Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Mitchell Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

Britain is leading the campaign to secure education for girls and women across the developing world. This is not, of course, just about the numbers entering school, but about ratcheting up the quality of education overall.

[Wendy Morton]

I very much welcome the support that my right hon. Friend’s Department continues to provide to educate women around the world, but can he confirm that he will continue to work with our G7 allies to ensure that they play their part in helping us to get an additional 40 million girls into school by 2026?

[Mr Mitchell]

I hardly dare answer my right hon. Friend’s question such is her expertise in this matter. I can tell her that the UK has committed to tackling the global education crisis through the girls’ education action plan, which was set up in 2021, and through two G7-endorsed global objectives to get 40 million more girls into school and 20 million more girls reading by the age of 10 by 2026.

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

In Afghanistan, women are locked out of learning and girls are shut out of school, and the recent ban on aid workers has made the situation much worse. I think that we should stand with women and girls in Afghanistan, so will the Minister confirm that there will not be any cuts to the official development assistance going to Afghanistan?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. and gallant Gentleman knows a great deal about Afghanistan from his deep experience. He is absolutely right to say that the violation of women’s rights in Afghanistan—particularly girls’ schooling—is absolutely outrageous. We are doing everything that we can in terms of expertise, money and influence around the world to ensure that we stop it.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

4. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the time taken by his Department to impose sanctions on the Myanmar military regime.

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[Mrs Paulette Hamilton (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

11. What recent steps his Department has taken to improve access to water, sanitation and hygiene for women and girls across the world.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

Britain is working to improve access to clean water, sanitation and hygiene in 37 developing countries.

[Mrs Hamilton]

I refer the House to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. A third of women around the world do not have access to clean water. In December, I visited Ghana and saw how water, sanitation and hygiene projects funded by UK aid can be life-changing for women and girls. The Government’s international development strategy commits to “empowering women and girls” around the world, but it does not go far enough. Can the Minister assure me that his Department will prioritise funding for WASH projects for women and girls?

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank the hon. Lady, my constituency neighbour, for flagging up an extremely important area of development policy. Over the last three years, Britain has trained 460,000 health and other key workers in the science of hygiene, and has supported 14,800 healthcare facilities. As she will have seen from her visit to Ghana, that is highly prioritised by the British Government.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Research by Open Doors for its world watch list indicates that there is a worrying tendency for Christian communities to be deprived of access to vital aid programmes. Will the Minister ensure that all UK-funded aid programmes are open to Christians, where needed, and other ethnic minorities?

[Mr Mitchell]

My right hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, and the answer is yes.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Preet Kaur Gill (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have now passed the halfway mark to the 2030 deadline for meeting the sustainable development goals that we and 192 UN countries signed up to. On our current trajectory, however, we are set to miss every single one. Does the Minister agree that WASH is a cornerstone of the global goals and, to meet his targets on girls’ education and ending preventable deaths, schools and hospitals need clean water and sanitation? Will he restore the official development assistance for WASH, which has dropped by two thirds, as part of the women and girls strategy?

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Lady makes an extremely important point. Since the programmes were renewed in 2015, 63 million people in the poorest countries now have access to clean water and a lavatory, thanks to the UK taxpayer. Specifically, support for the Sanitation and Water for All partnership, which promotes access to sustainable water resources, is a high priority for the Government.

[Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

12. What steps his Department is taking to provide consular support for Alaa Abd El-Fattah.

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[Sir Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)]

Can the Foreign Secretary confirm that the Government remain fully committed to deploying £11.6 billion of international climate finance up to March 2026? Will he also commit to setting out the annual projections for ICF spending over the next three years and, if possible, a breakdown between mitigation and adaptation finance?

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

My right hon. Friend knows a great deal about this subject, and has done an enormous amount. The Prime Minister announced at COP that Britain would stand by the commitment to spend £11,600 million on climate finance through the ICF, and yesterday there was a cross-Whitehall meeting with Ministers involved in the programme to discuss how that would be done. I will try to establish how much we can put into the public domain about those plans, as my right hon. Friend suggests, but I should emphasise that the pipeline of high-quality eligible projects is extremely important.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

T6. Thousands remain unjustly imprisoned in Egypt, including many lawyers. As well as doing all that it can to secure the release of the British-Egyptian dual national Alaa Abd el-Fattah, will the FCDO ensure that it continues to make representations for the release of Alaa’s lawyer and human rights defender, Mohamed el-Baqer?

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[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

T7. [R] As chair of the all-party parliamentary group for crypto and digital assets, I have been reading about the success of Oxfam’s UnBlocked Cash project. It uses blockchain technology to ensure the digital identity of recipients, and it has won the European Horizon prize and the World Summit award. What progress has the Department made on maximising UK aid reaching the most vulnerable via blockchain and distributed ledger technology?

[Mr Mitchell]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Just a minute, Minister. When I said to the Foreign Secretary that he was taking too long, that did not mean that Back Benchers could take up all the time instead.

[Mr Mitchell]

The hon. Lady raises an important point, and she specifically mentions Oxfam. Anything that Oxfam is involved with is well worth pursuing and I will look into it.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

FSO Safer, the oil tanker off the coast of Yemen, continues to deteriorate. Funding has been raised, so can my right hon. Friend update the House on when the oil will be offloaded and the tanker made safe?

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[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

In the horn of Africa, millions of people are facing starvation due to the worst drought in 40 years. We know that local non-governmental organisations can play a vital role in reaching the local groups of people affected, so what proportion of our £156 million of promised aid is going to people through local NGOs?

[Mr Mitchell]

We take an absolutely pragmatic approach to this and we use the best possible vehicle for getting the humanitarian aid through. I can tell my right hon. Friend that we will meet the target of £156 million that we budgeted for by the end of the financial year.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

T10. A UK Treasury official recently said of Japan’s attempt to co-ordinate a G7 response to China’s economic coercion that it is “more words than results”. Does the Minister agree with Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Minister that effective responses to economic coercion should be a major focus of this year’s G7 summit?

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[Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)]

Can the Minister explain why the percentage of UK official development assistance marked as significant against the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s disability marker fell by 10% between 2019 and 2021? What steps is he taking to reverse that?

[Mr Mitchell]

I thank the Chair of the International Development Committee for raising this important point. We have put disability at the centre of what we do. I met the Bond Disability and Development Group, a group of experts, yesterday to consider what more we can do on education, climate and humanitarian crises. More than a third of all development programmes now contain disability-inclusive activities.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

My constituent Daniel Gadsden is in prison in the Philippines, facing drugs charges that he strenuously denies. After 17 months in custody, in appalling conditions, his mental and physical health is very poor. He has an untreated eye condition and is now almost blind. His parents, Helen and Nick, are terrified that they will never see their son again. Will the Foreign Secretary meet me and them to discuss what more can be done to ensure that Daniel is treated with decency and humanity, and that he receives a fair trial?