Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of using forecasts of Gross National Income to determine future levels of official development assistance on actual future levels of official development assistance.

Official Development Assistance (ODA) budgets from 2025/26 onwards are set in cash terms based on Gross National Income (GNI) forecasts. This change means that the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office's ODA budgets will no longer be exposed to the volatility of ODA spending by other departments, including asylum costs.

As the Minister of State for International Development set out in her 27 March letter to the International Development Committee, this is a significant and positive change to the way the FCDO manages its ODA budget, increasing the predictability of our budgets and allowing us to plan with more certainty.