Oral Answers to Questions

Sajid Javid Excerpts

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Mosley (City of Chester) (Con)]

1. What funding his Department plans to provide for aid to north and south Sudan in 2011-12.

[Sajid Javid (Bromsgrove) (Con)]

5. What funding his Department plans to provide for aid to north and south Sudan in 2011-12.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Mr Andrew Mitchell)]

Our future support to Sudan will be determined by the bilateral aid review, which is on schedule to report by the end of February. Whatever the outcome of the referendum, there will continue to be significant humanitarian and development needs in both north and south Sudan.

[Mr Mitchell]

My hon. Friend is right. Corruption has a devastating impact on the lives of poor people and, indeed, on the confidence of taxpayers in donor countries. It is for that reason that no British taxpayer funds go through the Government of Sudan, but I assure my hon. Friend that we will be working in both north and southern Sudan, whatever the result of the referendum, to increase access to justice and to ensure that in the north, for example, there is much greater transparency in the operation and accountability of local government, and in the south to seek to embed anti-corruption mechanisms from day one, were the referendum to decide that there should be a southern Sudan.

[Sajid Javid]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s efforts in Sudan. Although attention is rightly focused on the referendum in southern Sudan, the violence in the west means that the situation is still fragile, particularly in the region of Darfur. Can my right hon. Friend reassure the House that his Department is able to help both regions—the south and the west—simultaneously?