Oral Answers to Questions

Mike Gapes Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

The agencies state that the food insecurity situation in the region is the most serious in the world today. We are doing a great deal. My right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary was there at the weekend and announced a further £52 million of aid. We are the second largest bilateral humanitarian donor to this region in the world, after the United States. On the longer-term issues, we are one of the foremost countries in the world in putting climate change at the heart of foreign policy considerations, and this is one of the reasons for that. The Department for International Development will give consideration to other longer-term measures that now need to be taken.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Foreign Secretary referred to the situation in Somalia. What is his assessment of the role of the al-Qaeda-linked al-Shabaab militia, with which it seems that the aid agencies and the Governments are having to co-operate at some level to get assistance through to starving people? What does this mean for the long term?

[Mr Hague]

Of course, al-Shabaab’s role is entirely negative in Somalia, as the hon. Gentleman appreciates. It is good that AMISOM—the African Union Mission in Somalia—has made some good progress in recent months to secure Mogadishu. There is now a new Prime Minister of the transitional federal Government. I met him on my recent visit to Kenya and have encouraged him in his work. Al-Shabaab has a very negative role. It has previously refused assistance into the area, and that has probably made the situation even worse and driven more people out of Somalia into camps on the Kenyan border that now cannot take more people. It has indicated more recently that it will accept help from the agencies, which are now considering how to approach that.