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Conflict Prevention

The hon. Gentleman is right, and he has worked long and hard on Latin American issues, as I have, but to a lesser extent. Costa Rica is one of the few countries where such matters are written into the constitution, and Japan is another. It is a telling consideration when countries understand the benefit of that political position. The frustration of many people about the attempts to obtain equality in the world and some sort of redistribution and justice is that some of the poorest countries spend so much of their finance on defence and military equipment—up to 50 per cent. in some cases. A country in which I have taken an interest for a long time is Sri Lanka, where a terrible civil war ended only last year and there are still repercussions. It has had a huge military budget, and if there had been equal spending on peace-building and conflict prevention among the communities over the years, the whole country would have benefited and there would not have been the deaths and terrible political legacy. Latin America and single countries such as Sri Lanka are not the only ones to have had conflicts. I could list the countries where there have been ongoing conflicts and conflict prevention has not prevailed. When I was elected, there was, as now, ongoing tension and conflict in the middle east—it recurs regularly—between Israel, Palestine and surrounding states. Cyprus is still not at peace, so the problem exists on this continent in an EU member state and commonwealth country. There were terrible tragedies in southern Europe in the former Yugoslavia, and it is partly the international community's failures in places such Srebenica and Darfur in Africa that have made people realise that we must have different strategies. In Africa, we did not manage to prevent the terrible civil war in Sierra Leone, but it is obvious that conflict prevention strategies are still needed to ensure that its growing and improving democracy, and that of Liberia next door, are secure in an area where a frequent cause of conflict—the battle over resources—is still alive and well, whether they are mineral resources as in that area, or other resources elsewhere. Nigeria in west Africa is still not stable because of the religious conflict between Muslim and Christian communities. The other day, the Indian Government instigated a welcome reconciliation initiative on Kashmir, where conflict has continued since the end of the second world war and since the UK pulled out of what became India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The world has many conflicts, and I am conscious that in their response the Government have tried to identify the specific regions to which they are committed and in which they will invest. A key document, which may sound technical to people outside the House, is unexcitingly called, ““PSA Delivery Agreement 30””. Its slightly more exciting subtitle is, ““Reduce the impact of conflict through enhanced UK and international efforts””. It is a good source document, and it sets out what the Government wanted to pull together across Departments at the end of 2007. There have of course been problems since then, and the reality is that, as the Minister will know, there was considerable criticism of the 2009 Budget settlement, because it seemed that the conflict prevention budget had been cut considerably. I have alerted the Minister to the sort of factual questions that I hope he will answer today, and I hope that one will be specifically about the budgetary commitments now and the Government's planned budgetary commitments for the years immediately ahead.