Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment he has made of the impact of the reduction in the UK's Official Development Assistance budget on programmes aimed at reducing extreme poverty; and what plans he has to restore Official Development Assistance spending to 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income.

Reducing the overall size of the UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget will necessarily have an impact on the scale and shape of the work we do to reduce extreme poverty. While it is not possible to mitigate all negative impacts of reductions, equalities impact assessments informed decision-making and ensured that allocations across multilateral programmes and central programme spending do not cause disproportionate negative equalities impacts. The Government remains committed to returning to spending 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income on ODA when the fiscal circumstances allow.