12:39 Andrew Mitchell (Conservative)

What is less easily articulated is that tackling poverty throughout the world is also very much in our national interest. Whether the issue is drug-resistant diseases, economic stability, conflict and insecurity, climate change or migration, it is far more effective to tackle the root cause now than to treat the symptoms later. The weight of migration to Europe from Africa is often caused by conflict, poverty, disease and dysfunctional government. We see people putting themselves into the hands of the modern equivalent of the slave trader and crossing hundreds of miles of ocean in leaky boats in the hope of tipping up on a wealthy European shore. Often, they are not people seeking a free ride, but the brightest and the best from conflict countries, seeking a better life for themselves and their families. It is much better to help them to tackle the causes of their leaving the country that they have come from. Our prosperity depends on development and growth in Africa and Asia.

I welcome the Secretary of State to his new position, and I know that he understands the close relationship between development and the environment. Will he add to the list of the issues that he has just mentioned the importance of ensuring that environmental issues are taken into account as part of the development process? Will he also commit to ensuring that, on the climate change promise that the previous Government made, there will be no more than a 10% overlap between environmental projects to combat climate change and development aid—that his Government, too, are willing to continue with that commitment?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. On his general point, he is absolutely right about the importance of including in all our aid and development activity a climate-smart approach—one that, as he says, reflects the importance of the environment. In opposition I had an opportunity to see the direct correlation between those issues in many different parts of the world, and, although I shall not speak extensively today about climate change, I very much hope that there will be another opportunity to do so, and I take his point on board.

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13:53 Malcolm Bruce (Gordon) (LD)

The hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) has left the Chamber, but I want to say something about climate change. There is concern in the developing countries that all the commitment to poverty reduction could be easily subsumed into climate change measures. The 10% ruling was arbitrary, but I consider it important for the Government to focus primarily on poverty reduction, and not to allow climate change to divert funds that could be used for that purpose. We need a safeguard to ensure that that does not happen.

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14:52 Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)

Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he does not think any further resources should be made available for climate finance, and that if, as a result of the climate negotiations, further resources are asked of the developed world by developing countries, Britain’s contribution should not go beyond the 10% that the last Government said would come from DFID, and that other cuts in other programmes in DFID should take place?

I hope that the NGO community, including organisations such as Bond, and all the various NGOs that subscribe to and are members of Bond, will see that there is a need for them to start focusing outwards and engaging other countries in meeting their 0.7% target. The same could apply equally to climate change. Copenhagen did not fail because of what the UK Government did or did not do; it was a disappointment largely because the international community had not engaged sufficiently with China on that country’s aspirations and concerns.

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15:05 Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)

My final point on accountability is about our own accountability to the global community with regard to climate change. Developing countries are already experiencing the adverse effects of increased flooding, droughts and extreme weather events associated with man-made climate change. Few poor countries have the resources to invest in mitigation measures. Nor do they have the resources to rebuild infrastructure and houses that are damaged or destroyed. Climate change is destroying habitats, reducing food security, fuelling conflict and creating refugees. I hope that the Secretary of State can assure me that he intends that, distinct from the aid budget, we should meet our obligations to those countries that have not caused climate change but have to cope with the consequences. I echo the questions posed earlier about climate financing and ensuring that aid money is not vired over to deal with the effects of climate change.

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15:43 Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)

We also need to reform global financial institutions such the World Bank and International Monetary Fund by making their decision making processes more transparent and inclusive. We need to do much more to monitor and regulate international business and the impact that it has on the environment, because the effects of climate change are making it even harder than before to tackle global poverty. Developing nations now need significant sums of additional finance just to help them adapt to climate change.

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15:50 Rebecca Harris (Conservative)

In an era of global responsibility, where 24,000 children die in poverty every day and more than 3 billion people live on less than $2.50 a day, it is right that we should maintain our international aid budget and do all we can through trade, diplomacy, business investment and climate change policy to ensure that our efforts to help the world’s poorest are not damaged by the uncertain state of the global economy. It is also right that in the current economic climate, more than ever every pound of taxpayer’s money that we deliver in aid must provide the most value possible and be distributed through a system that is completely transparent.

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16:21 Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)

This trend is particularly noticeable in the area of food production, security and climate change. Despite traditional stereotypes, women are engaged in agricultural production in increasingly large numbers. Data offered by the UN hunger taskforce suggests that of the 4 billion poor and hungry, 50%—2 billion—are smallholder farmers, and the majority of those are women. The Food and Agriculture Organisation further suggests that women account for 70 to 80% of household food production in sub-Saharan Africa, 65% in Asia, and 45% in Latin America and the Caribbean. That so-called feminisation of agriculture means that women are becoming increasingly important to agricultural production systems. The reasons for the trend are wide-ranging but include rural-to-urban migration of men, war and its demographic impacts and mortality linked to HIV/AIDS. In many instances, it actually means that the role of men in agricultural production is becoming less significant than that of women.

Climate change is only increasing the challenges that they face. Where it has acute effects on land productivity, women run a higher risk than men of losing their means of livelihood. There is already evidence of that in areas with prolonged drought or heavy flooding, where men have left the rural areas in search of employment leaving women and children on farmland with dwindling resources.

Because women continue to be regarded as home producers or farming assistants and not as economic agents in their own right, they continue to be left out of policy support for mitigating and adapting to climate change. Climate risk insurance, for instance, is unlikely to reach women farmers if farming policy continues to ignore small-scale food growers. In fact, women in forestry, fishing and agriculture receive just 7% of total aid, and in Africa women receive just 10% of the credit for small-scale farmers. When women do obtain credit, the average value is 42% of what is granted to male farmers, and they often require a much higher percentage of collateral. That is clearly unsustainable. As the realities of climate change and food insecurity are beginning to bite—I am thinking particularly of the Sahel food crisis—it is becoming increasingly clear that one hope of effectively increasing the resilience of communities at risk is to engage, resource and train women who are already doing more than their fair share to clothe and feed some of the poorest communities in the poorest countries.

I hope that I have gone some way to showing what effective agents for development women in agriculture already are. As developing effective strategies to tackle food insecurity and climate change becomes ever more urgent, I hope that investing in women in agriculture will be seriously considered as a cost-effective and sustainable way of creating more sustainable communities in the areas in question.

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16:41 Damian Hinds (Conservative)

The line “charity begins at home” holds a certain attraction, but, as we see again and again from the generosity of the British people when called upon, charity here certainly does not end at home. The moral and altruistic argument for aid is strong, but as politicians we can, and must, do better than hitherto in explaining to, and convincing, people why aid can also be in our own interests when properly targeted and as long as we know that other wealthy nations are also making their proper contribution alongside ours. A larger world gross domestic product benefits not just newly developing countries, but the entire world economy, through bigger markets, specialisation and trade. It ensures that the world’s scarce resources, including human resources, are put to better use, and through the promotion of stability in otherwise volatile parts of the world, it contributes to our security. Furthermore, there are benefits in terms of climate change, economic migration and so on, and often direct benefit can be had from strategic bilateral relationships, which of course are competitive exercises between countries.

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17:27 Gareth Thomas (Labour)

Under this Government, the Department should be at the centre of development thinking, but it simply is not yet. It could champion reform of the World Bank, which, despite doing a lot of good, needs to evolve quickly, get its staff out of Washington and into the African countries that it is supposed to help, and continue the reform of its governance. However, there has been nothing from the right hon. Gentleman on that issue yet. Under him, DFID could champion reform of the UN development system in order to help all developing countries, including those with whom we do not have bilateral aid programmes. It could continue to demand a change to how the UN humanitarian system works—or, in the case of Haiti, did not work anything like well enough. The Department could demand that UN agencies work together better in developing countries, but we have heard nothing from the right hon. Gentleman on that topic, either. He could certainly lead the development community on highlighting the finance that is necessary to help developing countries deal with the impact of climate change, but there has been radio silence on that issue, too.

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17:44 The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)

Additional climate finance, as the previous Government made clear, will come from the existing aid budget. On the question of how the G20 working group on development will be held to account—something that he knows all about as a former Secretary of State—it will report to leaders through their sherpas. On the forthcoming millennium development goals summit, the UK ambition is to agree on an ambitious action agenda for attaining the MDGs. The shadow Secretary of State absurdly asked for our post-2013 spending plans. But so badly did his party mess up the public finances that he could not even, when he was Secretary of State, give us his own figures for next year. [Official Report, 6 July 2010, Vol. 513, c. 1MC.]

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