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 potential impact of the Government's decision to provide surplus UK vaccines to the COVAX programme on the Government's decision to spend 0.5 per cent of GNI on Official Development Assistance in 2021.

The UK is leading the international response to COVID-19. We have made available new public commitments worth up to £1.3 billion of Official Development Assistance (ODA) to counter the health, economic, and humanitarian impacts of COVID-19 and to support the global effort to distribute vaccines equitably.

The cost of donating the UK's surplus vaccine doses to developing countries will be classified as ODA. This will be in addition to the £10 billion already committed in aid this year. Final 2021 UK ODA spend will be published as usual in FCDO's Statistics on International Development report in 2022, which will also include COVID-19 related donations and support which is ongoing.