Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether his Department is planning to provide additional support to the (a) India, (b) Nepal, (c) Sri Lanka and (d) Afghanistan to assist with their response to the covid-19 pandemic.

The UK is leading the international response to COVID-19. We have made available new public commitments worth up to £1.3 billion of ODA to counter the health, economic, and humanitarian impacts of COVID-19 and to support the global effort to distribute vaccines equitably.

In India, there is significant UK-India scientific and medical collaboration underway with our Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific advisor regularly meeting their Indian counterparts to share advice, insight and expertise. We have also recently launched the 'UK-India Clinician Knowledge Exchange' which brings together clinicians from the UK and India to enable mutual sharing of best practices.

For Nepal, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and previous support to India, I refer the Honourable Member to my answers of 7 June to PQ 7832, 1 June to PQ 5187 and 5185 and 20 May to PQ 2477.