Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, how much his Department plans to spend promoting democracy abroad in 2016; which organisations have received such funding since 7 May 2015; and how much such funding each of those organisations have received.

This Government is firmly committed to supporting democratic values and the rule of law. Since the start of this Parliament, the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) has supported many projects and organisations promoting democracy and will continue to do so up to 2020. In addition to the FCO’s longstanding sponsorship of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, to which we allocated £3.5m this financial year, in September 2015 the FCO launched a new fund called the Magna Carta Partnerships, to assist democracies in crisis or transition. This fund is worth £100,000 in this financial year. The FCO also continues to support democracy work overseas through its Human Rights and Democracy Programme (HRDP), an annual fund which has a budget of £5.5 million in this financial year. In addition to these dedicated funds, the FCO uses a range of other bilateral and programme funds across its global network to promote democratic values, and works to strengthen democratic values through our relationship with institutions such as the European Union, the United Nations, the Council of Europe, the Commonwealth and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

The total cost of these various democracy strengthening activities, and lists of beneficiaries, is not held centrally and could only be collected at disproportionate cost in the time available.