Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, with reference to the Written Statement of 21 April 2021 on FCDO update, Official Report HCWS935, how much Official Development Assistance his Department allocated to India to aid its covid-19 response in (a) 2020-21 and (b) 2021-22.

We stand side by side with India as a friend and partner during what is a deeply concerning time in the fight against COVID-19. The UK is working closely with the Government of India to identify what support we can provide in the coming days, based on their most pressing needs. The UK was the first country to deliver life-saving medical equipment to India. The first shipment of equipment, including ventilators and oxygen concentrators from surplus stock, left the UK on Sunday 25 April 2021, and successfully arrived in New Delhi in the early hours of Tuesday morning.

As the Foreign Secretary set out in his Written Ministerial Statement on 21 April, global health security and responding to the COVID-19 crisis remains a priority for UK Aid. Following a thorough review, the FCDO's aid budget has been allocated in accordance with UK strategic priorities against a challenging financial climate of COVID. We are now working through what this means for individual programmes, in line with UK strategic priorities. The Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget for India, along with the final and audited spend for 2020/21, will be published in due course through the Statistics on International Development website and the FCDO annual report.