Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what discussions she has had with her international counterparts on planned funding levels for a humanitarian response in Yemen.
Answered by James Cleverly - Home Secretary
As reported by the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Mark Lowcock, in his UN Security Council briefing of Monday 16 April, UN agencies estimate that they need more than $900 million to enable them to continue their operations in Yemen until July.
On Thursday 23 April, DFID’s acting Permanent Secretary discussed ways of improving humanitarian funding levels in Yemen with Mark Lowcock.
The Secretary of State also discussed Yemen funding with the Executive Director of the World Food Programme on Friday 17 April and UK officials remain in close contact with other major donors such as Saudi Arabia, the US and Germany.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to support women and girls as part of its response to covid-19.
Answered by Wendy Morton
There must be an explicit and visible consideration of, and support to, women and girls across DFID’s response to COVID-19. DFID has committed an additional £10 million to the United Nation’s Population Fund COVID-19 response to strengthen health systems to deliver sexual and reproductive health and gender-based violence services, support supply chains for lifesaving commodities and deliver community engagement activities. We also recently committed £20 million to the UN Children’s Fund to help keep children in developing countries safe and learning throughout the crisis. DFID has also launched a call for proposals under our Rapid Response Facility, which required all projects to mainstream gender, protection and safeguarding.
DFID is flexing existing programmes to ensure we can better respond to the specific impacts women and girls are facing as a result of COVID-19. For example, the Women's Integrated Sexual Health (WISH) programme is our flagship women’s sexual and reproductive health programme and provides lifesaving services to women in 27 countries around the world. WISH is finding innovative ways to keep delivering desperately-needed services and supplies during this pandemic, while also supporting efforts to stop the spread of the disease.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what her Department’s policy is on the Gavi replenishment period and strategy review.
Answered by Wendy Morton
As Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance’s largest donor, the UK fully supports the Gavi 5.0 strategy for 2021-2015 to ‘leave no one behind with immunisation’. The UK has committed £1.65 billion, the equivalent of £330 million per year, to support Gavi’s goal to immunise a further 300 million children and save up to 8 million lives.
The UK is hosting the Global Vaccine Summit on 4 June, which will bring countries together to raise the funds required to save millions of lives. The Gavi replenishment period is vital to raise at least $7.4 billion to fund Gavi’s investment case for its next five years of work (2021-2025).
Gavi’s strategy for the next five years was approved by the Gavi Board in June 2019, with a focus on equity and increasing vaccination coverage to unreached and under-immunised children. Gavi is adapting its strategy to support countries’ responses to the impacts of COVID-19 on routine immunisation.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what level of funding she plans to allocate to the replenishment of Gavi, the Vaccines Alliance.
Answered by Wendy Morton
The Secretary of State announced the UK’s support to Gavi in Parliament on Wednesday 29 April. Our pledge of £1.65 billion to Gavi over the next five years. will immunise up to 75 million children against vaccine preventable diseases, strengthen health systems, build resilience against coronavirus and other diseases and support global access to any future coronavirus vaccine.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that user fees are not a barrier to the treatment of covid-19 in developing countries.
Answered by Wendy Morton
I refer my honourable friend to the answer to question 39671, on 1 May.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that services to help prevent maternal, new-born and child deaths that may be under pressure as a result of covid-19 are protected.
Answered by Wendy Morton
The UK government’s commitment to end the preventable deaths of mothers, new-born babies and children by 2030 is more essential now than ever given the COVID-19 outbreak. DFID is stepping up efforts to ensure sexual, reproductive, maternal and new-born health services continue to be prioritised in our response to the pandemic, to stop mothers and babies dying unnecessarily.
Globally we are working with agencies such as the World Health Organisation, UNFPA, the Partnership for Maternal New-born and Child Health and the Global Financing Facility (GFF) to support governments to maintain health systems in affected countries, provide technical guidance and advocate for sustained reproductive, maternal, new-born and child health services. This may include filling essential supply chain gaps and supporting frontline health workers. The UK supported the GFF Investors Group press release last week that called for strong, collective action to avoid a potential secondary health crisis from disruptions in health services from COVID-19.
The UK has committed £1.65 billion, the equivalent of £330 million per year, to support Gavi’s goal to immunise a further 300 million children and save up to 8 million lives. The UK is hosting the Global Vaccine Summit on 4 June, which will bring countries together to raise the funds required to save millions. The Gavi replenishment period is vital to raise at least $7.4 billion to fund Gavi’s investment case for its next five years of work (2021-2025).
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure that humanitarian (a) access and (b) principles are protected in the global covid-19 response.
Answered by James Cleverly - Home Secretary
To date, the UK has committed £744 million of UK Aid to support global efforts to combat COVID-19. We are working with all our international partners to ensure aid is effectively distributed to vulnerable countries.
The UK is a key contributor to the UN’s Global Humanitarian Response Plan (GHRP), which focuses on humanitarian access, through securing the continuity of the supply chains for essential commodities and services, and supporting the most vulnerable, including protecting and assisting refugees, Internally Displaced Peoples, migrants and host communities.
We are co-leading work with Italy through the G7 to strengthen the resilience of vulnerable countries. A large part of this work is to ensure unhindered humanitarian access for vulnerable populations, and to make sure the global response is prioritising the most in need.
We are also using diplomatic channels to ensure that international humanitarian law and global commitments regarding the rights and protection of refugees and access to asylum are upheld in this crisis.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to support countries with weak health systems to ensure they have the resilience to respond to the covid-19 pandemic and maintain pre-existing health priorities.
Answered by Wendy Morton
The UK has, so far, pledged £744 million of UK aid to help end the COVID-19 pandemic as quickly as possible. This includes a package of £200 million to support UK charities and international organisations to help prevent infections and mitigate the impact of COVID-19 in developing countries, including maintaining essential health services.
DFID recognises strong and resilient health systems are vital to national and global health security and helping to protect the world from health threats, including COVID-19, and to maintaining the delivery of essential health services.
Through our multilateral partnerships, and our regional and national programmes, we support developing countries to make their health systems stronger and more resilient, and prepared to detect, prevent and respond to health threats, such as COVID-19.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how many projects and at what cost to the public purse have been assessed by (a) her and (b) her Chief Statistician as not meeting the definition of Official Development Assistance in each of the last five years.
Answered by Wendy Morton
Spend reported as Official Development Assistance (ODA) must meet the criteria set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). DFID receives a small non-ODA allocation from HMT for the known areas of spend we have that fall outside of the scope of ODA.
DFID collates and checks UK ODA spend data in reporting to the OECD DAC and in our National Statistics publication ‘Statistics on International Development’. The DAC Secretariat quality assures donors’ ODA spend to ensure that it is reported correctly and qualifies under the ODA rules.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how much funding his Department has allocated to the UK-Africa Investment Summit; and whether that funding was classified as Overseas Development Assistance.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As with all such Government events, the full costing will be available in due course. 2020 UK ODA spend, including for this Summit, will be reported in Statistics on International Development, published by DFID in Autumn 2021.