Humanitarian Aid: Refugees in Greece and the Balkans

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The right hon. Lady makes an important point very clearly. The UK has helped the International Organisation for Migration to do better evidence gathering to find out what is happening on the ground. Part of the challenge is that people, including children, often turn up without any papers. Some people are even concerned about registering with the authorities in the countries that they reach because they are worried that they will not be able to continue their journey. This is a complicated situation, but I assure her that we are playing a key role in getting support to refugees who arrive here in Europe, including children.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend for the magnificent and effective way in which she is fulfilling the responsibilities of her office. The fact that the UK is second only to the United States in the amount of aid it is giving to the region is testimony to her efforts. Is it not the case that were all other EU countries to contribute towards aid in the region in proportion to what the UK is doing, the problem presenting itself on the Turkey/Greece border would not be nearly at its present scale?

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, the cost that many European countries now face to support refugees who felt that they had no choice but to set off on a life-or-death journey is immense. That money would have been spent far more effectively, produced far greater value for money and enabled support to get to many more people had it been put directly into the UN effort on the ground, working with generous countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, which have taken so many refugees. If we had worked with those countries more effectively, many of the refugees—I have met many of them in my visits to the region over the past few years—would have done what they had wanted to do, which was to stay there in the hope that, in time, they could rebuild their lives and go back to Syria.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 28th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Swayne]

My hon. Friend draws attention to a very important issue. UN studies predict that Gaza will become uninhabitable, as a consequence of the water problem, by 2020. A peace process is vital, so that the level of investment required to drive such developments becomes available.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

6. In which countries her Department is working with the Ministry of Justice to build prisons to facilitate the return of foreign national offenders from the UK.

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Grant Shapps)]

This summer, in my capacity as a joint Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister, I visited Tower Street prison, Jamaica, where we have negotiated a prison build and transfer arrangement to return foreign national offenders, as reported by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister.

[Mr Hollobone]

Given that we spend £300 million a year on incarcerating foreign national offenders in this country, it makes sense to use the DFID budget to build prisons in other countries so that they can be returned. Would the Minister be kind enough to consider Pakistan, Bangladesh and Vietnam for future projects?

[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend will be pleased to hear that we work in various countries, through the returns and reintegration fund. I mentioned Jamaica. There are also examples in Ghana, which I will shortly visit, and Nigeria, where I have just been.

Job Creation: Developing Countries

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Before we start, let me make it clear to all those assembled here that I am not late; I am the emergency replacement in the Chair. It is an honour to be here this afternoon for the debate in the name of Mr Jeremy Lefroy.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship. I would like to draw attention to my various entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The debate is about supporting job creation in developing countries and much of my working life has been spent in that area, so it is inevitable that I have some interests to declare.

Last week, the Select Committee on International Development visited Sierra Leone and Liberia. In both countries, we had the honour of meeting the President. Both, without prompting, listed unemployment, particularly among young people, as something they needed to tackle, and tackle quickly. They see the need particularly clearly because of their recent experience of terrible civil wars that were fuelled by the resentment of people who had no real income, felt divorced from any development taking place in the country and saw an elite disconnected from the needs of the population. As a result, they are both determined to do whatever they can to avoid that situation arising again. As the UN says in another context: create more jobs or risk unrest.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Lefroy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The default rate is often lower in such organisations, which rely on a substantial element of trust, as well as on prudent lending and investigation of borrowers. We have seen that default rates of less than 5%, considerably lower than some banks take, are common. Default rates are sometimes as low as 2% in such organisations.

There is also internet-based lending, which is increasing substantially. We see that in this country with peer-to-peer lending, but there are also organisations such as Kiva and Lend with Care, which is run by the charity CARE International. Such lenders typically provide very small loans in which donors from across the world can invest as little as £20 or £30 in loans to MSEs. Such is the power of technology these days that they are able to run such schemes without extremely large overheads.

Furthermore, there are initiatives such as DFID’s programme in Pakistan in which local banks, as we saw, were given a guarantee by DFID so that they could lend to businesses. That means that DFID does not have to do the lending itself, but, as the risk is taken out of the lending, a local bank is able to lend to businesses to which it would not otherwise have lent.

In this case, I believe the guarantee of some £10 million, if I remember rightly, was not drawn on at all, which shows it was an excellent example of lending at no cost to the British taxpayer, with the British taxpayer giving a guarantee. Banks will still carry out the same degree of due diligence, but the guarantee gives them a bit of extra confidence to go and lend to businesses to which they would not otherwise have lent. The key in all those areas is to find cost-effective ways of reducing risk so that financial institutions are prepared to lend, or investors are prepared to commit equity, to a project.

I will mention one particular fund because I have personal experience of being an investor in a company that took advantage of it some years ago. The Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund was set up under the previous Government, with substantial funding from DFID—I believe that DFID currently funds more than 50% of the entire fund. The fund focuses on investments of which the primary beneficiaries are people earning less than $2 a day. Those people may be suppliers to a business or consumers who now have access to a reliable source of seeds or fertiliser, for instance. The fund matches the entrepreneur’s investment up to a certain amount. In Sierra Leone, we visited a chicken farm that is expanding production through support from the AECF. One of the new investments was a modern feed mill that will not only improve the quality of feed, and hence chickens, which have hitherto been imported, but provide a regular customer for many small farmers from whom maize and other crops are purchased.

The AECF effectively acts as a catalyst, and its various funds now total more than $200 million. I have said in the past in the House that I believe that the AECF should provide less in the form of outright grants and more as returnable capital, loans or equity, which can be reused to help other businesses. I am glad to see in the latest figures that just over half the funds advanced by the AECF have been loans, and I encourage it further to increase that proportion because the more it does, the more that can be recycled in to other businesses. If a business is successful, it is right that those who have helped it—in this case, the British taxpayer and taxpayers from other countries that contribute to the fund—should share in that success.

I now come to the point well made by the hon. Member for Upper Bann. Without adequate infrastructure, it is almost impossible for businesses to grow and reach their potential. I recall visiting a road project in the Democratic Republic of Congo near Bukavu with the International Development Committee. The project was substantially funded by DFID, and the road was connecting Bukavu with a town several hundred kilometres away that had been cut off from the rest of the world for some 20 years. That town is not small, and people travelled from there to Bukavu, one of the major population centres of the Democratic Republic of Congo, with great difficulty.

We travelled on the first 60 km to be completed, and people told us that it now takes just two hours for people, generally women, to bring their produce to market in Bukavu, whereas previously it had been a five-day walk carrying produce, in which time a lot of the produce probably would have gone off and become unsalable. The road project is a clear example of rural infrastructure that directly benefits farmers and the rural poor and creates jobs in the widest possible sense. There are many other examples, but that is the clearest example I have seen in which so much difference has been made in such a short space of time.

We heard that Sierra Leone and Liberia have some of the highest electricity prices in the world. That is extraordinary in countries where income is so low. Capacity is another issue. There are many countries in which the entire generating capacity is a fraction of the 900 MW output of Rugeley power station in my county of Staffordshire. As far as I know, Rwanda has less than 500 MW of output, and we were told that Sierra Leone has less than 100 MW of output, although it is currently building more capacity. Those substantial countries have electricity supplies on which a medium-sized town in the UK would not be able to survive. Without electricity, business clearly cannot flourish, and jobs cannot be created. Of course people can buy generators, but as anyone who has ever run a generator will know, the cost is prohibitive and adds enormously to the cost of doing business.

One final infrastructure issue is ports, which are a hindrance in many countries instead of an asset. We can see how, for countries that have invested in ports and run excellent ones, they become an entire competitive advantage in themselves; I think of Singapore, which has become a hub of trade in the far east and globally. Almost anything going in that direction transits through Singapore. I think of one or two ports in the middle east that have been developed into enormous entrepôts. Earlier still, the classic example in Europe is Rotterdam, through which effectively everything transited. We lost a lot of trade to Rotterdam because we were not fast enough in developing our own ports here in the UK, although that has been reversed to some extent since.

There are a number of problems with ports, not least corruption. I have personally experienced the problems with theft and corruption in ports, but it is clear that many ports are simply too small: they need more quays and they need dredging. The difference that better ports can make to job creation and business is enormous, particularly for landlocked countries. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are landlocked. In order to give them access to markets, the countries that house ports have a business opportunity, but also a responsibility, to make those ports as efficient as possible. It is estimated that sub-Saharan Africa needs a minimum of $100 billion a year for its infrastructure, and that the whole of Asia needs perhaps $1 trillion. Given that total overseas development assistance is less than $150 billion a year, it is clear that such investment can be done only through Government and private financing.

That is where initiatives such as the Private Infrastructure Development Group come in. Today I checked the results of that initiative, which was set up by the previous Government and continues under this one. The 2012 report stated that 39 projects were operational at the time, employing about 200,000 men and women in their construction and operation and providing services to 97.6 million people. Every $1 contributed by members through the PIDG facility—I am proud to say that the UK is by far the biggest donor—mobilises $39 in finance from other sources for projects. That is a tremendously effective use of money. Even if we take some of the figures with a little scepticism, as I always do, we would have to be extremely sceptical not to acknowledge that that is good value for taxpayers’ money in terms of the return created and the jobs generated.

I will come to the end of my remarks fairly shortly, but I will touch on a few areas that I believe are extremely important to supporting job creation in developing countries. The first is agriculture. We have already heard how many people are employed in agriculture in developing countries, but what must we do to make it work for them so that it is much more than just a subsistence livelihood? We need to help them invest in productivity. I have spoken about productivity before, as have others in other debates, so I will not go into it in great detail, but the issue is about processing, both on-farm—much is lost through poor processing—and post-farm, when raw food is made into finished products that can be sold. Post-farm processing creates a tremendous number of jobs. When we were in Afghanistan, we noted that many raw products from Afghanistan were going to Pakistan for processing and then coming back to Afghanistan in processed form, so we encouraged Afghanistan to invest in its food processing facilities.

Marketing is also important, as are land rights, which come up time and again. Land rights are essential to developing an economy. We have mentioned on a number of occasions the excellent DFID programme in Rwanda in which some 10 million plots of land were given titles, meaning that people have security over their land and can invest in it. They are therefore able not only to borrow against it but to gain additional productivity from it.

Green jobs are also relevant, and not only to the UK and developed countries; they are important in developing countries, because they link sustainability and growth. I was pleased to see that one of the more recent infrastructure projects funded through PIDG was a solar farm in Rwanda. Sometimes one wonders whether solar farms built in the UK are of much use, although I am glad to say that, over the weekend, I was able to have a couple of baths from the hot water solar panel on the roof of my house, even in Staffordshire. However, in countries such as Rwanda that have the benefit of the sun, it is great to see projects such as solar farms being developed to provide low-cost electricity for tens of thousands of homes.

Another way of encouraging job creation that might seem slightly difficult, particularly to those of us on this side of the House, is tax creation. You might share with me, Mr Hollobone, a scepticism about whether collecting taxes can create jobs, but I believe that it does, as long as it is done fairly and rationally. There are a number of reasons why. First, it creates a level playing field. Many countries that I have seen have an arbitrary way of collecting taxes. For various reasons that I will not discuss, some businesses are let off paying the whole amount and others are penalised, perhaps because they are more honest. A proper tax collection system should be neutral. It should enable everybody to flourish in the right way, paying what one would hope is a fairly low rate of tax while contributing to the benefit of everybody.

Secondly, taxes fund security and good governance. As we said at the beginning of this debate, without good governance and good security, business cannot be conducted. Finally, taxes fund public services. To refer again to the remarks made at the beginning, education is absolutely critical to the success of business, as is a health system in which people are looked after so they do not get sick with malaria every other week and go missing from work or, if they are self-employed, end up destitute because they simply cannot get out into the fields.

I have not attempted to do more than provide a brief overview of what I see as the most important areas in which job creation in developing countries can be supported. I have spent most of my working life trying to support it; I remember that when I first went to Tanzania, the business that employed me had about 20 employees. My ambition was that it should have 100 employees after four years, and we succeeded. We had some ups and downs afterwards, but by and large, that was my biggest source of satisfaction: not necessarily the bottom line, but the fact that more and more people—hundreds and hundreds—could get a livelihood from the kind of work in which we were involved.

The stakes could not be higher. If we solve this, we will solve so much else in terms of peace, security, development, the elimination of poverty, and shared prosperity for both developing countries and, as I have said, for ourselves. It is not beyond us, with committed and visionary leadership.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

If the House was not aware previously of how much the hon. Gentleman knows about international aid, it will certainly be now.

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[Lynne Featherstone]

That is absolutely the case. There are some benign circles that we need to get going in, for example, higher education in developing countries, because skills in health and education need to be supplied locally. We need to up the quality of teaching and professionals in the health service. Indeed, that is how we are moving forward, and I believe I will be giving evidence to the IDC on health system strengthening. The need is great, because the numbers are enormous and those jobs must be filled by training individuals within countries and not “borrowing” them, as has happened in the past.

As for monitoring and evaluating DFID’s work, we are scaling up efforts to monitor and evaluate the impact of our work on economic development. Some areas of this agenda, such as job creation, investment and trade, are quite complex to measure. The International Finance Corporation’s “Let’s Work” initiative, which DFID, CDC and the Private Infrastructure Development Group engage with, is working to develop an agreed approach to estimating the impact of private sector infrastructure interventions on job creation. DFID funded the IFC’s study in 2013 of the private sector and jobs, and a whole chapter is devoted to the difficult issue of measuring net additional job creation. Measuring it exactly is one of the challenges, but it is our ambition both to measure it and to ensure that the jobs being created are additional and would not have been created in any case.

Under the economic development scale-up, we are looking to increase the relevance of education and skills for the changing job market, as I have said. That goes for foundational skills and technical skills, so that skills taught in school and technical training institutes have to be right and join up what is needed for industry in the country with the skills that are available. New interventions for marginalised groups in rural and urban areas provide combinations of interventions, such as entrepreneurship skills and finance and innovative business models—we are trying to create another benign circle. I have visited some of the larger pilot entrepreneur skills awareness training projects, where an inspirational speaker talks to 700 or 800 young people at a time, who all seem absolutely fired up and up for going out and becoming entrepreneurs in their own right. It is very exciting work.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford mentioned power. The Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility is delivering technical assistance to unlock private investment in developing countries and the EU is investing in the EU-Africa Infrastructure Trust Fund.

As for ports, in Mombasa in Kenya we are helping to tackle problems with port management to improve trade and regional integration. Most importantly, of course, as Mozambique’s ports develop, the corridors that will open up to neighbouring landlocked countries will be incredibly valuable, both to those countries and the ports themselves.

As for work, I hear what the hon. Member for Wirral South, my opposite number, was saying. I can assure her that I go to the International Labour Organisation every three months and I work closely with the unions. They have raised the issue of our stopping their funding many times with me. However, as I have explained, we work in different ways. We are working with them on a project on trafficking in Asia and we have given £4.8 million to an ILO programme to improve working conditions in the readymade garment sector in Bangladesh. That was launched in October to help to conduct safety inspections of the 1,500 factories that are not covered by existing initiatives and to help the victims of the disaster.

In a similar field, the trade and global value chains initiative encourages buyers, factories and workers to work together to improve productivity and working conditions. Our overarching message and narrative on working conditions—in all businesses and in all ways, and with Governments—is that they should be good and professional. It is no good a Department such as DFID not caring about standards; we care very much about standards and responsible business. We encourage companies to respect voluntary global standards, which improve labour standards and reduce harmful working practices. We provide funding and support that strengthens mechanisms that ensure that companies comply with their commitments on labour standards and working practices, such as the ethical trading initiative. We have also funded and supported the extension to the global fair trade system and are building evidence about its impact on wages and working conditions.

As for ensuring that poor people are not being excluded from any newly developed markets, which obviously is important, we support inclusive growth, benefiting women and girls in particular. That is an essential pillar of DFID’s economic development strategic framework. Although occasionally one sees “economic development” written in a report, it is always meant to read “inclusive economic development”. There is no point developing a country if the process is not inclusive, because if it leaves people behind, it will simply repeat the worst mistakes that have been made in other parts of the world. I am pleased that the overarching principle of the high-level panel report on the post-2015 agenda is exactly that. “Leave no one behind” is the most important message.

In conclusion, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford, who covered the issues and subjects in better detail, perhaps, even than myself. I think all hon. Members would say that we are all committed to the creation of useful employment and work and the improvement of subsistence work and agriculture. That is important, right across the developing world, because if we do not do it right, we will be guilty of leaving many people behind. Ultimately, it is in our own interests—in the country’s and everyone’s interests—that we get this right and support the developing world in the creation of the right sort of jobs, the right environment and the right economy.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I thank all hon. Members who contributed to this important debate. I now suspend the sitting until 4 pm, or earlier if both the Member whose debate it is and the Minister responding arrive earlier.

Afghanistan

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 14th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

May I, too, ask about poppy growing? My constituents in Kettering wish to know what has been done, what is being done and what can and cannot be done to tackle poppy growing without endangering fragile local economies in Afghanistan, which remains the major source of heroin that comes into the western world.

[Justine Greening]

Principally, there are two strands of work in which DFID has been engaged. One has been to work alongside the Home Office on a counter-narcotics strategy that has involved working with the Afghan police and the security services. The second is the work on livelihoods. We all recognise how difficult it is to get communities to change practices and livelihoods in which they have been engaged for so long. We have undertaken work in this area, but recognise that more needs to be done, which is why we want to stick with this for the long term.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 9th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

I thank my right hon. Friend and pay tribute to him for the work he has done; indeed, I have met with him to discuss this very issue. Of course, dementia is a growing issue in the developing world. Regarding the Prime Minister’s summit, we have contributed to the Department of Health, which is the lead Department on the issue, and we are dealing full out with communicable diseases. We also, as my right hon. Friend knows, have a campaign on mental health issues.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

7. How much international development aid the UK gave in total to Jamaica, Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia, India and Bangladesh combined in the last year for which figures are available.

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

In 2012 the UK Government gave a combined total of £973 million in bilateral official development assistance to Jamaica, Pakistan, Nigeria, Somalia, India and Bangladesh.

[Mr Hollobone]

Between them, those six countries account for 2,900 foreign national offenders in Britain’s prisons, which is more than a quarter of the foreign national offender total, at an annual cost of some £100 million. Will the Department agree to use some of the £900 million spent annually on those countries on insisting on compulsory prisoner transfer agreements as a condition of that aid, and on building prisons in those countries so that they can take their people back?

[Mr Duncan]

There is no straightforward correlation between the practicality of building a prison abroad and the number of UK-based prisoners from that country. We do not make our aid conditional on securing a prisoner transfer agreement with each such country. To do so would seriously undermine our poverty and stability programmes, and in any case they are deeply political and very complicated to negotiate. However, more than 19,000 foreign national offenders have been returned since 2010.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan]

I fully agree with the good sense expressed by the hon. Gentleman. Tunisia is a beacon and is well ahead of many other countries. I am delighted that DFID and Her Majesty’s Government have played a strong part in helping it on that journey.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

The Arab spring started in Tunisia, so what can my right hon. Friend do, in conjunction with the Foreign Office, to embed democracy through local elections, as well as through national elections, in such countries?

[Mr Duncan]

We are actively working on the electoral processes, primarily through the United Nations Development Programme and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, to support the independent electoral commission and the Government of Tunisia to implement free and fair elections this year.

Gaza (Humanitarian Situation)

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

You are a good man, Mr Hood.

I have been to the Gaza strip twice: once with Interpal, with the hon. Members for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), and once with Caabu and the all-party group on Palestine, with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden).

My take is that, yes, the humanitarian situation is dire. But there will be no solution to the problem of the Gaza strip unless, first, the security situation is sorted out and, secondly, proper economic links are restored both with the state of Israel and with the state of Egypt.

When the Northamptonshire regiment went into Gaza in the first world war and took part in the three battles of Gaza there was no water, so it built a water pipeline from the River Nile to Gaza. That should be considered today. The problem is the Sinai and the security situation there; Hamas-backed terrorists are just as much of a problem to Egypt as to the state of Israel. If Hamas is taken out of the equation, the security situation begins to be addressed and then the economic links between both sovereign states can be tackled.

All of us want the humanitarian situation in the Gaza strip sorted out, but we simply will not make any progress if all the condemnation is against Israel. Instead, we should be looking at the practical economic realities on the ground, where the Palestinians in the Gaza strip simply want to resume their trading life—as they always did—with both Israelis and Egyptians.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan]

I wholly endorse what the hon. Gentleman says. We offer our condolences and full sympathy following Del Singh’s death. It would be a tribute to him if we were all to raise the issue of the humanitarian challenge now facing Gaza. It is no exaggeration to say that, come the autumn, Gaza could be without food, without power and without clean water. One UN report predicts that it could become an unliveable place, meaning that it risks becoming unfit for human habitation.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I welcome the Minister’s forthcoming talks with the Egyptian Government. Will he impress on them that, while we support the security crackdown in Sinai, it is important that they should make suitable provision for humanitarian assistance to cross the Egypt-Gaza border?

[Mr Duncan]

I understand what my hon. Friend is saying, but at the moment those borders are closed. Under international law and other obligations, primary responsibility rests with the occupying power, and it is to that end that we will continue to work closely with Israel in an attempt to alleviate the humanitarian pressure that Gaza currently faces.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 4th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

The significant increase in DFID’s contribution to the global fund to £1 billion will contribute to the scaling up of proven TB REACH programmes that are included in the national strategic planning process. We have reviewed the mid-term evaluation of TB REACH, which shows that it is effective and that it reaches very important populations. However, given that there are so many small projects, there are concerns about sustainability and about the ability to scale up. We will obviously keep that in mind.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

If left untreated, tuberculosis kills 50% of those with an active infection. Will the Minister ensure that as much funding as possible goes to the African and Asian countries where up to 80% of the population carry the latent tuberculin bacteria?

[Lynne Featherstone]

Yes, we are very keen to help the countries that have such a high burden. We are encouraging the global fund to change its remit to give more than 10% of the support to Nigeria. Interestingly, Nigeria pledged $1 billion to the global fund yesterday at the pledging conference. That is a tremendous move forward for that country.

Typhoon Haiyan

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I agree. I do not think that humanitarian effort should be politicised. It is about helping the people who have been put in so much need by the typhoon that hit, and getting support to them. That surely has to be the most important thing. I hope that all countries, including China, will respond positively and generously to the next UN flash appeal.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

People in Kettering and across the country have been incredibly generous in contributing £65 million to the financial appeal. It shows that this is the sort of international aid that everyone can support. The United Kingdom was already one of the world’s most generous donor nations, and the contributions from the NHS, the Royal Navy and other parts of Her Majesty’s armed forces will not have come cheap. How are those contributions counted against DFID’s aid target, and how are those costs reimbursed to both the Ministry of Defence and the national health service?

[Justine Greening]

I hope that I can provide my hon. Friend with some assurance. Where International Development spend and effort takes place in other Departments, it is classified as official development assistance and is part of the UK’s 0.7% commitment, which this year for the first time this Government are reaching. Part of our just over £50 million response is the money that we have spent sending HMS Daring and HMS Illustrious. We will fund the marginal costs that the MOD has incurred to get those vessels into the area and do the work that they have done, which I think is quite right.