Baroness Sugg

The UK remains steadfast in its commitment to supporting women and girls around the world and countering the rollback of their hard-won rights and freedoms. We will continue to be a champion for women and girls across the world by showing up and making our voice heard, including though our influence at the UN and other multilateral organisations and through the work of Baroness Harman as UK Special Envoy for Women and Girls. We will stand in solidarity with women's rights organisations who are on the frontline of tackling rollback, including by driving innovation to generate sustainable funding flows for women's rights. We remain committed to promoting comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), including safe abortion, in the face of global rollback.

The UK Government strongly values the work of grassroots organisations in improving access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) in their communities and countries, especially in the context of growing international pushback on women and girls' rights. On World AIDS Day in December 2024, the Prime Minister announced the Grassroots and Counter Rollback Programme. This programme will strengthen local and national civil society organisations, movements and their networks. This will support SRHR in their own communities and countries, and build efforts in the front line facing intensified international pushback against SRHR. It will focus on neglected issues, such as safe abortion, and marginalised groups, whose rights and access to services are often denied or curtailed.

The UK is proud to defend and promote universal and comprehensive Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). Official Development Assistance (ODA) is one of multiple levers to achieve this. Over the coming months, we will work through how the ODA budget will be used in future years, informed by internal and external consultation and consideration of equalities impact assessments ahead of making decisions on budgets for individual programmes in the autumn.

The transition to spending 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income on Official Development Assistance requires significant shifts in the shape and scale of the work we do. However, we will continue to work with international and national partners and use targeted funding, technical partnership and diplomatic engagement to provide leadership on SRHR.

The Government is determined to see the proceeds from the sale of Chelsea Football Club reach humanitarian causes in Ukraine, following Russia's illegal full-scale invasion.

We are deeply frustrated that it has not been possible to reach agreement on this with Mr Abramovich so far.

While the door for negotiations will remain open, we are fully prepared to pursue this matter through the courts if required, to ensure people suffering in Ukraine receive the benefit from these proceeds as soon as possible.

The UK is proud to support universal and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for all. This includes support to address the additional barriers faced by adolescents and young people to ensure they can access the information, services and advice they need. The UK works in partnership with governments, civil society and community groups to do so. For example, in December 2024 the Prime Minister announced the Grassroots and Counter Rollback programme which aims to strengthen civil society organisations and movements to counter misinformation and expand access to SRHR.

The UK continues to provide strong political leadership in multilateral fora. We work to protect and progress language relating to adolescents' SRHR, including comprehensive sexuality education and family planning education. Meaningful engagement of young people is also a priority, and this year we will again include a young person as part of the UK delegation to the United Nations Commission on Population and Development.

Ensuring that 'honour'-based abuse (HBA) is well understood by frontline professionals, Government agencies, and impacted communities, is essential to preventing abuse, supporting victims and bringing perpetrators to justice.

Currently there is a definition of HBA used by the Criminal Justice System, but we recognise there is more that can be done to raise the level of consistency of understanding regarding HBA in Government and beyond and we are aware of the proposals for a statutory definition of HBA.

On 6 February 2025, the Minister for Safeguarding and Violence Against Women and Girls hosted a roundtable on HBA which was attended by multiple Government departments and specialist sector organisations, including Karma Nirvana. The question of what a statutory definition could look like was discussed at length. Home Office officials are working through the next steps following that discussion.