Sudan

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Lord Collins of Highbury) (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his question; we obviously debated it last night in the general debate on the Horn of Africa, when I took the opportunity to go into some detail about our activities. In response, because we only have a short time for questions, on 21 October, the UN Secretary-General made recommendations about the protection of civilians, which we strongly support. He made reference to the commitments made in the Jeddah declaration to limit the conflict’s impact on civilians. Yet, as the noble Lord said, we have seen the RSF campaign, ethnic groups’ torture and rape, as well as bombardments by the Sudanese Armed Forces. We are ensuring that we continue to work with the United Nations. When we take the presidency next month, we will continue to focus on Sudan and ensure that we can build up towards that ceasefire. The most urgent thing is humanitarian access, which has of course also been inhibited by the warring parties.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the Minister on that last remark. Will he agree with me that, given the scale of the humanitarian crises, not just within Sudan but within the Middle East and in Ukraine, this is the wrong time to cut official development assistance? Cutting it from 0.58% to 0.5%—a £2 billion cut from the outturn in 2023 to the 2024-25 levels announced in the Budget today—is the wrong thing to do at the wrong time. With regard specifically to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, my party leader, Sir Ed Davey, asked the Prime Minister for the practical steps we will take as penholder and in the coming presidency of the Security Council, as the Minister said. Will the Government actively consider the wide calls for there to be an extension of the UK no-fly area across the whole of the country of Sudan, not just Darfur, for military aircraft and drones? Will they also work out what would be the active areas for safety and protection of civilians, especially those community areas that are providing health and education facilities?

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for the range of questions. There are very good reasons for the difficulties with the no-fly zone, in terms of security and escalation. However, I will give a strong commitment to raise the Secretary-General’s commitment on the protection of civilians in November at the Security Council. We want to ensure that all his statements are actively implemented by all parties. I reassure the noble Lord that, in terms of our commitment to supporting the humanitarian situation, we are spending £113.5 million this financial year. This includes our bilateral ODA, which now stands at £97 million. We are not cutting aid. In fact, I suspect that in the forthcoming year, because of the terrible situation in Sudan, we will be increasing our support.