Meg Munn

I thank the Secretary of State for her answer. Given that many small island states in the Pacific face severe threats from climate change and will fail to meet millennium development goals on education and health, and given that this year sees the once-a-decade small island developing states conference, will she take a lead on the Government’s involvement in that conference, and will she ensure that the House is kept updated on what this Government can do to support such countries, which are suffering?

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Justine Greening

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question, and I will write to her with fuller details, but, in summary, we do a significant amount of work in supporting Pacific islands. She mentioned climate change, and we in fact fund the World Bank group that is doing a pilot programme on climate resilience; we are a major donor to it. We also provide support through the European development fund and the Commonwealth. If I write to her with more details, perhaps she will get the reassurance she seeks.

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Lynne Featherstone

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Livelihoods and jobs are a key focus for DFID, and we are doing a great deal of work on them. Some of the money that we are providing is built into resilience work, because the problems in the Sahel are about drought and climate change. It is what we can do for the long term that matters most.

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Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)

We know that the greatest risk that the UK faces from climate change is flooding, but the developing world will be hit even harder, so we all need a global climate deal. Will the Minister commit the Prime Minister to attending Ban Ki-moon’s climate summit in September, as other world leaders will, and to pushing for a stand-alone climate change goal in the post-2015 process?

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Mr Duncan

The hon. Gentleman strays ever so slightly from the question on the Order Paper, but I understand his point. I am not privy at this stage to the Prime Minister’s diary, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the priorities that we set in our overseas aid programmes focus on climate change to a large extent and are doing an enormous amount of good.

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