Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, with reference to the oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development on the Global Fund to fight AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria, 12 January 2016, Official Report, column 248WH, what steps her Department is taking to ensure the Global Fund is addressing concentrated epidemics among key populations in middle income countries.
Answered by Nick Hurd
The UK is a key supporter of the Global Fund and pledged up to £1 billion between 2014 and 2016, subject to a 10% donor share cap. Approximately 50% of Global Fund resources are directed to Middle Income Countries (MICs) and the UK has asked the Global Fund to focus more heavily on marginalised groups in MICs where they do invest.
The UK is working with the Global Fund and other partners to encourage MICs to develop their own self-financed programmes to combat concentrated epidemics, ensuring that investments are effectively reaching key populations and holding national governments to account so that vulnerable groups are not left behind.
Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of UK aid spending in reducing levels of illiteracy in Pakistan.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The Pakistan programme is DFID’s largest bilateral investment in education worldwide. More than 6.3 million primary school children and 3.7 million secondary school children have benefited since 2011. Working in partnership with provincial governments and the private sector, we aim to get more children into school, staying longer, and learning more.
DFID has funded the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) for the last three years. The report includes a wide range of data on education, including pupil enrolment, provision of facilities, and learning outcomes. In their 2015 report, published on 17 December 2015, ASER reports on national progress on literacy in rural areas for example it shows that grade 5 literacy levels in English have improved by 7 per cent. DFID interventions in the education sector since 2011 are likely to have had a positive impact on literacy levels in Punjab and Khyber Phaktunkhwa, given the focus on improved facilities and teaching, and pupil and teacher attendance. It is not however possible to claim a direct correlation between the ASER data and DFID’s investment.
Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, if her Department will take steps to improve access to water in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
UK officials regularly discuss the issue of water with Israeli counterparts. We continue to call for the full implementation of the relaxation of access restrictions for Gaza and, with robust monitoring, for the entry of essential items on the dual-use list to allow for rehabilitation of the water network. We also continue to press both parties to reconvene the Joint Water Committee to facilitate further approval of key projects that will improve Palestinian access to water.
Through the UN FAO, DFID has invested up to £1.24m to help vulnerable rural farmers in Area C support their families through increased incomes from agricultural production. Improved irrigation efficiency has been achieved by rehabilitation of existing water cisterns and approximately 30km of water conveyance systems.
Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking (a) in the short term to provide humanitarian relief to displaced people in Bangui in the Central African Republic and (b) to secure peace in that city.
Answered by Nick Hurd
The Central African Republic (CAR) is facing a severe and protracted crisis that has displaced more than a million people since 2012. Despite the deployment of 12,000 peace-keepers, the country remains marred by sectarian tension, criminal violence, arms proliferation and armed groups.
In September the UK approved a £7 million uplift in our assistance to CAR and CAR refugees to address rising needs and aid gaps, bringing UK humanitarian funding to £25 million in 2015 and £58 million since 2013. This makes the UK the third largest humanitarian donor to CAR after the US and the EU in 2015. UK funding is enabling partners including the International Committee of the Red-Cross and the Common Humanitarian Fund to provide humanitarian assistance to people in need in Bangui and the rest of the country.
The UK is also working with and through international organisations to ensure an effective international response to the security crisis in CAR.The UN is a key partner in CAR.The UK contributes to the UN peacekeeping mission (a projected £33.2m this year in assessed contributions).
Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, if she will discuss with her ministerial colleagues in other departments (a) reducing UK support for fossil fuels overseas and (b) ensuring that support for energy in developing countries is directed towards low-carbon technologies.
Answered by Nick Hurd
My Department works closely with other government departments on UK energy policy overseas, including the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), the Treasury, and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. The UK Government has committed to end public funding for coal fired power plants, , except in rare circumstances, in the world’s poorest countries. This policy has been agreed with DECC and was announced at the Warsaw Climate Change conference in 2013.
DFID will continue to support international initiatives to promote cleaner energy sources and other low carbon technologies. For example, the Energy Africa campaign will accelerate the expansion of the household solar market in Africa, helping to bring universal energy access to the continent. The International Climate Fund (ICF) managed by DECC and DFID also actively supports low-carbon technologies, and monitors this through Key Performance Indicators. The UK reports publicly on achievements through the ICF (see https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/463954/ICF_Results_Note_Final.pdf).
Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, with reference to the Prime Minister's speech at the UN Sustainable Development Goals Summit on 27 September 2015, what steps the Government is taking to leave no one behind.
Answered by Justine Greening
The Prime Minister’s promise that ‘no one will be left behind’ is clearly referenced in the new UK Aid strategy at paragraph 3.17, available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-aid-tackling-global-challenges-in-the-national-interest. My department is currently laying out what this means for all DFID and wider government investments overseas, and supporting the international system to ensure no one is left behind. We will support countries and development partners to increase their capacity to better identify and reach the extreme poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged groups.
Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the potential role for the private sector in increasing birth registration in fagile contexts.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
Accurately recording births, deaths, adoptions, marriages and divorces will be critical in achieving the newly agreed Global Goals. In fragile contexts, registration is essential to enable refugees to obtain humanitarian services and protection under international law.
Although globally, the births of nearly 230 million children under age five have never been recorded and almost two thirds of deaths are not counted at all, some progress is being made, largely in Latin America and Asia. The increasing use of technology and the private sector have played important enabling roles in building this momentum and will continue to be crucial to further progress.
DFID supports statistical capacity building and implementation of national statistical plans in a number of countries through global programmes such as the Statistics for Results Facility Catalytic Fund (SRF-CF), implemented in eight countries. In Nigeria, for example, SRF-CF supported eight outreach birth/death registration centres. DFID also provides bilateral support to countries’ national statistical systems.
At a policy level, DFID supports the Commission for Information and Accountability (COIA) where CRVS is one of ten priority areas. DFID also provides support to the UNHCR, the mandated UN agency to advocate for the protection and promotion of the rights of refugees, which plays a crucial role in assisting refugees in with documentation. To date, DFID has allocated over £44 million to UNHCR’s operations in Jordan and in Lebanon, of which a proportion will go to funding the registration and issuing of birth certificates for refugees.
Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, whether her Department plans to continue to spend £500 million per year on tackling malaria.
Answered by Nick Hurd
The UK Government is committed to remain a world leader in tackling global diseases like malaria.
In the recent Spending Review we announced the Ross Fund, which will provide £1 billion to support research and implementation to tackle malaria and other infectious diseases. This will be one part of DFID’s balanced portfolio of investments in malaria control, delivered through bilateral and multilateral channels, support to health systems and service delivery and support to research.
The UK has pledged a contribution to the Global Fund for AIDS, TB and Malaria of up to £1 billion between 2014 and 2016, subject to a 10% donor share cap. This will dramatically improve the lives of millions of people, saving approximately 580,000 lives by preventing 8.4m new malaria, HIV and TB infections. Our future contributions to the Global Fund are being considered as part of the Spending Review.
We will lay out further investment plans in the future.
Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how her Department plans to ensure that data is collected on stateless children so that such children can be taken into account in measuring progress in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The UK has played a key role in creating a set of Global Goals that are universal and inclusive; underpinned by a commitment to leave no one behind. Goal 17 target 18 concerns the need for high-quality, timely and reliable disaggregated data. It will be essential to have this data to ensure we leave no one behind, including data on stateless children. DFID is currently undertaking a bilateral aid review to address priorities for this parliament and this will address how we will support better data to ensure the Prime Ministers Leave No One Behind promise is delivered.
Asked by: Mike Kane (Labour - Wythenshawe and Sale East)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how her Department is contributing to the co-ordination of work across Government to support the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Answered by Justine Greening
The UK welcomes, and is committed to championing, the Sustainable Development Goals. Through our commitment to global development, and by honouring our 0.7% aid commitments, we will play a key role in helping countries to achieve these goals – especially on eradicating extreme poverty, hunger and disease. This will be a cross-government effort, with DFID and other Departments contributing to the successful implementation of the Goals, both internationally and here in the UK.