Overseas Territories: Humanitarian and Disaster Relief

Lord Singh of Wimbledon Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is right to draw attention to the important work in this respect. The UK’s Darwin Initiative supports the OTs to increase their resilience in the face of climate change by funding projects. The CSSF has also provided OTs with over £4.6 million for capacity building through the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, and we are very proud of the 4.3 million square kilometres of MPAs within our overseas territories.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB) [V]]

My Lords, the Government and our Navy are to be congratulated on their timely assistance to our Caribbean and other overseas territories. Does the Minister agree that recurring natural disasters are a fact of life for many, and that the best way of mitigating suffering is to facilitate co-operation between territories in the regions to share best practice and ensure the pooling and rapid deployment of resources to the affected areas?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)]

I can assure the noble Lord of that, as I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. We work very closely with CDEMA, the regional emergency response agency in the region.