14 June 2021
Urgent Question on the deteriorating situation in Ethiopia

Andrew Mitchell raises concerns about the situation in Ethiopia where 2 million people have now been driven from their homes over the border into Sudan with many facing starvation and calls on the Government to urgently provide more humanitarian aid to the region.

Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson) on securing this urgent question, and I echo the comments of the Foreign Affairs Committee Chair that many responsible people throughout our country are worrying about a return to 1984 famine conditions. I urge my hon. Friend, who is a decent and humane Minister, to take two key things away from the House. The first is that 2 million people have been driven from their homes—many across the border into Sudan—and 350,000 people, according to the UN, are now in IPC phase 5, which means they are quite literally starving to death. Secondly, in 2020, the UK recorded $108 million in humanitarian money for Ethiopia; so far this year, with the cuts resulting from our broken promise on the 0.7%, the UN tracking system says that Britain has provided only $6 million—that is the figure scored against ODA so far. Will my hon. Friend bear in mind those two facts in his discussions with his Treasury colleagues?

James Duddridge (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Minister for Africa)

I thank my right hon. Friend for his long-standing interest. Like him, I do not want to go back to 1984, although there are chilling similarities. He talks of the number of individuals who have gone across the border to Sudan. We have provided £5 million to refugees coming over. We also recognise the number of 350,000.

I think my right hon. Friend explained the source of another hon. Member’s figure of $6 million. I will have to check it, because that is a gross distortion. This is one of our biggest aid programmes. We are the second or third largest aid donor, so that must be a snapshot of a single programme or a very small period of time, because our programmes are many multiples of that.

Hansard