G20 Summit

Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite right and I very much welcome her welcome for the initiative. The Government are very pleased to receive these independent reports from NGOs, particularly regarding the extremely important areas of access for women and financial education. We certainly should keep an eye on it and I shall make sure that officials in the departments are aware of what the noble Baroness said.

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords—

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill]

My Lords—

[Earl Attlee]

My Lords, can we hear first from the right reverend Prelate?

[The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds]

My Lords, I am grateful for the particular stress that the Leader of the House put on support for the poorest countries of the world. As I understand it, there were three strands to that support and to the UK’s part in creating it. The first was an anti-corruption plan. Can he be more specific on how corruption can be tackled within the poorest countries of the world and how the UK can contribute to that? The second strand relates to the inability of the poorest countries to access modern technology. What sort of help can be provided by the UK and does that have implications for our aid budget and aid policy? Thirdly, welcome though the hunger event at the Olympics, to which reference was made, would be, how is that intended to support the poorest countries of the world?

[Lord Strathclyde]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate for his general welcome. I cannot add anything more on the anti-corruption plan because G20 officials have been asked to come forward with details over the next few months. We will have to wait and see what will happen on that. As to food security and technology, the UK met its L’Aquila financial commitments in full and will continue to provide broadly equivalent resources to help food security. We made welcome progress at the G20 on implementation of commitments made last year at Cannes, including rolling out the Agricultural Market Information System to improve transparency, endorsing the Scaling Up Nutrition movement, and pledging to continue our work in other areas, such as the platform for agricultural risk management. This is an area to which a substantial amount of importance is given, as is the hunger event at the Olympics in London during August. I think that the idea is to hold a conference to concentrate people’s minds on the issue of hunger around the world, but if I can add more I shall let the right reverend Prelate know.