Oral Answers to Questions

Tony Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 30th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

The Prime Minister is quite right. The work that we are doing to give land title to smallholders means that they have security and can work their land without it being taken from them.

[Sir Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

I join Members from all sides of the House in expressing my support for the If campaign, which seeks to end food insecurity and global hunger. One of the main causes of food insecurity is the illegal acquisition of large areas of land by investors. What steps has the Department taken to support good land governance in west Africa?

[Lynne Featherstone]

As I said just now, some of our programmes involve land titles for smallholders, and the UK welcomes the successful negotiation of voluntary guidelines on the responsible government of land tenure, fisheries and forests that was concluded at the Committee on World Food Security last year. The UK is working to promote transparency of land administration and security of tenure in a number of countries. For example, in Mozambique we are helping local communities to register their land, and we want to continue that progress.