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Global Food Security

I am coming to that. I have a whole list of points to get through. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Sir Malcolm Bruce) asked why it was that only 14 countries are in the programmes when there are 29 DFID countries. I hope to get to that.

The Government believe that functioning markets are a better way to manage food stocks than Government interventions. The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) made a number of points that went above and beyond the recommendations made in the report. One idea he mentioned was the World Food Programme holding universal stocks to improve availability. He also mentioned involving neighbouring countries and so on. As he said, those ideas go beyond the report’s recommendations. The evidence we have is that universal stocks are not the most effective use of money.

I will not return to the cap as an example, because it is clear that Members did not favour that view, but Malawi, for example, has recently had food shortages. They hold stocks, but when push came to shove and they looked at their grain stock reserve, it was not as high as they thought. Much of it had disappeared. There are a number of issues outside of simply whether stocks are held for emergencies. We do not have the evidence to say that that proposal is an effective use of money, but my experience is that a whole range of unintended consequences come from stockholding.