Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what her policy is on providing funding to non-governmental organisations and charities that promote boycotts or sanctions against Israel.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
DFID’s work in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is channelled through trusted partners including both the UN and non-governmental organisations and mainly consists of large-scale and strategic programmes. The UK Government has made its position on boycotts clear. While we do not hesitate to express disagreement with Israel whenever we feel it necessary, we are firmly opposed to boycotts. We believe that imposing sanctions on Israel or supporting anti-Israeli boycotts would not support our efforts to progress the peace process and achieve a negotiated solution.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that a long-term, strategic approach is taken to funding of her Department's education projects.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
The Department for International Development (DFID) works with partner countries to develop, and finance, long-term education sector plans that will deliver good quality education for all children. We also invest in research to inform our education strategy. DFID is, additionally, a significant donor to the Global Partnership for Education, which works to optimise multiple funding flows to national education sector plans.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what monitoring her Department undertakes of the content of UN Relief and Works Agency educational materials in Gaza and the West Bank.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
We accompany our support for the UN Relief and Works Agency with stringent attention to their neutrality and values of peace. UNRWA continues to implement a human rights, conflict resolution and tolerance policy, which applies to all its schools in its five fields of operation, supplementing the host country curriculums. UNRWA has also developed a framework which establishes standard criteria for analysing and enhancing textbooks across all fields and includes tools to guide analysis of host country curricula, textbooks, and other learning material to ensure they reflect UN values. We take allegations of incitement very seriously and raise them with UNRWA whenever appropriate.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, if she will take steps to encourage better dialogue between factory workers and management in Bangladesh's garment industry.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
We are supporting the formation of Operational Health and Safety committees, including training and capacity development of up to half a million participants, with the aim of improving dialogue and cooperation around worker safety. We are also supporting the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) to implement a Social Dialogue project in five pilot factories in Bangladesh, and are providing support to workers to form functioning worker participation committees.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what progress has been made on encouraging companies to sign up to the Ethical Trading Initiative.
Answered by Justine Greening
The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) is a unique alliance of companies, trade unions and non-government organisations. DFID supports the Ethical Trading Initiative in their work to improve the lives of workers around the world. Company sign-up to ETI has nearly doubled in the last 5 years from 45 members to 87 members.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment she has made of the performance of the UK Aid Transparency Guarantee.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
Publish What You Fund’s Aid Transparency Index 2014 rated DFID’s transparency as “very good”, and ranked DFID as the best performing bilateral development organisation on transparency. It also recognised DFID’s leadership role encouraging others in the international development system to be more transparent. A pilot assessment in April 2014 published by the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation also rated DFID as having made the most progress in implementing the aid transparency commitments agreed by donors at the Busan High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in 2011. DFID has launched the Development Tracker website which enables anyone to scrutinise project documents, budgets, supplier contracts and transactions.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps she is taking to ensure that environmental sustainability features within every part of the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals framework.
Answered by Justine Greening
Ensuring that environmental sustainability and climate change are clearly integrated into the Sustainable Development Goals is a key priority for the UK Government. The UK government is actively engaged in the ongoing intergovernmental negotiations through the UN, working with all member states, to agree the post-2015 framework.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to support the development of tax collection capacity in developing countries.
Answered by Justine Greening
DFID is currently engaged in tax capacity building in 22 of our 28 priority countries. We are also developing tax capacity building work in a further 4 priority countries. This includes indirect support through multilateral organisations. We have established a specialist Developing Country Capacity Building Unit in HMRC, to deploy HMRC staff to provide technical expertise in support of these efforts.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to improve education in Commonwealth countries.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
We support education directly in 22 countries, of which 13 are Commonwealth countries. We are also a major funder of the Global Partnership for Education, which supports education in 60 countries of which 17 are Commonwealth. Globally, including support to Commonwealth countries, we have supported 10.2 million children in primary and lower-secondary school and have helped to train 123,000 teachers to improve the quality of learning since 2010.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how much funding her Department allocated to War on Want in each of the last five years.
Answered by Desmond Swayne
War on Want has received DFID funding through competitive grants via the Civil Society Challenge Fund.
2009/10 £109,542.58
2010/11 £114,033.07
2011/12 £181,398.18
2012/13 £236,411.36
2013/14 £191,601.19