Sustainable Development Goals

Justine Greening Excerpts

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I am going to make my point, and this will interest the right hon. Gentleman because it is a body that he set up. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact has been highly critical of the Secretary of State’s TradeMark Southern Africa programme. It found that an £80,000 illegal payment was made to the Government of Zimbabwe in breach of the Government’s own rules.

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

Let me point out that that programme was set up by the hon. Lady’s Government.

[Mary Creagh]

Shock, horror! The right hon. Lady’s multi-annual review in 2011 talked about that programme and found that it was working well. The payments I refer to were made between July 2011 and May 2013—on her watch. The commission said:

“We are…deeply concerned that…a private company is managing a £30 million DFID programme without any formal contract with…DFID.”

That is a direct quotation from ICAI. It details serious weaknesses in financial management, with 90% of all expenditure undertaken in cash, without securement or contract—for example, a $20,000 cash payment with a hand-written receipt from an off-the-shelf receipt book; a request for a $100,000 petty cash fund; and a request by newly recruited staff to be paid tax free, which is against South African law. As I say, the review of the capital budget that the Department carried out in October 2011 found that most outputs had been achieved, but after three years of the current Secretary of State being in charge, the third annual review found that DFID was not on track to meet its financial forecast—on her watch.

To her credit, the Secretary of State has shut down that programme, but similar problems persist elsewhere. ICAI’s report into DFID private sector spending published eight months ago found that it was

“impossible to identify how much DFID actually spends on private sector development…because it is not captured as a discrete category of expenditure in DFID’s financial system.”

That leads to the question: “If you don’t know where it’s going, how can you measure if it is working?”

The National Audit Office has criticised another private sector project—the Private Infrastructure Development Group. The NAO criticises the right hon. Lady’s Department’s decision to scale up PIDG funding from a total of £49 million in 2010-11 to £258 million in 2012-13. Her Department will allocate £700 million-worth of taxpayers’ money to that fund between 2012 and 2015. The UK now accounts for 88% of all contributions. The NAO criticises the fact that there was no change to PIDG’s governance and that the business cases for projects were not assessed by DFID’s quality assurance unit—despite the risks involved. The NAO concluded that DFID has inadequate financial control and oversight, lacks robust information and was unable to prove value for taxpayers’ money.

I share the NAO’s and ICAI’s concerns about where and how this £1.8 billion is being spent. I have put a series of parliamentary questions to the Secretary of State about where the funding for her strategic framework for economic development is going. I asked the right hon. Lady how the money would be ”targeted on economic development”, and how it would be

“allocated to different activities and countries.”

The Secretary of State did not answer. The public deserve to know if and how much of the money is being paid to the private sector directly. I asked the Secretary of State that question, only to be told:

“This information is not available in the form requested.”

Perhaps that reflected the concerns expressed in the NAO report. I asked how much of the £1.8 billion had already been spent; no answer. I asked what the purpose of the money was; no answer.

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady seems to be unaware that the £1.8 billion budget relates to 2015-16. We are not in that financial year yet.

[Mary Creagh]

A total of £700 million is being spent in one fund over three years, and the Secretary of State is unable to answer a single question asked by ICAI, by the NAO, or by me about where and how that money is being spent. Presumably—as in the case of the huge increase in the funding of PIDG—that is because she does not know. The Public Accounts Committee has now examined PIDG’s investments. Its report will be published tomorrow, and we await it with great interest.

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[Mary Creagh]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for that. I certainly remember one of the more hair-raising car rides of my life up to the mountains there and seeing the fantastic work that was being done in those areas.

I want to talk more generally now about our priorities. Universal health coverage would reduce inequality and would stop 100 million people a year falling into poverty. Figures from the House of Commons Library show that, unfortunately, this Government have cut bilateral spending on health in Sierra Leone and Liberia from £26 million in 2010 to £16 million this year. Four months ago the International Development Committee criticised DFID, saying:

“The planned termination of further UK funding to the Liberian health sector is especially unwise.”

Lasting health care systems are about more than the delivery of commodities such as vaccines and bed-nets, vital though they are. Despite the progress made over the last decade, HIV and AIDS continue to blight the lives of millions of people. Between 2008 and 2013, Britain gave £40 million to support the work done by the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, yet Ministers have slashed that support to £5 million for 2013-18— a massive 87% cut.

[Justine Greening]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

Perhaps the Secretary of State would like to explain why that cut was made?

[Justine Greening]

I really just wanted to ensure that the record was straight. This Government have spent more on health care in Sierra Leone in every year in government than the hon. Lady’s Government did. I will be specific: DFID’s 2009-10 annual report says Labour spent £11 million on health in Sierra Leone. This Government have consistently spent more than that in every year. Does she regret not spending more previously?

[Mary Creagh]

Well, my question to the Secretary of State is: does she regret cutting, and is she going to reverse her decision to pull out of bilateral spending in Liberia—yes or no? My figures are from the House of Commons Library, and I do not recognise the one that the Secretary of State has used. I have also joined them together; the combined total was £26 million for Sierra Leone—[Interruption.] Here is the answer, if the Secretary of State will listen and stop chuntering. The combined total was £26 million in 2010—[Interruption.] It is hard to listen when you are talking, I find. The combined total was £26 million in 2010, and it is £16 million today. That is a £10 million reduction. Perhaps she would like to write to me to set the record straight. We can have an exchange of letters; I am sure it is pretty dull for people to listen to this.

Ministers have slashed funding for the international AIDS vaccine; there has been a massive 87% cut. That cut is a short-sighted mistake if we are to invest for the long term in tackling those neglected diseases. I note that the Secretary of State neglected to explain why the funding was cut by 90% for that international research programme.

On human rights, we want women and girls to exercise their human rights free from the fear of violence, coercion and intimidation—

[Justine Greening]

rose—

[Mary Creagh]

The Secretary of State will have her chance when she makes her speech.

We want girls to enjoy their education free from the threat of child or forced marriage. However, Tory MEPs voted against the European Parliament’s report on sustainable development goals and on the section on women’s sexual and reproductive rights. We want to tackle the economic conditions and supply chains that tolerate the obscenity of 168 million child workers. We want to ensure that children affected by conflict have the psycho-social services that they need and the right to go to school. We want members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities to be free to love and marry whomever they wish. We want the disabled to participate fully in society, and we want protection for indigenous peoples.

We want workers to enjoy decent work, decent pay and rest breaks, and to have the freedom to join a trade union. We must not have a repeat of the terrible Rana Plaza disaster. We will therefore reverse this Government’s ideological decision to stop funding for the International Labour Organisation.

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

In 2000, the international community agreed a simple and powerful set of objectives: nobody should live in extreme poverty; all children, including girls, should be in school; and the epidemics of HIV/AIDS and malaria must be tackled. Crucially, part of that was about the desire to work in global partnership to achieve goals by working together. I wish to take this opportunity to thank non-governmental organisations, people in the development community and my staff in DFID, of whom I am exceptionally proud, for all the work that they have done, working together, over the past 15 years.

In those 15 years since the millennium development goals were agreed, we have seen the greatest reduction of poverty in history. The MDGs inspired the international community to achieve amazing results: extreme poverty was cut in half by 2010, five years ahead of target; there have been visible improvements across all health targets; more than nine in every 10 children worldwide now have a primary education; and we are well on our way to tackling hunger and malnutrition. Of course the MDGs were to run for 15 years, so, as this House will know, 2015 is one of the most important years for the international community in recent memory.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State rightly mentions the progress that has been made under the MDGs across a range of outcomes, including children’s participation in education. Does she agree that one of the great challenges for the 2015 sustainable development goals is to ensure that disabled children, who are often registered for school but do not attend, fully participate in education? How does she see her Government helping to secure that?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right about that. If we look at the tranche of children who have still not got into education, we see that they tend to be the children who are disabled or who are in more nomadic tribes and it is harder for them to get into education. We are clear that a core ethos underpinning the next development framework needs to be about leaving nobody behind. My Department is pulling together the first ever DFID strategy on how addressing disability should be part of our development programme. So she is right to raise the issue and I can certainly reassure her that this Government have started to bring that issue into our programming more centrally.

In July, we will convene in Ethiopia to agree a new financing agenda for development. Of course the UK Government have in this Parliament, for the first time ever, finally met their commitment to spend 0.7% of our GNI on international development.

In September, on the 70th anniversary of the United Nations, we will meet in New York to agree the elements of the post-2015 development framework up to 2030. In December, the world will come together in Paris to agree a binding international treaty to tackle the global dangers of climate change. I am proud to be part of a Government who are taking a leading part in all of those negotiations.

Let me briefly discuss the post-2015 agenda. The international community has a duty to produce a set of equally inspiring goals and targets to run up to 2030 that will put us on a sustainable development pathway to eradicate extreme poverty within a generation. The UK has played a leading role in that process, not least demonstrating our commitment to international development by finally meeting the commitment we made to spend 0.7%. Indeed, that is recognised by the fact that the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, personally asked our Prime Minister together with President Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and the then President Yudhoyono of Indonesia to co-chair the high-level panel of experts who were asked to review these issues and to publish a report about how we should pull together the next sustainable development framework.

[Richard Benyon]

Does my right hon. Friend also agree that what is important is not just the figure of 0.7%, but how it is spent? What this Government have managed to do is focus the money on where it is most effective. That has required some decisions to be taken. We have had to remove funding from countries that did not need it for those that do.

[Justine Greening]

We have worked really hard to ensure that we stopped funding programmes in countries such as China and Russia, which no longer require targeted development assistance.

[Mary Creagh]

The funding to Burundi was also cut. I do not know whether the Secretary of State has visited Burundi, but I have. Does not Burundi need assistance from the Department for International Development?

[Justine Greening]

Countries such as Burundi do still get support from the UK, but it often takes place through the global funds that we support—funds to support health, education or the work that we do on the humanitarian agenda.

[Mr O'Brien]

As the Secretary of State knows, I had some involvement in the decision on Burundi. The shadow Minister cites Burundi. She should be aware that there was a specific project on which we were asked to deliver on a bilateral basis. It was a very effective project, because we delivered to the Office Burundais des Recettes—the inland revenue—so that it could start to mobilise some of its resources to support development. In addition, we enhanced our multilateral aid, which we put through a transparency process. Far from criticising what we did, the shadow Minister should understand that not only did President Nkurunziza and the others in Burundi welcome our approach, but they were particularly grateful that we encouraged the Belgians to step up to fill the bilateral gap. I hope that that is useful information.

[Justine Greening]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. He has huge credibility in the international development arena. He has been a Minister, and his work both then and now is hugely valued not just in this country but worldwide. He is absolutely right to say that there were a number of reasons behind the decision on Burundi. Rather than seeing a fact and then drawing her own conclusions, I urge the hon. Lady to dig a little deeper.

[Mary Creagh]

rose—

[Justine Greening]

I will give way one last time

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. The hon. Lady has already made her speech.

[Justine Greening]

I will make some progress. I will go back to the high-level panel report that the Prime Minister was asked to co-chair by Ban Ki-moon, that was published in May 2013. We all recognise that it played a key role in shaping the broader debate around the sustainable development goals. I am talking about the discussions that it outlined and some of the objectives and challenges that it set out for the new post-2015 framework.

[Mrs Spelman]

The UK was one of the first countries to identify sustainable development goals as the best idea around for the outcome of the Rio+20 summit. The presence of our Prime Minister on the high-level panel on sustainability and the vision of the UN Secretary-General brought the millennium development goals and the universal sustainable development goals into one entity.

[Justine Greening]

My right hon. Friend is right, and she speaks from a position of authority. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O'Brien), she is well respected, both for her service as a Cabinet Minister and for her tireless work with charities such as Tearfund. She is absolutely right: we were one of the key players that recognised the need to fuse the two agendas, of sustainability and climate change and of tackling poverty, successfully if we were to achieve the goal that my Department works faithfully to achieve of eradicating absolute—

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Government Members say that they want a bipartisan approach and nowhere is that more useful than on the issue of climate change, because we need a long-term strategy. Why does the right hon. Lady resist having separate climate change goals within the sustainable development framework?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady is somewhat misinterpreting the Government’s position. If she looks at the report by the high-level panel of experts co-chaired by the Prime Minister, she will see that it includes a range of targets and goals in relation to climate change. I shall come on to that later but, as I have said, no one can deny that the UK has played, continues to play, and will play a leading role in climate change discussions, not least because that flows into the work that we do in international development, for example, setting up the international climate fund and investing nearly £4 billion in projects that can help to tackle development and, in many cases, give a real lead in addressing climate change.

Since the report by the high-level panel, the open working group on sustainable development goals—a group of 70 member states mandated at Rio+20 to deliver a proposal on those goals—the UK has pushed for the highest possible level of ambition. We have been consistent in our drive for member states to agree an inspiring and workable agenda centred on the eradication of extreme poverty, with sustainable development at its core, ensuring, as I said to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), that no one is left behind.

As part of that, we have consistently argued for a strong health goal that focuses on strengthening health systems and on ensuring effective health outcomes for all women, men, girls and boys at all ages. We have clearly stated that the framework must fully integrate environment and climate change, and it must have a strong goal on gender equality focusing on improving prospects for women and girls. I was disappointed that there was no explicit reference to the importance of having a strong gender goal and the mainstreaming of women and girls’ issues in the development framework. I hope that we can continue, as we have done in the past, to have cross-party consensus on those issues to make progress.

[Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

I thoroughly endorse what my right hon. Friend has said. I should like to take the opportunity yet again to congratulate her, the Prime Minister and all those involved from all parts of the House in helping to push through the International Development (Gender Equality) Act 2014—something that that she has emphasised but which—and I say this with some regret—was not sufficiently observed by the Opposition spokesperson.

[Justine Greening]

I am grateful for that intervention. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) has worked tirelessly on gender equality issues. I am proud to have been in a Parliament and part of a Government who supported his Bill on international development and gender equality. I hope and expect that by the end of this Parliament we will have passed not just one Bill on international development introduced by a Conservative MP, but a second Bill introduced by a Liberal Democrat—a coalition effort on two Bills that will make a real difference for the long term.

We want to see, and the open working group included, the critical issues that the millennium development goals omitted, including peaceful and inclusive societies, economic growth, which is key if we are to increase people’s prosperity, and good governance. Today I shall reflect on the progress that the international community has made to date on agreeing the post-2015 development framework. The proposed sustainable development goals agreed by the open working group last July reflected a high level of ambition and the UK was instrumental in forging that outcome. Those goals have been welcomed by the NGO community, and, like the high-level panel report, they rightly devote significant attention to climate change and environmental sustainability.

The open working group’s gender goal is excellent, with targets on sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights. Goal 16 on peaceful and inclusive societies and access to justice is especially welcome.

[Mary Creagh]

rose—

[Justine Greening]

I give way one last time.

[Mary Creagh]

The right hon. Lady might have missed my point on human rights, but there was a point on women and girls and child marriage in my speech. She mentioned sustainable development goal 16. Can she explain why her Conservative colleagues in the European Parliament voted against that goal?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady continues to seek division, which is regrettable.

Those goals have been welcomed by the NGO community, and the UK Government have said that we support the breadth and the balance of the open working group report. We recognise, though, that the post-2015 framework needs to have the universal appeal that made the MDGs so successful. Developing countries were able to take those goals in their entirety and integrate them directly in their national development plans. The deputy Secretary-General of the UN, Jan Eliasson, said clearly to me the last time we met a couple of months ago when he was in London that that was one of the unintended impacts of the MDGs—countries used them as their development strategy because they felt that they could work with them. That is why the UK has been strongly advocating a shorter, more inspiring and more implementable set of goals and targets that resonates with people around the world. We want to keep the breadth and the balance of the open working group’s goals and targets, but we want to ensure that we get a framework that can truly improve the lives of the poorest people in the poorest countries.

We know that, for the poorest people in our world, we cannot allow this discussion, process and debate to be kicked around as a political football. We should be steadily building consensus. In December the UN Secretary-General published his synthesis report “The Road to Dignity by 2030”. He called on member states to strive towards the highest level of ambition and he set out six principles that member states should strive towards: dignity, people, prosperity, planet, justice and partnership—working together. He also called on member states to look at targets and to ensure that these are measurable, implementable and in line with the level of ambition that we want to see. I have spoken to the Secretary-General on a number of occasions about the post-2015 framework and about the need to make sure that, like the MDGs, it is compelling and transformative. He is right that these principles must be taken forward in negotiations.

In his synthesis report the Secretary-General made a clear link between the post-2015 framework and the outcome of the climate change conference in Paris. I agree that the two are fundamentally connected and that 2015 is a unique year and a unique opportunity to bring the two agendas together. As I argued at the UN General Assembly last year, it is the very poorest who will be hit first and hardest by climate change. Our objectives for the Paris meeting are clear and ambitious. We want an outcome that delivers the ultimate goal of the UN framework convention on climate change, which is to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting the global average temperature increase to no more than 2° C above pre-industrial levels. We are one of the few countries arguing for this to be explicit in the SDG framework. The most cost-effective and reliable way to achieve that is through an international, legally binding agreement with mitigation commitments for all.

Our approach to the 2015 framework can support that in two ways. First, it will ensure that climate is truly integrated in, and demonstrably an integral part of, the final framework of goals and targets. Secondly, if we can secure agreement at the September summit, it will help to boost multilateralism ahead of the Paris meeting in December.

[Caroline Lucas]

I appreciate the tone that the Secretary of State is taking. I want to ask about consistency, because the one thing that I learned when I worked for Oxfam for 10 years was that to have credibility on the global stage, we need to have consistency in our domestic policies. The Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into SDGs found that there is a contradiction in the Government supporting subsidies for fossil fuels while at the same time promoting the climate change agenda. Will she say something about that?

[Justine Greening]

As the hon. Lady knows, I was happy to give evidence to the Committee, because that is a key part of the SDGs that we need to get right. She will know that within the broader international development agenda we have tightened up our work, including with the World Bank, in terms of the projects that we are prepared to sign off on, so we are not investing in those fossil fuels unless there is no alternative for the poorest countries in the world to be able to get the energy they so desperately need to help them start to move down the road to development.

The UK Government have one of the proudest records of any development aid donor, both in delivering real results for the poorest people in the poorest countries and in shaping the international consensus around what matters most. Let us consider our record for one moment. We are the first country to reach the 0.7% of GNI spent on aid target—something that we promised to do for many years, and done by this Government. Our Prime Minister led the world, hosting the summit in 2011, supporting the global alliance for vaccines and immunisation, saving the lives of millions of children. Just yesterday, the world agreed to commit a further $7.5 billion to continue the important work of GAVI, or the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation, from 2016 to 2020. In response to the UK’s pledge of £1 billion, Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, said:

“The UK’s generous pledge to Gavi—which will save around 1.4 million children’s lives by 2020—is another example of how Britain invests in development solutions that provide value for money and real impact. The UK has been instrumental in helping to mobilise the international community to give generously to Gavi. The people of Britain should be proud of their huge contribution in creating a world that is healthier, more stable and increasingly prosperous.”

I wonder whether he would be confused by the tone that the shadow Minister has taken.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell]

Would my right hon. Friend like to reflect on the fact that because of the decisions made by the whole of the House of Commons in respect of the GAVI replenishment in 2011, throughout the five years of this Parliament a child will have been vaccinated every two seconds and a child’s life saved every two minutes from diseases that none of our children, thank goodness, die from in Britain?

[Justine Greening]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. He will know that in addition, the pledge that we made yesterday has increased our level of support for GAVI even further. The fund is not just able now to deliver vaccination and immunisation for those children; in the case of Ebola it can play a real role in stepping up to help us to combat new emerging diseases and health threats as well, so it has a much broader and more strategic impact on global health security than anyone could possibly have realised when it was being set up. It is also, critically, a model that pulls in the private sector, and allows drugs to get to children in a way that would never have been possible if we had not pulled together those different parties to work for one common goal with countries that have a common strategy on immunisation. It is incredibly important and we will continue to support it.

Our Prime Minister has led global summits in London—in 2012 on family planning and in 2013 on nutrition and combating stunting. In 2014 I was immensely proud to work with him on the Girl summit, where we catalysed a global movement to eradicate female genital mutilation and early and forced child marriage. It was a pleasure to be able to go back to Walworth academy last week to talk to people there about some of the progress that we have made over the past six months since that conference and the key role that they were able to play in ensuring that it was such a success. That focus on girls’ rights came on top of the global summit that my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague), now Leader of the House, organised to prevent sexual violence in conflict.

We will use this proud record and the credibility it brings us on the world stage to argue unashamedly for a post-2015 development agenda that works as a clear strategy for eradicating poverty, leaving no one behind and achieving sustainable development.

[Sir William Cash]

On FGM, the Serious Crime Bill has some very important stuff in it. It needs to be improved—as my right hon. Friend knows, I am arguing for that at the moment—but it is a huge step forward, is it not?

[Justine Greening]

It can be a huge step forward. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to see the broader opportunities in that Bill for enabling us to increase our ability to tackle FGM at home. One of the most important elements of the Girl summit was recognising that we have issues to resolve here in the UK, as well as playing our role internationally in helping other countries to tackle theirs.

The hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) accused the Government of failing to support a stand-alone goal on health. She seems a little befuddled on this point, as her claim is inaccurate. We have supported a stand-alone goal throughout this process. Going back to the high-level panel report, if she looks at goal 4 she will see that it explicitly states that it is to “ensure healthy lives”. That is partly why, under this Government, spending on health in relation to international development, just bilaterally, has risen from £750 million a year when we came into government to about £1.25 billion a year now. We absolutely have invested in this area.

I should correct the hon. Lady on another matter where she seems to have got her facts mixed up. In a recent interview, she said that spending by the Department on fragile and conflict states has “reduced under this Government”. I have to update the House by saying that that is incorrect. In fact, investment has risen from £1.8 billion in 2009 to £2.8 billion in 2013. On the issue of poverty, where we are talking about matters of life and death, and how we can lift people out of sometimes miserable day-to-day existences, it does not do those people, or the challenges they face, any justice to be kicked about as a political football. If the hon. Lady must engage in what she calls hand-to-hand combat, I ask her at least to get her facts right.

On a stand-alone goal on climate change, I point to our Prime Minister’s own words:

“Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing our world. And it is not just a threat to the environment. It is also a threat to our national security, to global security, to poverty eradication and to economic prosperity.”

In short, climate change is too complex an issue to belong in just one goal; as we have said repeatedly, it needs to be interwoven or mainstreamed throughout the entire post-2015 framework.

I was only too happy to come to this place to talk about the Government’s record on shaping the sustainable development goals. As I said, I would very much have liked women and girls, and particularly tackling violence against women and girls, to have been mentioned explicitly in the motion.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

rose—

[Justine Greening]

I will not give way because I need to make progress.

I know that the hon. Member for Wakefield has still not yet found time to go on any visits to see any international development projects in her role as shadow Secretary of State. As and when she does get a chance to visit some of those DFID projects, I hope she will realise, and agree with me, that putting women and girls at the centre of international development is absolutely the right thing to do.

Finally, we are proud to be the first G7 Government to have achieved the 0.7% target. We are supporting the Bill on the 0.7% target that is currently passing through Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) mentioned another international development Act, and I hope that it will be the second such Bill to make it through the House. That has largely been achieved by cross-party agreement on international development. Until now, the main parties have very much worked together to ensure that we can support the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

I regret that, as far as I can make out, cross-party consensus seems to be anathema to the hon. Member for Wakefield. From my experience in my current role, she seems to be doing the exact opposite of what is needed to achieve a successful post-2015 framework. It seems to me that she is picking a fight for the sake of it and, ultimately, putting politics before tackling poverty. I urge her to work constructively with us to build the strongest possible post-2015 development framework.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

All picking such a fight does is give support to Poujadists outside Parliament who want to attack international development as a concept. We in the House should be united on this issue, not trying to pick fake fights, as the Opposition seem to be doing.

[Justine Greening]

I agree. I believe that the track record of this Government, led by our Prime Minister, shows our absolute commitment to work with all partners so that later this year the UN can agree the most ambitious, inspiring and workable post-2015 framework that will eradicate extreme poverty once and for all, and put the world on a path to sustainable development. The world watches the UK Parliament, and I very much hope that we can now have a constructive debate with the Labour party about how we can work together—as a Government, and as a Parliament—to achieve that aim.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—