5. What recent assessment he has made of the development situation in Nepal. (116156)

Nepal is the world’s 16th poorest country. As I saw during my recent visit, it faces enormous political and development challenges. We are tackling them by focusing on wealth creation, strengthened governance and security, health, education, and disaster risk reduction.

According to WaterAid, only 31% of Nepal is covered by proper sanitation, and 7,900 under-fives die every year from diarrhoea. Following the high-level water and sanitation conference in April, can the Minister give me some assurance on what is being done to try to put right that appalling situation?

I assure my hon. Friend that things are just a little bit better than he says. The latest data from a highly regarded national survey suggest that 55% of people in Nepal have access to safe latrines. Despite total child deaths having almost halved in the past 10 years, child deaths from poor water and sanitation are still unacceptably high. Our programmes will help to avert 3,500 child deaths and should ensure that 110,000 more people have access to safe latrines by 2015.

In light of the fact that there will be elections in Nepal very soon, what assistance are we providing for good governance there?

The hon. Gentleman hits on a most important point. At the moment, there is constitutional and governmental deadlock in Nepal. When I was there, we were doing our utmost as an influential friend of Nepal—as I hope the UK can continue to be—to help to break the deadlock and ensure either that a new constituent assembly is formed or that there are elections, and each can facilitate and assist the other.