Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what plans her Department has to provide aid to developing countries that are struggling to tackle outbreaks of covid-19.

The UK is playing a leading role in the global response to COVID-19, working with our international partners to slow its spread. We are using UK aid to its full effect to counter the health, humanitarian, and economic risks of this pandemic in the developing world. The UK has, so far, pledged £744 million of UK aid to help end this pandemic as quickly as possible. The UK continues to work with international partners, including the United Nations and its agencies, to ensure aid reaches those most in need.

The UK strongly supports the UN’s Global Humanitarian Response Plan to tackle COVID-19. Our latest UK aid funding of £200 million, announced on 12 April, will enable humanitarian organisations to help reduce mass infections in developing countries that often lack the healthcare systems to track and halt the virus. This funding includes £130 million to UN agencies in response to their COVID-19 humanitarian appeals. We have also allocated £50 million to the Red Cross and £50 million to match funding from Unilever, for a joint project targeting up to a billion people with awareness and behavioural change campaigns to promote handwashing and providing 20 million hygiene items to help the most vulnerable communities protect themselves.

The UK is also providing up to £150 million of UK aid funding, which will go the International Monetary Fund’s Catastrophe Containment Relief Trust to help developing countries meet their debt repayments so that they can focus their available resources on tackling COVID-19. The UK has also worked closely with other G20 creditors and the Paris Club to provide a temporary suspension of debt repayments from the poorest and most vulnerable countries that request relief, further boosting countries’ capacity to respond to the crisis.

By preventing the virus from spreading in the poorest countries we will save lives and reduce the risk of future waves of infection spreading around the world, including to the UK.