Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon on 10 June (HL596), whether they will now answer the question put, namely, what assessment they have made of the report by Uniting to Combat Neglected Tropical Diseases Our open letter on the UK cuts: A tragic blow for 'global Britain' and the world's most vulnerable people, published on 29 April; and in particular its findings that most of the 770 million medicines donated by pharmaceutical companies will not be delivered because of cuts in Overseas Development Assistance.

The FCDO is currently working with implementing partners, drug companies, donors, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to exit the programme Accelerating the Sustainable Control and Elimination of Neglected Tropical Diseases (ASCEND), as responsibly as possible within financial constraints. We are continuing to distribute medicines in the most urgent cases, and as these are ongoing, it is not possible to assess the impact on the number of donated medicines distributed.

The latest target for the total number of treatments to be delivered by the ASCEND programme between 2019 and 2022 was 600 million. Hundreds of millions of treatments have been distributed to date under this programme, the full results of which will be published by early 2022.