Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to adopt and implement a dedicated sustainable development goal for water and sanitation, with targets for universal access to basic water, sanitation and hygiene by 2030.

The UK supports the inclusion of water and sanitation in the post-2015 agenda. We are pleased that the Sustainable Development Goals proposed by the Open Working Group includes a goal to ‘ensure the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’ which contains specific targets for drinking water and sanitation. We will continue to build on the work done so far on water, sanitation and hygiene as part of our efforts to finish the job on the current Millennium Development Goals and ensure that no-one is left behind.

In the last five years we have supported 62.9 million people, of whom 22.2 million were women, to access clean water, better sanitation or improved hygiene conditions through DFID’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programmes (exceeding DFID’s commitment of 60 million).