Part of Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – in the House of Commons at on 13 June 2023.
Andrew Mitchell
Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development and Africa), Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office) (Minister for Development)
As the hon. Gentleman knows, we are looking at that specific issue. We think there is a case for Majority voting when it comes to debt settlements, and we are exploring all that. He is right to emphasise that 15% of low-income countries are already in distress and 45% are at high risk of entering debt distress. Next week, at the Macron summit in Paris, Britain will be driving forward the climate-resilient debt clauses, which our export credit agency, UK Export Finance, was the first to start to put into grants. That will make an enormous difference, and we are pressing for all creditors to offer such clauses in their loans.
The term "majority" is used in two ways in Parliament. Firstly a Government cannot operate effectively unless it can command a majority in the House of Commons - a majority means winning more than 50% of the votes in a division. Should a Government fail to hold the confidence of the House, it has to hold a General Election. Secondly the term can also be used in an election, where it refers to the margin which the candidate with the most votes has over the candidate coming second. To win a seat a candidate need only have a majority of 1.
