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Pakistan and Kenya

My Lords, first, I thank the noble Baroness for the advice she gave us this morning in the meeting with the Prime Minister. It was very much appreciated. Secondly, on civil society, we still very much hope that in addition to strong domestic monitors we will have both a strong EU team and a strong Commonwealth team. However, I know from my own experience of elections that that will not be enough unless there are also strong domestic monitors to really cover the ground, because there can never be sufficient international monitors to do that. I will look into what support we are providing to domestic monitors. In our eyes the need for the elections to go honestly will be critical to the future of the aid programme. We have commitments to double aid but that assumes that there is progress towards free and fair elections. The noble Baroness was disappointed that the programme does not rank more highly. Pakistan still has a lot of poverty, but in overall per capita income it ranks much higher than the countries to which we target most of the aid programme. The fact that we are doubling aid to Pakistan is a measure of our belief that there are real problems and a real chance to improve the country’s social and economic status. But we have to balance that against countries with lower per capita income figures.