Asked by: Robert Flello (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what (a) financial and (b) other assistance her Department has contributed to international support for children with microcephaly and their families.
Answered by Nick Hurd
The Department for International Development (DFID) has worked with the Department for Heath (who are leading the UK government’s response), Public Health England and the Foreign Commonwealth Office to help develop the UK strategy on Zika and support the World Health Organisation (WHO) galvanise an effective international response. There are four strands of this strategy which are: (a) galvanising effective leadership and international coordination; (b) ensuring a risk-based approach to identify priority regions/countries and likely impact of further spread; (c) shaping and contributing to country and regional responses and (d) playing a lead role in the international research response.
DFID has programmes in a number of countries which will support the Zika response. To date, countries in currently affected regions of Latin America and the Caribbean have not made specific requests for financial and/or other assistance from us to support children with microcephaly. We will continue to carefully assess any requests, offer additional assistance where needed and adapt any existing programmes to the needs required. We have already committed £200,000 of bilateral aid in support of Haiti’s Ministry of Health community mobilisation activities. DFID and Wellcome Trust will contribute £10 million (DFID up to £5million) for Zika research. We will continue to monitor the situation closely, working with other government departments and WHO.
Asked by: Robert Flello (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 1 June 2015 to Question 20, whether any UK funding is provided to multinational organisations that assist organisations that are closely involved with China's one-child policy.
Answered by Grant Shapps
No organisations the UK funds, who work in China, promote the one-child policy. The UK Government supports the work of various international organisations and agencies to promote informed choice, universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights and women’s empowerment, including voluntary family planning.
Asked by: Robert Flello (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department takes to ensure that UK aid is not provided to coercive family-planning schemes or to organisations that are complicit in such schemes.
Answered by Grant Shapps
The UK Government supports the work of various international organisations and agencies to promote informed choice, universal access to sexual and reproductive health and rights and women’s empowerment. All UK support to improve sexual and reproductive health – including for family planning – must be provided in the context of informed choice.
Asked by: Robert Flello (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, pursuant to the Answer of 1 June 2015 to Question 20, what the evidential basis is for the statement that sex selection is not caused by the availability of abortion services or technologies; whether her Department considers that antenatal scanning equipment facilitates sex-selective abortion; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Grant Shapps
The World Health Organisation document “Preventing gender-biased sex selection. An interagency statement”, available online, includes more information and extensive references on these issues.
Asked by: Robert Flello (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent South)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the effect of sex-selective abortion on the gender balance in China and India; what assessment her Department has made of whether UK-funded equipment is not used to carry out sex-selective abortions in countries which receive UK aid; and on what evidence her Department has made that assessment.
Answered by Grant Shapps
The UK Government does not promote or support abortion on the grounds of gender. The practice of sex selection is not caused by the availability of abortion services or technologies but is a consequence of deep rooted discrimination against women, poverty and cultural preference for sons. Our work on girls' education, women's empowerment, skills and jobs aims to increase the ‘value’ of girls and women in society and therefore tackle the pressures and incentives that drive preferences for male children.
The UK has never supported or funded the one child policy and closed its bilateral aid programme to China in March 2011. In India, our partners are strongly committed to implementing India’s 1994 National Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Regulation Act, which bans the use of medical technologies for sex selection purposes.