Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)

I do not want this to sound at all patronising, but the assistance that we can give now is very different from that which we could give 10 or so years ago. Yes, there is the immediate response, which will take the form of ODA, and we have a crisis reserve, which is where it needs to be for this stage in the year, but we have also been able to work on insurance and construction. I was very recently at a hospital in Jamaica whose construction we had been able to support, making it much more able to withstand the impact of a hurricane. It has generators and its own energy supplies, and some of that is renewable, and it is able to carry on functioning even in the most difficult circumstances. So the infra- structure is becoming more robust. We have invested alongside others in parametric insurance so that the payouts are very fast to enable the Government of Jamaica and those of other islands to be able to respond much more quickly than they could previously. On the noble Lord’s points about OECD and ODA graduation, for small island developing states that is really important. There is a problem with graduation, as we see with Montserrat at the moment; it is something that we are very keenly looking at to make sure that countries are treated fairly, because at the moment the way these things work often disadvantages countries with very small populations.