United Nations World Humanitarian Summit

Lord Lansley Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

Yes, my Lords. Again, the noble Lord raises some important points. One of the key things we want to be able to do from the summit is to bring together not just Governments but civil society organisations and people from academia to see how we can respond to the growing need to make sure that young people particularly are able to get trained, educated and engaged in employment. They need meaningful life skills so that we do not end up with a generation unable to respond to the ever-growing demands of the 21st century.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend the Minister will be aware that the United Kingdom’s commitment to 0.7% of gross domestic product as international development aid gives us the opportunity to give leadership at the World Humanitarian Summit. Can we use that and our commitment to predictable multiyear financing to lead in the development of training programmes for additional professionals capable of responding to humanitarian crises—not only trained but also available—since the use of additional financial resources depends on trained professionals in the field?

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend again addresses a real, serious issue—one we recognised when we had to deal with the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone. Our ambition for the summit is one of radical change to humanitarian action. We need much more efficiency, effectiveness and accountability in our responses and the responses of others, including a much-strengthened professional humanitarian workforce.