Official Development Assistance

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I talked about money in my previous answers, but our commitment to be advocates and continue to push for a change in country on the rights of women and girls is often as important. Maintaining access to safe abortion and family planning advice and products is a key commitment from the Government that builds on the work of very many of my predecessors. This is absolutely vital and is one of the reasons that we have decided to prioritise health as we go forward.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, given that conflict is one of the reasons why development is always impeded, has the Minister had a chance to look at the correspondence last week between the Foreign Secretary and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, where the Foreign Secretary was asked whether these cuts will impact the work we are able to do with the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner and UNICEF? He said that peacekeeping would not be affected, but he was unable to answer that question. Given the importance of holding to account perpetrators of terrible crimes from Ukraine to the Middle East, in Sudan, the Horn of Africa, Syria and so many other places, does the Minister agree that we must do nothing that reduces our expenditure on bringing perpetrators to account and our attempts to try to mitigate the worst effects of the terrible violence?

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I agree with that. We can be proud of the work that this country has done on conflict prevention, on demining and on many other areas connected to the issues he raises, not least accountability. But you only have to listen to the news coming out of Gaza this morning to be confronted with the fact that you can provide as much aid as you like—we have protected our aid to Gaza; we have aid waiting on the border—but the reason that those people are starving is because of political choice.