Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, how many projects and at what cost to the public purse have been assessed by (a) her and (b) her Chief Statistician as not meeting the definition of Official Development Assistance in each of the last five years.

Spend reported as Official Development Assistance (ODA) must meet the criteria set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC). DFID receives a small non-ODA allocation from HMT for the known areas of spend we have that fall outside of the scope of ODA.

DFID collates and checks UK ODA spend data in reporting to the OECD DAC and in our National Statistics publication ‘Statistics on International Development’. The DAC Secretariat quality assures donors’ ODA spend to ensure that it is reported correctly and qualifies under the ODA rules.