Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of co-operative models on international development.

The Government is modernising its approach to development, moving from donors to investors, from delivering services to supporting systems, from providing grants to utilising our expertise, and from international interventions to supporting local solutions.

Country-led and community-led partnerships are at the heart of this approach, and we recognise the important contribution that cooperatives make to the prosperity of local communities, such as those in Zambia and Nepal working to improve smallholder farmers' access to markets, with the support of the UK.