Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what proportion of her Department's budget has been spent on programmes designed to strengthen tax systems in the developing world in each of the last five years.

We do not currently record tax programmes under a separate spend code but we have been expanding our work on tax and transparency over the Parliament. This includes the establishment of a specialist Developing Country Capacity Building Unit in HMRC, to deploy HMRC staff to provide technical expertise in support of these efforts.

Statistics on Overseas Development Assistance are published by calendar year in line with international best practice. Information on country of spend is available from the National Statistics publication ‘Statistics on International Development’ https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statistics-on-international-development-2014 . Information on spend by specific project is available from the Development Tracker http://devtracker.dfid.gov.uk/