16:30 Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)

I will just make some more progress. From scientific research, health and climate change to economic growth, education, governance and security, there are few aspects of life that our aid does not touch in many of the poorest nations of the world.

Kenya has a population of 43 million people and is the biggest economy in eastern Africa, yet around 25% of Kenyans do not have enough income to meet their basic food needs. A massive three quarters of the population are dependent on agriculture. This proves troublesome when their weather patterns are becoming increasingly erratic. That beautiful country and those wonderful people face a number of issues, including the unequal distribution of political, social and economic power; tax and governance issues; high maternal and child mortality rates; and—the main focus of my trip—climate change.

Although I had visited Kenya a number of times before in my previous charity work, my most recent visit was a chance to see Kenya with a different focus. I spent three jam-packed days in the country, meeting members of the Kenyan Government, UK representatives, campaigners and charity workers. On one occasion, I visited an extremely rural area, where the impact of climate change is felt most acutely, and met a local farming community. Rainfall is now much less frequent but heavier, which creates significant challenges of soil erosion and flash flooding. I visited a farm where a partnership of the UK and Kenyan local government has helped to fund the construction of water-capture pits for the farmer. When it rains, the pits enable him to store water, which can last for several months during a drought. This means that farmers can expand their farms and provide employment for more local people—so simple, yet so effective.

Having met these people and heard their stories, which begin with anguish but have a positive and hopeful outcome, I understand much more clearly why this spending is so necessary. My trip made it very clear that climate change, as well as every other single issue facing those who receive aid, is being felt in the poorer countries of the world, where people are less resilient and less able to adapt.

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17:12 Stephen Timms (Labour)

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that in the same way as Make Poverty History was a huge issue then, climate change is a huge issue now? Value-for-money programmes in Bangladesh, such as those to do with flooding, have an enormous impact. They can prevent not only flooding, but famine, helping with unwanted migration and so on—issues we need to look at. Even terrorism can be linked to the failure to address climate change.

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17:18 Wendy Morton (Conservative)

The hon. Lady makes a very valuable point. The benefit of such debates is that they enable us to share many examples of projects and the experiences that we have all had. We face a choice: either seek to tackle the root causes of poverty and therefore many of the great global challenges we face, or wait for the problem—be that the threat of mass migration, terrorism, disease, corruption or global climate change—to arrive here on our doorstep, by which point it is often too late.

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17:54 James Cartlidge (Conservative)

Does the hon. Gentleman not think that we also have a duty to explain what our aid does and achieves and that it is audited in a technical way? We do not actually talk about the fact that polio was nearly eradicated or about peace building in Rwanda. Future wars will be about water, not oil, so we need to include climate change and do the job of explaining to the public what our aid is trying to achieve.

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18:00 Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)

It is estimated that UK aid helps to save a life every two minutes. It has provided 13.2 million people with access to essential TB treatment. Since 2011, it has reached 62.9 million people with water, sanitation and hygiene interventions and has ensured the safe birth of 5.1 million children by making appropriate medical assistance available. However, aid from the UK does not just save lives. It helps to tackle social inequalities and to encourage prosperity. It supports those suffering from poverty to overcome hardships and helps to provide education opportunities to children, including girls, across the world. It increases people’s abilities and skills to earn a living, and generates employment, fosters trade and develops markets. It helps to address climate change, to reduce conflict and to increase stability across our world. All that is in the interests of developing countries and the developed world.

As a country, we cannot act with credibility overseas if we are blind to inequality at home, but our ambitions for a fairer Scotland are undermined without global action to tackle poverty, to promote prosperity and to tackle climate change. As a Christian, I believe we have a moral duty to fulfil our commitment to achieving the sustainable development goals around the world. As humans, we share one planet and we must contribute to making it fair, healthy and safe for all.

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18:46 Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)

The same is true of the work on water and sanitation referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). DFID’s work has reached 60 million people over the past four years—vulnerable people in remote rural areas and the most difficult of circumstances. We have heard about the work with Syrian refugees who can have an education as a result of the work funded by DFID. Just two or three months ago, the International Development Committee saw the tremendous work being done with children in the north of Nigeria to ensure that they have an education fit for the 21st century, and last year we saw forestry work done over more than 20 years in Nepal, increasing forestation there by around 15%. That is important in tackling climate change.

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19:44 Desmond Swayne (Conservative)

Overseas aid is also undoubtedly controversial; it has to be. If I am spending British taxpayers’ money on helping the people of Bangladesh who live on the chars to deal with climate change and flooding, it is clearly not available to deal with flood defences in Durham, York or elsewhere. However, I put it this way: we have pledged to spend 0.7% of our national income on international development, which means that we have 99.3% to spend on ourselves. I do not know anyone who spends 99.3% of their income on themselves; I am not sure I want to know such a person, and I am not so sure that they would have any friends. That is equally true of a nation. What influence would we have in the world, and how could we carry our heads high, if that were the case, and we were to abandon this important pledge? It is important to focus what we spend, rigorously demanding value for money, and ensuring that we have the systems to secure that and to drive down costs, so that we get proper value.

The reality is that over the past five years, we have delivered education for 11 million schoolchildren; 69 million people have received financial assistance and services to trade their way out of poverty; 29 million people have benefited from our nutrition programmes; 5 million people, as my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) said, have benefited from having healthcare professionals attend at birth; 63 million people have had access to clean water; 15 million people have been able to cope with climate change; 44 million children have been immunised; and we have delivered emergency care to 13 million people in the wake of 33 disasters. That is a measure of the importance of what we are doing.

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