The number varies from time to time and I will see whether I can come back to the hon. Gentleman with a figure. DFID's total expenditure on consultants as a proportion of our bilateral budget has fallen from 10 per cent., as I recollect it, in 1997–98 to about 5 per cent. now, so it is a falling share compared with the position that we inherited in 1997. We use consultants for a range of activities, partly to help deliver programmes and partly to give us advice.

In respect of Malawi, I have to say that some of the criticism was ill founded, because the training programmes that the National Democratic Institute was engaged in were supporting civil society and parliamentarians in Malawi to think about how they could do their jobs more effectively. That included hiring rooms for training courses and feeding people who were attending them—a normal day-to-day activity that Members of the House and of all organisations engage in. The feedback from participants in those programmes was that that support and training was very helpful in assisting them to do their job as elected representatives.