Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what funding his Department has allocated to programmes supporting the payment of living wages in global value chains; and whether that funding is supporting workers in the cocoa sector.

DFID is investing more than £1.2 billion in bilateral agriculture programmes, many of which support smallholders in global value chains, including cocoa. DFID does not categorise its programme spend according to the nature of different value chains given the significant additional burden this would place on projects if the data was to be robust.

DFID is a founding member of the Living Income Community of Practice and is partnering with the UN Foundation, CARE, and the Fourth Sector Group, to explore how we can encourage the growth of more “for benefit” businesses in the cocoa supply chain. It also supports the Ethical Trade Initiative to improve worker’s rights in global supply chains. This includes working with companies to improve the application of human rights and providing direct remediation of labour rights violations for vulnerable workers.