Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how overseas aid intended to alleviate climate change in Malawi is spent.
Answered by Hamish Falconer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
UK bilateral aid to Malawi in Financial Year 2024/25 was £49 million, of which £11.6 million was invested in alleviating climate change, including through responding to humanitarian disasters, funding policy research and contributing to seasonal humanitarian appeals. The UK's flagship Building Resilience and Adapting to Climate Change (BRACC) programme supported UN agencies to build the resilience to climate shocks of poor households through improving agricultural productivity. Since the programme began in 2018, over 1.75 million people have been supported to cope with the effects of climate change, particularly droughts and floods, and a further 1.46 million people were assisted during humanitarian crises by cash transfers.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much and what proportion of the overseas aid budget is delivered in the form of direct (a) cash and (b) bank payments to individuals.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has supported cash transfers within its humanitarian and social protection systems work for a number of years because they are a well-evidenced mechanism for reducing extreme hunger and poverty at scale, building resilience to prevent crises, and meeting the lifesaving humanitarian needs of highly vulnerable people, e.g. during droughts and conflict.
In 2023, £881 million of bilateral UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) was spent on humanitarian aid, a proportion of which was cash payments. In the same year, £129 million (1.3 per cent of bilateral UK ODA) was spent on social protection, including but not only cash transfers.
Cash transfers are increasingly being delivered through electronic payment systems, reducing the administrative cost and making them more secure. The delivery modality varies by context - the FCDO does not collect aggregated data on these modalities for direct cash payments.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, when his Department first discussed the matter of Mauritius exercising full sovereignty over the Chagos Islands with (a) his international counterparts and (b) the Government of Mauritius.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
As the then Foreign Secretary's statement of 3 November 2022 describes, negotiations between the UK Government and the Government of the Republic of Mauritius on the exercise of sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago were started by the previous Conservative government in November 2022. It was the Conservative government which made the key concession of offering to give up sovereignty, from which there was no coming back. Please see the written statement published on Thursday 3 November 2022: [https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-11-03/debates/22110340000007/ChagosArchipelago]
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how much and what proportion of overseas aid is distributed via GiveDirectly.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office has recently worked on two Give Directly projects, the first to build climate resilience in Malawi, and the second for humanitarian support to majority Sudanese refugees in Uganda.
The Minister for International Development confirmed at the International Development Select Committee on 3 June that our funding for GiveDirectly in Malawi is paused.
The latest figure for 2024 expenditure is £1.96 million in Malawi and £1.85 million in Uganda, totalling £3.81 million. Details of programmes, including disbursements, are available on DevTracker. Based on published provisional total Official Development Assistance (ODA) figures for 2024, these disbursements represent 0.027 per cent of the total 2024 UK ODA expenditure of £14.066 billion.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he is taking to increase the number of apprenticeship starts in his Department.
Answered by Catherine West - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
We remain committed to supporting the use of apprenticeships across all Government Departments to break down barriers to opportunity. This includes supporting the Government's commitment to 2,000 digital apprenticeships through its TechTrack scheme by 2030 to improve digital skills and drive improvements and efficiency in public services.
Additionally, a new cross-Government Level 3 apprenticeship programme in Business Administration, the 'Civil Service Career Launch Apprenticeship' (CLA), will see new apprentices kickstart their careers, across various departments, starting from January 2026.
Moreover, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office are working on aligning our apprenticeship approach with our capability framework. For example, we are exploring new apprenticeship opportunities to scale our approach and build internal capability on Data and AI.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he is taking to protect Christians from persecution in (a) Rwanda and (b) the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Answered by Hamish Falconer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Protection of civilians, promotion of respect between different religious and non-religious groups, and human rights are priorities for the UK. The UK continues to work through UN bodies and other multilateral fora to promote and protect these rights. Recent attacks by IS-affiliated Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) on Christian communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) are alarming and we are deeply saddened by the loss of life. Ministers and senior officials including our Ambassador in Kinshasa regularly raise the importance of civilian protection with the Government of DRC. The UK continues to remind all parties of their obligations under international humanitarian law and make clear that all those who have committed human rights violations and abuses must be held accountable.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department has banned the use of DeepSeek.
Answered by Catherine West - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Government has a robust set of security policies in place to oversee how information is handled, within our buildings, on our IT, and by our staff. We keep these policies under constant review to ensure they are applicable to new technologies. The AI Playbook for the UK Government outlines that only corporately assured Generative AI tools should be used to process HMG information. Everyone who works in Government has a duty of confidentiality and a responsibility to safeguard any government information or data that they process, access or share, and all government departments are required to meet a range of mandatory security standards.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what proportion of food procured by his Department is sourced in the UK.
Answered by Catherine West - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
To date the Government has not held information on where publicly procured food is sourced from. Starting right away, for the first time ever, this government will review the food currently bought in the public sector to determine the standards that it is meeting, where it is bought from and look to introduce monitoring for transparency and accountability within those supply chains to ultimately get the best food for the consumer.
This work will be a significant first step to inform any future changes to public sector food procurement policies as we want to help make it an equal playing field for British producers to bid into the £5 billion spent each year on public sector catering contracts.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what estimate he has made of the (a) amount and (b) proportion of the overseas aid budget that will be spent in the UK in each of the next three years.
Answered by Stephen Doughty - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The Home Secretary is committed to ensuring that asylum costs fall and has already acted. The Government has taken measures to reduce the asylum backlog, reform the asylum accommodation system to end the use of expensive accommodation in the next Spending Review period and increase detention capacity to facilitate more asylum removals.
Whilst there will always be volatility in asylum forecasts, we expect these decisions to drive down overall in-donor refugee costs over the next Spending Review and the Home Office are well incentivised to deliver this.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, how many officials from his Department attended the World Economic Forum 2025.
Answered by Catherine West - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
No Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office officials attended the 2025 World Economic Forum as delegates. The Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization, United Nations and other International Organisations attended to accompany Ministers and members of his team based in Geneva provided support to the HMG delegation.