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International Aid Reviews: Conclusions

The noble Lord maybe missed the part of the speech that said that the Secretary of State has committed to supporting regional programmes. As he absolutely rightly points out, some of the smaller countries will have greater responses from their regional areas than from bilateral programmes, which are smaller and less able to reach widely. We support the regional programmes very much. I come back to the point about Burundi and Lesotho, which I keep pronouncing wrongly. We believe that they have comparative partners that are far better placed than us to deliver aid. Therefore, we will help them go through the regional programmes. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, I should say that our regional integration work, which is managed by TradeMark East Africa, which has an established office in Bujumbura, will provide support for Angola and Burundi, so that is covered well. We will not just leave them out there and we are not suddenly going to stop—the process will phase down by 2016. The noble Lord is absolutely right that we have a keen focus on agriculture, which is really important for food security, not only for that area but for us, too. We have pledged from 2009, when the Opposition were in government, £1.1 billion over three years. We are therefore taking agriculture sustainability very seriously. We are committed to food security and agriculture and are working with the FAO as well as other multilaterals, including the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme, to ensure that we have a strong programme in place.