Your campaigns

February 2013

Dear ‘IF’ campaign members,

I am writing to thank you, on behalf of the Government, for the recent letters received by a number of Whitehall departments outlining the key messages and aims of your campaign.

As your letters rightly state, hunger is one of the most serious development challenges the world faces.  Nearly a billion people around the world do not get enough food, and undernutrition holds back the growth and development of millions of children.

The UK Government is committed to tackling these problems.  Under the Coalition Government, UK annual spend on nutrition has almost doubled from £19.3 million in 2009/10 to £37.5 million in 2011/12.  This does not capture the significant UK spend on nutrition-sensitive, humanitarian or nutrition research.

Last year, we used the exposure the London Olympics brought to the UK to hold a Global Hunger Summit, which generated a range of new commitments, for example, to develop and deliver drought-resistant and vitamin-enriched crops that could help to feed millions of people.  By 2015, the UK will have reached 20 million pregnant women and children under five with nutrition programmes.

Together, the generosity of our people, the hard work of our charities and the UK development budget are helping millions of the world’s poorest families to get the food they need now, as well as ensuring longer-term food security in the face of population growth, resource scarcity and climate change.

However, with nearly a billion people around the world still unable to guarantee when they will get their next nourishing meal, we have much more to do.  That is why the UK Government welcomes the ‘Enough Food for Everyone IF’ campaign.  We know this is an issue which people up and down the country feel strongly about, and we are determined that the Coalition Government will continue to lead the fight against global hunger in the year of our G8 Presidency.

The Prime Minister has announced that we will hold a major event on 8 June, ahead of the G8 Summit to drive further global action to reduce hunger and malnutrition.  We will also take forward the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, agreed at last year’s G8, which aims to lift 50 million people out of poverty over the next ten years through sustainable agricultural growth.

As well as tackling hunger, we want to use our leadership role in 2013 to focus on tackling the root causes, and not just the symptoms of poverty. That is why we will use our G8 Presidency to take action to promote greater transparency around the extractives industries, in order to increase revenues from natural resources and their investment in tackling the issues that affect the poorest people, such as hunger.  We will galvanise support for land transparency, to promote more responsible and productive investments in agriculture.  We will also work to help developing countries collect the tax they are owed, and we will promote trade, to spur growth and wealth creation.

Of course, if we are serious about eliminating poverty for good, we have to address the issue of climate change.  If left unchecked, climate change could have a serious impact on global food production, and on the food security of millions of people in the world’s poorest countries who rely on agriculture for their livelihoods.  Climate change is a global challenge which requires global solutions.  The UK’s £2.9 billion International Climate Fund is an example of our commitment to tackling our fair share of the problem.

We believe the bold and transformative policy agenda we have outlined for our G8 Presidency, together with our action on a range of development issues, such as climate change, can make a difference to millions of people around the world.  We welcome the energy, passion and commitment your organisations and supporters demonstrate, and we look forward to working with you to make progress in the battle against hunger in 2013.

Justine Greening
Secretary of State

January 2013

Thank you for your recent correspondence on the subject of international land grabs.

The UK Government welcomes Oxfam’s campaign on governance and transparency of land acquisitions, which raises a number of important issues. The UK Government recognises that competing pressures on land for food and fuel risk impacting adversely on food security of the poorest. We believe that private sector investment in poor countries, and the growth of small and large commercial agriculture, are key to achieving global food security and economic growth in Africa.  When done well, commercial investments in agriculture have the potential to be transformational, but it is vital that the rights and interests of the people living on the land are taken into account.

The importance of responsible investment of course extends to World Bank  supported investments.  But the UK government does not agree that a six-month freeze on agricultural lending by the World Bank, as proposed by Oxfam, is necessary or desirable. The UK Government is already actively engaged in discussions with the World Bank on the policies and procedures underlying the Bank’s investments and supports the World Bank’s current efforts to promote responsible agriculture investments, which involve land acquisitions.

The UK welcomes the successful negotiation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests, concluded at the Committee on World Food Security in May 2012. The UK will push for the implementation of guidelines to help share best practice, and shape land laws, policies and programmes. The UK also welcomes the development of the Principles on Responsible Agricultural Investment and the on-going consultation process under the Committee on World Food Security.

This is an important year for the UK as we will host the G8 meeting.  The Prime Minister has announced that the G8 Summit will focus on the golden thread of open economies, open governments and open societies to help advance trade, ensure tax compliance, and promote greater transparency and accountability.  This should prove an important opportunity for the UK to get international engagement on these issues.

UK Aid is supporting efforts to secure land rights for individuals, businesses and communities in at least 8 countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and through investments in key multilateral organisations. Our commitment is approximately £100m over this spending review period for programmes that improve land and property rights. Examples of on-going projects include supporting rural communities in Mozambique to register their land and helping at least 4 million landholders obtain formal titles in Rwanda. The International Fund for Agricultural Development, to which DFID provides core funding, supports poor people to secure their land rights in about 45 countries.

I hope that this letter has been a helpful update on this important issue.

Best wishes,

Justine Greening
Secretary of State

December 2012

Thank you for your email about the World Development Movement’s campaign for an International Development Committee inquiry into UK aid used to attract private sector investment to developing countries.

The Department for International Development (DFID) works with a broad definition of the private sector, including small-holder farmers and small, informal enterprises, as well as larger companies. In poorer countries, many – indeed, most – of these enterprises are run by or employ poor people; and their success is crucial to livelihoods. As well as creating 90% of jobs, private enterprises make just about all of the goods that poor people buy and drive innovation that can have transformational impacts on people’s lives.

Fostering pro-poor private sector development is an important area of my Department’s work, and I welcome the opportunity that the International Development Committee inquiry into the future of UK development cooperation provides to explore this issue in depth.

The UK Government puts a high priority on the rights and conditions of workers in developing countries, including in export processing zones (EPZs). For example, in the EPZs in Bangladesh, DFID is working with the World Bank and International Finance Corporation (IFC) to support a network of 60 labour counsellors who have helped to increase compliance with labour laws in the country’s 8 EPZs, from 30-40% to 92% of companies. In 2012, 99% of grievances were resolved. These labour counsellors have also helped to set up Worker Welfare Associations in EPZ factories. More than half of companies operating in the EPZs now have Worker Welfare Associations. The minimum wage inside the EPZs is 33% higher than outside, and the labour counsellors are reporting a 95% compliance with the payment of this minimum wage.

Through the IFC, DFID has also supported the drafting of a new Economic Zones Act which was passed in 2010. The Act enshrines in law all of the gains for labour in the current EPZs, and seeks to expand worker rights.   Firms who locate their business in special economic zones are expected to comply with local labour laws.

Further details of our approach to supporting pro-poor private sector development can be found in "The Engine of Development – The Private Sector and Prosperity for Poor People”.

Justine Greening
Secretary of State

December 2012

Thank you for your letter about the UK’s commitment to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in the developing world, and our participation in World Toilet Day 2012.

Thank you also for your support for the UK announcement, made at the Sanitation and Water for All High Level Meeting in Washington in April this year.

We are aware of the scale of the challenge ahead. Sanitation remains one of the most off-track Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Today 2.5 billion people still do not have proper sanitation and over 1 billion have no toilet at all.  Meeting the MDG target for drinking water five years ahead of schedule was welcome news, but this still means that nearly 800 million people lack access to clean water.

These are the statistics that led to the UK Government’s decision to establish a target to provide sustainable access to water, sanitation and hygiene to 60 million people, building on our already ambitious commitments.  We will reach this target through a range of measures, including challenging charities and the private sector to compete for support on the basis of the value-for-money they offer.

We believe it is right to focus on where the need is greatest and where progress may be in danger of stagnating.  This is where our engagement will be most effective in transforming and improving the lives of the poorest people.  As a result most of our water, sanitation and hygiene programmes will be in Africa and in South Asia.

On 19 November, the Department for International Development (DFID) marked World Toilet Day in several ways:

• by contributing a blog piece entitled ‘Girls, Women and Sanitation - Dignity matters’, as part of WaterAid’s “Thunderclap” World Toilet day blog event;
• by holding a seminar in DFID’s 1 Palace Street headquarters, which featured both internal and external speakers on “the role of sanitation & hygiene in improving child survival and development”; and
• holding an all-day exhibition in DFID Palace Street Atrium, which included a display stand with various posters on sanitation and hygiene.

I hope that this will assure you that we are serious about our commitment to water, sanitation and hygiene.

Justine Greening
Secretary of State

November 2012

Thank you for your recent correspondence supporting the Save the Children campaign No Child Born to Die.

The UK Government shares the concerns raised in the campaign about the numbers of children dying unnecessarily or suffering the life-long impacts of malnutrition. This is why we are committed to reach 20 million children and pregnant women in developing countries through our nutrition-related programmes by 2015.

I also share the concerns on the potential effects of North American crop losses on global food prices. Sharp rises in world grain prices could make food less affordable in many developing countries. The UK has been working with other G20 members to ensure a coordinated response to the current price spikes and is scaling-up support for big social protection programmes that provide small amounts of cash directly to the poorest, from 9 countries in 2009 to 17 by 2014.

Leadership is indeed critical to success. The Olympic Hunger Event hosted by the Prime Minister in August helped build global political commitment and collective action to help the 165 million undernourished children. For example, the agricultural research community agreed to roll out new nutrient-enriched crop varieties to half a million farming households in Africa by the end of 2013, and the UK alone agreed support to agricultural research that could help feed 45 million people.  UK companies like Unilever, Syngenta and GlaxoSmithKline will work to find ways to make nutritious food available to poor families at prices they can afford. Other commitments were made by the European Commission who agreed to take responsibility for reducing the number of stunted children globally by 7 million by 2025.

The G8 Presidency in 2013 will enable the UK to drive forward progress on the G8 New Alliance for Food Security to make a difference for the very poorest.  An announcement will be made shortly on the overall themes for the UK’s G8 Presidency.

In the meantime, you may be interested in the UK’s wider work on nutrition, outlined in ‘Scaling Up Nutrition: the UK’s position paper on undernutrition’ (2011). This is on DFID’s website at www.dfid.gov.uk, alongside other nutrition publications and links to our global work.

Justine Greening
Secretary of State

Thank you for your recent letter, recognising the UK’s long and unbroken record of support for the eradication of polio.

The UK Government has pledged £40 million to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) for 2012-13. Last year, a similar sum helped fully immunise more than 45 million children. The UK makes its annual contribution to the World Health Organisation, which hosts GPEI in Geneva. The contribution is untied to give GPEI the decision-making flexibility to allocate the funding according to where it is needed most.

2012 marks the final year of the current pledge. The UK Government is now considering its support from 2013. The science, the funding, organisation and political commitment are all key interlocking factors for the global community to get right  in the push to root out the final 1%. We continue to work closely with the GPEI’s spearheading partners, the other bilateral donors, academics and foundations backing polio eradication to develop a strategy that goes beyond the Emergency Action Plan 2012-2013.

From our perspective some of the issues are:

• It will be essential, as the Independent Monitoring Board and others have recognised, that the strategy draws on the lessons from India’s towering achievement and learns how other countries - particularly the remaining three endemic countries - can incorporate them into their national elimination programmes;

• We also need to understand better the reluctance of some countries to contribute financial and other support to help achieve this global

public good. The Global Poverty Project can play a key role in this respect, reaching out to new or past donors and to the endemic and reinfected countries.

• We continue to challenge other donors to do their bit to close the funding gap, and we ask affected countries to do theirs by strengthening their immunisation programmes. All that is missing is real and sustained political will to see the effort through.

We have come so far in eradicating polio. We can do this provided everyone makes a contribution.

Thank you for your interest.

With best wishes,

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State for International Development

May 2012

To supporters of the Save the Children Campaign against African malnutrition.

Thank you for your recent letter in support of Save the Children’s campaign against malnutrition in Africa and requests strong UK support for action on food security and nutrition at the G8 summit.

I am pleased to say that the UK has met in full the commitments made at L’Aquila to address food security, disbursing over £1.1 billion between 2009 and 2012.   With this we were able to, for example, support 1.2 million of Ethiopia’s poorest people with a small amount of cash to help them meet their immediate food needs, and make small on-farm investments to help boost their productivity over the longer-term.  In Zimbabwe, during 2010/11, the UK supported 256,400 smallholder farmer households with seeds and fertiliser to help increase their production and provided access to finance to over 34,000 poor people in rural areas, over half of whom were women.

Since 2010, the UK has more than doubled resources for tackling undernutrition.  We have also significantly scaled up our work on nutrition and made a commitment to reach 20 million pregnant women and children under five with nutrition interventions by 2015.  But we know that tackling hunger and malnutrition is not a quick fix and more needs to be done. 

That is why the Prime Minister gave strong support for the ‘New Alliance for Food and Nutrition Security’ launched at the Camp David Summit on 19 May. The New Alliance is a 10-year initiative in partnership with African governments and African and global businesses to lift 50 million people out of poverty and increase food security. Recognising that international aid is not enough to achieve food security in Africa, the Alliance aims to accelerate private investment in African agriculture to drive sustainable and inclusive growth that will create rural jobs and raise smallholder incomes.  The UK will contribute £395 million, including a £75 million contribution to the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme (GAFSP).

G8 members also committed to support the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement – the most promising mechanism for delivering international resources to the critical ‘1000 day window’ since conception.  This is the most effective time to intervene to prevent/reverse long-term damage associated with malnutrition. G8 members committed to maintain and scale-up robust programmes to reduce child stunting.

We remain at the forefront of responses to food insecurity in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel. UK assistance to date has fed more than 3.3 million people in the Horn of Africa, and supports more than 400,000 people in the Sahel. And while ensuring those facing emergencies get timely and adequate relief in the short-term, we are working with partner countries, G8 members and international organisations to help communities become more resilient to shocks, such as drought and floods, in the longer-term.

The UK will use its G8 Presidency in 2013 to advance the global development agenda and ensure the G8 delivers on its commitments, including the New Alliance.  We will set out the UK’s priorities for 2013 later this year.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

December 2011

To supporters of the CAFOD campaign, ‘Get Down to Business’

Thank you for your letters, postcards and posters about the important role small businesses play in getting people out of poverty.

The UK government agrees with you about the important contribution that small business men and women make in driving forward growth, creating jobs and bringing self respect and security to millions of poor people around the world.

I made my support for small business clear in my message at the Tea Time for Change event which CAFOD, together with other civil society actors, organised in June this year. I also spoke about small and medium enterprises as “the key to job-creating growth” in my 11 July speech at the London Business School.

We are active in pursuing this agenda. Firstly, UK Aid for Trade is helping small businesses to improve their access to global markets, by reducing constraints related to policy, regulation and infrastructure. DFID’s support through the ‘Trademark’ initiative is creating ‘one-stop’ border posts between countries in southern and east Africa – getting goods moving by cutting down waiting times
www.trademarksa.org/ and www.trademarkea.com/.

Secondly, through the Business Innovation Facility, DFID is also working with businesses to find new opportunities for small business men and women in Africa and Asia to produce, supply or distribute goods as part
of the supply chains for larger companies.

I also recently launched three new windows in the Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund.

Thirdly, the UK has encouraged the G20 Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion to focus on scaling up support for small and medium enterprises in developing countries. Finally, DFID is also working with international partners, such as the World Bank Group and the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor (CGAP), to increase access to sustainable financial services that will unleash the potential of small businesses.

I hope this reassures you that, like you, I and my Department want to see small business men and women succeed – and that we are taking action at all levels to help them do so.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

September 2011

Thank you for your letter about the recent launch of the Save the Children Report - "An Equal Start", and the correlation between gender inequality and child and maternal mortality.

Improving maternal and child health are major priorities for the Coalition Government and we share your concerns about the number of women and children who die each year in developing countries from preventable causes. Like Save the Children, we are determined to see faster progress towards the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Nobody should die or suffer ill health because they are too poor to afford access to health care. This is why the Coalition Government supports international efforts to achieve universal coverage of basic health services. We are already helping many developing countries, including Sierra Leone, Zambia, Burundi, Uganda, Ghana, Liberia, Malawi and Nepal, to launch free health services for vulnerable populations, particularly women and children.

The UK Government's Framework for Results for improving reproductive, maternal and newborn health - "Choices for women, Planned pregnancies, safer births and healthy newborns" sets out how the UK will double its efforts on women's reproductive and maternal health over the coming years.

The Government aims to save the lives of 50,000 women during pregnancy and childbirth and 250,000 newborn babies by 2015. We will also support at least 2 million safe deliveries, with particular emphasis on the availability of motivated health workers, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time with the right equipment and drugs, in facilities that function.

Our Framework for Results places a particular emphasis on reaching those who most ofter find it hardest to access services: the poorest and most marginalised girls and women. We recognise that tackling gender inequality and improving equity are important aspects to improving health and key to making progress towards the MDGs. The Framework emphasises the importance of the empowerment of women to make healthy choices and the value of education for girls and young women.

We are helping many developing countries to build equitable health financing arrangements to support their efforts to ensure universal coverage. We consider human resources for health (HRH) to be a core component of health systems, critical to our work on ensuring access to and delivery of quality health services especially to the poor. We will therefore continue to work with all our partner countries to enable strengthening of HRH and systems capacity to deliver proven interventions that can save lives and improve access for the poor.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

September 2011

Thank you for your letter in support of the War on Want campaign Love Fashion, Hate Sweatshops.

I share your concerns about poor working conditions in some countries. The Department for International Development (DFID) is now doubling its efforts to work with businesses on this issue. We recognise the private sector as the engine of development, driving innovation, opportunity and prosperity for poor people in developing countries. At the same time, however, we expect firms and investors to respect ethical standards. 

Voluntary codes and standards are helping to improve working conditions.  The Ethical Trading Initiative for example, which has DFID support, reports annually on progress being made by its members. To be effective voluntary codes do need to include a means to challenge businesses that may not be meeting the required standards. The newly revised Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises includes provision for complaints to be made against companies based in or operating from the UK. The National Contact Point, which assesses complaints, is based in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and has support from DFID. 

We are also looking to provide incentives to countries to ensure decent working conditions for their citizens. DFID supports the special trading deal General Systems of Preference (GSP+) for example, which the European Union (EU) offers to developing countries that ratify and effectively implement twenty seven international agreements, including the eight International Labour Organisation (ILO) Core Conventions. The ILO Conventions cover freedom from child labour, forced labour, discrimination at work, and the right of unions to operate. GSP+ allows the EU to investigate claims that rights are being abused, and as a last resort withdraw the additional incentives provided.

There is undoubtedly more to do. DFID supports new approaches to raising labour standards, for example through the Responsible and Accountable Garment Sector (RAGS) fund. RAGS now supports twelve initiatives aiming to show what works, and stimulate better practice more widely.

I hope this assures you that the Coalition Government shares your concerns about the conditions workers in other countries face in their jobs. We will continue to support fair trade and workers' rights initiatives around the globe.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

August 2011

To supporters of the ACTSA campaign

Thank you for your emails in support of the ACTSA campaign which calls for the UK Government to provide support to UN Women.

The UK Government is fully committed to UN Women and I am delighted that
UN Women is now up and running. We are working to help Michelle
Bachelet, the Executive Director of UN Women, and her team make a strong start in their important work. This included providing interim funding earlier this year. On 6 July this year I announced that the UK will provide £10 million a year in core funding in both 2011 and 2012 so that UN Women can deliver results for girls and women around the world.

This contribution represents 11% of UN Women's core budget in its first year
and places the UK as the second largest donor to UN Women. Following our
announcement Michelle Bachelet said that UN Women "heartily welcomed"
this multi-year commitment from the UK.

The challenge now is for UN Women to deliver results with the substantial contribution we and other donors have made. We will be working closely with
UN Women and offering support where useful, for example, we are seconding a senior economist to help on their economic empowerment work. In line with all of the multilateral agencies through which the UK spends aid, we will review the level of UN Women's core funding after two years in the light of the results they have achieved.

I hope you will welcome our very positive financial, technical and political support for UN Women in this, its foundation year.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

August 2011

Dear All 

The Godmothers campaign requests support for the 'Early Day Motion 1318
on UN Women'. This calls for the UK Government to provide support to UN
Women and was debated in Parliament on 10 March 2011.

The UK Government is fully committed to UN Women and I am delighted that
UN Women is now up and running. We are working to help Michelle
Bachelet, the Executive Director of UN Women, and her team make a strong
start in their important work. This included providing interim funding earlier
this year. On 6 July this year I announced that the UK will provide £10
million a year in core funding in both 2011 and 2012 so that UN Women can
deliver results for girls and women around the world.

This contribution represents 11% of UN Women's core budget in its first year
and places the UK as the second largest donor to UN Women. Following our
announcement Michelle Bachelet said that UN Women "heartily welcomed"
this multi-year commitment from the UK.

The challenge now is for UN Women to deliver results with the substantial
contribution we and other donors have made. We will be working closely with
UN Women and offering support where useful, for example, we are seconding a senior economist to help on their economic empowerment work. In line with all of the multilateral agencies through which the UK spends aid, we will review the level of UN Women’s core funding after two years in the light of the results they have achieved.

I hope you will welcome our very positive financial, technical and political
support for UN Women in this, its foundation year.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

August 2011

To supporters of the Oxfam campaign 'GROW' 

The Coalition Government shares many of Oxfam's concerns on this issue. It is an outrage that almost one billion people are going hungry in the world today.  The recent Government Office of Science Foresight study into the future of food and farming addressed the challenge that underpins the Oxfam report, that by 2050 enough nutritious food will need to be produced for an additional two billion people, from a shrinking natural resource base. I agree that significant reforms are needed to the global food system if this is to be achieved.

The Oxfam report argues the need for urgent action on interlinked challenges of 'production, equity and resilience'; the UK Government is tackling the production challenge in a number of ways. The UK will deliver in full on its £1.1 billion commitment made under the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative. The Department for International Development (DFID) programmes in Ethiopia, Sudan, Malawi, Uganda, and Rwanda are helping to improve access to input supplies for small-holder farmers, installing efficient irrigation systems, and developing conservation agriculture to save water and reduce carbon emissions. In Mozambique and Tanzania the UK is supporting private sector development so that agriculture traders and small scale food processors can provide reliable markets for small scale producers. 

The Government has also increased its support for agriculture research by sixty per cent in the last three years. Agriculture will continue to be a major research focus for the foreseeable future. DFID research has helped to develop high yielding rice varieties for poor upland farmers, and funded the production of vaccines for East Coast Fever and the eradication of Rinderpest – two important diseases of cattle in Africa. This year DFID will begin a major new research programme aimed at tackling chronic malnutrition.

Increasing agricultural production is not enough on its own to prevent poor people going hungry; they need to have secure access to affordable food. Oxfam highlights the vested interests of elites that help to prevent this, i.e. the 'equity' challenge. The Government is working to identify initiatives taken by local, national, and regional organisations that have a positive impact on citizen empowerment, building a robust evidence base of what really works on the ground, and providing support to help successful organisations scale up their efforts. For example, in Rwanda we are helping at least six million landholders, including women, to obtain land titles so they can use their land as collateral.  

Oxfam highlights the important role of private sector companies which direct their business models and practices toward addressing the challenges faced by the global food system. The UK Government supports the development of the Principles of Responsible Agricultural Investment, and puts these into practice through public-private partnerships. DFID works in partnership with UK food retailers to source new products from Sub Saharan Africa, helping them to develop new, responsible business models and supply chains. DFID also provides backing for Fairtrade International, which ensures that farmers receive fair prices for their products, and workers receive better wages. 

I agree with Oxfam that a resilient food system needs to provide secure access to food for a growing population in an era of increased shocks, including climate related ones. The recent Humanitarian Emergency Response Review, carried out by Lord Ashdown, recommended strengthening our resilience to climate change.  We are now building resilience as a core part of DFID's approach in all of the countries where we work, integrating resilience and disaster risk reduction into our work on climate change, and improving the coherence of our development and humanitarian response in fragile and conflict affected situations. Our agricultural research will also focus on developing more climate smart agricultural inputs and practices.

The UK is working intensively with our G20 partners on a range of actions aimed at reducing the vulnerability of people in developing countries to food price volatility. We are also increasing opportunities for smallholder producers to benefit from deeper engagement in the global food system, including through responsible investment by the private sector.

I hope this assures you that the Government is taking this issue seriously, and taking positive steps to tackle the challenges facing the global food system.

With best wishes,
 

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

July 2011

Thank you for your petition, which I have recently received, urging the UK Government to lift people out of water and sanitation poverty by 2015.

The UK Government agrees that water and sanitation are amongst the most basic of human needs. It is indeed shocking that even today, almost 900 million people do not have clean water and 2.6 billion people do not have proper sanitation. About 4,000 people, mostly children, die daily from easily preventable diseases like diarrhoea, for which lack of access to safe water and sanitation is a major contributor.

I am pleased to confirm that we will fulfil our commitment to spend 0.7% of the UK's Gross National Income (GNI) in development aid from 2013. And we will be focusing more than ever before on the results and value for money achieved with these resources. We have put in place the Independent Commission on Aid Impact to make sure that we are doing just this.

The Department for International Development (DFID) has recently published the findings of two reviews on our Bilateral and Multilateral aid programmes. As a result of these we have now committed to a series of challenging targets on water and sanitation. These include making sure 15 million more people have access to clean drinking water, 25 million more people have access to improved sanitation facilities and 15 million more people are reached by hygiene promotion.

I believe it is right to focus on where the need is greatest and where progress may be in danger of stagnating. This is where our engagement will be most effective in transforming and improving the lives of the poorest people. Hence, many of our programmes will be in Africa, where access to sanitation is the most off-track Millennium Development Goal (MDG) target and, where access to safe water is also off-track, unlike in the rest of the world. 

We will now have five new major bilateral programmes on water and sanitation in Africa (Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe). We will also continue to support programmes in four countries that have amongst the largest numbers of people without access in Africa (Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. In South Asia, we will continue to achieve results in water and sanitation in India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Finally, by including sanitation as a high-level indicator in DFID's Business Plan, we will ensure that we monitor our progress very closely and remain accountable to you the public, for our results.

We are also currently reviewing our support to water and sanitation. I hope this reassures you that we are serious about addressing this challenge.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

July 2011

To Supporters of Save the Children

Thank you for your letter about Save the Children's "Healthworkers Save Lives" campaign.

The UK's Framework for Results "Choices for women: Planned pregnancies, safe births and healthy newborns" sets out how the Government will double its efforts on women's and children's health and commits us to saving the lives of 50,000 mums and 250,000 newborn children in poor countries by 2015.

I personally remain highly committed to the UN Global Strategy on Women and Children’s Health. The UK is fully committed to the pledge we made last September to double the number of maternal, newborn and children's lived saved through our aid. We will also continue pushing other donors to fulfil the commitments they made and look forward to progress being reported at the UN General Assembly this September in New York.

The UK is strongly committed to strengthening health systems and to supporting health workers as part of this. We recognise that this requires getting skilled and motivated health workers in the right place at the right time, with the necessary infrastructure, drugs, and equipment. We estimate that about 25% of the Department for International Development’s (DFID) spending on health supports human resources for health.

We see UK efforts as best directed towards country-level planning for a strong health workforce. DFID country-based health programmes work to strengthen local capacity in a variety of ways including through training, reforming public service recruitment, deployment and supervision; and through quality improvements in service delivery. For example:

in Ethiopia, we will ensure that over 500,000 pregnant women are able to deliver their babies with the help of nurses, midwives or doctors;

in Liberia, we will help train an additional 3,700 health workers to provide essential health care services for women and children;

in Malawi, we continue to invest in the Emergency Human Resource Programme that has to date increased the number of professional health workers in Malawi by more than 50% (2004 to 2009).

We will continue to support international efforts to achieve the universal coverage of basic health services, and to work with Save the Children and others to ensure a coordinated and concerted effort to strengthen the health workforce in the interests of those who do not yet benefit from effective health services.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

June 2011

To WaterAid Supporters
                       

Thank you for your letter urging the UK Government to do more to lift people out of water and sanitation poverty by 2015.

The UK Government agrees that water and sanitation are amongst the most basic of human needs. It is indeed shocking that even today, almost 900 million people do not have clean water and 2.6 billion people do not have proper sanitation. About 4,000 people, mostly children, die daily from easily preventable diseases like diarrhoea, for which lack of access to safe water and sanitation is a major contributor.

I am pleased to confirm that we will fulfil our commitment to spend 0.7% of the UK’s Gross National Income in development aid from 2013. And we will be focusing more than ever before on the results and value for money achieved with these resources. We have put in place the Independent Commission on Aid Impact to make sure that we are doing just this.

In March I announced the results of two root and branch reviews of the UK's bilateral and multilateral aid programmes. As a result of these we have now committed to a series of challenging targets on water and sanitation. These include making sure 15 million more people have access to clean drinking water and 25 million more people have access to improved sanitation.

I believe it is right to focus on where the need is greatest and where our engagement will be most effective in transforming and improving the lives of the poorest people. Many of our programmes will be in Africa, where access to sanitation is the most off-track Millennium Development Goal target and, where access to safe water is also off-track.

We will now have five new major bilateral programmes on water and sanitation in Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We will also continue to support programmes in four countries, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, that have amongst the largest numbers of people without access to safe water and sanitation in Africa . In South Asia, we will continue to achieve results in water and sanitation in India, Bangladesh and Nepal.

Finally, by including sanitation as a high-level indicator in the Department for International’s Business Plan, we will ensure that we monitor our progress very closely and remain accountable for our results, to you, the public.

We are also currently reviewing our support to water and sanitation. I hope this assures you that we are serious about addressing this challenge.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

June 2011

Thank you for your letter about the campaign Make Aid Transparent.

In the House of Commons on 8 June I welcomed the launch of the Make Aid Transparent campaign, which supports our common goals.

Improving the transparency of aid has been a top priority for the Department for International Development (DFID) since the Coalition Government took office as we strive to achieve better results and greater value for money from the UK's aid budget.

I launched the UK Aid Transparency Guarantee last year, committing DFID to publishing more detailed information about all our new projects in an accessible, comparable and timely way. This means that UK taxpayers and beneficiaries in poor countries will be able to see where their money is being spent. For example, we now publish details of each project payment over £500. We also publish all of our country plans, project designs and documents, and set out the results we expect to achieve and how we will deliver them. Information is published in the project database on DFID's website at www.dfid.gov.uk.

The Publish What You Fund organisation noted recently that

"..as well as focusing on its own breadth and quality of publication, [DFID's] commitment to influencing others sets important precedents for aid transparency on a global level".

Under the Aid Transparency Guarantee, we also encourage organisations funded by DFID to adhere to similar standards of transparency and accountability. We lead the International Aid Transparency Initiative which is a voluntary coalition of major aid providers and partner countries who have agreed to apply common standards for aid transparency. This initiative will make it easier for people to see all the aid from all donors, and get a full picture of aid being spent in each country.  More aid transparency will also encourage developing countries to become more transparent to their citizens about their budgets and the aid they receive.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

June 2011

To Supporters of Concern Worldwide

Thank you for your recent letter supporting Concern Worldwide's campaign urging the UK to keep poverty reduction on the agenda at the G8.

At the recent Summit, the Prime Minister and President Obama jointly reaffirmed their commitment to helping millions of vulnerable women, children and family members escape the grip of hunger and poverty; preventing stunting and child mortality in millions of undernourished children, supporting agricultural research and development activities; and leveraging private investment to improve market opportunities and links with smallholders.

I agree with you wholeheartedly that it is an outrage that people are going hungry in our world today. The UK remains firmly committed to improving the food and nutritional security of vulnerable people in developing countries. Over the next four years UK aid will prevent 10 million more children from going hungry and ensure another four million people have enough food throughout the year.

The UK will deliver in full on its commitment made under the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative to help improve policies, governance and financial resources of the global food system. Of the £1.1 billion the UK pledged to this commitment approximately one third has already been provided. These funds will ensure that new seed varieties and fertilisers are made available in small and affordable packs more suited to smallholder farmers in Kenya and will help 8 million landholders in Rwanda to obtain land titles so they can use their land as collateral, and strengthen the ability of women farmers to assert rights to their land. In Zimbabwe, the UK is helping to boost food production by the poor, with a particular focus on conservation agriculture and improved extension services, and in Bangladesh we are supporting farmers to adapt to climate variability and helping them build up and retain productive assets such as livestock.

Over the next four years the UK will continue to work with multilateral agencies with a mandate to tackle hunger and malnutrition, particularly the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme. We have increased our support for agriculture research by 60% in the last three years and this will continue to be a major research focus.

In addition, we will work to improve the nutrition of women and young children through country programmes including in Bangladesh, India, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. We will improve the evaluation of our nutrition programmes to ensure that we generate better evidence about what works most effectively. And, along with a number of partner governments, the Gates Foundation and multilateral agencies, we will support the Scaling Up Nutrition Initiative. This is the most promising mechanism for accelerating action to improve nutrition in the first 1000 days of a child's life. Evidence shows that if we can help improve nutrition during this vital period in young children's development, we will improve their overall health and ability to benefit from education throughout their life.

With best wishes.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

June 2011

Thank you for your letter about the Global Campaign for Education’s (GCE) 'Send my Sister to School' campaign.

It is a tragedy that 67 million children around the world are still out of school. Investing in education is vital, as education provides children with the best route out of poverty, giving them the power to improve their own lives and the lives of others in their community. This is particularly true for girls.

The campaign is right to highlight the importance of education for girls. The empowerment of women and girls is at heart of UK development policy and the Department for International Development (DFID) is working through its country programmes to support partner governments to overcome the barriers that women and girls face.

The UK supports actions to achieve all the Millennium Development Goals and we will prioritise aid spending to ensure that new progress is made on access to clean water, sanitation, healthcare and education. We are also committed to making sure that every pound we spend is used in the best way to benefit as many children as possible.

Following a root and branch review of all the UK's aid spending we recently published our priorities for the next 4 years in the document UK Aid: Changing Lives, Delivering Results, which can be found on the DFID website at www.dfid.gov.uk/aidreviews. In this document we pledge to support at least 9 million children in primary school, over half of whom will be girls, and 2 million children in secondary school by 2014.

You should be proud to know that you have joined so many others to be part of a campaign to provide a better future for every child on our planet.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

May 2011

To Christian Aid Supporters

                          
Thank you for your letter calling for the World Bank to stop funding the construction of coal fired power stations, to reduce their investment in fossil fuel infrastructure and to develop ambitious targets for investment in clean energy projects to increase energy access. 

I recently attended the World Bank's Spring Meetings where I reaffirmed the Coalition Government's commitment to be the greenest UK Government ever. 

Together with my colleague Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, we are helping people in developing countries cope with changes to their climate and are supporting renewable energy to improve the lives of the poorest people. 

The World Bank and our other multilateral partners must assist poor countries to develop new ideas to reduce the impact of climate change and to act as champions for climate-smart investment and lending that takes account of the risks of climate change. Countries must work together to raise the money needed to address these challenges. We also need to ensure that we have organisations that are fit for purpose. The UK will continue to push for the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), such as the World Bank, to increase their lending for clean energy, and ensure that they fully consider all aspects of proposed support for fossil fuels. 

The World Bank's energy strategy needs to push for an increase in  energy from renewable sources and address the shortfall in energy that exists in many poorer countries. The World Bank needs to contribute to this effort based on its strengths. In this context, it is vital that it raises private finance to produce more clean energy. 

The UK Government has engaged closely with the World Bank throughout the formulation of its energy strategy and will continue to do so.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

May 2011

Thank you for your letter in support of Oxfam's Mums Matter campaign, which aims to improve maternal health and save women's lives in the poorest countries in the world.

Improving maternal health is a major priority for the Coalition Government. We share your concerns about the number of women who die each year in developing countries from preventable causes. We are determined to see faster global progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and to do all we can to tackle the scandal of women dying in childbirth.

Nobody should die or suffer ill health because they are too poor to afford access to health care. This is why the Coalition Government supports international efforts to achieve universal coverage of basic health services. We are already helping many developing countries provide health services for women and children, free at the point of delivery. In Sierra Leone, the UK led the way in supporting the launch of free health care for children under five, and for pregnant and breastfeeding women. In addition, we have helped the governments of Zambia, Burundi, Uganda, Ghana, Liberia, Malawi and Nepal launch free health services for vulnerable populations.

For us, mums really do matter, and we want to make a serious contribution to tackling the tragedy of maternal deaths. To this end, I recently launched the UK Government's new plan for improving reproductive, maternal and newborn health. Called Choices for women: Planned pregnancies, safer births and healthy newborns, this document sets out how the UK will double its efforts on women's reproductive and maternal health over the coming years. The Framework is available on the Department for International Development's website

The Government aims to save the lives of 50,000 women during pregnancy and childbirth and 250,000 newborn babies by 2015. We will also support at least 2 million safe deliveries, with particular emphasis on the availability of motivated health workers, with the right skills, in the right place, at the right time with the right equipment and drugs, in facilities that function. We will also empower women to make healthy choices and emphasise the value of education for girls and young women.

Around the world, 215 million women who want to delay or avoid a pregnancy are not using an effective method of family planning. We will help prevent unintended pregnancy by enabling women and adolescent girls to choose whether, when and how many children they have.

The doubling of this effort is backed by a doubling of resources for women and children's health which was announced by the Deputy Prime Minister at the UN in September 2010. This is the UK's contribution to an international global plan to improve maternal health: the UN Secretary-General's Global Strategy for Women's and Children’s Health.

Our new Framework for Results outlines a comprehensive approach to improve maternal health from before pregnancy, through delivery to the very important first few hours and weeks after delivery. It places a particular emphasis on reaching those who most often find it hardest to access services: the poorest and most marginalised girls and women. It also blends experience of what works with fresh thinking and a new focus on innovation.

I hope this will assure you that the UK Government will keep women at the heart of the whole of our agenda.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

April 2011

Thank you for your card in support of the WI and Oxfam Mothers’ Day campaign about eliminating maternal mortality in the developing world and extending free health care for pregnant women and their babies.

It is an outrage that 1,000 women die each day in pregnancy and childbirth. The Coalition Government has made tackling maternal mortality a major priority and I have put girls and women at the heart of the Government’s approach to international development.  

Nobody should die or suffer ill health because they are too poor to afford treatment. The UK Government is working with the international community to achieve universal coverage of basic health services. The Department for International Development's (DFID) Business Plan, published in November, sets out actions to increase access to healthcare and clean water and sanitation that will help to reduce maternal and infant mortality, and restrict the spread of diseases like malaria.

Poor people face many barriers to accessing services, including financial barriers such as user fees charged at public facilities. We are working with countries that wish to develop more efficient and fairer health systems. As the campaign notes, we are already helping many developing countries provide health services for women and children, free at the point of delivery. In Sierra Leone, the UK led the way in supporting the launch of free health care for children under five, and for pregnant and breastfeeding women. We have helped the governments of Zambia, Burundi, Uganda, Ghana, Liberia, Malawi and Nepal launch free health services for vulnerable people. Furthermore, at the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit in September last year, we were pleased to see sixteen low- and middle-income countries announce that health services would be free for women and children.

The World Health Report provides very helpful guidance on this issue and the UK Government is working with the World Health Organization (WHO) to develop a programme of support to countries that wish to put this advice into practice. A DFID member of staff will be working directly with WHO on this.

You may be interested to know that on 31 December I launched the UK's Framework for Results for improving reproductive, maternal and newborn health in the developing world, which sets out how the UK will double its efforts to improve the health of women and newborns over the coming years. A copy of the Framework is on the DFID website.

I hope that this reply helps to assure you that we are driving this important agenda forward.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

April 2011

Thank you for your letter in support of the WaterAid and Tearfund campaign, The World Walks for Water.

I'm pleased to say I took part in the World Walks for Water event in Westminster on 22 March, during which I had a number of useful, informal discussions on water and sanitation with other participants. It is a terrible tragedy that millions of people, mainly girls and women, have to walk for miles every day to find water which is often not safe enough to drink.

It is also shocking that, even today, almost 900 million people do not have clean water; 2.6 billion people do not have proper sanitation; and, 4,000 people, mostly children, die daily from easily preventable diseases like diarrhoea, for which lack of access to safe water and sanitation is a major contributor.

That is why the UK Coalition Government has promised to give millions of the poorest people access to clean drinking water, safe sanitation and better hygiene practices to stop people getting sick.

The UK Government has major programmes throughout Africa and Asia to deliver improved access to safe water and improved sanitation. The provision of these basic services will contribute to improving the health and livelihoods of 7 million people in Bangladesh, 3.2 million in Ethiopia, 1.5 million in Sierra Leone, 3.7 million in the Democratic Republic of Congo and 1.9 million in Nigeria.

I recently announced the outcomes of the Department for International Development’s (DFID) root and branch reviews of all UK aid. The Bilateral and Multilateral Aid reviews are a critical part of determining how we can accelerate progress towards the UN Millennium Development Goals, including the targets on water and sanitation, and achieve maximum value for money for UK taxpayers.  The results are available on the DFID website at: www.dfid.gov.uk/aidreviews.

I hope this will assure you that the Government places a very high priority on ensuring the poorest people in the world have access to clean and safe water and sanitation.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

April 2011

Thank you for your letter supporting Plan UK's campaign Because I am a Girl.

You are right to highlight the importance of education for girls. The empowerment of girls and women is at the heart of UK development policy. The Coalition Government has stated that we will prioritise aid spending on programmes that increase access to basic services, such as health and education, for the world's poorest people. Investment in girls' education is key to reducing poverty and has the potential to transform countries and societies.

All of the Department for International Development's (DFID) education programmes will have a focus on girls and young women, we will aim specifically to help increase the number of girls completing primary and lower secondary education. We will work with existing and new development partners to address girls' drop-out rate and their transition to lower secondary schooling through financial incentives (bursaries and cash transfers); water and sanitation programmes for schools; increasing the number of female teachers; engagement of parents - particularly mothers - in learning opportunities and school management; textbooks and teacher training (opening horizons beyond social stereotyping and cultural norms); and interventions to reduce violence in schools.

Our priorities for the next 4 years are set out in UK Aid: Changing Lives, Delivering Results, which can be found on the DFID website at www.dfid.gov.uk/aidreviews. We have pledged to support at least 9 million children in primary school, over half of whom will be girls, and 2 million children in secondary school by 2014. The number of girls and boys we support in primary school is a core performance indicator that we will report against each year by country to ensure we are achieving our pledge.

We have been working closely with Plan UK and with other civil society organisations with an interest in education, to ensure that our support the best evidence-based interventions to maximises outcomes for girls and boys in the developing world.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

April 2011

Thank you for writing to us about the bilateral and multilateral aid reviews. As I will now explain, your letter is a little 'over the top'.

The UK Government is committed to significant increases in UK aid. However, increasing our expenditure is not enough if we are to make significant progress in reducing poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals. We also need to ensure that this money is spent where it can have most impact. The rationale of the bilateral and multilateral aid reviews was to identify the countries and organisations where UK aid could have the most impact, to provide better value for money for taxpayers and the best possible outcomes for poor people.

Under no circumstances will aid be redefined; the law states that aid is for poverty reduction, not economic or commercial interests, and the Government has stated throughout the past ten months that this will remain the case.

Both reviews were conducted through a consultative process. In July 2010, I wrote to the heads of major civil society organisations, including the organisation of UK development non-governmental organisations (BOND), of which World Development Movement (WDM) is a member, inviting them to submit comments and evidence for the multilateral aid review. This was followed up by a roundtable consultation meeting in September, attended by representatives of over 30 civil society organisations, including WDM. NGO representatives were invited to regular update meetings during the process of the bilateral aid review.

As you will be aware, we have in parallel set up the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), established the UK Aid Transparency Guarantee and become the first country in the world to publish information on the International Aid Transparency (IATI) standards.

Reducing poverty amongst girls and women is at the heart of DFID's policy and programmes. We will invest more in girls and women, who will in turn invest more in their families and communities. Our new strategy on women is focused on four priorities where we aim to have a big impact: later marriage and safer childbirth; getting more girls through secondary school; economic empowerment; and tackling violence. We are also seeking to improve the focus on girls and women among the international organisations with which we work.

I agree that support to agriculture and food security is of vital importance.  We will work with our partners to help reduce the impact of high food prices around the world, and prevent food shortages before they take hold. We will also work with governments, charities, UN and the business sector to make the worldwide response to malnutrition much more coordinated, targeted and hard-hitting.

The UK is supportive of the Responsible Agricultural Investment initiative (RAI).  The RAI seeks to enhance the transparency of international investment in agriculture and land. The RAI is a set of principles among host countries for international agricultural investment (e.g. Principle 1: 'Existing rights to land and associated natural resources are recognised and respected'). There is a consultative process underway to turn the principles into actions for investors, governments, donors and international agencies.

On climate finance, the UK Government is supportive of the Adaptation Fund. We are active members of its Board and welcome the progress made in establishing the Fund. The Adaptation Fund has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding for its first project, on coastal erosion in Senegal. I welcome this progress towards supporting concrete adaptation projects on the ground. I will be keeping the fund’s progress under review.

DFID's Multilateral Aid Review found that the Climate Investment Funds meet a critical gap in delivering low carbon, climate resilient development outcomes, delivering finance at scale and learning lessons for future climate change architecture. They are innovative, with effective and equitable governance structures, and have a strong commitment to transparency. We will continue to press the importance of lesson learning and making improvements based on this, for example on country leadership and engagement of developing country stakeholders beyond government.

The UK Government believes that an effective Green Climate Fund will be a key part of global cooperation to tackle climate change. We worked hard to secure agreement in Cancun, and have identified a team of senior officials to participate in the design process that will be taking place over the coming year.

We are aiming for a fund that will deliver real and lasting results. This means a fund that can add value beyond existing funds. It should support transformational change towards low carbon development, reduce emissions from deforestation and land degradation, and help countries build resilience to climate impacts. Good design will be crucial to ensuring that the Green Climate Fund can secure meaningful funding and lever significant private sector investment.

Finally, I would like to thank you for your interest in DFID's work, and for your commitment to helping to ensure that the UK meets its international obligations and does what it can to help poor people throughout the world.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

March 2011

Thank you for your letter about International Women's Day and CARE International's 'Voices Against Violence' campaign.

The 100 year anniversary of International Women's Day is an important symbolic occasion, and I join your constituent in celebrating women's achievements and recognising their struggles. Indeed, I was flattered to be included in the International Women's Day list of the hundred most inspiring people delivering results for women and girls, produced by Women Deliver.

Girls and women are at the forefront of the UK Government's work to tackle poverty in the world's poorest countries, especially where the challenges of poverty are compounded by violent conflict. Sexual violence in conflict is appallingly high, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) as your constituent rightly points out. But even where rape is less prevalent, women often suffer disproportionately in war, and are frequently excluded from the process of building peace.

For these reasons, the UK Government launched its new National Action Plan on Women Peace and Security in autumn 2010. This plan is not just fine-sounding commitments on paper – it is already being turned into action to help some of the world's most vulnerable women. The Plan will be annually updated to reflect progress and add new commitments, and the Government will make a statement to parliament at that point.

In Nepal, we have already provided support to over 1,500 women to hold politicians to account on issues like women’s participation and ending sexual violence. In the DRC we have begun a five-year programme which will improve the ability of the police to prevent and respond to rapes and sexual assault.

This work is only a small part of the UK's broader efforts to improve the lives of women in poor countries. Recently, I announced the outcomes of root-and-branch reviews of UK aid, setting out our plans for the coming years. The results of the reviews are available from www.dfid.gov.uk/aidreviews. This includes an increased focus on empowering women and girls, and protecting them from sexual violence. We will enable 10 million women worldwide to access justice through the police and courts, and strengthen women's political voice – we have helped 40 million women in Bangladesh obtain photo identity cards that enable them to vote and reduce the risk of electoral fraud. We will also help to save the lives of at least 50,000 pregnant women and 250,000 babies by improving maternal healthcare.

Thank you for your interest in this important issue.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

March 2011

Thank you for your email about debt relief for Sudan. 

The UK aid programme for Sudan is one of the Department for International Development's largest programmes, and in 2010/11 approximately half of it will go to South Sudan. Our programme assists broad international efforts to promote peace and stability in Sudan through the delivery of humanitarian relief, improved security and access to justice, and improving the ability of public institutions to deliver basic services to the people of Sudan. The UK also provides support to Sudan through the vital work of the UN African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS). In November 2010, a new joint UK Government office opened in Juba and we are increasing our staff numbers in South Sudan in order to deliver an effective programme which provides real value for the UK taxpayer. 

Debt is one of several key outstanding issues of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), to which the UK was a witness, that need to be resolved. We are playing a leading role in the international discussions on debt. 

I recently discussed this with President Thabo Mbeki, Chair of the African Union Implementation Panel supporting the parties to negotiate the conclusion of the CPA. We agreed that this important issue needed to be urgently addressed. 

As we have made clear to the Government of Sudan, any solution to Sudan’s debt will require concerted action by both the Sudanese and the international community. With progress on the completion of the CPA, and on finding a lasting and just peace for Darfur, there is an opportunity for negotiations on debt relief to proceed. This view is shared by a number of creditors, including the United States.

The debt relief process is a long and established one. The UK has led in the establishment of a Technical Working Group, comprising the International Financial Institutions and the full range of Sudan's main creditor countries and institutions to begin the technical work required. The first meeting of this group was in Washington on 3 February and attended among others by the UK, the US, China, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Following that meeting, work is underway to establish exactly how much is owed and to whom.

Now that the South has voted for secession, how Sudan's debt will be treated between North and South is an issue for the two countries to decide as part of their wider negotiations over the coming months. Whatever the outcome of the negotiations I agree that the development of the South will be critical to the stability of the new state. When agreement has been reached, we will be able to consider the next steps on debt relief, based on continued progress towards peace and stability in Sudan, and the technical work already underway.

Looking beyond the CPA, the results the UK aims to achieve across Sudan through its development partnership with the Governments and other agencies, include: helping 1 million people escape from poverty; getting 240,000 children through primary school; reaching over 750,000 people with malaria prevention and treatment; giving over 500,000 people access to clean water and sanitation; and providing life-saving health and nutrition support to up to 10 million people.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

February 2011

Thank you for your letter about VSO's 'The Godmothers – Keeping UN Women on-track' campaign.

The Coalition Government stands four-square behind UN Women, and we are working to help Michelle Bachelet and her team make a strong start in their important work. This is an historic opportunity to create an efficient and powerful body that has the chance to make a positive impact on the lives of girls and women across the world. Women in poor countries are particularly vulnerable to the effects of poverty, whether through conflict, violence or poor job opportunities. I hope that the merger of four UN organisations into a single agency will provide a stronger international response for girls and women at a global level and in the field.

The UK was instrumental in helping to secure agreement for UN Women to be created, and I met Michelle Bachelet on her first week in office to offer our strongest support. The Government has since been working closely with UN Women to help it get up and running, including through our membership of the Board, and we have also provided some transitional financial support to that end.

We look forward to receiving UN Women's results plan in June which will allow us to decide on the UK’s core funding contribution for the coming years, in line with the relentless focus on results that Coalition Ministers are driving throughout the entire UK aid programme. I am sure you will agree that it is essential for such an important decision on behalf of UK taxpayers to be based on a very clear plan, by which the Government can see the results that UN Women expects to achieve for girls and women in the world's poorest countries.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

January 2011

Thank you for your postcard asking for support for indigenous pregnant women and mothers.

Improving maternal health and women's rights are major priorities for the Coalition Government and an area that the Prime Minister has personally championed. We are determined to take action to improve access to sexual and reproductive health services, including access to modern family planning methods, to give women in developing countries the reproductive choices they want and need. Our Business Plan, published in November, sets out actions to increase access to healthcare, clean water and sanitation, to reduce maternal and infant mortality, and to restrict the spread of diseases like malaria.

The Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Summit in September 2010 was an opportunity for the world to renew its commitments to the world's poor. The Summit successfully agreed an action agenda for how the international community and developing countries can achieve the MDGs. Unprecedented pledges were made by donors (amounting to £40 billion) and many developing countries made commitments to increase access to family planning and safe births.

A “Global Strategy for Women’s and Children’s Health”, launched at the Summit in September, emphasises the importance of reducing barriers to access, including expanding free services for women and children. 

This is particularly important for the poorest and most marginalised women in the developing world, including those from indigenous communities.

The Coalition Government is committed to putting gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls at the front and centre in international development. We recognise that indigenous peoples can be denied rights, for example through language and geographical location, which is why we support programmes which seek to strengthen the rights, voice and political representation and participation of excluded groups.

Choices for women: Planned pregnancies, safe births and healthy newborns, the UK's new Framework for Results for Improving Reproductive, Maternal and Newborn Health was released on 31 December 2010. Ultimately, the Coalition Government will judge the success of this Framework by whether the poorest are reached in the countries where we work. Disaggregated data, that track changes in the lives of poor and marginalised groups, are important.

Stigma and discrimination – due to poverty, ethnic group, age, marital status, disability, sexuality, HIV status and other factors – exclude women and girls from services. This is often overlooked, yet significantly affects the quality of care. The health system reflects the society in which it operates but could be a model for equity and social change. Approaches to overcome stigma and discrimination include: training of health workers; tailored services; accountability mechanisms and quality assurance; behaviour change communications strategies; and community engagement.

I hope this is helpful.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

January 2011

Thank you for your email in support of the Stop AIDS campaign to help stop babies being born with HIV, urging the Government to contribute its fair share to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria. I agree that it is vital we sustain the substantial but fragile progress the world is making in tackling AIDS, especially in the worst affected countries.

The Coalition Government wholeheartedly supports the call for the elimination of paediatric AIDS and we are working with others to scale up services to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child. To reach this goal, we need to adopt the comprehensive approach recommended by the World Health Organization. We can add particular value in the area of primary prevention of HIV among women of child-bearing age, and on prevention of unintended pregnancies among women living with HIV through our investments in family planning.

In 2007, the UK made an unprecedented long-term commitment to the Global Fund of up to £1 billion, comprising up to £360 million for the period 2008-10 and up to £640 million over 2011-15, subject to high quality demand, sustainable impact and good performance.

The Department for International Development is undertaking a Multilateral Aid Review (MAR) to examine our support for multilateral agencies. We are also reviewing our bilateral aid and humanitarian emergency response programmes. The MAR includes an assessment of the relevance of the Global Fund to the UK’s objectives on poverty reduction and its ability to deliver results on the ground. The results of the MAR will be an important element in any future funding decisions in respect of the Fund.

The Executive Board of the Global Fund met in December to consider country proposals for additional financing under 'Round 10' of funding applications. The results of the MAR will be announced in the spring. I am pleased to say that we are sufficiently confident in the Fund’s performance to be able to bring forward £100 million of our remaining £640 million pledge into 2010, so that all the proposals on the table could be supported in full. This has helped to allow good quality proposals to be approved more quickly, and will enable life saving treatments and services to reach more patients faster.

The Global Fund Replenishment Conference in October raised a total of $11.7 billion in formal pledges and projections. This is the largest ever financial commitment to the Fund's work, and represents a 20% increase on the last Replenishment which raised $9.7 billion for 2008-2010. This is a very significant achievement given the current economic climate. It does mean that the Fund will need to become even more efficient, driving costs down and increasing effectiveness so that every single dollar raised maximises the health results that it buys.

I can assure you that we believe the global financial crisis is no excuse for turning our backs on AIDS and other pressing health needs, as demonstrated by our commitment to spend 0.7% of Gross National Income on overseas aid from 2013.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

December 2010

Earlier this year, WOMANKIND Worldwide's Speaking out for Women campaign was successful in securing signatures from people in 80% of the UK's constituencies. WOMANKIND Worldwide recently delivered the numerous signed postcards to my office, including the postcard you signed. I wanted to thank you for your commitment to improving the lives of girls and women in the poorest countries. 

The Department for International Development is committed to promoting gender equality and putting girls and women at the front and centre of our policies and our operational work around the world. 

We have identified gender equality and the role of girls and women as one of our six strategic priorities in the DFID Business Plan. We will continue to work to improve maternal health and access to family planning; increase the number of girls completing primary and progressing to secondary school; promote the economic empowerment of girls and women; and tackle violence against girls and women.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

December 2010

I would like to commend the ONE campaign's efforts to reach the goal of virtual elimination of paediatric AIDS; the UK Coalition Government wholeheartedly supports this.

It is unacceptable that more than 1,000 babies acquire HIV through mother-to-child transmission every day when there are effective interventions to prevent this. The Department for International Development is working with others to scale up prevention of mother to child transmission services.

To reach this goal, we need to adopt the comprehensive approach recommended by the World Health Organization. This includes better integration of HIV services into maternal and child health, reducing infections among women and girls, addressing the structural drivers of the epidemic (stigma and discrimination, gender based violence) and supporting access to essential medicines for women and children, including anti-retroviral drugs.

Making choices through family planning is a key element of the package, but many women do not have access to modern methods of contraception and cannot choose whether, when and how many children to have, let alone choose to do this safely. The unmet need for family planning among HIV positive women is higher than among HIV negative women. The UK Government has put women and children at the heart of the Coalition's development agenda and we expect to make a significant contribution to the goal of eliminating paediatric AIDS particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where most paediatric infections occur, through improvements in maternal and child health services and investments in family planning.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

December 2010

Thank you for your support for Tearfund's recent 'Superbadger' campaign on clean water and sanitation, and the impact that access to these will have on saving the lives of mothers and babies. I agree with you that it is essential that the importance of water and sanitation is not overlooked.

The Coalition Government will launch the new Reproductive, Maternal and Newborn Health (RMNH) Framework for Results shortly. As part of the preparation of the Framework we undertook an extensive consultation process, which ran for twelve weeks until 20 October, and was available on Department for International Development's website.

Central to the Framework is the importance of ensuring safe delivery, which means the provision of sufficient clean water and cleansing agents and the adoption of good hygienic practices by birth attendants and mothers. An unclean birth cannot be a safe birth.

The UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Summit was a crucial opportunity to galvanise political momentum and to secure concrete commitments to accelerate progress on the MDGs as the deadline of 2015 approaches. On maternal and child health, the Summit resulted in commitments from a range of partners – including the private sector and foundations – that together will save the lives of 16 million women and children by 2015. The UK's pledge to double our efforts on maternal, newborn and child health will save the lives of at least 50,000 women in pregnancy and childbirth, save 250,000 newborn babies and enable 10 million couples to access modern methods of family planning. The clear emphasis on results and outcomes rather than input targets is a very positive development. 

We are also undergoing a detailed review of all work the Government does on international development, to ensure we achieve maximum progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. Water, sanitation and mother and child health will be essential features of our work so I am sure your supporters will be interested to see the results of the review when they are published in the coming months.

I hope this reply will reassure you that the Coalition Government continues to place a high priority on access to safe and clean water and sanitation, particularly in the context of maternal, newborn and child health.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

November 2010

Thank you for your letter on behalf of your constituent regarding the 'No New Debt Send a Pound' campaign.

Unfortunately, DFID does not have the legal authority to accept the £1 coin donations from the general public. DFID is subject to the usual Treasury requirements, which means that any donations are treated as excess income and need to be returned to the Treasury. They are then used to meet all Government priorities and to reduce overall Government borrowing, and cannot be earmarked for international development or any other issue. As an alternative, the Treasury advised us that the money could be transferred onto a local charity; in this instance, the money would have been treated unofficially and not reported as part of DFID's income. 

I understand that neither of these options is in keeping with the wishes of WDM and Jubilee Debt Campaign supporters. DFID has therefore agreed with WDM and Jubilee Debt Campaign that they should collect their supporters' money for onwards transmission to the UN Adaptation Fund. I am sorry that we are unable to pass on the money ourselves, but we need to operate within the legal confines that govern how the Government raises revenue.

Regarding concerns about DFID's handling of campaign correspondence, I can assure WDM and Jubilee Debt Campaign supporters that DFID does take into account and values the views of the public on international development. I have seen the postcards sent by supporters and been regularly updated on the number of cards received. I therefore appreciate the strength of support on the issue, and I am grateful that they have taken the time to write.

The British Government is supportive of the Adaptation Fund. We are active members of the Adaptation Fund's Board and we welcome the progress that the Adaptation Fund has made. The Adaptation Fund has now signed a Memorandum of Understanding for its first project, on coastal erosion in Senegal, which will be managed by the first National Implementing Entity to be accredited. I welcome this progress in putting the principle of country ownership into action and starting to support concrete adaptation projects on the ground. 

The UK also supports the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR), which was designed to deliver something that no other existing fund or mechanism can – a strategic, programmatic approach to finance for adaptation, which delivers transformational outcomes in a small number of pilot countries. The PPCR plays an important role alongside the Adaptation Fund and aims to provide lessons for the Adaptation Fund and other future financing mechanisms. 

The PPCR provides countries with grant finance and the option of taking highly concessional loans on top of this. The loans have zero or near-zero per cent interest rates, low administration and service charges and long repayment periods. The first round of national investment plans has made it clear that there is a strong demand for these highly concessional loans. 

I believe both the Adaptation Fund and the PPCR have important, complementary, roles to play in supporting developing countries to adapt to the consequences of climate change.

I will make further decisions on the allocations of the International Climate Fund (ICF) over the course of 2011, based on assessment of fiduciary standards, need, results and value for money.

I would again like to thank you for your interest in supporting adaptation in developing countries and to assure you that DFID remains open to and very much welcomes the views of the WDM, Jubilee Debt Campaign and their supporters.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

November 2010

Thank you for your email jointly addressed to the Chancellor and me about access to clean and safe water and sanitation. I am replying on behalf of us both.

I agree that water and sanitation are the most basic of needs, and everyone should have access to these services. I believe that the UK has a strong obligation to address the challenge of improving opportunities for the poorest people in the world. It is shocking that in 2010, 2.6 billion people do not have proper sanitation and 4,000 people, mostly children, die daily for the lack of access to safe water and basic sanitation, most from easily preventable diseases like diarrhoea.

The Coalition Government has committed to spending 0.7% of the UK’s Gross National Income in development aid from 2013. In our 'Programme for Government'  we stated that we will prioritise aid spending on programmes to ensure everyone has access to clean water and sanitation along with other vital basic services. The Department for International Development (DFID) has major programmes throughout Africa and Asia that are already delivering improved access to safe water and improved sanitation. 

The UK's leadership and in particular the Government's spending commitment was commended by all of our international partners at the recent UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Sanitation was particularly highlighted as one of the most off-track and there was a call for all development partners to take stronger action to accelerate progress on this critical MDG target. Improvements to sanitation underpin progress on many of the other MDGs – infant mortality, nutritional health and overall growth. The Outcome Document from the Summit calls on governments and their partners to continue to increase funding for sustainable access to water and sanitation and to accelerate efforts to close the sanitation gap, especially for the poor.

To determine how we can achieve best results and value for money for UK taxpayers, I have commissioned a review of all UK aid spending. This review focused on the results being achieved and how UK aid can make the most effective contribution to progress towards the MDGs, including the targets on water and sanitation. I hope that you will agree with the importance of the reviews and when the outcomes emerge, you will welcome the improvements we will be able to make to the lives of such a large number of people.

DFID will continue to work closely with WaterAid and other civil society organisations focused on water and sanitation.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

October 2010

Thank you for your letter supporting the Tearfund campaign on the Global Fund.

In 2007, the UK made an unprecedented long term commitment to the Global Fund of up to £1 billion to 2015, comprising up to £360 million over 2008-10 and up to £640 million over 2011-15, subject to high quality demand, sustainable impact and good performance.

We assess the Fund's performance largely against criteria that are well known and in the public domain, including against the Key Performance Indicators agreed by the Fund's Executive Board. While the Fund has undoubtedly achieved impressive results in some areas, my view is that in others the Fund's performance could be significantly improved.

For example, we want to see the Fund get better at working with countries and other donors, demonstrating better value for money. We want ongoing reforms to be implemented with pace and urgency.

The Department for International Development has launched a Multilateral Aid Review (MAR) to look at UK funding to multilateral agencies. The review will include an assessment of the relevance of the Global Fund to the UK's objectives on poverty reduction and its ability to deliver results on the ground. The results of the MAR will be an important element in determining any future funding decisions in respect of the Fund, and this is the position that the UK delegation took during the recent Global Fund Replenishment Conference.

The Global Fund Replenishment Conference raised a total of $11.7bn in formal pledges and projections. This is the largest ever financial commitment to the Fund's work, and represents a 20% increase on the last Replenishment, which raised $9.7bn for 2008-2010. Although less than many had hoped, this is a very significant achievement given the current economic climate. However, it does mean that the Fund will need to become even more efficient, driving costs down and increasing effectiveness so that it maximises the health results that it buys with every single dollar that it raises.

The Global Fund press release on the outcomes of the Conference can be found at the following web address: http://www.theglobalfund.org

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

October 2010

Thank you for your letter in support of the CAFOD campaign ‘Act on Poverty’.

Reaching an ambitious and fair international agreement to tackle climate change is a key priority for the Coalition Government. We are working hard to ensure that as much progress as possible is made in the next international meeting in Cancun. It is the world’s poorest people who are hit first and hardest by climate change, are least responsible for its causes, and are least able to cope with its effects. To help to ensure that the voice of the poorest countries is heard, we are planning an Advocacy Fund to support them to participate fully in the negotiations. We are also delivering on the UK commitment made at Copenhagen to provide £1.5 billion in climate finance to developing countries over 2010-2012, part of a $30 billion pledge from developed countries.

You mention the Government’s commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid by 2013. I am happy to confirm that we remain fully committed to this, despite the difficult economic times we are living through – and we are continuing to press other countries to deliver on their commitments too.

I agree that business has a crucial role to play in enabling poor countries to lift themselves out of poverty and in helping to tackle climate change. DFID is working with international companies to create new ways of doing business that are both profitable and have a positive and sustainable impact on a country’s development. For example, as part of DFID’s Business Call to Action initiative, Abellon CleanEnergy has committed to make a $100 million investment in Ghana to establish a biomass production and generation facility. Abellon will build a bio-plant and convert a degraded forest into a sustainable forest. The investment should provide sustainable energy to one million customers in Ghana by 2015, reduce CO2 emissions by up to 200,000 tonnes per year, create 25,000 new jobs and provide new opportunities for smallholder farmers to sell their produce.

DFID is a member of the 10:10 campaign and is working hard to reduce its carbon footprint. I wish you and your parishioners all the best in your efforts to reduce own carbon footprints.

With best wishes,

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

October 2010

Thank you for your letter supporting the Oxfam campaign to protect the UK’s aid budget.

The Coalition Government has made a very clear pledge to increase aid spending to meet the target of 0.7% of GNI as Official Development Assistance from 2013. We will also enshrine this spending commitment in law as soon as the parliamentary timetable allows. 

The climate in which we will deliver this commitment is very tough. However, the Government is clear that it is wrong to balance the budget on the backs of the world's poorest people.

In the current financial climate, we have a particular duty to achieve one hundred pence of value for every single pound of taxpayers' money that we spend on overseas development. DFID has launched reviews of all the aid money spent through our bilateral country programmes and money delivered through multilateral organisations. These reviews will determine how and where we spend aid money in the future and ensure we get maximum value from our resources.

Both the Coalition Government commitment to 0.7% and our current reviews of the aid spend will help make sure that the UK remains a global leader in providing high quality, high impact aid.

I hope this information is helpful.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

October 2010

Thank you for your postcards about funding for adaptation. Climate change will have a severe impact on poor people in developing countries – those that are the least able to cope. That is why the Coalition Government is committed to helping the developing world carry out the urgent work needed to adapt to climate change, adopt clean technology and grow in a low-carbon fashion. 

The UK has committed to contribute £1.5 billion of 'fast start' funding over three years (2010-2012) to help developing countries tackle climate change. Decisions on future financial allocations, including for adaptation, will be determined through the Spending Review. This will be finalised in the autumn. The Government continues to work hard in the High Level Advisory Group on Climate Finance, on which my colleague - Chris Huhne, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, sits – pressing for new sources of climate finance.

I welcome the progress that the Adaptation Fund has made in recent months in approving its first projects and starting to accredit national organisations to directly access and manage the funds that they are allocated. The UK is supporting the design of the Adaptation Fund as an active Board Member and we welcome the progress that the Adaptation Fund is making in piloting 'direct access'.

The UK supports the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR), which was designed to deliver something that no other existing fund or mechanism can currently deliver – a strategic, programmatic, approach to finance for adaptation, which delivers transformational outcomes in a small number of pilot countries. It aims to provide lessons for the Adaptation Fund and other future financing mechanisms.

Under the PPCR, pilot countries are provided with grant finance, and are able to choose whether to take highly concessional loans on top of this. These loans will be highly concessional due to their zero or near-zero per cent interest rates, low administration fees and service charges and long repayment periods, meaning that each £1 loan is equivalent to around 75p in grant. The loans will be consistent with the Debt Sustainability Framework – i.e. they will not be available to countries that cannot afford to repay them. Loan money from the UK repaid to the PPCR will be able to be used to finance further lending, meaning that a greater number of countries can benefit from adaptation finance.

I would like to thank you for your interest in supporting adaptation in developing countries. I can assure you that the finance you provide through the tax you pay is being focused on achieving the best possible result in developing countries.  This includes through grants through the bilateral programme, such as in Bangladesh where grant finance has helped raise over 91,000 homes above flood levels.

In terms of the £1 you sent, unfortunately DFID does not have the legal authority to accept donations from the general public so we have written to the campaign organisers requesting that they accept the funds for onward transmission to the Adaptation Fund.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

September 2010

Thank you for your letter about the UN MDG Summit.

The Summit was a success for British leadership and more importantly for the world's poorest people. It was an important opportunity to build political momentum and to secure concrete commitments to accelerate progress on the MDGs as the world approaches the deadline of 2015.

The UK's leadership and in particular the Government's commitment to maintain our pledge to spend 0.7% of our national income on aid from 2013 was commended by all of our international partners. UK civil society also played a critical role in building public support and international momentum both ahead of and during the Summit in New York.

On maternal health the Summit reached agreement on the Secretary General's Global Strategy which aims to save the lives of 16 million women and children by 2015. It attracted unprecedented financial commitments from a range of partners – including the private sector and foundations – totalling $40 billion. The UK's pledge to double our efforts on maternal, newborn and child health will save the lives of at least 50,000 women in pregnancy and childbirth, save 250,000 newborn babies and enable 10 million couples to access modern methods of family planning.

On malaria, the UK pledged to help halve the number of deaths in at least 10 African countries by 2015 by increasing access to malaria prevention, diagnostics and treatment backed by an increase in funding to as much as £500 million per year by 2014. The clear emphasis on results and outcomes rather than input targets was a very positive development.

The Summit was also notable for the extent of developing country engagement. Tanzania pledged to spend 15% of their national budget on health and Liberia promised to secure universal coverage of bed nets to combat malaria by the end of this year. Developing countries also took the lead on side events on issues such as climate change and conflict.

The UK used the Summit to highlight the challenges around the delivery of basic services, including access to clean water and sanitation. I am pleased that this is reflected in the Outcome Document, which includes a call to continue to increase sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation and to redouble efforts to close the sanitation gap and increase the coverage of basic sanitation, especially for the poor. We will continue to work with international partners to ensure this progress towards the achievement of these important MDG targets.

Finally, we should acknowledge the importance of the Summit Outcome Document. Drawing on the real experiences of countries that have successfully tackled poverty in recent years, the Outcome Document sets out an integrated framework for action which can be a focus for global efforts over the next five years.

A great deal of work must be done to ensure that this momentum is carried forward both through the annual review mechanism in ECOSOC which the UK pressed for and in other international fora, including the G20. I hope we can continue to work together to ensure that the energy and political commitment evident in New York are sustained.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

September 2010

Thank you for your email about the importance of focussing on off-track Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) at the UN Summit.

As you know, the UK Coalition Government will be prioritising maternal and child health at the Summit and beyond. As part of a comprehensive approach to these issues we will include support for AIDS treatment, including prevention of mother to child transmission of HIV, and help to promote increased access to water and sanitation. These critical areas are also reflected within the UN Secretary General’s Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health, which the UK is supporting.

Thank you for your continuing support for this important issue.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

September 2010

Thank you for your letter calling on the Government to "Finish the job" for child health. 

I completely agree that it is incredible that so many people, especially women and children, die needlessly every year. Bold international action is needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The UN Summit is an important opportunity to agree an ambitious agenda for action for the final five years.

Maternal, newborn and child health are high priorities for the Coalition Government, and we intend to add significantly to global efforts to reduce the number of deaths among children and mothers. The Department for International Development (DFID) works with national governments in our partner countries to build equitable, accessible and efficient health services that meet the needs of the poorest people.

You asked the Government to pledge support for the Joint Action Plan on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. This is now known as the Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health. I am pleased to be able to assure you that DFID has been closely involved in the development of the Strategy and we will be doing everything in our power to urge all countries to support its endorsement at the UN Summit on the Millennium Development Goals.  

With regards to user fees, you rightly point out that financial barriers to health services can prevent the poorest people from getting the care they need. To tackle this we are adopting a twin-pronged approach. Firstly, we are investing in health systems to increase the supply and quality of health services; secondly, we are helping remove the barriers that prevent poor people accessing care, working alongside our partners to support their own priorities.

We are helping many developing countries replace health user fees, especially for women and children, with more efficient and fairer health financing mechanisms. In Sierra Leone, DFID has been the lead donor in supporting the launch of free health care for pregnant women, breastfeeding women and children under five. This initiative has already resulted in a trebling in the use of basic health care by children under five since April this year.  

DFID is currently preparing a business plan that will set out how we plan to accelerate our support to reproductive, maternal and newborn health over the next four years. As part of this process we are holding a public consultation to gather views and contributions of people and organisations across the world. I would encourage and welcome broad participation in this process. 

I would like to thank you for your interest and for taking the time to write in support of this important subject.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

August 2010

Thank you for your recent message urging me to make tackling hunger a top priority at the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Summit in September.

I very much share your concern. The internationally agreed hunger and malnutrition targets remain stubbornly off-track. At the MDG Summit we need renewed commitments from all partners, as well as a clear road map to show how we can achieve the targets by 2015.

At the G8 summit in June, the Prime Minister reaffirmed the UK's commitment to spend over a £1 billion on achieving specific outcomes on agriculture and food security over three years. We remain on-track to meet this pledge. Our funding will help raise farmers' incomes, reduce the number of people going hungry, and increase the nutrition levels of children. 

The Department for International Development supports this agenda in a number of ways. For example, we support the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which targets small-scale farmers, many of them women.  In Ethiopia, our support for the Productive Safety Nets Programme has improved the food security of 7.8 million people previously dependent on emergency aid. We remain major supporters of Malawi's fertiliser and seeds programme, and we support food security and agriculture programmes in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and India.

Our priority now is to ensure that our spending achieves sustainable and measurable results, and represents the best possible value for UK taxpayers' money.  

I hope you find this reply helpful.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

August 2010

Thank you for your letter about the Christian Aid campaign, ‘A new beginning: Poverty Over’. I am replying as the Minister at the Department for International Development who leads on the issues raised.

I agree that climate change will impact hardest on poor people in developing countries, who are also the least able to cope. That is why the Government is committed to helping the developing world carry out the urgent work needed to adapt to climate change, adopt clean technology and reduce emissions from deforestation. The UK is contributing £1.5 billion in climate finance for developing countries over three years (2010-2012). This finance is drawn from the UK’s aid budget, which is due to rise to 0.7% of UK national income by 2013. This demonstrates a major commitment by the UK – in difficult economic times – to helping developing countries tackle climate change.

The UK’s climate finance contribution was made in the context of the commitment made by developed countries at the Copenhagen Summit in December 2009 to provide $30 billion (approximately £21 billion) over 2010-2012 to kick start emission reduction measures and help developing countries adapt to the impacts of climate change. For the longer term, developed countries committed to the goal of mobilising $100 billion a year by 2020 to help developing countries tackle climate change. The UK is working to identify new sources of climate finance for developing countries to contribute to this goal, including by participating in the UN Secretary General's Advisory Group on Finance.

The EU has committed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 20% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, with the possibility to increase its target to 30% in the context of an ambitious global deal on climate change. The UK is pushing for the EU to demonstrate leadership in tackling international climate change by supporting an increase in its emissions reduction target to 30%.

Effective tax systems are central to effective states, and the Coalition Government will work with developing countries to explore how they can best benefit from recent improvements in tax transparency. The new Government has already demonstrated its commitment to this by being among the first countries to sign an amendment to the Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance on Tax Matters, at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on 27 May. The amendment brings the Convention into line with latest international standards of information exchange, including information held by banks, and opens the Convention to a potentially worldwide membership.

As you may know, country-by-country reporting requirements are currently being explored both by an OECD Informal Task Force on Tax and Development and by the International Accounting Standards Board.  The Coalition Government very much welcomes this work and hopes that it will be able to provide solid, practical evidence which will allow us to assess the different approaches to transparency. In the end, our priority must be to identify the most effective means of delivering real benefits to developing countries.

Stephen O'Brien
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State

August 2010

Thank you for your letter about the UN Millennium Development Goal (MDG) Summit in New York in September.

I am very pleased to say that the Deputy Prime Minister will represent the UK as head of delegation at the UN MDG Summit as the Prime Minister will be on paternity leave. The UK is committed to securing an ambitious outcome in September that agrees an action agenda for achieving the MDGs by 2015 and secures additional results based commitments on the most off-track MDGs.  The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister will continue to press other world leaders to attend the Summit as it is an important opportunity to advance our goal of tackling extreme poverty in developing countries.

You are right to say that we must protect the most vulnerable, including children. We are strongly committed to working towards children achieving their full potential as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. At the UN MDG Summit, the UK will encourage others to invest in protecting and promoting the rights of adolescent girls. This should include the creation of safe spaces to reduce their vulnerability to violence, to build girls’ social networks, raise awareness of their rights, and build life, livelihoods and leadership skills.

Andrew Mitchell
Secretary of State

August 2010

Thank you for your correspondence raising concerns about world poverty and the Coalition Government’s intentions. I am replying as the Minister responsible for the issues raised.

I agree with that it is a scandal that millions of people in our world suffer from hunger and lack the very basics like clean water and sanitation. It is shocking and simply absurd that, in the year 2010, 25,000 children die every day, mostly from easily preventable diseases.

The Coalition Government places a high priority on ensuring that everyone has access to vital basic services such as clean water, sanitation, healthcare and education.  I enclose the international development part of The Coalition: Our Programme for Government so that your constituent can be reassured that the Government feels very strongly about the important issues raised.

The Department for International Development (DFID) is committed to increasing our efforts to improve access to food. In 2009, DFID fed 90,000 starving children in East Africa. In 2010, DFID will help treat over 31,000 children across the Eastern Sahel (Niger, Chad and Central African Republic) suffering from severe acute malnutrition. Every year DFID humanitarian funding in Democratic Republic of Congo reaches over 4 million Congolese people. We are also working hard to help poor countries increase their food production so that they are not reliant on others. Doubling the production of staple crops in Africa would reduce food prices by 25% and lift 100 million people out of poverty. We are working towards that goal: DFID is supporting increased agricultural production, rural development including rural roads, and safety nets for those who fall into hunger in Africa and other poor countries.

DFID is also working to improve access to water and sanitation. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 69% of people lack access to basic sanitation and 37% lack safe drinking water. This has a significant impact on people’s health and well-being, as well as economic development and environmental sustainability. For example, in Ghana, poor environmental health is estimated to cost up to 9% of GDP. DFID is working to improve this situation and will help up to 25 million more people gain access to safe water and sanitation in Africa over the next five years. We will support at least 30 million people in Asia to get access to sanitation by 2011.

I hope I have reassured you that the UK Government is fully committed to tackling global poverty and hunger. We will honour our commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid from 2013, and will enshrine this commitment in law.

With only 5 years to go until the deadline, 2010 is a crucial year for the MDGs. The UK will lead the way in galvanising concerted international action at the UN MDG Summit in September in order to meet the goals by 2015. We will prioritise the most off-track MDGs, in particular maternal health, and focus on delivering basic services like access to clean water and sanitation.

I hope this letter is helpful. If you would like to read more about the Department or our work, you can find more information on our website.

Stephen O’Brien
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State