Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to encourage local authorities to celebrate the Commonwealth prior to the Commonwealth Summit in London in April 2018.

We have been working closely with interested parties across the UK, including local authorities, to raise the profile of the Commonwealth in the run up to next year's Heads of Government Meeting and to celebrate its unique networks.

We are encouraging local authorities to host a 'Commonwealth Big Lunch' between Commonwealth Day on 12 March and the end of the summit on 22 April. We have also asked them to encourage their communities to share their Commonwealth links on social media, using #ourCommonwealth to tell the story of the Commonwealth and demonstrate how wide ranging its people-to-people links are. There will be many other local promotions of the Commonwealth taking place in the run up to the summit.