World Food Programme

I can honestly say that there was no spite, because I had a private conversation with Josette Sheeran afterwards. She would want me to make it clear that she had a good personal relationship with the Secretary of State and that there was no quarrel. The money that she was getting was fine and delivered its intended purposes. There was no complaint about the relationship, but she felt that our Government was resisting its development. She would like to tease out the Secretary of State's position, and I am sympathetic to that. Rather than being in any way challenging and critical—I do not want to be—I am saying that I completely understand the Government's position and why they are taking it. Perhaps until last year I would have said, "That's it. The Government simply say, 'We view the WFP as the lead humanitarian food relief agency. It is excellent. Whenever that is needed we will fund it generously.'" Neither I nor the WFP quarrel with that. However, if we are looking at whether we want to prevent famine—and we do— the Committee is suggesting that the WFP should have the capacity to make a contribution to that. We should at least reassess whether that would be a legitimate vehicle for British funding—that is all I am asking the Government to reconsider. I do not want there to be any suggestion of spite, conflict or difference of opinion. My impression is that there is high regard for the British Government in the WFP, and vice versa. In respect of the development of the relationship, there is not tension but simply difference. Other countries are responding in ways that the WFP finds helpful. Personally, and from the Committee's point of view, it would be good if the British Government considered that view. I do not want to detain hon. Members unduly. I hope that I have given some of the flavour of the report, the context in which we produced it and the changing circumstances over the last 12 months. We must not allow food security to lose its high priority on the agenda, and I shall refer to some points that have been made recently. An article in the Financial Times on 7 April 2009 reported that 1 billion people were chronically hungry and referred to the increased requirement of $6 billion instead of $5 billion. Peter Brabeck, chairman of Nestlé, said:""Don't forget that the food prices are today about 60 per cent. higher than they were only 18 months ago. And this means that those people who spend 60, 70 per cent. of their disposable income on food have been hurt very, very strongly"." Josette Sheeran has said that the food crisis is not over. The WFP worries that because we do no have food riots and there is no focus on high spikes, attention may be moving away. I commend the Department for International Development for not chasing headlines or fashion. It tries genuinely to provide one of the most important and sustained mechanisms for delivering poverty reduction. I respect the ministerial response that the Government were not ready to change policy because they believed that they had got it right. I am asking them only to think about this, which is reasonable. The Committee takes the view that the WFP is one of the best UN organisations. It operates in extraordinarily difficult conditions and does a fantastic job, bearing in mind that delivering food is not just about getting it there. The WFP must often build roads and secure access in dangerous places, and must do so often under fire with resulting casualties. That has positive consequences. Roads were opened up in southern Sudan for the delivery of food, and they became trading links and networks for economic development that was unrelated to the WFP, but facilitated only because the WFP built the road. The WFP is one of the best organisations, but our conclusion is that it has the capacity to do a lot more to prevent famine. National and international communities must give serious thought not just to how we respond to emergencies—the Government do so admirably—but to how we can prevent those emergencies, and the role that the WFP could take in that. That is the key issue on which the Committee would like the Government to focus.