Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will publish the criteria to determine the prioritisation of Official Development Assistance funding in 2025-26; and what steps is he taking to ensure such spending optimises value for money.

We are committed to modernising our approach to development to help provide the best value for money for UK taxpayers and deliver mutual benefits at home and overseas. We will work with our partners in new ways to maximise our impact.

To enable us to deliver the transition to spending 0.3 per cent of gross national income on Official Development Assistance effectively, in 2025/26 we are prioritising meeting legally binding commitments and delivering work already underway, as well as planned humanitarian spend. This will help deliver the flexibility the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office requires to set a transitional set of final allocations following the Spending Review. We have also established an exemptions process to allow for critical new development work to continue.

Full detail is set out in Baroness Chapman's 27 March letter to the International Development Committee [https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/47275/documents/245059/default/].