Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bates on 25 September (HL 1590), whether the OECD's Development Assistance Committee has legally binding rules or only recommendations which no country is obliged to follow.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee, of which the UK is a member, sets the rules that determine what aid counts as Official Development Assistance (ODA). Only spending that complies with these rules is recognised as counting towards the United Nations’ 0.7% of gross national income target for ODA to which the UK is committed. That commitment is enshrined in the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015.