Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Bates on 12 February (HL5337), how the Department for International Development will monitor progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in the poorest developing countries; and whether this will require any additional staff.

Progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals is reported through various means, including the UN’s SDG indicators website, https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/database/, which captures data reported to the UN by Member States under the global indicator framework for the 2030 Agenda. In addition, Member States are expected to complete voluntary national reviews of progress towards the Goals at least once in the period to 2030. The reviews are presented to the annual UN High Level Political Forum each July.

We will continue to use these sources to monitor progress towards the SDGs by Least Developed Countries. We will not require additional staff to do so.