Contributions
1,361 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARD NATO Accession: Sweden and FinlandWe welcome the agreements made at the Madrid summit last week. These brought together all members, by consensus, to agree to Norway and Sweden joining. That involves discussions…06 Jul 2022HANSARD NATO Accession: Sweden and FinlandI welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for what has been agreed at the Madrid summit. It was a truly historic summit. It not only made huge progress in bringing Finland and Sweden…06 Jul 2022HANSARD NATO Accession: Sweden and FinlandI completely agree with the hon. Member that Finland and Sweden joining NATO makes the world a safer place for the people of the United Kingdom, for all our NATO allies and for…06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentI am grateful to the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), the Chair of the International Development Committee, for securing this debate. The Minister for Asia and the…06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentI will try to address some of the comments. I will come to global health budgets, which my right hon. Friend raised. The global pandemic was in nobody’s manifesto. We faced the…06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentI am so glad that the right hon. Member has raised this point because the UK remains one of the top six largest shareholders of the World Bank. We are one of only six countries in…06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentI will make some more progress, because I want to answer many other questions. Major global challenges are threatening the progress made over previous years. We had seen progress,…06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentLet me come to the special drawing rights; I was about to go through more of the specific questions that Members asked. We have committed to channelling up to 4 billion of our…06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentYes, the Chair of the International Development Committee is right. There are countries where part of our support is access to safe abortions. That is a vital part of the UK’s…06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentWhat I can tell my right hon. Friend is that access to vaccines in Africa is not the issue at the moment. There are plenty of vaccines around. I have been working closely with…06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentLet me try to address hon. Members’ questions first, because I have only another few minutes and Members have been sitting here throughout the debate. I thank my hon. Friend the…06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentNo, because I want to get on to some of the right hon. Gentleman’s other points. On ICAI, the budget is not actually reduced; it was to be a flat budget. In line with the…06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentOn China—06 Jul 2022HANSARDStrategy for International DevelopmentWhy do we send programme aid to China at all? We have reduced it by 95% and we do not send any direct aid, but sometimes there are projects that are important for human rights.…06 Jul 2022HANSARD NATO Accession: Sweden and FinlandWith permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on our support for Sweden and Finland’s accession to NATO. I am making this statement on behalf of my right hon.…06 Jul 2022HANSARD NATO Accession: Sweden and FinlandI thank the shadow Foreign Secretary for his words. We stand together united across this House in providing support to Ukraine and in standing against Russia’s illegal aggression.…06 Jul 2022HANSARD NATO Accession: Sweden and FinlandMadam Deputy Speaker, could I ask you a favour? One of the Finnish Ministers is actually in this place and is trying to get access to one of the Galleries, but because we have…06 Jul 2022HANSARD NATO Accession: Sweden and FinlandOh, she is there. I therefore welcome Minister Johanna Sumuvuori, who is here for the international ministerial conference on freedom of religion or belief. I say to her: we…06 Jul 2022HANSARD NATO Accession: Sweden and FinlandWhile I support the hon. Gentleman’s sharing our joint approach to accession by Sweden and Finland and his approval of the fast-track process we are laying in exceptional…06 Jul 2022HANSARD NATO Accession: Sweden and FinlandI know my right hon. Friend makes an important contribution in the discussions he often has with NATO colleagues. He rightly points to one of the many reasons why it is so…06 Jul 2022