Malcolm Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what steps the Government (a) have taken and (b) plans totake to respond to the Action Plan of the Third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries. [44360]Clare Short: The Government are working to implement the action plan of the Third United Nations Conference on the Least DevelopedCountries in a variety of ways both through out bilateral programmes and our multilateral work. Over the past four years, we haveincreased the proportion of aid allocated to least developed countries, as a proportion of our bilateral country resources, from 33per cent. to 45 per cent.We are supporting the Commonwealth Secretariat's Trade and Investment Access Facility to deliver a range of activities designed tostrengthen the capacity of least developed Commonwealth countries to address trade issues. We also continue to work withmultilateral organisations including the United Nations and the European Commission to ensure that the momentum generated by thethird United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries, on key issues such as trade, aid untying and financial issues ismaintained in follow-on international conferences. These include the current Financing for Development conference in Monterey (18-22March) and the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.We consider it important to see the third United Nations Conference on the Least Developed Countries as part of an on-going processof developing a partnership for poverty eradication between developing countries, including least developed countries, and theinternational community. We will therefore continue to work with our partners to build on the positive achievements made on recentinitiatives such as the European Union's "Everything But Arms" agreement and the Development Assistance Committee's recommendationson untying, both of which were strongly supported by the UK, to ensure that least developed countries can achieve sustained economicgrowth and development.