Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what proportion of the £160 million funding for humanitarian aid pledged by the UK at the United Nation’s Yemen Pledging Conference in Riyadh on 2 June 2020 has been paid to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Answered by James Cleverly - Home Secretary
The UK’s £160 million funding will be delivered through a range of UN agencies and aims to provide support to at least 300,000 vulnerable people each month to help them buy food and household essentials, treat 40,000 children for malnutrition and provide 1 million people with improved water supply and basic sanitation.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) is one of the UK’s partners in Yemen. We currently support the Cash and Markets Working Group coordinator and stand ready to consider support to the OCHA led Yemen Humanitarian Fund when an allocation round is announced.
Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how much the CDC Group has invested in fossil fuel projects in each of the last three years.
Answered by James Duddridge
Since 2017, CDC has made new direct commitments to fossil fuel projects totalling $207.4 million ($84.8 million in 2017; $0 million in 2018; $122.6 million in 2019). During the same period CDC has made over $1 billion of commitments into climate related investments including renewable power, forestry and resource efficiency projects.
Last week, CDC published an ambitious Climate Strategy, which sets out a comprehensive approach to align all of CDC’s investing activities with the Paris Agreement, based on the core principles of reaching net zero by 2050, enabling a just transition and strengthening adaptation and resilience.
CDC is committed to Paris Alignment including net zero emissions by 2050 and will not make new investments in any business – either directly or through an intermediary fund – that is deemed to be misaligned with the Paris Agreement. CDC is targeting 30% of total investments to be committed to climate finance in 2021.
More information here: https://www.cdcgroup.com/en/news-insight/news/cdc-group-unveils-commitment-to-become-aligned-to-the-paris-agreement/.
Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, whether the Government's £300 million funding pledge to the Syrian humanitarian relief fund at the Brussels Conference on 30 June 2020 is inclusive of or separate from current projected Official Development Assistance spending in (a) Syria, (b) Lebanon, (c) Jordan and (d) Turkey.
Answered by James Cleverly - Home Secretary
At the Brussels Conference, the Secretary of State pledged to provide at least £300 million of humanitarian and development assistance. This is the currently-approved UK ODA expenditure for Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey for 2020. This figure is made up of DFID country budgets, total operating costs, and ODA-eligible budgets from other Government departments towards these four countries.
Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps she has taken to ensure that Official Development Assistance is not spent on fossil fuel projects.
Answered by James Duddridge
Countries need reliable and sustainable supplies of energy if they are to tackle poverty effectively by growing their economies, creating jobs, and delivering essential services. UK aid is focused on helping them achieve this, and our support for energy is increasingly invested in renewables. Since 2011, the UK has provided 26 million people with improved access to clean energy and installed 1,600 MW of clean energy capacity, avoiding 16 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions.
In 2019, in the Green Finance Strategy, the Government committed to aligning the UK’s Official Development Assistance with the goals of the Paris international climate change agreement, including our support for energy.
The Government has also announced that the UK will double our international climate finance to £11.6 billion between 2021/22 and 2025/26. A significant proportion of this funding will be invested in clean energy, including up to £1 billion in developing and testing new technology in areas such as energy storage, innovations in renewable energy, cooling, low carbon and electric transport and technologies for industrial decarbonisation. This funding for innovation is targeted at driving forward the clean energy transition in developing countries, by creating and demonstrating new technologies and business models to deploy them.
Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what discussions she has had with Cabinet colleagues on the reallocation of responsibility over the globally agreed Sustainable Development Goals following the merger of her Department with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Answered by Wendy Morton
The UK remains committed to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the SDGs will play an important role in collective approaches to post-COVID-19 recovery. Responsibility for the oversight of the SDGs will need to be considered in the round as part of the formation of the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Notwithstanding this, all government departments have responsibility for the aspects of the SDGs that relate to their respective policy responsibilities.
Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent assessment she has made of the effect of increased numbers of covid-19 cases in (a) Iran, (b) Saudi Arabia, (c) Turkey and (d) Israel on the (i) health and (ii) humanitarian situation in fragile states that border those countries.
Answered by James Cleverly - Home Secretary
The Department for International Development is concerned by the continued high rates of COVID-19 cases in the Middle East region and is tracking the situation closely. According to World Health Organisation (WHO) data Iran and Turkey are the countries in the region with the highest infection and death rates. We are especially concerned by the situation in Yemen and Syria where the conflict in both countries, coupled with under-resourced health care facilities means the impacts are likely to be significant and the number of cases far higher than reported. This is why the UK has so far pledged £764 million of UK aid to end the coronavirus pandemic as quickly as possible. Countries in need in the Middle East including Yemen, Syria, Iran and the Occupied Palestinian Territories will benefit from this. This is in addition to other UK aid that has been flexed to support the response around the world, including the Middle East.
Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of merging her Department with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on the UK’s ability to meet the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030.
Answered by Anne-Marie Trevelyan - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK remains committed to the Sustainable Development Goals. The SDGs will play an important role in post-COVID-19 recovery, recognising the connection between healthy lives, healthy societies and a healthy environment. As the Prime Minister affirmed on 28 May, we owe it to future generations to build back better, basing our recovery on a fairer, greener and more resilient global economy, and to get our shared goals back on track, including the Sustainable Development Goals.
Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent discussions she had with international counterparts on the urgent need for increased pledged funding for humanitarian aid programmes in Yemen.
Answered by James Cleverly - Home Secretary
Over the last month the International Development Secretary and I have held several calls with our counterparts, including from Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, to stress the importance of donors providing funds to the humanitarian response in Yemen.
UK officials have also held similar discussions with their counterparts around the world.
The UK announced our new pledge of £160 million in humanitarian funding for Yemen in the 2020/21 financial year at the Yemen Pledging Conference on 2 June, taking our total commitment since the conflict began to £970 million.
Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what outcomes were agreed on 23 April 2020 during discussions between her Department's Acting Permanent Secretary and the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs on international humanitarian funding levels in Yemen.
Answered by James Cleverly - Home Secretary
On Thursday 23 April, DFID’s Acting Permanent Secretary discussed the worsening humanitarian situation in Yemen and the urgent need for additional funding with UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Mark Lowcock.
The UN has requested over $2.4 billion of funding to be able to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Yemen until the end of this year.
I announced on 2 June that the UK will provide £160 million in response to Yemen’s humanitarian crisis this financial year (2020/21). This brings our overall commitment to Yemen to £970 million since the conflict began in 2015.
Asked by: Anna McMorrin (Labour - Cardiff North)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to ensure logistical strategies are in place to help ensure the timely distribution of vaccines to international NGOs working on the ground in low-income and fragile states.
Answered by Wendy Morton
My Department is at the forefront of global efforts to ensure that Covid-19 vaccines are available to everyone who needs them, including in low-income and fragile states. On 4 June, the UK will host the Global Vaccines Summit (GVS2020) alongside GAVI who are uniquely placed to ensure safe, effective and affordable COVID-19 vaccines can be rolled out at scale to ensure equitable access. The UK is the leading donor to GAVI and we recently announced the equivalent of £330 million a year for five years, covering the business planning period 2021-2025.