Oral Answers to Questions

Sandra Osborne Excerpts

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Around 95% of the Syrian refugees who had fled into Iraq are themselves Kurdish in origin. In total over recent weeks, around 1 million people have been displaced within Iraq itself. As I set out earlier, a three-person team went out last Thursday: two of them are working directly with the Government of Kurdistan to discover what we can do to help that regional Government to respond; the other is working with the UN to help set up the camps. As with the refugees from the crisis in Syria, most displaced people are staying in host communities rather than in camps, which are very limited in the facilities they can provide.

[Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)]

2. What her health priorities are in discussions on the post-2015 development framework.

[The Secretary of State for International Development (Justine Greening)]

The UK objective for post-2015 is to agree a simple, inspiring, measurable set of goals centred on eradicating extreme poverty that should finish the job that the millennium development goals started. The goal should be outcome focused, measuring reductions in preventable death and disease and giving women and girls sexual and reproductive health rights

[Sandra Osborne]

Despite progress on reducing maternal mortality and promoting universal access to reproductive health, this remains the slowest of the millennium development goals. Will the Secretary of State explain why DFID supported fewer women to give birth with the support of nurse, midwife or doctor in 2012-13 than it did in 2011-12?

[Justine Greening]

Overall, I think we can be proud of the fact that we are the first Government to live up to the commitment to spend 0.7% of our gross national income on international development, and that includes doing more work on health. We are, for example, increasing our spend on key health areas such as malaria, pledging up to £1 billion of support to the global health fund. I can assure the hon. Lady that tackling maternal mortality remains a core part of my Department’s work and that we are pressing for a comprehensive health goal and target as part of the post-2015 framework.