Oral Answers to Questions

Luciana Berger Excerpts

Wednesday 8th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr O'Brien]

The hon. Lady is right that in sub-Saharan Africa, HIV/AIDS is primarily a disease that affects women; they are now in the majority compared with men. It is right that in putting women and girls at the heart of all our policies, we measure all the impacts on women, in particular those on the poorest women in the poorest countries. In tomorrow’s meetings at the UN, there will be a keen focus on women, and we hope that something will come of that.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

8. By what means he plans to assess value for money in his Department’s funding for climate change prevention in developing countries.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Mr Alan Duncan)]

We rigorously assess costs against benefits in all our programmes. To measure the value for money of our climate programmes, we will look at metrics including the number of poor people protected from extreme weather events, the number of hectares of forest protected, and the number of people with access to energy.

[Luciana Berger]

The Minister will be aware of the decision at the last climate change summit to establish a green climate fund, and that the UK has a representative on the transnational committee that is designing the fund. Will he update the House on the progress made to date by the transnational committee and on what concrete outcomes the UK Government hope to see by the next summit in Durban later this year?

[Mr Duncan]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that the fund is not yet up and running. We are on the design committee for the fund and are playing our full part in it. We want to ensure that the fund delivers results for poor people in the best possible way.