Sudan and Eastern DRC

Harpreet Uppal Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lammy]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. On what is happening in Rwanda and the DRC, many years ago in this place—22 years—an all-party parliamentary group on the African great lakes region was set up. I was a member of it, and the then MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, Oona King, chaired it for a while. That is when I first went to the region, in the wake of the awful, horrendous ethnic cleansing—[Hon. Members: “Genocide.”]—and genocide we saw in Rwanda back in that period, and that is when I became familiar with the issues.

The hon. Gentleman raises the issue of the 0.7% target on development spend. I understand why those feelings are strongly felt about development, but he knows that we have a £22 billion black hole. We want to get there eventually, but it will take us some time. Notwithstanding that, the UK still makes a major contribution in development aid spending at a time when we are seeing, right across the global community, aid spending falling because of the cost of living crisis, with inflation and the effects that it has on western populations.

It is too early to make an assessment of some of the changes we have read about with the Trump Administration. I am told and advised that there is an 85-day process for the new Administration to look at these issues. However, it was interesting to me that Secretary of State Rubio raised the DRC with me before I raised it with him. We head to the Munich conference in a few weeks’ time, where these issues will of course be discussed, and I hope we will be able to convene and come together on the issue of Sudan shortly thereafter.

[Harpreet Uppal (Huddersfield) (Lab)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement and the work he is doing to shine a light on the crisis. As he said, this is about not just the amount of aid, but the crucial issue of access. There is, quite clearly, unequal access for the UN in distributing aid in Sudan. Can I ask how we are supporting organisations on the ground in Sudan, particularly Sudanese aid organisations, to deliver aid in the area?

[Mr Lammy]

I am very grateful for that question, because there is a lively civil society still at work in Sudan and NGOs are on the ground in Sudan doing what they can in the absence of UN agencies able to do that work. I was grateful that the World Food Programme facilitated my trip to the Chad border with Sudan, and to see trucks going in with the World Food Programme name emblazoned on them that may bring some alleviation to the suffering. However, I must say that in my conversations with the drivers, they talked about trucks being hijacked, the changes, the barriers and not being able to get as far as they would like. There are still serious issues on the ground.