Developing Countries: Abortion and Maternity Services

(asked on 28th January 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment he has made of the proportion of his Department's budget that is allocated to (a) women's reproductive programmes and initiatives and (b) abortions.


Answered by
Andrew Murrison Portrait
Andrew Murrison
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
This question was answered on 4th February 2020

Between 2013/14 – 2017/18 DFID’s average direct bilateral expenditure, under the sector codes Reproductive Health care, Maternal and Neonatal health, and Training of Personnel was nearly £218 million each year. This excludes direct bilateral expenditure on family planning, which is reported separately. To note, this £218 million does not cover DFID’s core contributions to multilateral organisations such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) which also provide reproductive health care services in developing countries.

Data for all sector codes and spend are available on the Statistics for International Development website, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-on-international-development-uk-gross-public-expenditure-gpex.

As DFID takes an integrated approach to our programming on sexual and reproductive health and rights, it is not possible to give a specific figure for our funding for safe abortion.

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