Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the answer of 14 July 2015 to Question 6473 and with reference to Tables 2.5 and 2.3 in the March and Summer Budget books, why there is a £1 billion reduction in the Department for International Development's Resource Department's Expenditure Limit.

The Government remains committed to spending 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) on official development assistance (ODA). The planned resource DEL expenditure for the Department for International Development (DFID) has decreased between March and Summer Budget by approximately £1bn because every year at Main Estimates in July DFID transfers ODA funding to other government departments to help meet the government’s overall international development objectives. This is purely a timing issue. The decrease in DFID’s resource budget for 2015/16 is reflected as increases to other government department’s resource budgets and the total planned DEL spend in 2015/16 across Government on ODA did not change between March and Summer budgets.