It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Amess, and to follow the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill and colleagues on this Committee.

One of the appointments of which I am proudest is to be an honorary member of the women’s committee to combat AIDS on Kilimanjaro, to which I was appointed many years ago, when I was living in Tanzania and my wife was running a public health programme for the best part of 11 years across many rural areas. It was there that I saw at first hand the huge importance of involving everybody in development, but how, in fact, women took the majority of leading roles, particularly in health and education, but often in business as well.

Before I make two points and put a couple of questions to the Secretary of State, I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Stone for the tremendous work that he has done on this subject over many years. As the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill said, this is not something my hon. Friend has just picked up; it has been a theme of his parliamentary career since he was elected in, I believe, 1984.

Our aid and development programme consists of bilateral and multilateral aid. Clearly we have a great deal of influence—in fact, complete influence—over our bilateral aid programmes, and we can make sure that the Bill applies to them. I question how we can ensure that it also applies to the contributions we make to multilateral aid programmes, where we are not often or necessarily in the driving seat because we are giving money to other organisations. They may be very good organisations, such as the GAVI Alliance, the Global Fund or United Nations organisations, and the multilateral aid review has helped tremendously in identifying those, but there may be programmes within that which do not conform to the requirements of the Bill. I wonder what the Secretary of State’s views are on that.

My second point is on the welcome renewal of emphasis on the role of the private sector in development, which I entirely support. Again, it is extremely important that we make sure that all our support for private sector development that tackles poverty is focused on the aims of the International Development Act 2002, whose sole focus is to reduce poverty. If we amend the Bill as we are rightly seeking to do, we must ensure that when we provide support to the private sector to fulfil that role, it also fulfils the requirements of these amendments in fact and not in a rather loose way. I would very much like to hear what the Secretary of State has to say about that.

Those are my only two points. Once again, I reiterate my congratulations and my welcome for the work done on this by all sides, and particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for Stone.