Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateAlison McGovern
Main Page: Alison McGovern (Labour - Birkenhead)Department Debates - View all Alison McGovern's debates with the Department for International Development
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberWe are working with a fund for small and medium-sized enterprises that can do precisely that. We have also, with the London stock exchange, focused on the issue of capital markets improving finance more broadly in developing countries—particularly, most recently, in Tanzania.
The garment industry in Bangladesh and elsewhere provides hundreds of thousands of jobs to people trying to work their way out of poverty, but it has too often involved unsafe conditions and poverty pay, and no one in Britain wants to buy clothes made in such conditions. Ahead of the first anniversary of the Rana Plaza disaster, does the Secretary of State now agree that her Government’s decision to withdraw funding from the International Labour Organisation, which protects vulnerable workers, was a short-sighted mistake?
I hope I can reassure the hon. Lady that we are working with the ILO in Bangladesh, and as she knows we have also sent over experts to help with building practices and construction. As the hon. Lady points out, it is nearly a year since the tragic collapse of the Rana Plaza building, and we have worked very hard since then with the Bangladesh Government and industry to make sure that we learn from that terrible disaster.