Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what plans her Department has to collect data on the transaction costs incurred by her Department’s reporting requirements for UN humanitarian agencies.

The UK will continue to be a good humanitarian donor who lives up to its Grand Bargain commitments. We provide 30% of our humanitarian funding as core or unearmarked funds. The Grand Bargain workstream on reducing earmarking noted that this flexible funding can reduce grant management transaction costs, amongst other benefits.

We do not plan to undertake an analysis of the transaction costs of our reporting requirements. Collecting data on transaction costs across all of our humanitarian funding would be extremely resource intensive and the results would vary considerably, reflecting the specific context, access constraints and the volume of funding we are providing. However, DFID retains a dialogue with UN partners, where issues of this nature can be raised.