19:23 Stephen Doughty (Labour)

That leads me neatly to my last point, which is the role of the devolved Administrations in development in eastern and central Africa. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the work of a new partnership that is developing in Wales, the Hub Cymru Africa. It is bringing together the work of Wales Africa Community Links, the Wales for Africa Health Links Network, the Sub-Sahara Advisory Panel, Fair Trade Wales and the Wales International Development Hub. Wales has a strong tradition of internationalism and of caring outside its borders. We have many local and Wales-wide organisations that care deeply about matters of development, human rights, international justice, climate change and so on. The sector in Wales is growing, with more than 350 community groups and micro-organisations working on international development. There is a large fair trade movement, supporting Wales as the first ever fair trade nation, as declared in 2008, and a Welsh Government-supported scheme, which delivers grants to many of those organisations enabling them to take their work forward.

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19:42 Andrew Mitchell (Conservative)

In all those countries, climate change hits the poorest people first and hardest. One reason for the massacres in Darfur—the pastoralists versus the crop growers—was the effect of climate change on crops and the ability of animals to withstand the droughts that are increasing in frequency. Britain has made an important contribution in the area of conflict, which has rightly been described as development in reverse. The key aim of British policy is to stop conflicts starting or, once they have started, to stop them, and once they are over, reconcile people. Much closer relations between development, defence and diplomacy, to which Members have alluded, came about because the coalition Government set up the National Security Council. The decision in the strategic defence and security review in 2010 to spend 30% of the DFID budget on tackling conflict—now increased to 50%—was absolutely right although, as I mentioned to the House, it was pretty hard to find ways of spending 30%, and it may be quite difficult to spend 50%.

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20:44 Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)

As we have also heard, the DRC is, like much of the region, experiencing climate change. Climate change exacerbates the problems of food and security, access to water, and population displacement. In many ways, it ultimately fuels the kind of instability that leads to the conflicts we have heard about. The Government have a responsibility to live up to their commitments on climate change. It will be interesting to hear what steps they have taken, for example, to promote the adoption of renewable energy on the continent rather than tying developing countries into fossil fuel infrastructure that will quickly become redundant.

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