Poverty: International Development Aid Debate
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Lord Watts
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Poverty: International Development Aid
Lord Watts Excerpts(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I do not agree with the noble Lord; we have achieved a great deal on the eradication of poverty. Focused on humanitarian support, we have provided more than £1 billion of life-saving support in humanitarian emergencies. We have committed £90 million to support in education emergencies, and the UK spent almost £1 billion on global health in ODA in 2022. I take the noble Lord’s point on Africa, and he will be pleased to know that, in 2024-25, we will increase our ODA spend there to £1.3 billion.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister agree with me that we cannot do much about poverty unless we control population? Can he explain why, despite large amounts of money being spent on aid, millions of women still do not have access to family planning?