UK Food Aid: Ethiopia

Lord Bishop of Durham Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

The noble Lord is right to identify that as a major issue, which is why family planning remains a big focus of UK aid across Africa. So many threats, risks, challenges and pressures face that continent, and climate change and environmental degradation, as mentioned in the previous question, are rapidly becoming the dominant threat facing many countries in the continent.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, it happens time and again that Governments start diverting food aid and other aid away from the people who need it on the ground, and time and again we have learned that international organisations such as Christian Aid and the Red Cross, and local faith communities from all faiths, are often the very best at delivering aid and making sure it gets to the people most in need. Can the Minister tell us what is being done to try to get around the Ethiopian Government and use those organisations?

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con)]

I strongly agree with the premise of the question. Many of those organisations are better placed to deploy aid than Governments, government agencies or some of the very clunky, large multilateral organisations. I mentioned earlier that the UK has not found evidence that our own aid has been diverted, but we are part of a UN-led diversion task force. We are pressing for a systemwide investigation into diversion risks across Ethiopia and working with our representatives at the UN and the World Bank to bring impetus to this process at the highest possible level. But there is an urgent need to maintain the humanitarian support that the right reverend Prelate identified in areas affected by ongoing regional conflict, flooding, cholera and so on. We follow strict processes to prevent aid diversion and have controls and risk management systems in place, and they seem to be working. We are acutely aware of the need to continue to provide humanitarian assistance for those in the greatest need.