Tony Baldry (Banbury): I welcome this opportunity to debate the Select Committee on International Development report on global climate change and sustainable development. A significant number of Committee members are present today, including the hon. Members for Calder Valley (Chris McCafferty), for Putney (Mr. Colman), for City of York (Hugh Bayley) and for Clydebank and Milngavie (Tony Worthington). I am sure that all hon. Members, in their own way, will base their contributions on the impressions that they drew from a fairly extensive inquiry that lasted a number of months. Some hon. Members may not have had the opportunity to read the evidence, but I hope that the report will stand the test of time as being worthwhile.

The United Nations world summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg two months ago was the first summit of its kind for 10 years. A number of Committee members were fortunate enough to be able to attend. Frustratingly and somewhat disappointingly, and despite the attendance at the summit of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Secretary of State for International Development, no ministerial statement was made on the subject when the House returned shortly afterwards, which would have put what happened there into perspective. Today's debate is the first opportunity that we have had to consider what happened at Johannesburg.

Perspective and scale are imperative when considering climate change. One of the things that struck me while listening to the evidence of witnesses during the Select Committee inquiry was that such a dramatic scale of change should have taken place in so a short time. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its third assessment report published in 2001, observed that the concentrations of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere had risen, that carbon dioxide was at its highest concentration for the past 42,000 years, and that the rate at which its concentration was increasing was unprecedented in the past 20,000 years.

Those are dramatic figures. A number of witnesses, including the Hadley centre for climate change, observed that during the next 100 years temperatures around the world are likely to be higher than in millions of years past. We are in a period of considerable and dramatic change. I wonder whether the Department for International Development is sufficiently forward thinking on the matter.

I note that in paragraph 12.2 of their response, on the Select Committee's encouragement of enhanced funding of the global environment facility, the Government state:

"We are not in favour of any prior allocation of funds within the GEF overall budget".

That is unfortunate, given that the global environment facility is one of the central mechanisms to ensure that environmental objectives are reflected within development projects - and, moreover, to identify climate risks such as famine sooner rather than later.

DFID does not seem to mainstream our concerns on climate change through its development policies. The Secretary of State's evidence to the Committee was, as always, robust and welcome, but it does not seem that DFID has a coherent policy on climate change. I believe that that is inadequate. The result is that policies in developing countries, including poverty reduction strategy papers and national strategies for sustainable development, often contain little to address climate risk. Unless DFID helps poorer countries to develop policies to deal with that risk, climate change will continue to undermine development.

The Select Committee heard the Secretary of State talk at length, although understandably, about "northern greens" during her evidence sessions, but I believe that that sometimes misses the point. Conclusions 5 and 6 of the report help us to put the world summit on sustainable development into some perspective. Conclusion 5 states:

"Developing countries have a different view of climate change to developed countries. They see it not as a problem of pollution or of how to sustain economic growth but as a problem of human welfare that threatens survival itself".

That might be a different perception, but it should make DFID put the wider implications of climate change into perspective.

The World Bank said that the WSSD should have focused on Africa, and I agree. Asia and south America contain developing countries, but most of Africa contains only poor countries. The fact is that the effects of climate change will not be spread evenly across the globe but will be felt disproportionately by the poor. Poor people are likely to be the most vulnerable because they are unable to withstand even the slightest shock to their livelihood.

Since 1997, DFID has pursued a sustainable livelihoods approach to development. It was encapsulated in the 1997 White Paper and has been the backbone of much of DFID's policy. The most widely accepted definition of sustainable livelihoods was proposed by an academic, Carney, in 1995:

"A livelihood comprises the capabilities, assets (including both material and social resources) and activities required for a means of living. A livelihood is sustainable when it can cope with and recover from stresses and shocks and maintain or enhance its capabilities and assets both now and in the future, while not undermining the natural resource base."

One point that I hope to make this afternoon is that millions of families in Africa are so beset by food shortages, drought and HIV/AIDS that they can no longer cope with or easily recover from stresses and shocks. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me for focusing a little on the plight of two regions of Africa. I and many other members of the Select Committee have just returned from visits to Malawi and/or the horn of Africa, and those examples may best illustrate the approach that DFID should adopt to climate change.

It is estimated that as many as 14 million people in southern Africa and another 14 million in Ethiopia and the horn of Africa are at risk of starvation. That means that nearly 30 million people are suffering almost silent starvation, because the media are only intermittently interested. Understandably, overseas coverage in the broadsheets these days deals almost exclusively with Iraq. Some people suggest that we are not dealing with the Ethiopia of 1985. I have been to Ethiopia, and that may not yet be the case. Film crews looking for tents full of skeletal children will be disappointed, but this is no less a holocaust of hunger. In that respect, the media cannot be guaranteed to act as an early warning system. An article from the current edition of the Institute of Development Studies' journal asserts:

"The case of Malawi in 2002 reveals the limitations of this argument. The media is a late indicator of distress, not an early warning. Journalists and television crews arrived in Malawi like spectators at a car crash: to observe the tragedy, not to prevent it."

Africans starve, journalists come, food aid dribbles forth, the journalists go and the Africans still starve.

If the media do not fully recognise the scale of Africa's plight, do Governments? I am sure that they do, but I want the House to consider two statements from the past fortnight on the prospects of African famine. Statement No. 1 reads:

"From my latest assessments in the field for southern Africa, certainly the peak period for assistance will begin in December and it is about 14.4 million people. In Ethiopia they have assessments in the field now and the 14 million, I think, was the worst case looking at all factors".

Statement No. 2 reads:

"A total of 427,000 tonnes of food aid was requested to help meet the needs of some 5.9 million people who were at risk. That followed the generally good harvests of 2001." - [Official Report, 3 December 2002; Vol. 395, c. 885.]

I believe that hon. Members would agree that those two statements are somewhat at loggerheads. The first statement was made by Judith Lewis, the World Food Programme regional director in southern Africa, in evidence to the Select Committee two weeks ago. The second statement was made by the Minister in an Adjournment debate in the House the day before yesterday. There is a huge difference between 14 million and 6 million. The response of DFID to the African crisis appears to be based not on the requests of UN agencies in the field, but on its judgment of what scale the crisis should be. Before the Minister rises to say that the World Food Programme always overestimates, there is no cogent argument to suggest that the WFP has miscalculated need by a factor of three.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Development (Ms Sally Keeble): I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman would read the rest of my quote, in which I think I gave best-case and worst-case scenarios. I think that he will find that my worst-case scenario agreed pretty much with that of the WFP. Otherwise, I will see whether the Department can check the figures.

Tony Baldry: I was in the Chamber and took careful note of what the Minister said because I was anxious not to misrepresent her. If she cares to re-read what she said in Hansard, I think that she will find that she referred to the figure of 5.9 million and said that the Government were waiting for further reports from the field about what is happening. Either DFID agrees with the World Food Programme or it does not, and I shall refer later to other examples of how it seems to me that the Secretary of State and the WFP are not speaking in a similar way.

I suggest that Ministers read an analysis of the 1985 Ethiopian famine recently published by IDS, which observes how

"the early warning system adequately picked up the problem, but failed to mobilise the kind of response needed to avert a disaster, in short, because donor agencies were sceptical about the needs figures."

Why are Ministers now being sceptical? On whom does DFID rely in order to feel confident that fewer than 6 million people are threatened by famine? Why is DFID failing to recognise in its country assistance plan for Ethiopia the WFP's estimates for the African crisis?

My concern is that I am not confident that DFID fully grasps the colossal scale of the famine facing much of Africa. Judith Lewis made it clear that her calculations account for all factors. DFID does not. However, it is not only Judith Lewis from whom the Select Committee has heard recently. James Morris, the executive director of the United Nations World Food Programme, recently met members of the Select Committee. I kept a careful note of what he said. He observed that there is

"a disaster unfolding, with 14 million people in the Horn of Africa, and 14 million in Southern Africa needing food aid. This could not be sustained by the World Food Programme."

In a press release issued on the same day, 28 October - just a few weeks ago - James Morris said:

"These figures are large and dramatic and the international community should take notice...unless we come to grips with this problem very soon, we face the real possibility of facing a devastating wave of human suffering and death early next year."

He went on to comment that

"while modern society is not prepared to tolerate the face of mass hunger, agencies like the World Food Programme - as well as hundreds of highly effective NGOs - are finding it increasingly difficult to find the resources to respond adequately to the growing number of emergencies.

"Dependent on voluntary contributions WFP and NGOs are caught between the rising needs of millions of hungry people and government budgets that are already stretched and contending with a global economic slowdown."

James Morris concluded, somewhat alarmingly:

"The sad truth is that as things stand the humanitarian system faces the prospect of being completely overwhelmed. It is clear that business as usual is insufficient to address the rising humanitarian crisis we confront."

Nothing that I have heard from the Government or that has been reflected in the media seems to tackle adequately the concern of UN agencies such as the World Food Programme, which is that

"the humanitarian system faces the prospect of being completely overwhelmed."

Is DFID's estimate of those at risk of starvation lower because it believes that many people are dying of HIV/AIDS rather than food shortages? The two are interlocked: hunger helps to beget HIV/AIDS, and HIV/AIDS helps to beget hunger. The WFP believes that the first fight against HIV/AIDS is about food and, likewise, it wants to distribute food to HIV sufferers foremost.

Mrs. Caroline Spelman (Meriden): Did my hon. Friend hear the Secretary of State's interview on the "Today" programme? She compared the estimates of those at risk of famine in southern Africa and Ethiopia, and suggested that the threat was worse in southern Africa because of the enfeeblement of the population by HIV and AIDS. I have carefully looked at the Hansard report of the debate on Ethiopia a couple of days ago, and cannot find maximum and minimum figures. However, the Minister stated:

"We expect to have the first estimates from surveys of the present situation within the next few days". - [Official Report, 3 December 2002; Vol. 395, c. 885.]

It would seem that the assessment in the media was given before the correct information was available to the Department.

Tony Baldry: The World Food Programme, which is there on the ground, seems to be clear about the scale of the need. Like my hon. Friend, I was surprised by the Secretary of State's interview on "Today". As members of the Select Committee know, I am generally not slow to compliment the Secretary of State and DFID on their achievements. I was surprised when she was reported as saying that talk of the threat of famine in Ethiopia was irresponsible.

When the Minister replies to the debate, perhaps she will tell us which of the comments made by the WFP's executive director is irresponsible. Is it his suggestion that there is

"a disaster unfolding, with 14 million people in the Horn of Africa, and 14 million in Southern Africa needing food aid. This could not be sustained by the World Food Programme"?

Is it the statement:

"These figures are large and dramatic and the international community should take notice...unless we come to grips with this problem very soon, we face the real possibility of facing a devastating wave of human suffering and death early next year"?

Is it the suggestion that the World Food Programme is

"finding it increasingly difficult to find the resources to respond adequately to the growing number of emergencies...The sad truth is that as things stand the humanitarian system faces the prospect of being completely overwhelmed"?

Do the Government agree with that assessment by James Morris, or do they think that the WFP has in some way got things wrong? I do not think that it is irresponsible for the Ethiopian Prime Minister to seek more food aid while the UN's World Food Programme estimates that 14 million of his country's people will soon be under threat of starvation.

Thus far, the WFP's emergency appeals for both regions have not received the response from donors for which one would hope. In southern Africa, that has meant that only about 13 per cent. of food aid has been delivered to those who need it.

Dr. Jenny Tonge (Richmond Park): At last, the hon. Gentleman is coming to the nub of the problem. There is not much difference between the Government's position and that of the World Food Programme. The WFP has put out an appeal, but unfortunately only 56 per cent. of the amount of donations needed has been received. That is not the problem in any case. The real question is why the WFP has not had the response that it had for previous impending famines. The reason should be in this debate. We are talking about climate change and decreases in world food supplies. Will the hon. Gentleman address those subjects a little?

Tony Baldry: I am sorry if the hon. Lady has missed the first of the serious points that I am making: that we all need to understand the scale of what is happening in Africa. It is unprecedented, in relation to climatic as well as other factors - it is, for example, the first time ever that both rains have failed in Ethopia. However, James Morris was telling the Select Committee that we are nearing the stage at which so many people in Africa need food aid that, even if we could get the food into the pipeline, the pipeline could not cope.

I shall in a moment say something about how increasing endemic poverty increases the difficulty.

Mr. Tony Colman (Putney): It may be important for those of us who also attended the relevant meeting to recognise that the World Food Programme representatives talked of last year's very good harvest in Ethiopia and explained the need for long-term reform. They said that the World Food Programme was placing strong emphasis on dealing with long-term agricultural needs. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would reflect on his recollection of that meeting, and agree that James Morris and his cohorts made those suggestions.

Tony Baldry: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I wanted to make it clear that a long-term food security programme is among the things that are needed. One of my concerns is that, in Ethiopia, in years when there has been no drought, the number of food-insecure people has been growing. People who have exhausted their coping mechanisms in difficult years cannot recover, even in years of good harvest. However, the quotations that I have given the Committee are fair and accurate reflections of what was said at the meeting.

In Ethiopia the Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission estimates that something like 250,000 tonnes of grain will be needed between now and the end of the year. That takes no account of the exacerbation of the situation that both the relevant regions will face next year because of what is happening this year. The Minister said in the Adjournment debate:

"Those positive developments include the effectiveness of early warning systems, and the willingness of the Government and the international community to work together." - [Official Report, 3 December 2001; Vol. 395, c. 885.]

She listed the comparatively high level of food aid so far donated by the United Kingdom. I do not think that anyone would dispute that the UK has responded or that the Department for International Development was among the first to respond. However, whatever the early warning systems are telling the UK Government, an average of one in three people are still hungry because they are not getting enough food aid.

I do not dispute that DFID is working multilaterally. I should not expect anything less from it. However, that does not alter the fact that the UK is responding to a level of crisis completely different, in many people's view, from the one that the World Food Programme is witnessing. My concern is that there is too little recognition of the scale of the crisis. Until it is recognised, Africa's suffering cannot be stemmed. I echo what has been said by the hon. Members for Richmond Park (Dr. Tonge) and for Putney (Mr. Colman) about the need for a long-term solution as well as a short-term one.

That brings me to the second recommendation in the Select Committee report, at paragraph 6 in the list of conclusions and recommendations, which is, I believe, crucial in the context of famine prevention and climate change. It states:

"Given their relative contribution, the burden of finding a solution to the problems posed by climate change should fall mainly on developed countries".

One of the problems posed by climate change is food shortage. The one is exacerbated by the other. They are symbiotic. If food aid is not donated now, there will come a point at which the food pipeline will be overwhelmed. There is not sufficient physical capacity. I do not think that the problem of physical capacity is being fully recognised by DFID. I suspect that what we are now witnessing in Ethiopia and southern Africa is the longer-term impact of a food pipeline unable to cope with the volumes of food aid now needed. Africa is stuck in a cycle of grinding poverty and vulnerability. When I visited Ethiopia and Malawi I saw that in many parts of those countries people are so incredibly poor that the merest breeze of adverse conditions blows them over. No capacity means no coping mechanism.

Every year, almost irrespective of whether there is a drought, more and more Ethiopians appear to be becoming food-dependent. That is a reflection of the deepening poverty and destitution of those living in rural areas. Unless the trend is reversed it will not be many years before we see something like 20 million people being food-dependent, which would clearly be impossible to cope with by way of food aid. A long-term food security strategy is needed. I quote briefly from the country assistance plan drawn up by DFID for long-term assistance to Ethiopia, which was published at the beginning of last month:

"Ethiopia is one of the poorest countries in the world, ill-equipped to cope with the current droughts to which it is prone...Ethiopia like other countries in the Horn of Africa is subject to highly variable and erratic climatic conditions. Drought is a recurrent problem. Most parts of the country 'normally' have at least two rainy seasons in a year but one or often both of these frequently fail. When this happens, harvests are poor and livestock may die. During prolonged droughts many households exhaust their own food supplies and have to sell what assets they have to buy more. When their assets run out, they become dependent on Food Aid and if this does not reach them, death from starvation results. Unless action is taken to control the spread of HIV/AIDS, then the effect of drought on populations affected by the pandemic can be devastating. The combination of HIV/AIDS and frequent drought is therefore a significant risk to poverty reduction."

Food insecurity is identified as a major contributor to poverty and poverty is a major contributor to food insecurity. The report continues:

"Extreme poverty has led to land degradation, associated problems of deforestation, over-grazing, loss of soil fertility and disruption of the water cycle."

Perhaps one of the most disturbing features of erratic weather and recurring droughts is that when people sell their assets during a drought, they are rarely able to rebuild their families' coping mechanisms. Perhaps one of the greatest concerns about countries such as Ethiopia is that, irrespective of whether there is a drought, the number of food-insecure people grows year by year. To return to the point made by the hon. Member for Putney, when I was in Addis Ababa, I went to see the European Union's team. They gave me a paper written by the food security adviser to the European Commission's office in Addis Ababa, which makes the point that many

"households are slowly falling into destitution over the years as a result of asset sales during ever more frequent crises. As a consequence, coping mechanisms have lost their effectiveness and even small downturns in production translate into major shocks for large numbers of rural livelihoods."

The paper goes on to make an extremely important point, which has been overlooked in recent reporting of what is happening in Ethiopia and elsewhere:

"Once more we are back into emergency appeals and the scramble for metric tonnes."

As has often been repeated, but perhaps not often enough, food aid fulfils only one of its three objectives, saving lives - the other two being saving assets and improving nutrition - and it does not do that well. Furthermore, emergency food aid is of limited use in addressing the structural problems at the basis of the current crisis in Ethiopia.

"Asset depletion over the long term continues unabated and under the current scheme of things, donors will be facing a caseload of 20 million food insecure people by 2015, a clearly unsustainable situation."

Those are not my figures. That is the European Union's food security adviser, on the ground in Addis, saying that unless something dramatic changes, all that will happen will be that year on year there will be more food-insecure people in Ethiopia and other parts of Africa, and predicting a potential 20 million people starving in Ethiopia alone. The EU paper rightly concludes:

"The main challenge is to reverse the 'one step forward, two steps back' tendency in the Food Security policy dialogue."

In order to do that, we have to be forceful in our message that crisis reinforces rather than supersedes the need for a long-term structural approach to food security. For that reason, we need to give longer-term support to agriculture extension programmes, supporting farmer training with a broader range of agricultural technologies made available to farmers, help with road building to enable them to get goods to markets more easily, improve market information and develop organisations that can advance credit to farmers. The eventual elimination of food insecurity and dependence on food aid must be an objective. However, that point should not disguise the poverty of so many countries in the world. To help them we need to tackle their poverty.

When I met Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, he made it clear that he considered it imperative that his Government should have a longer-term food security strategy. He recognises that Ethiopia cannot go on, year after year, depending on financial and food handouts from the donor community. I hope that DFID will pursue a longer-term approach. Everyone needs to be clear that climate change and poverty are interlinked. Everyone seems to recognise that they must be tackled together.

Meeting the UN's millennium development goals, therefore, requires policies that both address climate change and ensure sustainable development. However, Africa is not meeting the millennium development goals. DFID's last annual report contains, I think, 14 graphs on each continent's progress towards the millennium development goals. Not one shows Africa going forward. Most show it going backwards. Of the six countries in the southern African crisis, five are still at the very bottom of the human development index. They are the poorest of the poor: they have the highest malnutrition rates in the world, the highest chronic malnutrition in the world and the highest rates of wasting and stunting in the world. Why? Because of food insecurity.

Food insecurity is caused primarily by drought and HIV/AIDS. Those are the two ugly sisters blighting Africa. How can they be combated? Broadly speaking, aid is imperative to control HIV/AIDS, and trade is important to combat drought. To take Ethiopia on trade, for example, a longer-term food security strategy will mean getting more people in rural areas out of destitution. Famine and food shortages in Ethiopia are not simply weather-related but poverty-related issues. Some 85 per cent. of Ethiopians depend on agriculture for their income. They have been hardest hit by the fall in international coffee prices, which has not only affected the income of individual farmers and their families but substantially depleted the Ethiopian Government's finances.

Mr. Mike Hancock (in the Chair): Order. Mr. Baldry, a Member is trying to catch your eye, but you have not looked round the Room, and it might be that you go past the point at which he wants to intervene on you.

Tony Baldry: Mr. Hancock, it is usual for hon. Members to say, "Will the hon. Member give way?" I apologise - I was keen to say a lot, and I do not want to take up too much of the debate.

Mr. John Battle (Leeds, West): The hon. Gentleman brings a passion and concern to the debate, insisting that we do not become complacent about the scale of the problems in Africa. I think that we all appreciate that in his leadership in our Committee.

I know Malawi rather better than Ethiopia - I was there recently. I have checked the weather reports, and it is raining in Malawi now. That is important, because the rain season has started. The problem is not that there was not a rain season last year, but that it was intermittent and missed. Apart from AIDS, which is hollowing out the society and Malawi's capacity, the biggest problem when we were there was the lack of seed and fertiliser. To be fair to DFID, it was doing its best to distribute seed and fertiliser packs to jump-start in the medium term the possibilities of a harvest next year. However, when we asked the World Food Programme and the Food and Agriculture Organisation, they did not seem to realise that part of building for the future is ensuring that people have seeds to plant to catch the rain now; otherwise, we shall be discussing food shortages and food aid again this time next year.

Tony Baldry: I do not disagree with any of that. I think that there tends to be broad agreement on the Select Committee. I do not believe for a moment that the World Food Programme is the repository of all knowledge. In quoting the World Food Programme, I am concerned that there be a wider understanding of the scale of what is happening. Whether we visited Malawi or Ethiopia, we are all concerned about the failure of the FAO to provide help to encourage agriculture. There is a hole there. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that, notwithstanding the terrible problem of HIV/AIDS, unless people in Malawi can grow more food, the situation there will become increasingly difficult.

I shall briefly return to the problems of Ethiopia. Its main export is coffee, but coffee prices are at their lowest in 16 years. Ironically, Ethiopia's poverty may be of benefit to the country: because it is so poor, fertilisers or pesticides are not used, so Ethiopian coffee is genuinely organic. One way forward would be to brand its produce as Ethiopian coffee and promote it as a niche organic product.

I appreciate that DFID has been very much involved with a supermarkets initiative, but the labyrinthine procedures of the European Commission make it difficult to get coffee certified as organic. I hope that officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in Brussels can offer some help, particularly by ensuring that the Commission and others do not make wholly unrealistic demands of Ethiopian farmers to prove that they have never used pesticides or fertilisers; otherwise, Ethiopia will be dependent for any improvement in incomes on greater access to other markets, whether regional - such as Saudi Arabia and the middle east - or European.

The position is even more difficult in Malawi. The country may have a democratic Government, but I doubt whether it has the political leadership: even building a Bailey bridge on an ordinary road never seems to happen. We all recognise that countries such as Ethiopia and Malawi face HIV/AIDS as well as drought. Sadly, Africa is poor because it is sick and sick because it is poor.

The scale and perspective of famines have changed. Poverty and climate change have exacerbated them and sustainable development in Africa is now a far bigger challenge. Earlier this week, the Select Committee took evidence from its special adviser, Dr. Stephen Devereux. Members who heard his evidence - he is an expert on famine and has written extensively about it - will know that he views current developments as of a different order from those of the past, requiring new thinking. We have too often considered how past famines were dealt with by early warning systems and other mechanisms without realising that those mechanisms are inadequate to deal with Stephen Devereux's new "seismic factor".

Finally, because the scale of famine has changed, the amount of food aid that the World Food Programme needs to obtain gets greater each year. However, the World Food Programme never knows when it will receive the money from donors, so it has to go cap in hand to secure pledges, which have to be turned into commitments, which have to be turned into money, which sometimes arrives too late. We need a new system to avoid one humanitarian crisis giving way to another. UN donor countries and aid recipients now need a continually supported emergency budget to be distributed as humanitarian crises - sadly, likely to be frequent - happen. Many Governments of developed countries are sometimes reluctant to give aid to developing countries. As the hon. Member for Richmond Park said, all too often it takes all too long for requests to be honoured.

In the long term, more needs to be done to deal with the following famine equation: drought plus HIV/AIDS minus fair trade equals famine. Otherwise, Africa will have 30 million people dependent on food aid, and for Africa alone, the 2015 targets will become the 2030 millennium goals as Africa continues to starve silently.

Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North): Given that the hon. Gentleman is talking about the long term, will he accept that, in the long term, the solution lies as much with the Department of Trade and Industry and energy policy as with the practical support that DFID can give to relieve famine? Does he agree that it might have been useful had his report made a recommendation to the DTI, or a submission to the current energy review, stressing the absolute importance of reducing CO2 emissions, not only to our current commitment of 20 per cent., but to 60 per cent., as the royal commission on environmental pollution recommended?

Mr. Mike Hancock (in the Chair): Order. This is getting close to a speech, Mr. Chaytor.

Mr. Chaytor: I shall be brief, Mr. Hancock.

Recommendations 9 and 30 in the report are about the link between climate change and equity, and suggest that the Government should pursue a policy of contraction and convergence in their approach to CO2 emissions.

Tony Baldry: I am sure that every hon. Member will make their own speech. In fairness, the report, which was written and published before the Johannesburg summit, makes considerable recommendations on climate change and energy policy. I have not gone through all those recommendations this afternoon because hon. Members can read the report.

Since the report's publication, the Select Committee has been to Malawi, and others of us have been to Ethiopia and Malawi. We have seen, and are seeing, a disaster emerging in Africa, so it seemed appropriate to concentrate my remarks on that. The hon. Gentleman takes an active role in GLOBE - the Global Legislators Organization for a Balanced Environment - which I and many other Opposition Members also support. I am sure that he will focus on the issue that he has raised. I have chosen not to this afternoon, although not because I think that it is unimportant. Colleagues on the Committee and in the House may disagree with my view and think that I have got things out of proportion, but I think that, collectively, we must understand the scale of what is taking place in Africa.

What is happening now is different from what happened in 1985, and requires a different response. It requires long-term food security policies and the improvement of the mechanisms for supporting the WFP. It is not fair to accuse people who raise those issues of being irresponsible. I am sure that we can get them in proper and rational proportion. They are important issues that need to be addressed if huge numbers of people in Africa are not to starve.