Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a child marker scheme to track the money that her Department spends on interventions targeted at children; and if she will make a statement.

DFID provides significant support to children in both development and humanitarian contexts through programming across a range of sectors including child protection, social protection, education, nutrition, health and economic development.

The introduction of new markers in the Official Development Assistance (ODA) system is agreed by consensus of all members of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC). Currently the OECD DAC has paused the introduction of new markers to carry out a review of the marker system with a view to aligning ODA closer to the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals. We will await the outcome of this review before further considering an appropriate method to track this issue.