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DEFENCE
Defence Sixth Form College
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Dr. Lewis Moonie): Our intention to develop a Defence Sixth Form College was initially announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence in answer to a question by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Mr. Salter) on 27 March 2001, Official Report, columns 547–48W, on the outcome of the Defence Training Review. On 24 January 2002, Official Report, column 994W, my right hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces gave the House an update on the project, at which time no decisions had been taken on where the College would be built, or how it would be procured.
I am now able to inform the House that we have concluded that a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) offers best value for money for provision of the facilities and services required by the College. We have selected the Minerva consortium, which comprises Interserve plc, HSBC and TQ Education and Training Ltd, as the Preferred Bidder, and are now engaged in negotiations to conclude a contract.
This being the site selected by the Preferred Bidder, the Defence Sixth Form College will be built on the site of the disused barracks outside Woodhouse, near Loughborough. It will open in September 2005, at which time the present Army Sixth Form College at Welbeck Abbey will close.
HEALTH
Fertilisation and Embryology (Donor Information)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Ms Hazel Blears): Following a consultation exercise carried out between December 2001 and July 2002, we propose to lay regulations before Parliament, so that people conceived as a result of sperm, egg or embryo donation will be able to obtain more information about their donors in the future. The information will not identify the donors. We hope that donor-conceived people are all part of loving families but we also understand that at some point in their lives they may decide they want to know more about their genetic origins and we think it is right that they should be able to ask for non-identifying information.
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We propose that the regulations enable the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to provide non-identifying information about donors to donor-conceived people aged 18 or over who request that information and who were born after the HFEA's register came into effect in 1991. In practice the information would be available from 2010 (eighteen years after the register came into operation).
To enable standardised information to be available in the future, we will seek approval for the regulations to require the HFEA to collect standardised non-identifying information with immediate effect.
We will also explore the possibility of setting up a pilot scheme for a voluntary contact register for donor-conceived people aged 18 and over.
The summary of responses to the consultation exercise is on the Department of Health's website at www.gov.uk/consultations.
INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Water
The Secretary of State for International Development (Clare Short): The UN has designated 2003 as the International Year of Freshwater, acknowledging that global water issues need to be placed high on the international agenda. They will be discussed at the Global Water Conference in Kyoto in March and we expect that there will also be discussion at the G8 Summit in Evian in June. This statement sets out briefly the Government's view of the key issues and our approach to addressing them.
The provision, use and management of water are central to both sustainable development and poverty reduction. Nearly two thirds of the world's population will be living in countries of significant water stress by the year 2025. 1.2 billion people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.4 billion people lack access to basic sanitation. Environmental needs for water are vital. Some 1.3 billion people continue to earn less than US$1/day and 800 million of them regularly go hungry. Hunger and poverty are closely linked. Agricultural water management can and does play a significant role in reducing hunger and poverty in the developing world.
Meeting the water supply and sanitation targets within the Millennium Development Goals is estimated to require an additional US$9 billion to US$30 billion per year. Meeting funding needs for water resources and integrated water resources management would increases this amount to around $180 billion per year. The largest share of investment will need to be met from public and private resources in each country. Development assistance has a role to play through direct or indirect support of Government and civil society programmes, through helping to build the capacity of national institutions, and, in poorer countries, through providing a lever for other forms of finance, thus helping bridge the funding gap.
Our overall strategy, set out in the DFID Target Strategy Paper on Water published in 2001, is to seek to focus international policy making in water resources, irrigation, water supply and sanitation on the reduction
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of poverty. We have concentrated our efforts in improving the management and allocation of water resources and in increasing access to water and sanitation to achieve improved health and sustainable livelihoods for the poor. The UK played a leading role at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in the agreement of a new target on sanitation as one of the Millennium Development Goals. We are equally committed to supporting implementation of this and the existing MDG on access to safe water, and to the commitments made at WSSD for better management of water resources.
Our emphasis in addressing issues in the water sector has changed over the years. More effective use of development assistance means moving away from funding a proliferation of isolated and uncoordinated donor-led projects to providing support to build sustainable improvements in local capacity in a way that is consistent with poverty reduction strategies drawn up by developing countries themselves. We have moved from bilateral assistance towards providing greater input into global efforts at addressing these issues. In the last three years this process has accelerated.
In March 2000 at the World Water Forum in The Hague I announced that we planned to double our bilateral contribution to the sector over the next three years. At that time we estimated our expenditure in the sector (based on 1998–99 figures, which were the latest available) at £50 million a year. Our expenditure bilaterally on water and related activities is estimated at £82 million in 1999–00, £91 million in 2000–01 and £87 million in 2001–02. Our new commitments to the water sector totalled £86 million in 2001–02. Some of our spending, for example, direct budget support, is not easily attributable to particular sectors but will
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nevertheless contribute to sectoral goals. A small proportion of our budget support is likely to help finance activities in the water sector.
In our work in the water sector we aim to strengthen governance, build institutional capacity, raise awareness and promote sharing of knowledge.
We are therefore supporting global programmes and processes that reach down to the poorest through international agencies, through new forms of partnerships between the public sector, civil society and the private sector, such as the EU Water Initiative and Partners for Water & Sanitation. We continue to be open to good opportunities to invest in the water sector, consistent with our broader approach of supporting country-owned poverty reduction strategies through which developing countries establish their own priorities. Multilateral institutions which we support, such as the World Bank, the Regional Development Banks, UNICEF and the European Community, also make very significant investments in water-related projects and programmes.
We are seeking more effective ways of mobilising financing at a global level that are linked to the development of effective water sector strategies and policies. We work with other donors to develop new financing facilities, to address the complex of market and government failures that deter private financing in water infrastructure.
We are supporting global resource centres for water resource management and for environmental health, which, for the first time, bring together a network of developed and developing country based technical and social institutions. These resource centres seek to develop best practice and to share international expertise so as to ensure that the best knowledge finds its way down to national and local levels.