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Conflict Prevention

That would be a very good way of enabling the House not only to assess the Commonwealth as an institution but to review relationships between the United Kingdom and individual Commonwealth countries. May I say a few words about regional bodies, because again they will be of great importance in conflict prevention work? In particular, I want to ask the Minister about Africa. Turning again to the FCO annual report for 2007-08, the Foreign Office says that in that year it invested"““£1.5 million from the Africa Conflict Prevention Pool in building the conflict prevention and peacekeeping capacity of the African Union.””" Yet on page 154 of the same report it said that progress on the African Union Standby Force"““remains limited by weak capacity at the AU and in African regions.””" The capacity of the African Union is clearly of great importance given the points that the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) made about the situation in the Sudan and the tensions that may well arise around the forthcoming referendum on the possible secession of the south. It would be helpful if the Minister could give us an update on the Government's assessment of the capacity of the African Union. Finally, I want to ask the Minister about the budget. In his written statement on 25 March 2009, the Foreign Secretary announced an increase in the budget for preventing and resolving conflict. However, he qualified that announcement by saying that in part it was driven by the declining value of the pound and the necessity to add to the budget in sterling terms to ensure that it continued to buy the same value in programmes. Of that budget of £627 million, £456 million was said to be ring-fenced for assisted peacekeeping, leaving £171 million to fund all discretionary peacekeeping, conflict prevention and stabilisation work. We know from various press reports and leaked documents over the past few months that the Foreign Office is having to look very hard at its budget in the light of exchange rate movements. We know that the FCO was trampled on by the Treasury when the risk deriving from exchange rate movements was transferred from the Treasury to the FCO a couple of years ago. We also know that the permanent secretary at the FCO has written to heads of mission and FCO directors to ask them to draw up contingency plans for possible significant further cuts during this calendar year. So I would like the Minister to tell us whether the conflict prevention programmes that the Government have planned for are likely to be reined back or cut significantly as a result of those undoubtedly severe financial pressures.