Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what plans he has to require countries in receipt of Official Development Assistance for the health sector to commit five per cent of their GDP to spending on that sector.

If we are to meet the ambition of Sustainable Development Goal 3 and ensure no-one is left behind, countries need to invest more public resources in health. The UK strongly supports the commitments in the United Nations Political Declaration on Universal Health Coverage. This calls on countries to increase public spending, with an emphasis on primary health care, noting World Health Organisation recommendations of an additional 1% of GDP or more. We provide technical assistance to countries as part of our health system strengthening programmes through our country offices and through funding to the World Health Organisation. The UK will step up our efforts to end preventable deaths of mothers, new-born babies and children in the developing world by 2030. This will include boosting our support for developing countries to make progress towards universal health coverage, focusing on ensuring sexual and reproductive health and rights and helping the most vulnerable women such as survivors of female genital mutilation, and working with our global partners to deliver Gavi’s new strategy that will vaccinate a further 300 million children in the world’s poorest countries by 2025.