Foreign Aid Expenditure Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for International Development
Catherine West
Main Page: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)Department Debates - View all Catherine West's debates with the Department for International Development
Foreign Aid Expenditure
Catherine West Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Stephen Timms
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. During those campaigns, I remember that a Treasury Minister turned up to work one morning to find the Treasury surrounded by campaigners, arm in arm all the way around the building. They inundated the Treasury with postcards with £1 coins sellotaped to the back of them, one of which we worked out had been sent in by Gordon Brown’s mother. The organisers of the two campaigns—Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History—estimated that about 80% of the people who supported the campaigns and did those things were from the Churches. That is the reason for this cross-party consensus. It is a remarkable example. People sometimes say that the Churches never achieve much anymore; in this instance, the Churches achieved a huge amount, and it is important to recognise the source and strength of the existing consensus.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that in the same way as Make Poverty History was a huge issue then, climate change is a huge issue now? Value-for-money programmes in Bangladesh, such as those to do with flooding, have an enormous impact. They can prevent not only flooding, but famine, helping with unwanted migration and so on—issues we need to look at. Even terrorism can be linked to the failure to address climate change.