Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made of impact of cancelling rounds six, seven and eight of the Small Charities Challenge Fund on employment (a) in the UK and (b) overseas.

The UK is facing the worst economic contraction in over 300 years, and a budget deficit of close to £400 billion. As announced last year, given the impact of this global pandemic on the economy and, as a result, the public finances, we will move to a target of spending 0.5% of GNI as ODA in 2021. This was a difficult – but temporary – decision.

FCDO will now working through what this means for individual programmes, in line with the priorities we have identified.