Overseas Development Assistance

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park (Con) [V]]

My Lords, we are continuing to support Afghanistan, with £145 million of investment next year. Since 2001, we have provided £3 billion in development and government assistance to Afghanistan. Our aid has helped significant improvements in that country. Life expectancy has increased from 50 in 1990 to 64 just two years ago. Some 8.2 million more children have been to school; 39% of them are girls. We have insulated our programmes in Afghanistan as much as we possibly can, in most part, from the effect of the reduction to 0.5%. Covid has obviously changed the balance of calculations and forced us to focus on tackling this additional threat to Afghans’ health and livelihoods, but the programmes have, by and large, been protected.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

Before the Minister and his colleagues halved aid to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable women and children in malaria-plagued and war-scarred Yemen, which the UN Secretary-General described as “a death sentence”, why was no humanitarian impact assessment carried out?