Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of the Blue Planet Fund on levels of global poverty.

The strategic goal of the new UK International Development White Paper [https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/international-development-in-a-contested-world-ending-extreme-poverty-and-tackling-climate-change] is to end extreme poverty and tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. Poverty reduction is at the heart of all ODA spend, as such, all Blue Planet Fund (BPF) programmes factor poverty reduction into their design and implementation. We produce and publish annual reviews for all BPF programmes assessing their performance. Alongside Defra, who are the HMG strategic lead for the BPF, we will use the recent ICAI recommendations to strengthen the BPF programme portfolio's coherence, effectiveness, and relevance, including its poverty impacts at portfolio and individual programme level.