International Development Outcomes for Women and Girls

Baroness Goudie Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Goudie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my friend the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, for arranging this debate today. I also thank Concern Worldwide, Planned Parenthood, CAFOD, Action Aid and many other organisations which were kind enough to get in touch with me, as with others, about this debate.

The scale of the reduction in official development assistance that we debate here is significant and will drop to the lowest share since 1999. Most of our overseas gender focus will be affected if sitting within our bilateral programmes, which are being reduced significantly by 37%. The Government’s own equalities impact assessment recognises that this will fall disproportionately on programmes supporting equality for women and girls. I make no apology for talking about women and girls; they are the future of the world, not just here but everywhere.

Regarding women, peace and security, an area which I have worked on for many years and will continue to do so as an adviser to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security, I welcome the Government’s decision to protect central funding for the WPS agenda, and for preventing sexual violence in conflict, at 2025-26 levels. However, I note that a planned increase to the women, peace and security programme has itself been cut by 25%, at a time when the Commons International Development Committee has found that:

“The Government’s commitment to … the WPS National Action Plan … appears to be waning”.


Producing a budget at last year’s level, while welcome in the current climate, is not the same as the funding on it. I hope the Minister will confirm that this is a momentary pause.

I also hope that when we are leading the G20, we will continue at its meetings to be powerful on the importance of women being at the peace table, when we can ensure that this will happen. At present, that is not happening anywhere around the world, and we have to take that leadership.

I remind the Committee that these numbers are not hypothetical and have real-world impacts on women and girls around the world. The women’s integrated sexual health programme was described by the Government as “relatively protected”, yet its delivery partner, International Planned Parenthood Federation, now faces a 22% funding reduction for a programme that has helped to avert more than 1,000 maternal deaths. IPPF’s projection is that a cut of this size will put the lives of mothers and babies at risk. I hope that the Minister will say more about how the Government intend to prevent this pattern being repeated elsewhere.

I welcome the commitment that 90% of the FCDO’s bilateral programmes will contribute to gender equality by 2023. As the new communities of expertise model is developed, I hope that women’s rights organisations, particularly those with direct experience in fragile and conflict-affected states, will be consulted as full partners, as we know that the inclusion of local women at every stage of the consulting process leads to a better outcome all round in their society.