Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of British development aid is used to help poor countries establish secure titles to property and efficient registers of land ownership.

Improving land governance and poor people’s tenure security is an important priority of the UK Government’s work on agriculture and economic development.

Approximately 0.05% (£5.6 million) of UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2014 and 0.1% (£12.5 million) in 2015 was used to support standalone programmes to establish secure titles to land and support land administration systems. This represents only a proportion of total UK funding to support poor people’s land tenure security as it (a) does not include land titling activities that are a component of other programmes or (b) other activities that underpin property rights, such as improving land governance policy or promoting responsible agricultural investment. There is no globally agreed ODA spending code for land tenure programmes so compiling further details is difficult at present.