Oral Answers to Questions

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

3. Whether pledges made by the international community at the “Defeating Ebola” conference in London on 2 October 2014 are being fulfilled.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

7. What steps she is taking to assist west African states in tackling the Ebola virus.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)]

The UK is leading the international response to the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, committing £230 million so far. We are providing 700 beds, including at the Kerry Town treatment facility that opened today, ensuring safe burials are taking place, providing more community care and helping to train health care workers. The “Defeating Ebola” conference we held in London last month generated more than £100 million of support to the overall response.

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[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman is right to raise these issues. The UN General Assembly and World Bank meetings were good opportunities for me to raise them, as was the recent EU Council, at which the Prime Minister successfully pushed to get more than £1 billion of support. We are now seeing many of the pledges made at the London conference come through. The most recent example is that the Norwegians will now be providing health care workers to help us operate some of those core facilities.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Secretary of State and many Members of this House will be familiar with the heartbreaking and moving diary of a young doctor from Huddersfield working in Sierra Leone. I hope she agrees that we owe Africa. Whatever we are doing, we are not doing enough: can we do more?

[Justine Greening]

As I said, I think we should be proud of the work we are doing, and we are doing a huge amount. Alongside the beds we are providing, we are helping to make sure that burials can take place safely, we are scaling up the training of health care workers—800 a week are being trained by the MOD—and we are rolling out more community care. As the hon. Gentleman says, this care is often being delivered by volunteers from Sierra Leone, who are involved in safe burials, and from our own country, and we should thank them for their generosity of spirit.

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[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend will be aware that one of the things that DFID is doing more than ever before is work on economic development. It is vital that we help people and countries end aid dependency through jobs.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

T4. I am delighted that the Secretary of State has been to Sierra Leone, but does she realise that even though I have begged the Leader of the House, we still have not had a major debate on Ebola? We owe that to Africa. When are we going to move? When are we going to debate it in this House and when are we going to do more?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Gentleman will be delighted to hear that there is an Adjournment debate on Ebola tonight, and oral questions provide a great opportunity to discuss and debate the work we are doing.