Speeches by Dodds.

“You could look at DevTracker. That has become my best friend and I know the Committee is very interested in it. That is a great resource. I want it to become even greater, actually, so that it is much easier to find information about programming. Also, they will be able to look to that summit coming up and what we are …”

“Those cuts were damaging particularly, of course, because they were unplanned. This was a chaotic period. The previous International Development Minister is on the record as saying, for example, that this led to food being taken off the plates of children in Yemen. Those were his exact words. This had a direct impact o…”

“That will be important and of course there is going to be an external report on our commitments made at the nutrition for growth summit as well. My view is that the more accountability we have around this the better, so that we can seek to ensure that UK interventions on this are delivering and we are seeing that integ…”

“There are impact assessments for new free trade agreements. They are publicly available. The assessment that has been made of them by the independent Regulatory Policy Committee is that they are rated as green, so they are deemed fit for purpose. That included an assessment of their overall global impact. We are workin…”

“We think we need to shift our approach in response to our partners in the global south and their concerns around nutrition and food security. First of all, we think we have to push hard for reform and shifting the international systems on this so we have more effective investment where it is actually needed. We talked …”

“We are assessing this currently. I am confident that our programmes are resilient programmes. Whenever there is any change in development policy by a range of countries—and we have seen many of them changing their approach over recent years—there will be an impact from that. Certainly from the UK's point of view, we ar…”

“Yes, absolutely. I believe that that is in common with every other country. We are calibrating with our friends on that.”

“We are assessing all of this currently. These decisions are decisions that have been taken by President Trump and his Administration. He was elected by the US population, as we know, with millions of votes. It is ultimately a US policy decision.”

“I do not think that the Committee will be surprised to hear me say that there was quite a large amount of trailing of different elements of President Trump’s agenda before the election. The Department was well aware of this, as with every other upcoming election, and we have a number of them in fact coming up that may …”

“That work has been really important. I would also mention the Pirbright lab. I believe that there is an Edinburgh-based initiative called GALVmed as well that has worked on livestock vaccines. This is clearly absolutely fundamental work that also contributes to other Government goals. I was just thinking while you were…”

“Yesterday I set out a number of measures that we are seeking to take in relation to debt. I called on particularly the private sector to work with the UK on the take-up of majority voting provisions and other changes that we want to see. We want other countries to be much more transparent in their lending as well, as t…”

“Thanks so much for raising this. It is really worrying to see quite how far off we are from SDG2. Three-quarters of a billion people are going hungry. That is one in five people living in Africa at the moment. We are clearly far off. We have to work with other countries on this. Of course, we have some key moments comi…”

“No, it is not part of the ISF.”

“That is a really important point. There are philanthropic organisations that have different forms of expertise on this agenda. I had a really useful discussion with Bill Gates around this. Clearly, he and his foundation have been doing quite a lot of work around climate resilience, animal husbandry, vaccination and so …”

“As the Committee would expect, we are currently working to assess the implications of the US funding pause across development sectors. There is still a lot that is unclear, as you will have noted, I am sure, as well, but we are actively gathering information. We are also carefully calibrating our engagement with the US…”

“Generally there is sharing of knowledge, but there is always more that can be done. When I was in Indonesia, I visited a forestry management programme that involved elements that were based in-country and from centrally managed programmes too. I felt that it was a really good example of bringing together the broader ex…”

“Yes, of course. We are really determined that there must be successful replenishments, whether we are talking about Gavi or indeed the Global Fund. There are a number of replenishments that are coming up. When we are talking about multi-year commitments, of course we have to consider the context with the spending revie…”

“I do not know whether previous government commitments around recruitment in this area have been fulfilled. I know that, more broadly around capability and capacity, when I came into role as Minister I worked with officials to ensure that we had a programme to increase our capability and capacity. That has included a re…”

“With respect, I do not think that there is an assumption necessarily, so maybe I misunderstood the question. In every Department, there is an assumption that there needs to be a really thorough review of budgets and indeed zero-based budgeting where possible, so that there can be that really thorough analysis about whe…”

“That is a really good point. There is activity from the UK Government that is pushing in a positive direction on this. Particularly, I noticed this when I was in Malawi. Some of the discussions there are really interesting, particularly comparing that with the readout from your meetings as a Committee with smallholder …”