Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Wright Excerpts

Wednesday 12th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Duncan]

Absolutely. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question, because it illustrates the determination with which we seek value for money and take every possible opportunity to eliminate waste so that we can focus our taxpayers’ resources on the poorest people in the world, who are in such genuine need.

[Simon Wright (Norwich South) (LD)]

5. What progress her Department has made on developing sustainable development goals.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Lynne Featherstone)]

We are working internationally to secure a single set of development goals for the period after 2015. We want to build on the millennium development goals, finishing the job by eliminating poverty but also incorporating the sustainable development priorities that were agreed at Rio+20 in June.

[Simon Wright]

Will the Department support the Prime Minister in his role as co-chair of the high-level panel on the post-2015 development framework in order to guarantee integration and coherence between this process and the sustainable development goals, with the aim of putting environmental sustainability at the heart of the framework?

[Lynne Featherstone]

My hon. Friend raises a critical issue, that of ensuring that coherence and integration exist between the sustainable development goals and the post-2015 millennium development goals. I assure him that my Department is doing just that. Across Government, we have a single structure and approach to managing our engagement with both the high-level panel and the SDGs. The Prime Minister’s envoy is a senior DFID official, and is responsible for both those things.