Asked by: Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what support they are providing to help tackle mosquito-borne diseases.
Answered by Lord Bates
We tackle mosquito-borne diseases through bilateral programmes and funding to multilateral organisations to: (1) support research to develop new tools and approaches for disease control, (2) respond to outbreaks, and (3) improve access to vector-control tools like bed nets and insecticide residual sprays. We also build strong and resilient health systems that meet essential needs, and ensure countries are better able to prevent, detect, and treat all causes of ill health, including mosquito-borne diseases. In 2017 our funding to the Global Fund contributed towards the distribution of 197m mosquito nets in low income countries.
Asked by: Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what support they are giving to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help to manage the recent Ebola outbreak in that country.
Answered by Lord Bates
The UK responded quickly to support the international response, led by Government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the World Health Organisation (WHO), as the second largest donor to the Strategic Response Plan. UK support has helped to improve leadership and co-ordination, surveillance, infection prevention control and preparedness measures.
The UK is also supporting international response mechanisms tackling this latest outbreak, including the UN Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF) and the WHO's Contingency Fund for Emergencies. The UK is the largest donor to CERF and the second largest donor to the WHO Contingency Fund.
In 2014 DFID worked with the Wellcome Trust to develop an Ebola vaccine. This was subsequently developed by others into the experimental vaccine now being administered by the Ministry of Health and WHO teams.
Furthermore, the UK is supporting neighbouring countries like Uganda, Rwanda and South Sudan to ensure they are as prepared as possible for any regional transmission of Ebola, including funding for key UN posts in these countries.
Asked by: Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the contribution made by the Fairtrade movement to improving the lives of people employed in the supply chains of Fairtrade products.
Answered by Lord Bates
The UK government is a strong supporter of the Fairtrade movement, which plays an important role in helping producers around the world improve their lives by ensuring that farmers receive fair prices for their products, workers receive better wages and by making agricultural practices more sustainable. Fairtrade provides a minimum price for sales, as well as a premium, and certifies smallholder and plantation supply chains, as well as extractives such as gold. More than 1.65 million farmers and workers worldwide have benefitted from being part of Fairtrade certified producer organisations.
Asked by: Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bates on 31 October (HL2511), what lessons they have learnt in respect of the use of aid to support mixed public and private health systems to deliver high quality, accessible and affordable healthcare to the poor.
Answered by Lord Bates
The UK Government’s support to mixed health systems is evidence-based and includes rigorous mechanisms for lesson learning. We know that the non-state sector (for-profit and not-for-profit providers both in the formal and informal sector) delivers a substantial share of healthcare in low income countries - but that private provision might not meet the needs of the poor and can be inaccessible, of low quality, and unaffordable. Two key lessons for the use of aid in this area are (i) the need to focus on the needs of the poorest, and (ii) the importance of strengthening government stewardship of mixed health systems, to promote equitable access to quality and affordable health commodities and services. DFID programmes apply these lessons in the countries where we work with private providers.
Asked by: Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bates on 31 October (HL2510), in which developing countries the UK supports private healthcare providers.
Answered by Lord Bates
To help ensure the health needs of the poor are met, the UK Department for International Development supports improvement of the quality, affordability and accessibility of healthcare provided to poor people by non-state providers. This forms part of DFID’s approach to accelerating progress towards universal health coverage in a range of its priority countries currently including Burma, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Pakistan, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Asked by: Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the role of private healthcare providers in delivering government aid programmes.
Answered by Lord Bates
In most low income countries the non-state sector delivers a substantial share of healthcare, with poorer people often relying on informal providers. This is usually in response to insufficient, poor quality or inaccessible state provision.
However, informal and unregulated private providers can sometime provide low quality health services and commodities, and out-of-pocket payments can contribute to further impoverishing low income groups. Ensuring that services are accessible and affordable to the poor usually requires government or external funding arrangements.
The UK Government uses its aid programmes to support the strengthening of mixed public and private health systems to deliver quality, accessible and affordable healthcare to the poor and uses thorough monitoring and evaluation processes to ensure that results are achieved and lessons learned.
Asked by: Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government in which countries UK aid is being used to fund private healthcare provision.
Answered by Lord Bates
The UK supports developing countries across Africa and Asia to make faster progress towards universal health coverage, with a focus on ensuring that poor people can use the health services they need without the risk of financial hardship associated with direct out-of-pocket payments. Poor people often rely on non-state service providers for much of their health care. The UK therefore supports private providers where this offers the best value for money in reaching the poor with good quality services.
Asked by: Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what role the Department for International Development plays in monitoring how international aid is spent by other government departments.
Answered by Baroness Anelay of St Johns
Departments are responsible for ensuring their Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget offers high value for money.
DFID is committed to supporting other government departments to help them ensure that all their ODA spend is value for money for the UK tax payer. We provide advice and training to other departments on the international definition of ODA, we co-chair a cross-government senior officials’ group with HM Treasury, whose role is to ensure value for money of all UK ODA, and we work with other government departments to support them in setting up their systems of programme management.
Asked by: Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much of the Department for International Development aid budget will be spent by other departments.
Answered by Baroness Verma
As part of the 2015/16 Main Estimate process the Department for International Development transferred £258m of its International Aid budget to other Government Departments.
This figure excludes the Conflict Security and Stability Fund, which is a £1.033bn cross departmental fund, £883m of which sits on the Department for International Developments baseline. £823m of this was then transferred to other government departments as directed by the National Security Council.
Asked by: Baroness Kennedy of Cradley (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are their plans for the Department for International Development to invest in addressing Aids, tuberculosis, and malaria globally from 2016 onwards.
Answered by Baroness Verma
The UK government is committed to remaining a world leader in tackling global diseases and ending the epidemics of AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria by 2030. We are already working towards this goal through our substantial investment to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria which has saved 17 million lives.
We are currently undertaking a number of internal reviews to ensure we are in the right place to deliver our objectives and maximise our value for money and impact. Our future contributions to the Global Fund and country programmes are being considered as part of this. We will lay out further investment plans in the future.