Official Development Assistance: Bilateral Allocations
Baroness Sugg
To ask His Majesty’s Government when they intend to publish a full list of bilateral allocations for Official Development Assistance spending for 2026–27 to 2028–29.
The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) (Lab)
The Government are committed to publishing FCDO country ODA allocations in or before the FCDO annual report and accounts 2025-26. The annual report is due to be published in July. Publishing the annual report is in line with previous FCDO practice.
Baroness Sugg (Con)
I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer, and I look forward to the publication. The cuts to the UK’s official development assistance—some of the most severe across G20 countries—mean that the remaining bilateral spend will need to be targeted to remain as effective as possible. How will the Government monitor, track and publish progress against the FCDO’s six refreshed priorities? For example, on women and girls, which I am pleased to see is one of the six priorities, what discretion will heads of missions have, and how will the Government ensure effectiveness in these areas of bilateral spend?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
What we are doing to make this better—I appreciate that there is less money—is to give three years’ worth of certainty to our posts. We are also requiring them, rather than submitting for approval programme by programme, to do that as a portfolio, so that we can see how everything fits together. Posts are experts, they are there in country, and we pay them to know what they are doing. They can do an analysis of what they think the best approaches are for that particular place, and we are enabling them to do that with the three years’ worth of certainty that they now have.
Lord Fowler (CB)
My Lords, HIV/AIDS may have gone off the front pages here in Britain, rightly or wrongly, but what is beyond doubt is that it remains a serious scourge in many countries overseas. How do our overseas assistance programmes, current and future, measure up to that specific and very serious challenge?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
It is absolutely a serious challenge. While we see medical advances that enable us to make progress, we see problems emerge in other areas. We see prevalence among young girls, in particular, increasing to a worrying extent. This is one of the reasons that we decided to maintain a very strong commitment to the Global Fund, which as noble Lords will know, fights three diseases, one of which is HIV. We work closely with the Global Fund and our country partners in order to keep going on this battle, which we are making progress with, but there is still an awful lot more to do.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon (Con)
My Lords, I appreciate the challenge the Minister is facing with the cuts, and I agree with my noble friend about the protection of certain ring-fenced things, including the priority on the WPS agenda. Will the Minister leverage that more extensively, working together with colleagues in the Ministry of Defence? I seek her reassurance that 12 years of quality education for every girl in the world and of course—this is personal for me—preventing sexual violence in conflict remain key priorities for the Government.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I think that is right. I think we need to work more closely with our colleagues in the MoD because there is clearly a high degree of complementarity between our development investments and the work that we need to do to keep our country safe in the field of defence. On quality education, it is one of the next challenges that the world needs to lean into. We have made improvements in getting children into school, and there is a protective quality to that, but what they are coming out with, the skills and the education that they are attaining during that period in school, is not good enough. We need to address that globally so that it is good quality as well as getting attendance up.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, I declare an interest as an adviser to the aid and development contractor DAI. I am hosting an event in Parliament this evening looking at new and innovative ways to support humanitarian action as traditional funding streams shrink. I am delighted that the Minister has agreed to attend. In that spirit, will she say what progress has been made to use UK trade, investment, philanthropy, the private sector and other routes to deliver real poverty reduction benefits in developing countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, either alongside remaining aid programmes or as an alternative?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I very much welcome the question from the noble Lord. He will be aware that we had a Global Partnerships Conference just a few weeks ago addressing specifically that problem. I think it is understood now, if it was not before, that with all the aid spending that there has ever been, we would still be falling far short of our ambitions and the ambitions of our partner countries to achieve the sustainable development goals. We do have to work better together, and we do have to leverage, as the noble Lord said, and we do have to grow economies and enable partners to lead their own development, because that is not just the right thing to do in terms of making the money go further, but it is the right way to be a good partner for the long term too.
Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her answers so far and confirm that I am pleased that the Government will introduce individual country allocations for ODA assistance. One of the main challenges for that assistance will be Ebola, particularly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda. Will the Minister ensure that local actors, especially churches, faith leaders and faith actors who are best placed to respond, are adequately empowered through funding and decision-making as part of that response to help those who are deeply afflicted at the moment?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I think that is a shrewd observation. I recently returned from DRC, and I understand completely the point my noble friend makes. There is very little trust among the community in that part of the world. Particularly, they do not trust military actors, and some of the usual mechanisms you might use to intervene in that kind of context are not advisable in this one. Faith leaders and other community leaders are central to being able to make any progress against this dreadful disease.
Lord Callanan (Con)
My Lords, more than 100 UNRWA staff are now suspected of having links with Hamas, with many being suspected of being actively involved in the appalling 7 October attacks; 70 employees have been dismissed following these accusations. The UK pays tens of millions of pounds to UNRWA through ODA. Can the noble Baroness say whether Ministers have considered suspending that funding, as we did in government, given the recent revelations about UNRWA staff?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Given that UNRWA is the only agency that can really deliver what is needed at scale in what has become an incredibly challenging and militarised context, it is important that we maintain our funding of UNRWA, and we reinstated it when we came into power. I think that was the right decision and I stand by it. When there are issues and problems of the nature that the noble Lord outlines, the right thing for us to do is to make sure that they are dealt with. UNRWA has done so on occasions in the past. There have been reports and they have been acted on. It is our job to maintain that higher standard and those requirements of UNRWA.
Baroness D'Souza (CB)
My Lords, I understand that the FCDO sent a delegation to Afghanistan in recent weeks, and I wonder whether the Minister might be able to say something about the outcome of that visit, with particular reference to continuing assistance for women and girls.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
Noble Lords do not need me to tell them just what a difficult context this is. Since the return of the Taliban, the prospects for women and girls have diminished greatly. We work closely with our partners, we still fund programmes in Afghanistan and we will continue to do so.
Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Con)
My Lords, while I am delighted that the Government are still prioritising women and girls, how are they going to ensure that this priority remains through the multilateral grants?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I think it is impossible to do development without prioritising women and girls, and almost everything we do benefits disproportionately—and quite rightly—women and girls. It is one of the reasons why we prioritise health, because most of that does go to support women in particular. We use our voice very strongly and increasingly strongly on the boards of multilateral institutions. I speak regularly with the presidents of the World Bank and the African Development Bank, and our engagement with the UN never fails to articulate strong support for women and girls, particularly at this time when, globally, it is becoming more and more contested.
Baroness Deech (CB)
My Lords, the Government are generously funding the Palestinian Authority. Despite assurances, it is very reliably reported that they are still shipping the money to terrorists who are in prison under their “pay for slay” policy. I suggest that the Government are being deceived over this.
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
I hear the noble Baroness’s suggestion and I disagree with it.
Lord Grayling (Con)
My Lords, on biodiversity aid—and I declare an interest as a trustee of the African Wildlife Foundation—both the United States and France are establishing new-type foundations, which are partnerships between public money and private donations, to increase the amounts of money going into biodiversity-support projects because of the pressures on aid generally. Will the United Kingdom Government consider engaging with those who are doing this in the US and France with a view to doing the same thing here?
Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)
We have been doing this for quite a long time. I do not know specifically the programmes that the noble Lord is talking about, or the funds that he is talking about, but his suggestion is very much in line with the approach that we are taking, whether that is on water and sanitation, humanitarian interventions, infrastructure support or governance improvements. This is the right approach. It is about leveraging support and enabling new participants who really want to work to have a social impact, and to be able to do so alongside Governments so that we really work together and get the absolute maximum benefit out of every penny that is invested for our partner countries.