HC Deb 19 May 1966 vol 728 c296W
88. Mr. Philip Noel-Baker

asked the Minister of Overseas Development what sum Her Majesty's Government propose to contribute to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation campaign against illiteracy.

Mr. Oram

Her Majesty's Government are already contributing through the budgets of the Regular Programme of the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation and of the United Nations Development Programme towards the cost of the World Experimental Literacy Programme of U.N.E.S.C.O. The proportions of these contributions which may be approximately calculated as devoted to literacy are £85,000 for the biennium 1965 and 1966, and, if U.N.E.S.C.O.'s draft estimates are approved, £155,000 for the biennium 1967 and 1968.

The resources required for the World Experimental Literacy Programme, which is being conducted on selected and intensive lines in a limited number of countries with literacy problems, are of course as much those of manpower as of money and we are helping to recruit the skilled people for literacy work who are in short supply everywhere, and to train others.