Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to accelerate the rate of progress toward the Family Planning 2020 goal of enabling an additional 120 million women and girls in the world’s poorest countries to use modern methods of family planning by 2020.

The UK Government is determined to improve sexual and reproductive health and rights, including access to modern family planning methods. We were instrumental in ensuring the Sustainable Development Goals included two targets covering universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights and we are encouraging other countries to increase their commitments. Our investments in family planning aim to reach 24 million additional women and girls by 2020 and we are on track to meet this. In 2014, the most recent year for which figures are available, UK spending on family planning was £203 million, exceeding our 2012 London Summit commitment to double our yearly spend in this area.

We are currently developing our plans to 2020. As well as a large commitment to the United Nations Population Fund Supplies Programme (£356m until 2020), DFID also supports the Family Planning 2020 Secretariat, work on shaping reproductive health markets through the Clinton Health Access Initiative, and the Reproductive Health Supplies Coalition.