Kampuchea (Hansard, 11 February 1980)

§ Mr. Neil Marten

In the last 12 months British official aid for the people in Kampuchea has consisted entirely of humanitarian relief. The estimated total cost is some £7 million, of which about half is Britain's share (about 20 per cent) of the total cost of the emergency assistance given by the European Community. Of our aid the services of the RAF Hercules aircraft (costing about £200,000), the charter of the civilian CL44 transport aircraft (costing about £45,000), and 2,300 tonnes of rice, out of a total grant of 5,000 tonnes, through the world food programme (being distributed, but account not yet received) constituted aid going directly to Phnom Penh or Kompong Som. As explained in my written reply of 15 January to my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James)—[Vol. 976, cols. 698–99]—the disasters emergency committee (to which we have given about £480,000) and the joint ICRC/UNICEF appeal (to which we have given about £1,930,000) are free to use our grants at their discretion for relief operations either in Kampuchea itself or among Kampuchean refugees in Thailand, according to where the aid can, in their judgment, be most effectively used. As I told the House on the same occasion, we expect the aid given by the European Community (United Kingdom share of the cost, some £3.5 million) to be split about 50–50 between refugees in Thailand and on the Thai-Kampuchean border on the one hand and the rest of Kampuchea on the other.