Rory Stewart: In this whole debate, I believe there have essentially been two principles. One of them is the principle of how to honour the result of that referendum, and the second is the principle of how to take a deal safely and responsibly through Parliament. My big beg to the House—here I am speaking to colleagues who voted for Brexit—is let us, please, in these very final stages, do it properly....
Rory Stewart: What about London?
Rory Stewart: Like my right hon. Friend, I support a Brexit deal; indeed, I voted for it considerably more frequently than him. If this great party stands for anything, it stands for respect for parliamentary sovereignty and the rule of law. I respectfully say that he is tiptoeing on to a dangerous path. He is pitting Brexit against remain, young against old, Scotland against England, and people against...
Rory Stewart: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, rather than being some new-fangled innovative decision, this was a profoundly conservative decision by the Supreme Court, asserting the ancient sovereignty of Parliament, and that fundamentally the principle at stake here is that, of course, neither that Court nor any other court should determine whether Brexit takes place—that decision has...
Rory Stewart: Every child has a right to a good quality education. DFID’s education policy Get Children Learning makes clear that the state is the guarantor of quality basic education for all, but need not be the sole financer or provider of education services. This is the position we will continue to a) promote to partner countries and b) reinforce publicly. We welcome the focus in the UN Special...
Rory Stewart: We welcome the focus in the UN Special Rapporteur’s Report on the importance of the regulation in education systems, which is consistent with DFID’s position set out in the 2018 education policy Get Children Learning. We await with interest the publication of the study referred to in the UN Special Rapporteur’s Report.
Rory Stewart: We monitor and track all programmes and programme partners, and remain committed to the transparent publication of aid spending and delivery, through such information platforms as DevTracker. This includes education spending.
Rory Stewart: The Global Polio Eradication Initiative has recently launched their new strategy for 2019 – 2023. We are currently considering the strategy and a future UK offer of continued support, as are all global donors.
Rory Stewart: It is nearly a year since the declaration of the tenth Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This is the second largest Ebola outbreak and the first in a conflict zone. The risks remain very high. And we need – as an international community – to keep a relentless focus on these issues: addressing failings in public health systems, controlling cross-border transmission,...
Rory Stewart: The distinction traditionally made between development, environment and climate is a false distinction. Unless we tackle climate change, there will be 100 million more people living in poverty in the next 15 years. I returned this morning from New York, where I have been discussing with the Secretary-General of the United Nations our commitment to greening our development spending to ensure...
Rory Stewart: It is clearly true that many of the people who are suffering most are from some of the poorest countries in the world that emit very little carbon, which is why a great deal of our emphasis is on the question of resilience. I have just returned from Kenya, for example, where we are working with pastoralists whose grassland is being eliminated and with people in Lamu who are losing mangrove...
Rory Stewart: The question of water security is absolutely central. It poses the danger of conflict, for example in the Indus valley and along the headwaters of the rivers that flow into Egypt on the Nile. It is also an area where technology can help, however. We have become much better at preventing water waste. In many developing countries, 50% of the water is wasted; technology is part of the answer to...
Rory Stewart: The Department for International Development has partnered the Government of Bangladesh for many years, particularly because of the very severe impacts of flooding. We should pay tribute to the improvements in Bangladesh. In floods in the 1970s, more than 100,000 people could be killed in a single event; a similar event today would kill only a few hundreds. That is a huge tribute to...
Rory Stewart: We will be doubling the overseas development fund, which will be spent particularly on climate resilience, and Britain will be co-hosting with Egypt the UN summit on climate resilience in September. That was the focus of my discussions with the UN Secretary-General yesterday, and indeed at the Abu Dhabi summit two weeks ago.
Rory Stewart: Blockchain technology has very interesting potential. I recently saw in World Food Programme distribution in camps in Jordan how blockchain is dropping the price by tens of millions of dollars a year. However, there are still some risks attached to such technology.
Rory Stewart: There are three things that we hope will embed the priority. First, this is a whole of Government approach. The Prime Minister announced at Osaka that we would be the first major international development agency to be fully Paris-compliant. Secondly, we have now announced from this Dispatch Box and inserted into our planning that we will double our spend on climate and the environment. The...
Rory Stewart: DFID is doing an increasing amount of work on that issue. For example, its agricultural extension work is helping farmers to work out how to produce crops without depleting the soil or using excessive water. Perhaps the biggest challenge in agriculture is the relationship between pastoralists, particularly people herding cattle and oxen, and sedentary communities right the way across Africa,...
Rory Stewart: The shadow Secretary of State is absolutely right to say that there have been significant issues around some of the climate funds. We feel that a lot of progress is being made, and the most important thing is to find real investable projects on the ground. A lot of that relates to issues of governance.
Rory Stewart: No, we will not. The reason is that there are issues of capacity in both the World Bank and the UN. The key point here is not the ideological choice of the channel through which we pass the money but the capacity to manage these projects responsibly.
Rory Stewart: The central challenge in international development going forward will be the quality, expertise and number of our permanent staff on the ground. As international development becomes more complex, with conflict and climate, as we have to work more closely with other Departments and, above all, in a world in which developing countries are looking not for money, but for expertise, over the next...
