International Development White Paper

Wendy Chamberlain Excerpts

Tuesday 21st November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mitchell]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he does as chair of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. He will know that the team that put together the White Paper looked carefully at what the WFD does, and recognised the unique contribution it makes, supported as it is across the House and in the other place. I am very glad that, following the public accountability process—which, as my hon. Friend knows, is going on at the moment—we expect to be able to substantially reinforce the funding for the WFD.

[Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), our foreign affairs spokesperson, I welcome many aspects of the White Paper. However, as co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Afghan women and girls, I was interested in the case study in the paper that stated that the Government

“will invest further to support women’s full participation in all political dialogue”.

I place on record my thanks to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee for inviting former Afghan MP and Deputy Speaker Fawzia Koofi to appear before it. What steps is the Minister going to take to ensure that full participation? Is he speaking to Afghan female leaders here and in Afghanistan, and how is that happening in the context of budget cuts in the region?

[Mr Mitchell]

As the hon. Lady knows, next year, we will increase bilateral funding to Afghanistan to £151 million. We are able to do that because the budget is much more carefully targeted and is now properly cultivated to deliver results. On the subject of education and of the treatment of women and girls in Afghanistan, which is absolutely abhorrent, we do everything we can through various mechanisms, including the Afghanistan World Bank trust fund, to boost those important objectives. As the hon. Lady would expect, we focus on trying to win results with that money—which is paid by the British taxpayer—in the best way we possibly can.