Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of increasing (a) Official Development Assistance to Malawi, (b) funding for programmes to build climate change resilience and (c) Official Development Assistance to 0.7 per cent of GDP.

The FCDO's Official Development Assistance (ODA) allocations are set out in my [Andrew Mitchell] Written Ministerial Statement of 30 March. We plan to publish full breakdowns of the allocations, including by country, in the FCDO Annual Report and Accounts 2022 to 2023. Allocations are regularly reviewed to respond to changing global needs to ensure ODA is being used most effectively.

We remain committed to doubling our International Climate Finance to £11.6 billion between 2021/22 and 2025/26 and to balancing our funding between mitigation and adaptation. This will include programmes that seek to build the resilience of those most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

The Government is committed to returning to spending to 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI) on ODA as soon as the fiscal situation allows. We will return to spending 0.7 per cent of GNI on ODA when, on a sustainable basis, the government is no longer borrowing for day-to-day spending and when underlying debt is falling.