Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps he plans to take to ensure that the UK continues to uphold its Grand Bargain commitments (a) for donors to provide 25 per cent of global humanitarian funding to local and national responders by 2020 and (b) on localisation more widely.

The UK is a signatory to the Grand Bargain and the Good Humanitarian Donorship Principles, which make explicit commitments on localisation, and the UK's Humanitarian Reform Policy recognises national and local organisations and communities as first responders to disasters. We also recognise the value local and national actors have brought to COVID-19 response, playing a critical role in meeting humanitarian needs on the ground in the face of unprecedented challenges.

The UK continues to be one of the biggest humanitarian donors globally. We have been one the largest donors to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs' (UNOCHA) Country-Based Pooled Funds (CBPF). The CBPF is one platform that channels funding to local and national actors and in 2019, they allocated a quarter of their resources to local and national partners.

More broadly, the UK continues to invest in initiatives to support localisation, including the creation of the Start Network, Humanitarian Learning Academy, and the Humanitarian to Humanitarian (H2H) Network, among others.