Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): As always, it is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) who, over the years, has contributed insightfully to debates about international development.

My age is such that when I went to school, quite a lot of the atlas was still coloured pink. The Sudan was interesting because it was hatched pink and green to reflect the condominium of Egypt and the United Kingdom over it in the years immediately prior to its independence. The de jure Sudan was left as an uncomfortable nation, with a north that was basically Arab and Muslim, and a south that was essentially African and Christian. The two have effectively been in conflict pretty much ever since.

Tony Baldry is a regular supporter of the Loomba Foundation, a charity which was set up to care for widows around the world.

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): I commend the fact that the UK Government are in the vanguard of funding the relief effort for Liberia and Ivory Coast, but is it not important that we encourage the African Union not just to engage to try to find a peaceful solution to disputes such as the one in Côte d’Ivoire, but to develop the logistical capacity to do more in these humanitarian situations in the future? It is fine for the G7 countries to fund the effort, but there needs to be more capacity within Africa to sort out the challenges that Africa faces.

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): The UK will soon be spending 0.7% of GDP on international development. Following the recent review all of DFID’s money is committed, so if people want more money spent somewhere in the international development framework, it behoves them to explain where they want that money taken from in the DFID budget. We cannot have continuous requests for more and more spending unless people are prepared to acknowledge where they want spending reduced.

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): The United Nations special war tribunal in Sierra Leone has established that the use of rape as a weapon of war is a war crime, as is the enlisting of child soldiers. I can tell the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart)-who made a powerful speech-that Select Committees do discuss these issues, and that over the years the International Development Committee, among others, has pressed for a recognition of the emerging norm of responsibility to protect and to ensure that the international community bears down on those who commit war crimes and crimes against humanity. The challenge for Governments and, indeed, for the House of Commons is often how and when to intervene effectively, and I suspect that that challenge will detain the House over the coming weeks in the context of Libya. Tragically, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East (Margaret Curran) pointed out, one of the longest-living UN agencies is the agency for displaced Palestinians. We need to have regard to all these issues.

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): Will my right hon. Friend make two things clear to the NGOs? The first is that they have a shared responsibility with us to make it clear that international development is a moral obligation as well as being in our national interest? The second is that, given that international development aid is now at 0.6% of GDP and will soon be at 0.7%, if people want more aid spent on a specific topic or area, it behoves them to explain which part of my right hon. Friend’s programme they want money to be taken away from, because the Department has now reached the maximum amount of funds that it is going to have during the course of this Parliament.

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): What plans he has to provide support for the new UN Women agency; and if he will make a statement.

More than 11,000 individual written pledges to help halve extreme poverty are being handed to MPs in Parliament.

Tony Baldry: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development how much his Department has allocated in development assistance to southern Sudan in the last year for which figures are available. [32726]

On Wednesday RESULTS joined the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Global Education for All and on Nigeria to bring together education experts from various organisations across the globe to discuss ‘Engaging the Community in Delivering Education for All: The Case of Nigeria’. Nigeria is the country with the largest number of out of school children in the world – over 8 million at the last count – and faces significant problems in the education sector. The meeting intended to investigate how the UK is supporting education in Nigeria at present, particularly through ensuring that local communities are engaged with schools and how this could be extended and/or improved in the future.