Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how many staff of his Department who previously focused on climate change have moved to a role to plan for the UK leaving without a deal since July 2019.

DFID is fully supporting the Government’s preparations to ensure that the UK leaves the EU on 31 October. At the same time, as the Prime Minister made clear at the recent G7 Leaders meeting, the UK is strongly committed to tackling the two immense threats of climate change and biodiversity loss. Putting climate change and environment at the heart of our development programming is a high priority for DFID. While we have, since July 2019, deployed a small number of staff (fewer than 5) who were working on climate change to work on planning for our exit from the EU, overall the number of staff working on climate change is increasing.