House of Commons
Thursday 27 February 2003
The House met at half-past Eleven o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. Speaker in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
TREASURY
The Chancellor of the Exchequer was asked—
Voluntary Sector
1. Mr. Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston): If he will make a statement on the money allocated in the spending review 2002 for the voluntary sector. [99461]
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gordon Brown): The Home Secretary and I plan to publish a paper on future policies for the voluntary sector. In addition to matching £400 million in gift aid with money for the active community unit and £125 million for the futurebuilders fund, the spending review gave priority to, and targeted extra resources on, voluntary sector participation in sure start, children's services, IT centres, community economic regeneration and the new deal. We also plan to introduce proposals to encourage gap year voluntary service by young people.
Mr. Miller : I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments about sure start, which has been amazingly successful in my constituency, affecting 788 families. It is an example of the charitable and voluntary sectors and the Government working together. I urge him to do three things in respect of that superb project: to provide more investment; to join me in urging all parties to support it; and to consider allowing greater local flexibility, so that boundaries, which are rigid at the moment, could be bent a little to provide help to families who need it but who just happen to live across a boundary.
Mr. Brown: I know that my hon. Friend has a sure start scheme in his constituency that has had capital funding and helped 770 children in the area. We are very pleased that as a result of the engagement of the voluntary sector in every sure start project—it now runs 10 per cent. of the projects as the lead manager—we have managed to increase sure start child care and early-years budgets from £973 million last year to £1.5 billion by 2005–6. We are determined to improve provision in every area of the country where sure start projects are
needed. The best way forward is to engage the voluntary sector, but that would not be possible if there were a 20 per cent. cut in public spending.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): Given that the Government promised an extra £50 million for specialist palliative care, including additional support for voluntary sector hospices, and that that commitment was underlined by the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Salford (Ms Blears), as recently as 21 October last year, how does the Chancellor explain the fact, which infuriates the hard-working hospice movement, that it has so far received only 8 per cent. of the money first promised two and a half years ago?
Mr. Brown: The hon. Gentleman knows that the funding has been made available from the Treasury. Arrangements with individual hospices must be addressed locally, based on the view of local palliative care services. We are determined to put extra money into the hospice movement to help it, but I repeat that that would not be possible if the Flight plan for a 20 per cent. cut in public services were introduced.
David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire): North-west Leicestershire is fortunate in having a flourishing and independent voluntary sector. What plans does the Chancellor have to encourage greater corporate support for the voluntary sector and, in particular, for individual businesses to be able to give financial backing to those in their local community?
Mr. Brown: The Chief Secretary has been leading the way from the Treasury in trying to engage the corporate sector in several new initiatives that would increase the amount of money available for, and the numbers of people engaged in, voluntary, community and charitable work. It would be welcomed on both sides of the House if we could increase the amount of corporate giving and corporate engagement in some of our voluntary and community projects. I look forward to publishing with the Home Secretary proposals on how we can move the process forward in the next few years. I remind my hon. Friend that gift aid is available for companies as well as for individuals, that it is the most generous system of tax relief for charities that has been made available in this country, and that it surpasses what is available in most other countries. I hope that the £400 million that we are now devoting to gift aid will increase over the next few years, from increases in both corporate and individual giving. I hope that we will have all-party support for that.
Mr. Stephen O'Brien (Eddisbury): Given the pressure that the Chancellor has put on the funds of the voluntary sector, with the decline in charities' income—such as that experienced by hospices—from his removal of the advance corporation tax dividend credit and the imminent imposition of his jobs tax through the increase in the national insurance levy, can he find the resources to refund the £500 million per year of irrecoverable VAT
to charities? If he can, we will back him every step of the way and fully co-operate on the issue during the passage of the forthcoming Finance Bill.
Mr. Brown: I find it amazing that the Conservative party, which raised VAT and then put it on fuel, is now claiming that these measures have harmed charities. On help for charities, we have the best regime for individual and corporate giving, with tax reliefs higher than they ever were under the Conservatives, and an active community unit budget that has been increased massively. At the same time, the futurebuilders programme, led by my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary, is putting £125 million extra into charities. None of the problems of charities could be solved if the Flight plan cut 20 per cent. from their expenditure.
International Debt Relief
2. Mr. Parmjit Dhanda (Gloucester): What plans he has to extend the scope of international debt relief. [99463]
The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Mr. Gordon Brown): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall answer this question together with Questions 14 and 16.
I am pleased to announce that, following the G7 meeting in Paris last weekend, all G7 members have agreed to examined how, in the short term, we can do more to help countries where, because of the decline in commodity prices and for other reasons, they have yet to achieve a sustainable exit from debt from our debt relief programmes. We shall also examine how, in the longer run, we can together provide a new international finance facility, so that instead of poor countries having to pay higher debt interest payments, they will have additional resources to invest in tackling illiteracy and disease.
I have been grateful for all-party support for these initiatives. We hope to make further progress on all these matters at the International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings in April this year.
Mr. Dhanda : On behalf of trade justice campaigners in Gloucester and around the country, may I sincerely congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor on providing 100 per cent. debt relief to 26 developing countries? At the same time, however, does he share my concerns about the activities of private companies, of which those of Nestlé in Ethiopia offer one example? Such companies are pursuing litigation against heavily indebted poor countries, which often hampers our efforts to provide debt relief.
Mr. Brown: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I thank him for the work that he does in his constituency to promote the debt relief campaign and the pursuit of the millennium development goals.
I gather that Nestlé is now settling the issue with Ethiopia. I met the Prime Minister of Ethiopia only two days ago, and I promised him, on the issue of debt relief, that I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development would try to find a means at the international meetings in April to do more to help his country with the debt relief programme that he
wants to carry out. In the longer term, the issue is less what we do on debt relief than how much more resources, tied to reform, we can put into education and health programmes for countries such as Ethiopia and others. That is why the international finance facility, a British initiative gaining support among other countries, is so important. It is the long-term means by which we can guarantee that, instead of the poorest countries having to rely on debt relief, they will receive additional resources.
Mr. Speaker: I call Phyllis Starkey.
Mr. Speaker: Not here. I call Helen Jackson.
Mr. Speaker: Order. Will the Chancellor investigate whether Phyllis Starkey and Helen Jackson were notified? I call Sir Patrick Cormack.
Mr. John Bercow (Buckingham): He is always here.
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire): May I add my thanks and congratulations to the Chancellor? What steps are being taken to ensure that corrupt and tyrannical regimes are not the beneficiaries of what he is doing?
Mr. Brown: The whole House appreciates the hon. Gentleman's work in respect of Commonwealth countries. If we are to provide additional help for health, education and anti-poverty programmes, we must have a guarantee that the money will go not to corrupt elites, wasteful military expenditure and prestige projects by bureaucracies, but to the people. That is why the IMF's poverty reduction strategy programmes are so important, and why the initiatives that we have taken on transparency for fiscal and monetary policies in the highly indebted countries are important. The hon. Gentleman will be interested to learn that we are offering help to those countries to build up their capacity to run transparent financial policies, and thereby ensuring that everything possible is done to prevent the corruption to which he referred.
Mr. John McFall (Dumbarton): Does my right hon. Friend the Chancellor recall the UN development programme head who stated that the reason for 11 September was not Islam but the failure of Governments? Will my right hon. Friend continue to articulate the view that the world's long-term stability lies in easing the deep resentments in many developing countries? Will he work with the trade justice campaign and other campaigns to ensure that trade barriers are reduced, that the common agricultural policy is reformed, and that the World Trade Organisation fulfils its remit in respect of people in developing countries?
Mr. Brown: My hon. Friend is Chairman of the Select Committee on the Treasury and he is absolutely right: a world that is divided between people who have plenty and those who are denied basic necessities can be neither just nor stable. That is why it is so important that we
move forward to build a better relationship between developed and developing countries. As well as the actions that I have set out—on corruption and on providing extra aid resources—that better relationship includes the opening up of trade. Therefore, I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says. One of the biggest boosts to tackling poverty in the poorest countries will be progress at the WTO talks in Mexico in September.
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