The aid minister, the president's wife, and contraception

Ministers rarely criticise their counterparts in other countries, or their spouses. But UK aid minister Andrew Mitchell did so on Thursday,

Speaking at the Royal Society in London at the launch of People and the Planet, "a major report on global population and consumption", he recalled watching a meeting under a tree in northern Uganda at which a group of young married women were told about family planning services. After the talk, they were asked if they would like to follow up with a consultation with a doctor, and all raised their hands.

Shortly after this event, when Mitchell met President Yoweri Museveni's wife, Janet, she adopted what he termed a "fundamentalist" approach to family planning and related issues and told him that the British government should not be involved with such matters.

The UK Secretary of State for International Development was unmoved by her admonition. He told the London meeting that "the truth of what her husband's people wanted was under that tree."