Government Overseas Aid Commitment: Private Investment
Leo Docherty Excerpts(6 years ago)
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Penny Mordaunt
As I mentioned, CDC has a long history. It has been around for 70 years, and over that time it has done many things. One of my right hon. Friends, a former Secretary of State, got CDC to change how it focused its investments. It is focused now on the poorest countries, and on Africa in particular, which is where the heavy lifting is still to be done. CDC still has some legacy investments in places such as Latin America and so forth, but it is primarily concerned with Africa. We need to dispel some of the myths about investing in such countries. We get good and very competitive returns on those investments, and I urge financial institutions and investors to look at the opportunities that exist in Africa and Asia.
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
I commend the Secretary of State on her speech today. Can she confirm that she believes, as I do, that it is right and proper for our aid budget to support our national interest?
Penny Mordaunt
I set a new, higher spending bar for the Department, because in addition to spending money well, we have a duty to ensure that it could not be spent better. That means ensuring that we are doing the right thing within the development world and doing the best we can with that budget to improve health and education, but we also need to look across to our domestic priorities. If we are as explicit as we can be about the benefits to the British public of what we are doing in aid—for example, research that we have done has led to new treatments that are being used today on our NHS wards—I think the public will be pleased with that.