Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, whether there has been a change in his Department's (a) departmental expenditure limit and (b) annually managed expenditure spending in the Indo-Pacific region since 16 March 2021.

We have doubled the number of British High Commissions across the Pacific Island Countries over the past three years. The UK now has six High Commissions in the Pacific including: Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Samoa and Vanuatu. The UK also opened the UK Mission to ASEAN in 2019 to strengthen UK-ASEAN engagement. Since achieving ASEAN Dialogue Partner Status, the UK Mission to ASEAN has expanded with further roles planned by March 2023.

We have increased resourcing in a number of key Missions including Canberra, Jakarta, and Singapore.

In addition, a significant and increasing number of FCDO roles both at Headquarters and across the global network, involve an element of China policy. This shift in focus and resource has been underway for a number of years. The FCDO dedicated an additional £3 million in 2020/21 and a further £3 million in 2022/23 to increase our capability on China, including a significantly expanded China Department and new China-related roles in the overseas network.

Following the Autumn Budget announced by the Prime Minister and Chancellor, FCDO ODA allocations are being worked through and will be published in due course. FCDO will also be launching detailed Business & Country Planning and Workforce Planning exercises in the new year. This will help to determine the FCDO's future workforce requirements from 2023-24 onwards, taking into account Ministerial priorities, and delivering our FCDO transformation.

The actual FCDO Official Development Assistance (ODA) spend has been published in Annex A within the Annual Report and Accounts for 2021-22 (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fcdo-annual-report-and-accounts-2021-to-2022) and 2020-21 (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/fcdo-annual-report-and-accounts-2020-to-2021). ODA is measured on a calendar year basis. Provisional UK ODA figures are published annually in spring, with final figures in autumn. Final data for 2021 was published on 23 November 2022 (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-on-international-development)