15:14 Andrew Mitchell (Conservative)

I want to talk about the position of women across the world and the deep poverty that disfigures our world. I think the whole House will accept that we cannot understand international development unless we see it through the eyes of a girl or a woman, because girls and women suffer most grievously from the effects of poverty. They suffer first and hardest from climate change, food insecurity, conflict and disorder. As we have heard, so many are in important caring roles, and they are often, in the developing world, the earners in families. Some 2.1 billion girls live in countries that, even before the pandemic, were not on track to meet any of the gender equality targets set down by the United Nations. One of the best ways of changing the world is to educate girls. If we educate girls, they marry later, educate their own children, tend to be more likely to be economically active, and adopt leadership roles in their communities. That is why the Prime Minister is so right to champion—to aspire to—every girl getting 12 years of education.

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15:41 Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con) [V]

Given the Government’s continuing commitment to those worthy outcomes, I gently ask them to question themselves about the justification for the cut in our UK foreign aid. International aid has led the war on forced labour among migrant women and started to crack down on human trafficking. The UK has led the global action on that. Foreign aid has led to African women finding a market for their camels’ milk and been essential in the fight to end violence against women and girls in Lebanon. UK aid is critical in addressing the displacement of women due to conflict, climate change and, more recently, the covid pandemic.

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