Sudan

Lord Bates Excerpts

Tuesday 21st April 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Bates]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of progress towards alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Sudan following the Third International Sudan Conference on 15 April.

[Lord Bates (Con)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and in doing so I draw attention to my role as an officer of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Sudan and South Sudan.

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)]

Last week at the international Sudan conference in Berlin, the Foreign Secretary announced £146 million of new humanitarian funding for Sudan this year, which will reach nearly 2 million people. This includes doubling UK support for local Sudanese responders delivering vital aid in the hardest-to-reach areas. But funding alone cannot solve this manmade crisis, and that is why the Foreign Secretary joined participants in urgently pushing for an immediate ceasefire and for every possible tool to be used to improve humanitarian access to get aid in.

[Lord Bates (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that very helpful Answer and for her personal commitment and engagement on this important issue. Sudan is the greatest humanitarian crisis currently happening in the world, with 33 million in desperate need of humanitarian assistance, including 17 million children, and 13.5 million people having fled their homes in search of food, water and safety. The situation is getting worse every day. The events in Berlin last week were very welcome in producing additional much-needed assistance and pledges for humanitarian aid, but the great crisis now is how that aid, which has been pledged, will reach the people in such desperate need in Sudan at present, when vital humanitarian access is being so cruelly denied by military forces and even by its own Government.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. This is not particularly a challenge with money; last week, the international community rallied together and raised more than £1 billion to spend on aid for the people of Sudan. As he rightly says, it is how we get that aid to the people who need it most. We are doubling the amount that we spend with local responders, because often they are the right people and the best people to co-ordinate in the most effective way on the ground. It is vital that the warring parties in Sudan, and anyone who is obstructing access for aid, stops doing that immediately. It has almost become competitive, to see who can put the most restrictions on agencies, which are hoping to get aid to where it is needed. It is completely wrong—the aid is there and the resources are there, and we just need the ability to get access.