Question: When talking about international development one of the central issues is simply cash - at this point would you be willing to say whether or not a future Conservative administration would increase the amount spent on international aid in terms of a percentage of GDP?

Caroline Spelman: We share exactly the same commitment as the government of the need to work towards that UN target of 0.7 per cent.

And we have seen Gordon Brown increase that percentage over their term in office - initially it fell back to 0.22 per cent during their first two to three years in office and has crept up to 0.33 per cent again.

But there are difficulties with using those percentages. Would you increase it in percentage terms or in absolute terms because actually when the economy is shrinking the percentage automatically increases - so it is slightly deceptive.

But certainly every time Gordon Brown has increased spending on international development Michael Howard has welcomed that unreservedly - so I think you have got your answer.

Question: Can you say there will be no reduction - that you definitely won't reduce it in absolute or percentage terms?

Caroline Spelman: We have welcomed all those increases and that commitment to work towards 0.7 per cent is what should ratchet it up over time.

Question: In losing Clare Short as International Development Secretary there is a sense that the international aid organisations have lost a friend and a supporter - is that something that you would concur with?

Caroline Spelman: Well you would have to ask them. She was very rude to them actually. She accused them of grandstanding and actually she cut the percentage of her budget that went to international aid agencies.

So I think they did think of her as a great champion but in practise she wasn't very fond of them.

And actually one of the big differences between Conservatives and Labour over international development is that actually we are committed to using them more. We never bought into Clare Short's undying admiration for budgetary support - in other words writing blank cheques for governments, which was her preferred route.

I challenged her over that because you lose control over what it's spent on. If it doesn't get spent on the right things it undermines public confidence on the effectiveness of aid.

I think you can achieve your objectives better and have better accountability if you work with NGOs that have good track records and are answerable for the public money that they receive. Many of them are headquartered in this country and subject to our laws on charitable giving and the operation of charities.

Question: The decision to appoint Baroness Amos seems to have demoted the importance of International Aid in the House of Commons. Is that the case?

Caroline Spelman: Yes I don't think you can get away from that. It does mean that I cannot cross-question my opposite number on the floor of the House of Commons.

And I think that it is a bad moment to have chosen to do this because obviously Iraq is still running hot as an issue.

I think that members of the House of Commons should be able to question the secretary of state because of the fact that our national interest is at stake, our reputation as a country is at stake, and it is by no means clear at the moment that the reconstruction process, for which DfID is primarily responsible, is going particularly well.

Question: There was a sense with Clare Short that she had depoliticised the brief. That she would slap down Tory and Labour backbenchers who would try and score points. The impression you get from Baroness Amos is that a she is far more on message. Does that mean you are willing to up the stakes?

Caroline Spelman: I think it is... it is not a particularly political brief actually, if you think about it.

There aren't huge party political differences. I have just outlined one of them to you - that is the one over would you use NGOs more or would you carry on writing cheques to the government, that is a difference - but on the whole it is not hugely political.

And there is quite a lot of continuity through what Baroness Chalker was doing, what Chris Pattern had going on. People have conveniently forgotten that we have had a good international development track record for some time.

I don't think that it is politicisation or depoliticisation. I think it is a question of political style. I mean Clare Short is a big bruiser, a political fighter and part of her style would be to slap people down on all sides if she thought they were wrong.

Valerie Amos does not operate like that. I think she is very loyal to Blair but then actually you would expect members of the cabinet to be loyal to their leader and Chare Short was rather the exception in being allowed to depart from collective responsibility yet remain within the cabinet. I think it is just down to personal style.

Question: Could there be a fear that the Foreign Office - with a bit of the DTI thrown in - is now micromanaging the department?

Caroline Spelman: Well I hope not. We certainly for our part don't think that is desirable. It will be up to Valerie Amos to defend her department's integrity in that respect.

The origins of DfID are that it came out of the foreign office stable. I think that probably Clare Short was quite successful at defending her territory in that respect, although she was seriously sidelined in the conflict over Iraq where the Ministry of Defence had the upper hand, and actually, if you really closely analyse what happened in Afghanistan the MoD was in control there as well, so you have got to be a good fighter for your department.

You are your department's salesman and spokesman and so Valerie will need to be vigilant.

Question: On the issue of linking trade to aid she seems up for it. Is that something you would have concerns about?

Caroline Spelman: Well she can't repeal individually the International Development Act which was passed in 2002 which put an end to tied aid which we supported.

But I think that...what I hope is that where she will make an adjustment, is that whilst having the poverty reduction focus was entirely right for international development spending, we made the point at the time that it shouldn't come at the expense of doing more work on good governance and conflict reduction and trying to reduce small arms proliferation.

And actually it is quite interesting to watch how Clare Short has changed on this because I think after passing the act that she had realised, particularly with her strategy of writing blank cheques for governments, that you can't do that without good governance, hand in hand. Otherwise actually you just invite criticism about whether the money is actually doing any good at all.

Question: There has been the cycle of having crisis, instability, aid and then crisis instability, aid. Do you think it is time to take a more interventionist approach?

Caroline Spelman: Inan ideal world yes. But I mean the Department for International Development will have to gap contingency for unforeseen disasters. I often say that where the earthquake erupts or where the war breaks out that's where DfID goes.

There is a case for saying that DfID is fighting wars on more fronts simultaneously than it has probably ever had to.

There are two huge famines in Africa at the moment. Fourteen million people affected in Southern Africa - some of that man made some of that human and natural disaster - and almost the equivalent number of people in Ethiopia.

So dealing with huge famines there, whilst still trying to make a decent fist of reconstructing Afghanistan, is proving a lot more difficult that anybody thought.

We are seriously under scrutiny about whether or not we are doing reconstruction properly in Iraq, so trying to fit in any preventative work in the middle of all that is quite hard to imagine.

Question: You talk about trying to use aid agencies to try to lever money into these countries - would you try and set some form of target as to the proportion of the departmental budget?

Caroline Spelman: Well it has dropped down to seven per cent now hasn't it. I think that is very very low.

I would not like to put a figure on it but I certainly would like to see that figure rising incrementally over time as the NGOs built their capacity to take it.

Clare Short's riposte to me over putting more money through NGOs was that they couldn't cope.

Well anyone can cope given the time to build up capacity and, actually, as far as this country is concerned we are talking about blue chip NGOs like Oxfam, Christian Aid, Care, Cafod - these are big aid agencies.

I think it's no surprise that when the earthquake erupted in Goma of all the aid agencies in the whole world the UN chose Oxfam because it is the world's leading agency for putting water back on.

So I think that we should build on that. I think some ground rules would have to be set. There is an issue as far as the NGOs are concerned that if they take more of the King's shilling does that in some way compromise their objectives.

I think we would have to look at the conditions set in that case but I genuinely do think that it can help to make aid more effective and that I think is what the public and taxpayers want to see.

Question: On the issue of wiping out debt would you hope to go further than the government?

Caroline Spelman: Oh yes, absolutely. Debt relief is a big disappointment after all the trumpeting of the relief of debts in the millennium year when upward of 25 countries were supposed to be relieved of their debt in fact the reality is in 2003 only six countries have been relieved on their debts.

The reason why is because the debt relief process is far too complicated and it is also flawed because to relieve debt - there is no point in just wiping off a countries debts if you don't tackle what caused the debts in the first place.

You have to try to put them onto a sustainable footing, but the calculation of sustainability at the moment is deeply flawed. It doesn't take account of what happens when commodity prices collapse and they have collapsed across the board.

So countries that in the run up to the millennium with their exports of coffee or tea or rubber or cocoa or whatever they were exporting to generate income, are no longer sustainable because those prices have collapsed completely.

I think the debt relieving process needs a serious overhaul: far less secretive, greater transparency, looking at genuinely how you help countries to be sustainable. At the moment it is not achieving anything like it should.

In essence it is giving with one hand and taking it back with another. Because if you take Ethiopia as example we gave them £15 million in overseas aid last year and they owe us £16 million in debt.

Question: Simply saying we'll wipe the debt doesn't create a responsible culture does it?

Caroline Spelman: Absolutely. That is where the governance comes in. This is why proper negotiation needs to take place transparently. "Okay if we wipe your debt we need to talk together about your actual sustainability".

Now it is still very difficult to do. Take one of the better examples: Tanzania. Tanzania had £3 billion dollars worth of debt wiped on condition that it spent those released resources on health and education - then promptly went out and bought an air defence system - spending £28 million on it.

The World Bank says it is not even appropriate for what Tanzania needs, so it is actually quite difficult. They are sovereign countries so in the end you can't order them to spend the money on certain things but I think we have to work harder at those kinds of good governance measures.

Question: In terms of trade would you say that we were too protectionist?

Caroline Spelman: Far too protectionist. Completely hypocritical

Question: If you were in government would your trade secretary and chancellor say the same?

Caroline Spelman: Absolutely. Push much harder. Conservatives have been talking for a long time about CAP reform and CAP is one of the worst offenders. I mean on an equal footing to the US farm bill.

Both countries are absolutely as bad as each other. But there are features of the CAP, which are absolutely iniquitous, and one of them is export subsidies and I think taxpayers would be shocked to know what happens.

We see these countries that are extremely poor that are capable of producing things but they can't export them and generate an income from them because we dump the equivalent product in those markets subsidised by taxpayers money.

The best example of that is India. India is the largest producer of milk in the world and it is the second lowest cost producer and it cannot compete in the growth market, which is the Middle East, because we dump dairy surpluses produced in our country with taxpayers' money. This is the European Union we are talking about here.

I think if wholesale reform of the CAP can't be achieved then in the short term putting an end to export subsidies should be an absolute priority.

Question: Isn't there a sense that we won't do it until America does it? It is a who is going to go first issue?

Caroline Spelman: I just think that it is iniquitous and wrong - whether or not America does it or doesn't do it. The fact is that we have a moral duty to it.

We are not competing with the Americans for dairy exports we are competing with India.

So I think that we have to really be bold on this protectionist point. Because otherwise if we don't then I think that we just give succour to the anti-capitalist movement who are very quick to point out the hypocrisy that we push very hard for developing countries to lower their protection barriers so we can export to them.

Meanwhile we are not prepared to lower ours and I think we are vulnerable to that criticism. I don't share the views of the anti-capitalist movement at all. I think that they just fundamentally don't understand.

They are arguing for the developing countries to be allowed to re-erect their protectionist barriers and I don't believe that is the way forward for developing countries.

India is a very good example of a country that has lowered its barriers and actually is now making fantastic headway economically. And the gap between the world's richest and poorest had narrowed against a background of trade liberalisation. So we need more not less.

Question: Moving to Iraq - how would you classify the situation on the ground today?

Caroline Spelman: Very vulnerable and actually I think that Clare Short has quite a lot to answer for, from our perspective

In November and December last year we were urging her to make contingency plans for the possibility of the war in Iraq and its aftermath and she was publicly very reluctant to do that.

By stark contrast to the way she approached the war in Afghanistan where we debated what form our assistance should take. You remember Jenny Tonge saying we should "bomb the place with food". We actually said how should this be done and a major famine was averted in Afghanistan which was a real achievement of contingency planning.

Now Clare Short has admitted that there wasn't any contingency planning in Iraq, but who is to blame for that?

Question: Was that due to the fact that she had this internal conflict?

Caroline Spelman: Absolutely. But then she should have stepped back. I mean it was very important that whoever occupied the role of Secretary of State for International Development needed to be someone who is prepared get on with the contingency planning for the aftermath of conflict and she clearly didn't do that. It was a mistake by Blair, I believe, to ask her to remain because this didn't happen.

Question: Was that shortsightedness on his part because surely this was one of the things that was going to come back and bite him?

Caroline Spelman: Well I think it should. I have been out to the Gulf. The military are just hopping mad because they are being asked to do what they are not really trained to do and without the resources.

The Ministry of Defence was given £10 million - peanuts - by the chancellor for civilian projects in the post conflict scenario.

That is putting the water back, on putting the electricity back on - but it is peanuts. DfID was given £210 million for reconstruction in the immediate aftermath of conflict and as far as I am aware very little of that has been spent.

Valerie Amos has made an executive decision that 60 per cent should be passed straight to aid agencies which you know, hey presto, wry smile, because of course that seems to repair that relationship.

She has talked to the aid agencies about the scale of the problem. I mean we are talking about electricity plants that are 30 or 40 years old, which have been cobbled together with bits of string and rubber and the spare parts don't exist.

It is going to take a massive investment to actually get the country back on its feet. But you know we could start by actually getting DfID's money in there and moving. It is very important in terms of good will.

Question: Looking at the situation with HIV and Aids. There are still some governments who are in some state of internal denial about the state of the problem or the medical facts. What would you say to them?

Caroline Spelman: I just think all other problems virtually pale into insignificance alongside the Aids pandemic.

I honestly think in Britain today people are very complacent about this problem because, you know, we feel like we have got it cracked and you get attitudes from people who say well it's their own fault isn't it?

It really isn't the fault of the women in the village who don't realise their husbands are infected. The husband who has got himself infected on a grain buying trip in the local town and the children are now caught up in it.

The extent of the problem in Sub-Saharan Africa which averages a quarter of the population of the continent infected, is beyond one's comprehension.

There are now African governments really leading the way on this. I think that the corner has been turned there.

The reluctance of the South African president to acknowledge how Aids is caused and even denying the link between HIV and Aids was distinctly unhelpful since South Africa provides peer leadership for the region really.

When you travel in Sub-Saharan Africa now there is a lot advertising, public advertising about how to avoid contracting Aids and so on. I think the real worry or the next worry is India when you talk about denial.

When I went out to India spoke to the minister of health I got exactly that complacency. "This won't happen in good Hindu families" - "It isn't going to happen to us".

And yet it has already reached epidemic levels in India and you learn this from antenatal clinics.

When pregnant women come in for the checks on their unborn child they have a blood test and this shows you the extent of the infection in the population and it has hit the epidemic level.

Yet you have got the Ministry of Health saying its not going to happen to us. When you look at the size of the population in India with a billion people, I mean even a two or three per cent infection rate means millions of people infected and debilitated and ultimately dying from this disease.

Question: Is there a concern or should there be a concern that as the snowball seems to have been growing first through Sub-Saharan Africa possibly in India. that it is rolling towards us eventually?

Caroline Spelman: I think the snowball is not growing to the same extent in Africa. Infection rates are steady and in some states on the way down.

I mean, they remain very high, but there is evidence that the measures - sex education, public awareness, availability of barrier methods of contraception is beginning to have an impact.

The trick in India would be to get in quickly. There is no sex education in Indian schools for example. They need to move very quickly to prevent their infection rates rising from two or four per cent to these horrendous levels of Sub-Saharan Africa.

I don't think it does present a threat here in the direct sense of infection because in Western Europe we have two things that they don't have.

One is we have comprehensive sex education with the ready availability of contraceptives. I mean they are almost forced on children!

And secondly, because of our public health system, if people contract the disease they are supplied with drugs to help manage the disease and prolong life.

It is the latter that sub Saharan African countries don't have. The way in which it is likely to affect us is that Africa will simply fall further and further behind.

It is not hitting the aged and the young - it is wiping out the middle age population.

The most economically productive cohort in society is being obliterated and so you have grandparents raising grandchildren if the children are lucky, and if not they are raising themselves.

Consequently you are creating a continent that is even more vulnerable to conflict and instability because it has lost its demographic balance.

Question: Given that and given the expense of drug treatments are the drug companies doing enough. Should we be seeking to relax patent laws?

Caroline Spelman: Whoever finds the Aids vaccine to which they have poured billions will want see a return on that investment - that is the essence of patent law.

But what is obvious is that discounting the antiretroviral drugs by 90 per cent is not enough. It still means that it would cost the average African $100 US dollars a year. They don't have $100 US dollars a year - half the continent is living on less than two dollars a day.

And that is the bit that needs addressing. That is why I really welcome President Bush's 12 billion dollars for Aids. This is the kind of level of support that is needed. That is three time the budget of DfID's annual budget he has just written the cheque for.

The reason why those antiretroviral are so important is they can't save you, they can't cure you but they prolong life. In terms of raising the next generation if you can prolong the life of that economically active group by 10, 12 or 15 years, you might actually just manage to bring through the next generation with the skills to take on when their parents die off. It will take that level of investment and Europe would be expected to match that.

Question: Would you still bring more pressure to bear on the drugs companies?

Caroline Spelman: It is not just the drugs companies. We could insist that they provide them all for free, but actually more is needed than just the drugs. In terms of taking them it is not good if the regime is not followed carefully because otherwise all you get is resistance to drugs. They have to be taken at a certain time in a certain way.

And actually you need a health infrastructure around that. For example I have argued the case for giving antiretrovirals free to pregnant women because this is your hope of raising a clean generation who have avoided the transmission of the disease at birth.

But if the woman then goes on to breast feed her baby all the good work is undone because the disease is transmitted very easily through breast feeding.

So there you have got to make sure she knows how to feed the baby with a bottle, but with sterilisation facilities so the baby does not get gastroenteritis. It is much more complicated than just free drugs.

Question: If you could look at one area, one country in the world, which would give you cause for most concern just now what would that be?

Caroline Spelman: It has got to be the Congo at the moment. It is on the brink of genocide if it has not already started and I can't see the willingness among the rich nations of the world to try and keep the sides apart there.

Question: What is the size of the peace-keeping force, 1100?

Caroline Spelman: It is peanuts. I think it has been calculated that for the surface area of the Congo to keep peace in a way that would be effective you are looking at thousands of troops.

It is not that we are sitting on our hands here because our troops are overstretched in Iraq but it think that Blair talks a lot about UN peace keeping but when it comes to the crunch they are quite reluctant to send their soldiers.

And I pity the poor Uruguayans who are out there 800 of them waiting for reinforcements because they can't keep the sides apart with just that small number of troops

Question: So it's a "when" not an "if" that the spiral is set to intensify?

Caroline Spelman: Well I really hope it isn't. It is a very recent lesson of Rwanda that it can't be ignored.

But it requires a real act of international courage and will to step in now and prevent a genocide.