Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what programmes her Department has in place to facilitate access to wells and water in developing countries.

In 2012 the UK Government set a target of reaching 60 million people in the developing world with one or more water, sanitation or hygiene (WASH) interventions by the end of 2015. The Department for International Development (DFID) delivered a range of WASH programmes in 19 countries through its network of country offices. In addition DFID ran 2 regional programmes and 4 centrally managed programmes from DFID HQ.

The target was achieved 9 months early in April 2015.

More detailed information on individual WASH programmes that contributed to meeting this target is available through the development tracker function https://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/sector/3 on the DFID website.

We are currently formulating our new portfolio to deliver on the UK government’s commitment to help a further 60 million people get access to clean water and sanitation by 2020.