Murnaghan 2.06.13 Interview with Justine Greening, Secretary of State for International Development

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: International development is at the core of David Cameron’s brand of compassionate Conservatism but as most government departments are facing cuts, can we continue to protect the amount of money we spend on foreign aid? In a moment I will be speaking to the Secretary of State for International Development, she is of course Justine Greening. Let’s say a very good morning to the Secretary of State, Justine Greening, very good to see you, thank you very much for coming on. I just want to start first of all on this issue of lobbying which seems to continue to swirl around this morning with the latest allegations about three members of the House of Lords. Now the Prime Minister warned before he came in to power that this was the next big scandal coming down the line but it seems to be a scandal that never goes away. Can it ever be sorted out effectively?

JUSTINE GREENING: Well I think many MPs will be deeply concerned by the stories that we’ve read in the paper over the weekend. We really do need a cross-party approach to be able to tackle lobbying effectively but Parliament is also a place where many people, many organisations, charities, come to lobby and I think we’ve got to make sure that if we do bring forward some proposals, they actually do tackle the problem. Interestingly in the cases that we’ve seen over the weekend, actually it looks like they may have broken the rules, there is a process in place, the Parliamentary Standards Committee, to assess that so actually within Parliament there is an ability to a) identify what rules are, look at due process to find out whether they have been broken but I think you’re right, we also need to look at how we can go further than that and perhaps be better and clearer around what constitutes effective lobbying and when it goes beyond the right line.

DM: It comes a couple of days after Patrick Mercer, your former colleague I suppose, he’s resigned the Conservative whip, I mean there’s a question there about if he admits he’s done something that at least needs looking into and resigns the Conservative whip, do you think he should leave Parliament altogether now?

JG: As you say, Patrick has referred himself to the Parliamentary Standards Committee which I think was the right thing to do and what we should do is allow them to get on with that work, that’s the right process to take place and obviously we’ll have to see what they conclude and I think clearly he then needs to make his mind up when they have had chance to see what has happened but we haven’t actually seen the Panorama programme on which a lot of this will be aired and so I think let’s wait and see for those processes to go through and then I think clearly there are some continued challenges for all parties to look at in relation to lobbying.

DM: Okay, now let’s talk about the challenges of your brief and we had the Millennium Development goals, I suppose still operational until 2015, now we’ve got ambitious targets coming out from the United Nations about eradicating extreme poverty altogether in the fifteen years after that. Are these things that can really happen?

JG: I think we can see an end to extreme poverty, that’s what we are trying to achieve. There are some huge challenges facing the world in the coming decades ahead around food security, energy of course and climate change but also this on-going issue of poverty. We’ve seen extreme poverty halved in recent years, we can go a step further and see it eradicated and of course Britain has always played a leading role in shaping our world around us. We are still one of the biggest economies in the world, we are on the UN Security Council and of course the Prime Minister was part of a key piece of work asked for by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, to look at how we can step up and face these major challenges that the world faces in the coming decades and of course what we’ve seen coming out this week is the report that they produced which I think is being broadly welcomed by most people.

DM: But there is that question isn’t there, looking back to the millennium, the Millennium Development Goals, boom years of course. We come to 2015 and it probably hasn’t been eradicated and we’re looking at some very lean years going forward. I mean they are just too ambitious, these are warm words are they not?

JG: I don't think so. I think actually if you look at the progress made on many of those goals, whether it was halving poverty, water and sanitation, getting children into primary school wherever they are in the world – a lot of progress made but interestingly, where did we see no progress? It was in countries where there was conflict, where there was instability and what that means is that clearly for the UK and for how we invest our international development money, we need to have an eye for what’s in also our national interest. That means tackling instability in those countries before they can reach the streets of Britain, it means also keeping an eye on helping those next emerging markets that we will want to trade with develop and that’s very much been the focus that I’ve had since coming into this role.

DM: But there is a lot flowing out of that about focus on the United Kingdom. You talk there about the relationship to what actually happens on the streets of Britain but people will say just on the poverty measures, will they not, that look there are more and more people accessing food banks in this country right now, we need the money spent here. When it comes to extremism, well we saw what happened with domestically grown extremism on the streets of Woolwich a couple of weeks ago.

JG: Well I think ultimately for every one pence spent on international development, we are spending six pence on defence, probably thirteen to fifteen pence on education so it is 0.7% of our GNI, that means 99.3% is focused on the UK and I think it’s about making sure that that money we are investing in international development actually makes a difference, it’s why since coming into government we have targeted on countries that are the poorest. We’re not giving aid to places like Russia and China anymore, we’re targeting it a) where it’s needed and b) where it can make the most difference and c) where there is a clear UK interest in looking at stability and …

DM: But you talk about making sure the money is spent properly but once you hand the money over to whatever body it is, haven’t you ceded control at that point? How do you maintain that influence?

JG: We absolutely need to make sure that we can track our spend and we do that by being very transparent about where we’re spending our money, we also actually invest money into monitoring and evaluation so that we know not only what we’re planning to do but whether we are achieving those results and we have been very focused as a government on making sure that we are clear cut on what results we want to achieve and then reporting against them and that’s what we will continue to do.

DM: But you must be very pleased about the ring fencing that your department has, this protection against the Chancellor, you haven’t been dragged in to see George Osborne saying we need to trim your budget down but at what point does that ring fencing continue? The £130 billion deficit, you’re safe but what happens if the deficit climbs and the IMF come knocking on the door? I mean is it written in stone that this budget will not be touched?

JG: You are right there is a ring fence and interestingly it is ring fencing in relation to how big our economy is so if the economy doesn’t grow as fast, then that 0.7% of gross national income isn’t as big.

DM: What about knocking it down to 0.5%? Temporarily at least.

JG: Well I think we’ve taken a decision to live up to the promises that we made in our manifesto, in the coalition agreement and I think that’s right but what we do need to make sure is that DfID is much more fair and square part of the overall government and that is why we are working far more closely with the Foreign Office, is it part of our overall international relations policy, it is why we are working much more closely with people like the Home Office, it’s why I’m working with the Chancellor on setting up a joint DfID/HMRC team of tax experts who can make sure that countries can develop their own tax systems so that they have got their own money to spend in health and education and that is the way that ultimately we can see an end to aid dependency through creating jobs and tax systems that can provide the funding for those services.

DM: My questions is how inviolable is it? If the health budget, if the education budget has to be looked at eventually is yours still safe or does there come a point at which you say okay, we’ve protected it this far but we can do that no longer?

JG: I don’t think there is a government … in fact the two points you made were both other departments that we’ve ring-fenced, the NHS we’ve been explicit is a real priority for us as a government as is investing in schools and I think those are the promises we made the electorate where we would put the money and we’ve stuck to those and I think that’s what people want from governments, they want them clearly set out what they’re going to do and then they want to see them deliver on that and that’s what we’re doing.

DM: I notice in the Millennium Development Goals and in the new United Nations targets, the Prime Minister has talked about this, it’s not just an issue is it of handing over money and hoping things happen, it’s about fostering growth in developing countries where they can stand on their own two feet. Critics are going to say though, look, in this country you have your hands entirely on the levers of power and you can’t foster growth, how can you possibly achieve that elsewhere?

JG: I think we are starting to see the economy making progress now, if you look at the number of private sector jobs that are being created, but let’s be clear we are in a global race. Back in the 1980s we were trying to be more competitive within Europe, now we’ve got to be more competitive within the whole world and it is in our interests to be in those economies that DfID is working in, helping them grow, helping them become trading nations, making sure that alongside that we get our British companies involved in the development push too. They have a clear role to play and I think it is about starting to knit together those key issues of tackling poverty which is absolutely in Britain’s interests but also having a clear eye on our UK national interests in terms of stability and in terms of economic growth and that’s what we’re doing in my department now.

DM: It’s that stability we didn’t fully address there because people are going to say well, okay, we understand the theory of what you’re saying about spending money abroad but I suppose it comes back to this whole issue of dealing with our own problems first. We have seen terror twice in this country in the last decade, domestically it seems generated terror on the streets of the United Kingdom, couldn’t some of that money or couldn’t more effort anyway be put in to dealing with that threat which is clear and has ended up with people dying on the streets of the UK and it didn’t come from overseas?

JG: I think you need to do both at the end of the day. Ultimately prevention is better than cure, we’ve seen from some of the work that we’re doing in Somalia in helping them to build up their own criminal justice system, so they can tackle Al Shabab there rather than seeing us have terrorism incidents here but it’s a global world, people can get on a plane. What we need to do is make sure and help other countries develop their own justice systems so that they can tackle criminality and terrorism where they are, that’s one of the key ways we can stop it arriving on our streets. But you are absolutely right, we of course also need to have our own domestic efforts fighting terrorism which of course we have done.

DM: On that, we know the Prime Minister is going to talk about it tomorrow but we’ve got the former Prime Minister Mr Blair writing today saying the ideology behind Lee Rigby’s killing is profound and dangerous and presumably flowing from that, something needs to be done domestically. I mean what about this issue of so-called hate preachers, do you think a way can be found to gag them, to stop them saying the things they’re saying, that seem to inflame some people?

JG: I think Theresa May, the Home Secretary, is absolutely right to look at whether we can do more to look to stop these people coming out with clear incitement to violence and hatred on our streets but overall Britain is I think a strong country with strong freedom of speech, that’s one of the things that these people want to undermine and we should never let them do that but should we lie down and allow them to frankly cause division? No, so the Home Secretary is absolutely right to look at what we can do domestically. My department needs to continue to look at what more we can do to help stop instability in those countries in the first place before it gets here. You saw one of those people charged with the murder of Lee Rigby in a Kenyan court, it’s why we are right to be working overseas to help countries improve their own governance, their own justice systems and to become more stable in the first place.

DM: Do you ever feel though within your own party that the tide is running against you? The polls tell us that with the public as well, some of the points I raised earlier in the interview, the public don’t support the amount of money that is being spent on international development, they think more of it should be spent in this country but it also goes for the issue within your party of gay marriage, of the green agenda for energy policy, much of which we are discussing this morning, that sense that you are one of the lone voices now, one of the few voices for modernism within the party.

JG: Well I don’t accept that at all. I think in the case of international development, we live in a global world, you can’t just say stop the world I want to get off, Britain has always been a country that has been out shaping the world. We need to continue to do that, the PM as you saw in the UN playing a leading role in doing that on our behalf, absolutely right and we need to look towards the future, we need to be building a country for young people in Britain today to be successful in and that’s what we’ve been doing as a government. We have not only been tackling our public finance challenges, getting our financial house in order, living within our means, we’ve been investing in things like transport, in infrastructure, in making sure we have got sustainable energy so that we don’t have problems in the future that otherwise would be harder to tackle if we just ignored them.

DM: Secretary of State, thank you very much indeed. Justine Greening there.