Ms Raphaëlle Faure:

On UK aid and where it is going, I could not agree more that a great deal of the focus has been on economic development. The last strategy which came out in 2015 was written by the Treasury and the first objective listed was to provide aid in the national interest. As such, there is a drastic shift. If we look at how much of the aid is channelled and paid to UK contractors as opposed to contractors in developing countries, the figure is over 80%. There is potentially a question of tied aid. More and more UK aid is being channelled by Departments other than the Department for International Development, DFID. Figures were issued yesterday which showed that the DIFD was only providing 74% of UK aid, whereas the figure used to be 88%. That is a shift, whereby a great deal of UK aid is now being disbursed by business Departments. As such, the Deputy has identified something that is happening.

As to whether the United Kingdom was a critical voice on economic partnership agreements and what will happen in the future, the United Kingdom does not yet know what its trade position will be after Brexit. My colleagues would say that, in the first instance, the United Kingdom should endorse the deals with the European Union in order that no country would find itself without a deal and unable to export to the United Kingdom with a giant increase in tariffs all of a sudden. However, it is not clear what the United Kingdom will do and it is not clear from where I am sitting that the UK Government has an idea yet of what it will do.