Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of resetting the UK's official overseas aid budget at pre-covid-19 levels.

The difficult decision to temporarily reduce Official Development Assistance spend from 0.7% of Gross National Income to 0.5%, was a necessary response to the economic impacts of the COVID19 pandemic. The UK economy faced the worst economic contraction in over 300 years. In 2020-21 our borrowing was the highest it has been outside of wartime. We will return to 0.7% when the UK's fiscal situation allows; when on a sustainable basis we are not borrowing to support day-to-day spending and when underlying debt is falling.