Dr Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park, Liberal Democrat)

To ask the Minister of State, Department for International Development how much the Department has spent on the Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century; what the Department's targets were for the partnership in the years (a) 2000–01, (b) 2001–02 and (c) 2002–03; and how far these have been met.

Mr Hilary Benn (Minister of State, Department for International Development; Leeds Central, Labour)

The total spent on supporting the Partnership in Statistics for Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21) is £1.57 million.

The UK is one of several donors providing support, partly by means of contributing to its overall budget. As a consequence, DFID did not set specific targets for what our support is expected to achieve in each separate year.

The following sets out the PARIS21 targets over the three years as a whole, together with an indication how far they have been met. These are largely based on the results of a very positive recent evaluation, which we expect to be published shortly on the PARIS21 websiteatwww.paris21.org.

Improved co-ordination, motivation and resources for statistical capacity building.

Demand for improved information systems, and readiness to support them, has increased significantly in multilateral institutions and in many governments.

To enable the Secretariat to perform its support role effectively (e.g. facilitation of national, regional and global activities and facilitation of the task team activities) The UK was a major contributor to the costs of the Secretariat, whose performance has been rated highly.

Dissemination of best practice and maintenance of web-site—There has been some improved information exchange between donors at country level, and between UN agencies. PARIS21 is judged to have helped spread awareness among low-income countries' governments.

Facilitation of development of governance indicators and indicators of means of implementation—Progress was always known to be difficult to achieve in this area. However, a task team has now been established to manage a large project to take this work forward.

Based on the evidence from the recent evaluation DFID will consider whether we should continue to support PARIS21 and if so, how best to do so.