Tag: andrew mitchell


  • Harriet Harman writes to Andrew Mitchell about women’s projects in Afghanistan

    Harriet Harman, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, has written to Andrew Mitchell to ask him about funding for women’s projects in Afghanistan. Here are some extracts from the letter: “I recently had the opportunity to meet with Hussn Banu Ghazanfar, the Afghan Minister for Women…. One of the issues that was raised with

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  • Christian Aid calls on Mitchell to do more on climate change

    There is a very interesting piece over on Left Foot Forward on Christian Aid’s new campaign which calls on the World Bank to do more to tackle climate change. You can lend your voice to Christian Aid’s and email Andrew Mitchell, Secretary of State for International Development, and ask him to use his position within

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  • LCID reaction to Report on Labour’s Education record

    The difficulty of being part of a political party is that sometimes you stand accused of being too tribal, too colour-blind, too willing to defend the party line. LCID it is not beyond criticising and critiquing the Labour Party’s own policy and record, but we will defend it passionately when we think it has come under

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  • Will long-term poverty reduction fail under the Tories?

    There is an article running on the Guardian website analysing the contradiction at the heart of Conservative international development policy. It looks at the emerging schism between traditional Conservative values on aid and the ring-fenced budget; as well as between an increased focus on security and the alleviation of poverty. LCID has run several articles

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  • Tax Havens, Conservatives and the Developing World

    After the recent investigation by Channel 4 Dispatches programme that Conservative Ministers, Andrew Mitchell the International Development Secretary amongst them, store their wealth in off-shore bank accounts, the question of the harm done by these locations and their practices are now being asked. The figure quoted in the Dispatches investigation is that for every £1

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  • Mitchell in bother

    The Guardian has an article on its website about Andrew Mitchell stepping in to help have a trading ban lifted in Ghana, despite it being outside his remit. The firm had been banned from trading for allegedly smuggling cocoa. This would appear to be evidence that the International Development Secretary has overstepped the mark. It

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  • Could the Government be about to destroy the International Development Act?

    By Margaret Dantas Araujo Some of the UK’s biggest charities, Oxfam, CAFOD, and Save the Children, have publically raised concerns about the growing threat of securitisation of the aid budget. The use of aid for political reasons would be in direct contravention of the International Development Act 2002.  The act,  explicitly states, (1)The Secretary of

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  • Mitchell’s ‘ouput-based’ crusade risks trying DfID in knots

    by David Taylor, for Left Foot Forward Earlier today Left Foot Forward published a leaked document from the Department for International Development showing a list of nearly 100 public commitments recommended for the chop. But behind the headlines, International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell’s “focus on outputs and outcomes” raises two key questions. Firstly, if close to 100

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  • Questions grow over DfID’s ‘ring-fenced’ budget

    Rumours over the security of DfID’s budget have been mounting over the last few weeks. Today in the Guardian, Madeleine Bunting raises questions over the pressure coming from the Right for Cameron’s government to change their approach to the international development budget. The Coalition Government came to power promising to ring-fence international development spending, yet

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  • Aid is a marathon not a sprint

    Douglas Alexander writes in The Guardian today that ‘the coalition has failed to commit fully to international aid, yet it is a policy that remains morally right and in our common interest.’ “Instead of creating straw men to burn ceremoniously in an ill-conceived strategy to placate sceptics on the right of his party, Andrew Mitchell

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