Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Marson Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Adams]

I know how passionate the hon. Lady is about the situation in Myanmar, particularly on behalf of the Rohingya community. On the ICJ case, we have been absolutely clear in our support for the process. We have urged the military to comply with the provisional measures rulings, and we have provided funding to enable Rohingya refugees to attend those hearings in December 2019.

With regard to aid support, we remain a leading donor to the Rohingya response, providing more than £320 million to the Rohingya response in Bangladesh since 2017. That includes £27.6 million of new funding announced in May in Rakhine State. We have provided more than £44 million to all communities since 2017, including over £25 million for the Rohingya. The Government are providing education, nutrition, water, sanitation, health and livelihoods.

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

What assessment he has made of the effect of the covid-19 pandemic on the delivery of 12 years of quality education to girls throughout the world.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Wendy Morton) [V]]

Covid-19 has raised the stakes for girls’ education, deepening the crisis that they already face in basic skills, and too many children have missed crucial schooling since last year, which we know does long-term damage to their future and disproportionately affects girls. The UK is committed to standing up for the right of every girl around the world to 12 years of quality education. That is why the UK has put girls’ education at the heart of our G7 presidency, and we are co-hosting the global education summit with Kenya in July.

[Julie Marson [V]]

I thank my hon. Friend for her response. Does she agree that the G7 announcement on girls’ education represented a huge boost to our efforts to ensure that girls around the world get the education that they need and deserve?

[Wendy Morton]

Absolutely. We have put girls’ education at the heart of our G7 presidency and made huge strides in achieving our ambition of standing up for the right of every girl to 12 years of quality education. At the G7 summit in Cornwall, the Prime Minister secured a landmark commitment from our G7 partners to pledge at least $2.7 billion to the Global Partnership for Education ahead of the global education summit. That includes £430 million from the UK, which is an uplift of 15% on our current position as top bilateral donor, and our largest ever pledge to the GPE. That, along with our commitments to getting 40 million more girls into schools and 20 million more girls reading by the age of 10 in the next five years, demonstrates the commitment that this Government are putting into girls’ education.