14:30 The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (David Rutley)

The Inter-American Development Bank Group works to promote greater security and stability within Latin America and the Caribbean. The bank is a key partner as we work towards our objectives in the region. Those objectives include promoting democracy and economic growth, preventing organised crime and taking action on climate change, which I know is a huge issue for many members of the Committee. We are also working to deepen trade and investment relationships and to prevent and prepare for the next pandemic.

The UK has been a member of the Inter-American Development Bank Group since it was established in 1959 and we have used our shareholding to shape it. That includes securing a commitment from the bank, ahead of COP26, to align with the Paris agreement by 2023, and to increase the volume of finance that it provides to tackle climate change.

The bank plays a critical role in providing loan finance to Governments across the region to support development objectives and projects, including in infrastructure, health and education. However, private sector investment across Latin America and the Caribbean region is also critically important for driving growth, creating jobs and tackling climate change. To strengthen the bank group’s focus on investing in the private sector, it agreed with shareholders in 2015 to “merge out” its private sector operations to form IDB Invest. That is now a separate legal entity within the bank group, with its own board and shareholding structures. Today, IDB Invest provides around $6 billion of finance per year to businesses, with a focus particularly on small and medium-sized enterprises. The UK voted in favour of the merge out and agreed to transfer $7 million of UK capital from the bank to IDB Invest. In 2018, the IDB Invest Treaty was presented to the UK Parliament. The final stage in the process to join IDB Invest is to ratify the treaty.

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14:45 David Rutley

I welcome the comments and broad support offered by hon. Members for the order. Clearly, as the hon. Member for Leeds North East highlighted, the key priority is the economic prosperity of our partners and stability in the region. There is clear alignment there. He raised a number of issues, to which I know I am not supposed to respond, so I will not, but needless to say and to reassure members of the Committee, we will be meeting next week to discuss those items in more detail, in a more appropriate setting. We will leave those issues for then, but we are very mindful of issues in Haiti and we know that we need to do more to tackle climate change in the region. Interacting with those partners, they understand the influence of the UK when other strategic players are in operation in the region, such as China.

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