Oral Answers to Questions

Michael Fabricant Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am sure that the Foreign Office will note what the hon. Gentleman has said, and will indeed make representations. As he knows, DFID itself does not have a country programme in Colombia, but I will pass on his comments to the Foreign Office.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

4. If she will make it her policy to provide targeted aid for residents of Cuba.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone)]

DFID has no plans to establish a bilateral aid programme with Cuba. We provide assistance through our share of contributions to multilateral agencies, and the British embassy provides some funding to promote economic development.

[Michael Fabricant]

Look, I understand why we do not wish to aid Cuba generally—it still has many political prisoners, for instance—but the Minister knows as well as I do that it has a good national health service for its citizens, which, because of a lack of foreign exchange, is unable to buy modern drugs. Surely we can target aid in that area without actually assisting the Cuban Government.

[Lynne Featherstone]

I am afraid that we cannot do as my hon. Friend wishes. We carried out bilateral and multilateral aid reviews to help us to determine where our aid was best focused, and the results did not include Cuba, so we have no plans to give it any bilateral aid.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Prime Minister]

As the hon. Lady knows, I am a fan of directly elected mayors. However, the people of Birmingham had their chance to make that decision and they voted not to have a mayor. I hope that people will see successful mayors in London, Liverpool, Bristol and other parts of the country, and see that there are benefits from that approach. I agree with her that, even if we do not move to a mayoral system, there is more that we can do through city deals, local enterprise partnerships and devolving some of the funding in Whitehall further down towards cities and regions. All that would be to the good. It is worth while and welcome that in its policy review, her party has decided not to tear up local enterprise partnerships, but to extend them. It is good that there is cross-party agreement on how to drive devolution out to our great cities around the country.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

Q13. On behalf of my Burntwood constituents, may I thank the Prime Minister for his swift and effective action in giving what is, in effect, a posthumous honour to my constituent Stephen Sutton? With the economic plan now working well, how can we build on that and on the legacy that Stephen Sutton set for charitable giving?

[The Prime Minister]

Stephen was an absolutely inspiring individual, and his zest for life, even as he was suffering from a very difficult and progressive cancer, was completely extraordinary and very inspiring. He raised a huge amount of money for teenage cancer services, and he raised it from right around the world as well as the UK. I think it is right that our honours system properly rewards people who give to charity, and who give of their time, from the very bottom to the very top. There is probably more we can do to make sure that our honours system really reflects what the British public want, which is to see giving, generosity and compassion rewarded.