16:52 Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)

The new SDGs offer a better way forward, and our Prime Minister threw his support behind them in New York. Implementation must be universal—universality is what makes the SDGs as promising as they are. The British Government should not merely choose a few goals and targets to focus on; all 17 goals and 169 targets should guide our strategy. However, this is not just an international development issue, because the SDGs work even more broadly than that. Along with, I am sure, others present in the Chamber today, I want to see the Cabinet Office given the role of co-ordinating the work across not only DFID, but the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. We are falling behind other countries, but we can do better, and co-ordinating action across Government to fulfil the promise of the Prime Minister’s words in September is how we do that.

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17:20 Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)

This issue also came up yesterday in the HIV debate. A number of us were disappointed at the Command Paper published by DFID. The Government had showed commendable leadership in the development of the goals, in the negotiation process. Then last November they published a Command Paper that mentions the global goals only four times in its 28 pages. It would therefore be useful to hear from the Minister when a clear strategy for implementation of the SDGs will be published and whether that will happen before the high-level political forum in New York in July—the first key milestone—what the cross-Government role will be and whether they see a role for the Cabinet Office in co-ordinating across Government how domestic policy has an effect overseas, but also how the goals can be met at home, as well as how this will complement other commitments that have been signed up to, not least the Paris commitments on climate change.

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