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Pakistan and Kenya

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for the opportunity provided to me to meet earlier today with the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the noble Lord himself. It was an illuminating and useful meeting. On the broader issue, I wish to make two points about Pakistan. The first is a short-term point and relates to the thriving civil society to which he referred. We understand the limitations of international monitors, particularly in the light of the insecurity of the frontier province and the other areas where they may not be able to travel. However, we also know—and I should say that I monitored the last election in Pakistan—that a good number of domestic monitoring organisations are available in Pakistan and that they could give us a better picture of the outcome of the elections. So the question to the Minister is: to what extent are we funding those domestic monitoring organisations in the absence of a Commonwealth mission that can carry out that brief? Several times the noble Lord mentioned the importance of democratic institution building in both the countries mentioned in the Statement. He will be familiar from his work with the UNDP with the importance of per capita GDP growth in bringing about transitions to sustainable democracy where institutions work. The per capita figure usually cited is about $7,000 annually. DfID has nearly doubled its aid budget to Pakistan to £450 million over the next three years, which my rudimentary maths shows amounts to about £1 a year per head of Pakistan’s population. Do we really think that that can achieve very much in terms of Pakistan’s long-term stability? Can the Minister say where our aid to Pakistan ranks in the UK’s priorities? When I last looked at the league table, Pakistan did not figure even among the top 20 countries.