Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much Official Development Assistance has been allocated to projects related to (a) poverty reduction and (b) ending violence against women and girls in each of the last four years.

(a) It is not possible to identify all UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) allocated to projects related to poverty reduction from information FCDO holds. Expenditure on development assistance (as defined in the International Development Act 2002) requires Ministers to be satisfied that the assistance is likely to contribute to a reduction in poverty. There is no express requirement for consideration of a reduction in poverty for expenditure on humanitarian assistance, though in many cases humanitarian assistance may also contribute to poverty reduction.

Table 1 sets out total FCDO ODA spend and the amount spent on humanitarian assistance from 2019 - 2022. This is likely to be an underestimate of all UK ODA allocated to projects related to poverty reduction as it doesn't include any relevant ODA spend by other government departments.

(b)

Ending violence against women and girls overseas remains a top priority for the Government. Table 2 shows UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) spend on tackling violence against women and girls. This is likely to be an underestimate as some humanitarian and other sectoral programmes also work to prevent and respond to violence but are not captured in these figures.

Table 2: UK ODA to Sector Code 15180: Ending violence against women and girls, 2019 - 2022 (£ thousands)