Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, what recent assessment he has made of the potential impact of reducing Official Development Assistance spending from 0.7% to 0.5% of Gross National Income on levels of global poverty.

Due to the impact of the pandemic on public finances, the government took the difficult decision to temporarily reduce the Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget from 0.7 per cent of gross national income (GNI) to 0.5 per cent. We will return to spending 0.7 per cent of GNI on ODA when, on a sustainable basis, the government is not borrowing for day-to-day spending and underlying debt is falling. The UK remains a champion for international development and one of the most generous global aid donors, spending nearly £12.8 billion in aid in 2022.

While the reduction of the UK's ODA budget means some ODA programmes needed to be changed or stopped, it is not possible to attribute the impact of the reduction on changing global poverty levels.

The UK's aid spending is crucial for delivering on our re-energised international development agenda set out in the White Paper on International Development, including eliminating extreme poverty, tackling climate change and biodiversity loss, and accelerating progress on the Sustainable Development Goals, but we recognise that ODA alone will not be enough to deliver our goals. That is why we are being innovative, creative and bold about all of the ways we can support global progress - from increasing private investment in development to getting the most from research and technology.