Desmond Swayne
Main Page: Desmond Swayne (Conservative - New Forest West)Department Debates - View all Desmond Swayne's debates with the Department for International Development
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend raises a very important point. One of the sessions that I took part in at the Brussels conference was with civil society and we looked at how we will collect evidence and hold people to account for their actions. Some of our funding will support an international initiative to do just that, and it is vital that we do so. We should do everything in our power to stop the sorts of things that we have seen over the past eight years happening ever again.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
With respect to promoting our aid effort, as raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), is my right hon. Friend aware of anyone who spends 99.3% of their income on themselves?
Penny Mordaunt
I can see that I will have to deploy my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) to make the case for what we do. We do sometimes focus on that number of 0.7%, but we should actually focus on what that money does. If we can explain this better to the British public, who enable us to help people such as Syria’s children, they would be very proud of what the funding does.