I would like to start this session of the International Development Select Committee. We are blessed with a full range from FCDO today. Thank you all so much for making the time to be with us. The reason is that you are going through the process of announcing the changes that you are making to how you deliver humanitarian and development assistance and support. We know where some of the shifts are, we know where some of the cuts are, and hopefully in today’s session you will be able to explain to us the rationale behind them and put some more details on to what has already come in the statement that you gave last week. Yesterday, I had a session with the with the Prime Minister, who gave his intention in this area. We are very keen that you are still committed to the development agenda even in the difficult situations that we find ourselves in right now. Foreign Secretary, if you would introduce yourself and your team, then we will get straight into it if that is all right.

Thank you very much, Chair, for having us, and thank you to the Committee as well. We have here Baroness Chapman, our Development Minister, from whom I know you will have heard before, Nick Dyer, who is our Second Permanent Under-Secretary and Melinda Bohannon, who is the Director-General who covers development as well. We are here and happy to answer your questions today.

Brilliant. Thank you very much. My first question is about what assessments you have made on the impact of the ODA reductions on the UK’s soft power. Did you do work to analyse that beforehand and what are do you anticipate going forward?

The UK’s soft power has been a consideration throughout all of this. Development is a crucial part of our foreign policy as well as being a purpose in itself. As you will know, the whole purpose behind the overseas development is around the moral purpose, around UK values, but it is also in the UK national interest. It supports our security and our prosperity as well. We obviously have taken difficult decisions as a result of needing to increase our defence spending based on the global instability we face. That has meant a difficult decision about reducing overseas development funding but we have also set out a series of important reforms in how we are doing it. Far from walking away from overseas development, we are championing the purpose and the importance of it with the reforms that we are making, those reforms being about prioritising fragile conflict states, using evidence of where things make a difference and unlocking other finance too. Part of the work that Jenny, Baroness Chapman, has done on the new partnership, the new approach to Africa, probably exemplifies why we think that in a lot of these areas this is about strengthening that approach to soft power and partnership, because it is developing a new way of working with countries rather than some of the traditional paternalism of the past; it is now being very much about working in partnership with them. The shift from donor to investor and other shifts have been very much about that partnership working, which we think strengthens those relationships as well. Then there are some other areas including, for example, the British Council and the World Service, where we have specifically increased funding because we think those areas are particularly important as part of soft power even at a time when overall funding has been cut.

Minister, when you gave us the statement last week, my response was to think about the country directors who are having to go and deliver that news to people who they have spent maybe years building relationships with. How is that process going? Say we were supporting a Minister’s particular interest in women and girls or LGBT rights in a country and we are now saying that we are cutting that; what has been the impact? What feedback are you getting so far?

Countries, or the country directors, have known for some time that this was the direction of travel.

They did not know how deep the cuts were going to be to their bilateral relationships.

Part of what we have been doing, because we have been shifting the approach, is getting them to think about a different way of working with individual Governments and changing the way that they work as well. Jenny can probably add more detail on this, but we have been getting countries to effectively draw up partnership approaches country-by-country as to what are the areas in which they can draw in UK expertise even where actually there will not be any funding in place. We have been doing that in some areas already. One of the often-quoted ones is in Ghana, where HMRC officials have been helping with tax raising, the revenue support that helps support Ghana. We have been doing that step by step already and some countries are further ahead in that process than others, but I think it is a general shift in the approach that we want to see, and a lot of countries have been very keen on that change in partnership approach.

The Foreign Secretary has laid that out very effectively, but to specifically address the point that I think you are trying to get at about whether this is harming our bilateral relationships, I would say it absolutely is not causing them harm, and I would be very concerned if it was. I have done some of the Minister-to-Minister engagement because I think that is the right thing to do.

It is respectful to do that.

It is respectful. It is not possible in every situation, but our heads of mission and our development directors have known an indicative number for quite some time, so they have been thinking through how to land it effectively.

Quite some time? Is that six months, six weeks? Because these changes were not properly announced until—

We have not been able to give people a precise number, but they have known the direction of travel, they have known the number down in nearly all cases, and they have known broadly the quantum. They have been thinking ahead and making sure that their relationships are in sufficiently good shape that they can have those conversations in a positive way. This is their day job. They are professionals, they are very capable of doing that and they have been doing it successfully. One thing I would point out is that the quality of a bilateral relationship with a country, even a very fragile country, is no longer, if it ever was, measured in terms of quantum of ODA. It is very much about the respectful relationship that we are able to have. It is also about the stability of the people they are having to engage with and about their access to our technical assistance and expertise, which is why we want to put so much focus on the communities of expertise going forward. Countries really want that. They put a much higher price on that than they do on our bilateral ODA programming, and I think that is been the case for some time, actually.

Thank you, Minister. We are going to come on to staffing cuts, because I agree that the stability of our staff and the expertise of FCDO staff is key to our relationships, so we are concerned about the 25% proposed cuts that are going through, but we will come back to that in further questions.

I was thinking of ministerial stability as well.

Okay. Good. I do not disagree with the direction of travel that FCDO is going in, because this Committee has long argued against the sort of paternalistic, we-know-best approach. I am, however, extremely concerned about the speed with which that shift is being forced through because of the brutality and reality of the cuts. Foreign Secretary, at the beginning of this Parliament, the Government committed to restoring the UK’s leadership and reputation in international development. In your view, is the UK’s reputation stronger now than it was two years ago?

Part of the reason we are holding the Global Partnership Conference later this year is in order to continue with that leadership role, which we have had for historic reasons for a long time and are continuing to play. We are continuing to do it in the way in which we are arguing for reform of multilateral institutions. We are continuing to do it in the way that we are changing how we do development to have the maximum possible impact. In a series of areas—we still end up, I think, being the highest donor to the African Development Bank, for example. In a series of different areas, we also continue to be leading advocates as well as leading funders in different areas. We are making an argument that all kinds of development need to change. This is not simply about finance. This is about the fact that we should continue to care about humanitarian crises. We should continue to care about extreme poverty and the alleviation of poverty. We should continue to care about conflict prevention and the prevention of instability across the globe. Whatever the different fiscal circumstances, all those things continue to be priorities but we do need to do them in different ways in partnership with countries and that partnership actually can be more powerful in terms of changing how we do development and in terms of the impact that we can have.

I hope you are right. I will pass the questioning to David Mundell now.

Thank you. Chair. Can I come to you, Baroness Chapman? Success in the UK’s priority areas such as global health relies on progress in other defunded areas. What conversations have you had with multilateral and bilateral donor partners around the gaps these reductions will leave in critical programme funding?

We have very many conversations along those lines. I speak not only to G7 partners but to other donor countries as well about exactly this. It is not simple. When I first started this, I thought, “Well, the UK can lead on health and Germany can lead on something else—” but it does not work like that. As officials pointed out to me, Ministers come and go, they all have their passions and priorities and that kind of arrangement is not stable enough to be able to make concrete offers to, for want of a better expression, the Global South countries. The way we are doing it is by being as communicative and open about what we are doing and the reasons why we are doing things as we possibly can, so that even though we may not have published all of our commitments so far, particularly for funds that are going through replenishment, we are discussing with those funds and with other donors to make sure that everybody knows, as far as possible, what everyone else is doing so that they can make informed choices. We are slightly ahead on our transition-development-reset journey. One of the reasons why I think that people are really keen to talk to us at the moment is that they want to understand exactly how we are going about this and what our thinking has been. People have noticed that we are multilateralists and that we want to work collaboratively with other countries. They like that. Part of our reasoning for it is wanting to inspire a similar type of approach from other nations because you cannot do multilateralism by yourself.

Can I bring James Naish in on that point, David? Thank you.

We know now pretty much where the UK cuts are going to be. Given your knowledge of what other partners are doing globally, do you see any gaps in the international picture where you are starting to have greater concerns about than others, where other partners maybe are not playing as deep a role as you were expecting?

No. No, it is for other countries to make their choices. The French have the G7 this year and we are having a development meeting with them in about three or four weeks where we will discuss some of this. There will be an opportunity to do that then. I imagine there will be some gaps, though. I think it is important that we are just honest about this and we need to look at whether there are particular geographies or particular themes that we might want to find different ways of working together on, but we are not at that place yet.

This Committee, and indeed many others, welcomed the Government’s commitment to the Global Fund in the circumstances that we found ourselves. Last week, however, it emerged that two thirds of that funding is scheduled to be paid in the final year of the spending plan. I would be interested to know what the rationale for that is because, according to the Global Fund, that restricts its ability to make commitments, but more importantly, restricts its ability to draw down match funding, particularly in the US. What was the rationale behind that scheduling of the funding? Do you not think that it risks undermining a very positive announcement if ultimately it leads to restricting the Global Fund’s activities and an inability to draw down match funding?

Some of what is important with things like the Global Fund, where we do the big replenishments, is that we are giving predictability because we are giving commitment over a period. It is true that the profiling of those commitments can vary, and some may vary according to where we have other profiling for other kinds of multilateral institutions which might have been front-loaded for the first couple of years and so on. The Department has to make decisions according to profiling that also allow us to proceed with other commitments that we have made in different years. That is the reason for doing it this way, but it is also why we announce the fund in total. We have given a total fund over the course of the replenishment, and that is not unusual. It is something that other Governments will do. We have front-loaded the funding for some other things for other reasons.

Do you not accept that that profile will ultimately mean—particularly because of the inability to draw down match funding, which is a statutory position in the US—that that funding will be less effective and less able to fill gaps than it otherwise would have been?

It is just a reality where, if institutions have these replenishment funds—sometimes they are three-year replenishments, sometimes there will be five-year replenishments over an extended period of time—countries then manage the profiles, and for the fund as a whole they have to manage it across different years, and for individual countries they have to manage it across the years. Of course, countries would always like the entire fund to be delivered in the first year, but what would suit the funds most will be different for different countries. There are always trade-offs there, but I think we have managed to very substantially protect the funding for the Global Fund overall. Compared to the overall reduction, we have worked hard to protect the Global Fund exactly because of what it delivers on vaccines and other matters and they have recognised that. We have had many conversations with them as well.

It is positive about the overall sum, but two thirds does seem to be a very significant part to be in the final year of funding. Is that to meet your budgetary requirements? It cannot really be to make the fund as effective as possible.

I spoke to the Global Fund this morning. Part of me admires this, part of me is a bit annoyed with it, but the Global Fund is brilliant and Peter Sands is fantastic in his ability to get Labour MPs WhatsApping me with cut and paste bits of information; it is extraordinarily impressive. This issue, is exactly that. We have to make this cut to our overall budget over three years. For our bilateral programming there is a glide path down, quite a steep glide path, and you will be asking lots of questions of us about this and you just have. To make that possible, have had to backload. It is the only way to get the overall amount and we took a view that getting that overall amount for Global Fund really mattered so we have done that. The Americans can choose to do what they want to do and they do this all the time. They can make their own decisions about whether they want to match fund cash now or match it over a longer period and we are really happy to talk to them about that. If we get some headroom we can have a conversation with Global Fund about what to do about it. We totally recognise the issue but we think that we have done the very best job we could in getting them to the target amount that we wanted them to have because as we have all discussed many times, they do such a great job and we want to see them continuing to do that. We get the problem and we will continue to talk to them about what we might be able to do, including talking to the Americans, if that helps.

Minister, the Global Fund is still getting a 20% cut so it is not as though it has got off scot-free.

: No, but our budget has been cut by 40%.

It is 15%, as well.

A 15% cut.

I think it is helpful to have it on the record because that just emerged. Putting the emphasis on totality, it only just emerged how it was going to be paid and I think the issue in America is not just the Administration; it is in statute.

I understand.

That would have to be changed in order for there to be more flexibility from the US.

If they want everything year-by-year they should have a one-year replenishment. The fact is that they give us a three-year replenishment cycle and leave it to countries to stage their commitments, which is totally standard, countries can decide for themselves about how to stage their payments, and that is what we have done. We are completely open to talking to Peter Sands and the team at Global Fund about this. We would really love to have that conversation because Global Fund is a great partner and I think we are a good partner with them as well.

This is to reinforce some of the points that David Mundell is making. As Government, as an example in this country, we have said to local councils that we are moving them to multi-year settlements to give them a level of certainty. I accept at the total level the Global Fund does have that certainty but having only £19 million in year one out of £868 million does not let you run an organisation efficiently. I am sure that if we said to you today that your Department was only going to get 2% of the total funds over the next three years this year, it would impact your efficiency.

Yes, but I do not run a three-year replenishment cycle for the Foreign Office. It is up to the Global Fund what cycle it wants to operate on. They choose three years. We engage with that process and we have made our we have made our decision about how that is going to be staged. I completely understand Global Fund’s issue and am very open to talking to them about it. I stand, though, by the fact that we have done a very good outcome for Global Fund and we will continue to work closely with them to make sure that they can as far as possible leverage the match funding from the US.

Thank you very much. Can we move from one of the—I hate to say winners—to one of the areas that is under closer scrutiny, if I can put it politely.

My question is related to the community of experts. Forgive me if I misheard the question, Chair, but the question I was going to ask is around the community of experts. Can I ask you to give us bit more detail about the shift from our own bilateral programmes to this community of experts, the timeframe, how the staff changes will enable it and how you will ensure policy coherence across the board?

The whole point here is part of the shift in how we do things, and it is about providing expertise rather than simply funding the delivery of services that countries want to do for themselves. The idea is that this should not simply be about FCDO staff. This should be about the network of expertise that we have across the country. That might be academics, experts in HMRC on tax—taking the Ghana example—it might be expertise in health on establishing better health services and health systems, it might be expertise in education or criminal justice, or for example, expertise in tackling illicit finance, because we know there are huge problems with losses for countries through illicit finance. The idea was to be able to draw on that network of expertise and fund the provision of the technical expertise that can help countries to develop and build greater resilience and better expertise and systems for themselves in country.

Foreign Secretary, with respect, this sounds like a reverse woulda-coulda-shoulda. I do not think I have ever heard so many might-be’s in one sentence. My understanding is that we are moving away from the centrally managed funds, that there will still be some money and you are looking to shift it to these experts who might be from here, there or anywhere. How advanced is that process? Because my understanding is that in a week’s time we are losing the centrally managed funds to this model and that there are still some might-be’s.

The fund is still centrally managed but the fund will be able to fund these kinds of expertise country-by-country. Jenny can set out further detail. We still have effectively what is a centrally managed fund but it means that from one country to another, what it funds may be different. What individual countries want to draw down from the centrally managed fund—they can then say, for example, “What we need is greater expertise on strengthening education for girls”.

Then you would go to different institutions?

Exactly. Previously, we would have had a centrally directed programme that countries would still have drawn down from but it would more likely have tended to be provision or grant funding from a centrally given programme as opposed to the provision of expertise.

There will be eight of them—politics and government; climate and nature—

We have the list.

Yes, you have the list; great. Just checking you had read it. One of the complaints that you would probably have heard when you have done visits is from our teams in country saying, “I hate these centrally managed programmes. They are invisible. What are they doing? They are active here but I do not really feel like I have sufficient grip on this and we are not getting a real bang for our buck in terms of soft power, either, from what they are or what they are doing and it is all a bit unco-ordinated”. We want to put a stop to that. Some of the centrally managed programmes that you will be familiar with will run out of these communities of expertise because that expertise is so important, and it will sit within these communities. That will continue, although as you will rightly say, there will be less money spent on all of this, except for the women and girls’ programmes.

Do you know the percentage of less?

Yes, we do. We have it here. We can get that to you if somebody can find it in the spreadsheet for you.

We would be very grateful.

The point of it is that we do not just have a team focused on whatever topic it might be, a Government team. The point is that it works much more effectively across Whitehall Departments into the agencies, as the Foreign Secretary has said, but also is much more permeable to private sector involvement from the university, tech and financial services sectors. There are players now who want to get involved in development who may already be active, may be curious but have not previously had a route through. The UK offer can seem a little bit unco-ordinated to partner countries. This is about tidying that up, being more strategic and organising it more effectively. Your question was about whether they are all good to go next week. No, they are not. There will be some continuation of what we are doing now and a downward glide path over three years for some of these programmes. From some, we will responsibly exit sooner but we are going to be building them up. It will genuinely be good to get your input into how we can build these things up, what sort of partnerships you would like to see, what good looks like here, because this is new. I do not think that this has been done anywhere in this kind of structured, organised way and we want to listen very closely to what our partner Governments are saying and what the demand signals, for want of a better word, are from our teams in country but also from other Governments. Making these cuts has been really hard. It has been really hard, okay? This is the good bit where we get to build something up and do something different and I think these new things are going to be really impactful and powerful but only if we stick to our ideas about wanting to be properly inclusive and not just about what happens in Whitehall.

I agree that the potential for this is enormous and is exactly where, as a country, we should be leaning into our skills and experience and the research that we generate. I do not disagree. What I am concerned about, though, is how you maintain policy coherence. While the Foreign Secretary was speaking, I was thinking about the Police and Crime Commissioners. I got very frustrated when they first came in, that largely what they programmed was subjective and based on the whims of the individual—if, for example, I was trying to get ISVAs and SARCs for domestic abuse and sexual violence nationally but some police commissioners did not see it as a priority, some areas of the country did not have them at all. How are you going to avoid, for example—and I cannot believe this would be possible—a country director being particularly passionate about women’s rights at the exclusion of, I don’t know, say nutrition? So they are coming in with all of this help and needs around one particular topic, and another one has absolutely no interest in development but is really interested in business development, so all of their questions are coming for that. What is going to be the structure to keep an eye on this, so that we have that cohesion across your priorities rather than responding to an individual’s pet passions?

These directors will be better than police and crime commissioners.

That is a low bar; a low, low bar.

The answer to your question is that nobody should be working in development who is not passionate about women and girls. That is the first point. The second point is that no one should be developing their portfolio in their country based on their own passions and their own opinions about what they think is nice in that country.

But unintentional bias can lead to that happening.

Well that should not happen.

I agree.

They have analytics to apply. They do political economy analysis, they look at World Bank data, they look at the experience that they have of operating in that country, what has worked, what has not worked and they need to justify their portfolio approach. We have not really talked about that. I am excited by this. It is probably rather dull to lots of people, but we want to get away from the approach of “I am going to do a programme on this, then I might do a programme on that”. You have to have a coherent story for your country that you can justify based on evidence and data, and applying your professional insights as well, and those of your team, and then your portfolio gets signed off. You don’t just get to go and do it. There is a process of evaluation, sign-off and monitoring.

Who is doing that? Who is responsible for that oversight?

Ultimately, Ministers. The fact of us giving a three-year budget to countries helps to develop that sense of the plan. This is not just, about hand-to-mouth decisions that they are going to be making in the short term, but about what is the plan over a three-year period. The idea is that the country-based teams will be able to develop that portfolio plan. The major ones then will be coming to Jenny to be signed off. Is this the right approach? We are iterating still, so a couple of countries have been developing what is effectively like the portfolio plan to try these approaches out. Then we will need a clear sense of the guidance that reflects what they are already working to, but gives that clearer approach that says this is exactly what the priorities are. We know that it will vary from country to country depending on the circumstances and the nature of the challenges that they face, but there are still some overarching priorities, including for example the fact that we have made women and girls a priority for the whole FCDO, not simply for development. There are some key priorities that we will want countries to take into account wherever they are and that will be part of the guidance for the portfolios, but ultimately, certainly particular major portfolios will be coming back to Ministers.

You pick on women and girls, and you know that is a pet project for me and for this Committee, so I am really pleased that you are saying that 90% of the funds are going for gender mainstreaming. What concerns me is this. You can argue that a school is gender neutral and that you are encouraging boys and girls to go to it. I have not found the statistic about how much money you are ring-fencing for gender equality. Do you have a figure? Do you have a specific amount that you are looking to be spent on that? Despite the best will in the world, internationally we are seeing women’s and girls’ rights being rolled back faster than I thought was possible. Mainstreaming is great. It should be a priority for everyone, but in reality, if you cannot get to that school because you have been married off or sexually assaulted on the way there, or your family simply cannot afford to take you, just having the school is not an equality thing in itself. So, do we have a percentage?

I will let Melinda pull out any individual figures that we have. But look, in terms of the overall sense, the reality is this: because development supports women and girls, any reduction in development spending will, of course, have an impact. What we have tried to do, however, is to make women and girls a priority across the whole of the Foreign Office—not just within development—and to increase the proportion of FCDO programmes that we expect to be sensitive to the needs of women and girls, moving from 80% to 90%, and ensuring that we look particularly at the issues affecting them. We have also fully protected the funding for programmes tackling violence against women and girls. We have particularly highlighted this in some of our conflict work, for example in Sudan, but also in Ukraine. We have protected funding in a series of areas, for example specific funding around survivors of sexual violence or funding or helping to get justice through investigations into some of the rape and atrocities and taking action against them. We also restored some funding. We used the equality impact assessment process very strongly.

I am grateful that you did.

We used that process, which Jenny had initially used before I am was appointed as Foreign Secretary. She had been using that through the summer to already make some adjustments. When we looked at it again together, we made further adjustments to restore funding for some of the areas affecting women and girls in order to maintain that central focus and also send the signal that, to be honest, whichever policy areas we are looking at, we should be focusing particularly on issues around women and girls. That could be in areas such as jobs, investment, impact of climate change, right through to the issues around violence against women and girls and protection work.

What is the 10% of projects that women and girls are excluded from since they are included in 90%

They are not excluded. To count as part of the 90%, the OECD has rules that women and girls and gender must be a principle or a significant component. I am imagining that 10% of areas that do not have women and girls and gender as a principal component might be in infrastructure development or some sort of financial stuff.

We can do all that.

Yes, I know, but those areas do not qualify for the marker so that is what that is. It is not that women are not allowed to use the bridge we have built.

Or build the bridge.

Or build the bridge, yes, exactly.

Thank you very much. David Mundell.

Foreign Secretary, I would like to ask you about another challenge in relation to delivering our ODA funding programmes. In January, the US Administration adopted something they called Promoting Human Flourishing in Foreign Assistance, which is sometimes referred to as an extension of the global gag rule, which is essentially that they would not fund certain activities generally related to, for example, LGBT, family planning, and other issues that are not in accordance with US domestic policy. In parallel with that, the US Administration is entering into a number of MOUs with individual countries that abide by these policy considerations. How much of a challenge do you consider that is to being able to deliver our priorities, which would include elements that the US would exclude? There have been reports, for example, that it has been made very clear to countries that have entered the MOUs that their US funding would be reduced if they co-operate with other partners on these activities.

We strongly disagree with that approach. It runs completely counter to our approach. Matters such as sexual health services, direct support for women and girls, or for LGBT rights are hugely important parts of our development work rooted in core values and core UK values as well. There are many Governments and services in the world that hold views that are very different from the views of the US and continue to not just work with us but welcome the work that we do. We will continue to invest in those areas and those kinds of services as priorities. Jenny has been part of signing international statements that take a very different view from any kind of gagging rule and we are very clear about our values.

Do you have an overview that would allow you to step in or prioritise in countries where, for example, services were not provided as a result of the approach that the US was taking?

Prioritising women and girls across the FCDO allows us to respond if there is a sense of there being challenges in particular countries. Prioritising allows us to be champions worldwide, to continue to be a voice and to not get drawn into being part of a sense that all countries are somehow pulling back or going backwards on women’s rights. That is just not the case. We and many other countries will continue to be champions for those issues.

In parallel with that, will the FCDO be continuing its funding of LGBT issues internationally?

Yes. LGBT issues are another area that was picked up as part of the equalities impact assessment. Once we got the impact assessment in, we shifted some of our decisions to make sure that some of that funding could be restored.

I have two specifics on that area. Is Afghanistan getting any money for women and girls?

Do you mean through the central programmes?

Full stop.

As the Foreign Secretary describes, the portfolio for Afghanistan will need to be approved by Ministers but within that portfolio, we are currently aiming to get the balance right on things like provision of education, health and food security. There is a direct effect because women are supported there. There is also specifically the 90% element. We would expect as many of those programmes as possible to be consistent with the principle markers.

Another thing—and at the moment this is just something that is being mooted but I want to make sure it is on your desk, Foreign Secretary—is that the UN is reviewing its structure. I think there are about 200 UN bodies, and I think that only two of them are completely women-focused, UNFPA and UN Women, and the man at the top has put forward the argument that we should merge them. As you know very well, women’s organisations and rights are incredibly hard won and tend to be the first to go. Losing 50% or maybe 100% of the capacity is something that alarms me because each organisation does something very different. Is the UK Government pushing back on that?

We cannot lose capacity and voice for women and girls. We have been part of the UN80 discussions, which are about ensuring that the UN as a whole can have maximum impact. That includes looking at different agencies and structures. We are very clear that women and girls need to be a central part of what the UN does and we cannot have any rolling back from that position.

I am taking that as we are pushing back behind the scenes, and if you want to dissuade me of that then you can, but at the moment I am satisfied with that answer. Thank you.

I have two questions, if I may. Starting with you, Foreign Secretary, what is your strategy to communicate the Government’s decisions on aid to the UK public?

I wrote an article and we have had the announcements and the information that we published last week as part of this. This Committee, in its scrutiny, also does part of the communication about our approach. I think you are asking about our explanation to the public about why this is so important and why we continue to do it. We have seen a huge response from the likes of the UK Aid Match around Palestine, for example, and Gaza in the run-up to Christmas, and our work in Jamaica on the impact of the hurricane there. There is huge support for that kind of humanitarian support at a point of crisis, whether that crisis is the result of conflict or of climate change, and that we are a country that does our bit to support those in crisis across the world. That support continues to be hugely important. A lot of the social media about the things that we did, setting that out across the country, was very much about showing the very practical impact that the Royal Navy had in Jamaica, helping with rebuilding facilities and restoring services for people affected by Hurricane Melissa. Likewise, being able to demonstrate UK aid effort—the tents that we were able to get into Gaza, to provide shelter for people at a time of terrible flooding and winter conditions affecting families with small children in Gaza—being able to show that, I think, is hugely important.

Perhaps I can lead on from that and you will see the possible connection here. Baroness Chapman, you might like to think about this too. Last Sunday was World Water Day, but yesterday it emerged that the FCDO is closing down its UK WASH Systems for Health only part-way through its five-year programme, giving just three months notice. This programming supported five Governments across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia to strengthen the systems needed to establish reliable, resilient and inclusive wash services over five years, contributing to better health, nutrition and education, especially for poorer households and communities, and for women and girls in particular. With this vital funding cut, can I therefore ask you both, given WASH annually polls with the UK’s public as the most supported development investment, as it is so cross-cutting, what is the UK’s water, sanitation and hygiene strategy? Or indeed, is there one?

There is. The UK public, without a doubt, relates very strongly to work on water. I think part of what we need to do is to explain that the best and most impactful way that we can improve access to clean water for the poorest populations on earth is not through doing what I would have thought of 10, 20 years ago, which was access to water pump-type programmes. I know that that is not what WaterAid thinks either, but that is where a lot of the British public is. The biggest player in access to clean water globally now is the World Bank through IDA. You can look at Sierra Leone where they did a $40 million programme to properly get permanent access to clean water for the poorest populations. We can some of the system strengthening work. We do not need to do it through a specific WASH programme, but to get investment at the scale that it is needed— this is like David Miliband’s point about dosage here. Yes, we can do our bilateral things, and that is good, but it is far, far more impactful to work multilaterally at scale through IDA. Over 70% of that funding is going into Africa, and this is how you get the infrastructure built. People want decent, proper, sustainable infrastructure that is well-constructed and that lasts. They do not want a stop-start way of funding this stuff any more. That is why we have done what we have done. I accept there is a communications challenge around it, but it was the right decision to make. We are putting nearly £2 billion into IDA, and that is one of the reasons that we are doing so.

Who should the communications have been with?

That is an interesting point. We talk about communications a lot. I think we are in a bad way when it comes to public support for development. The last statistic I saw on support from the British public for getting back to 0.7% was 12%. The idea that we can go rapidly from that to everybody supporting it, being really pleased and thinking it is all really well spent is probably a bit naive. The way I see this, and having got through the last year of making these decisions, is that one of the things we need to work with the sector on is talking to people who are already inclined to support development and persuading them that the Government have done a really good job on this reset, that we have a strategy, that we are spending money well and are sharing the burden across the taxpayer, the private sector and their MDBs. We need to explain much more coherently and straightforwardly. Many people say that they support development and are worried about aid dependency and neo-colonial kind of approach to aid. We have a really good answer to that through the work that we have done on partnership, but what we have not done sufficiently well or even attempted yet, but we must, is articulate this to the public, who I think would be genuinely quite interested in what we are doing and why.

Thank you. I have Monica, then James, then David on this point.

When you talk about 12% of the public that does not support getting to 0.7, surely that is about leadership.

It is 12% that do.

Isn’t that about the narrative that you either have defence or development? Does not that lead us down a rabbit hole that if we need more defence, which presumably we will, we cut development even further? How do we protect against that?

I do not think that is the narrative that has caused this corrosion over time. I think this agenda has been deliberately weaponised by political leaders, some of whom have been Secretaries of State for Development, by the way, over the last 14 years. It has been seen as fair game to make out that this money is badly spent, poorly targeted and has no impact. The sector also has to step up and take a lead on this. We have to get out of this habit of only talking to the public about development when there is a crisis. We need to talk about the successes and the fact that 30-odd countries that were low-income countries are now middle-income countries because of the work that has taken place over the last 20 to 30 years. There is a lot to be proud of. I cannot remember the last time I heard an NGO or a politician speaking to the public directly about the fact that we have millions more women surviving childbirth than we used to, or about everyone who is been vaccinated because of what we have done. We just must be much more confident and upbeat. Your point about political leadership is spot on. With some notable exceptions—we all love Justine Greening—it has been really quite mixed over the last while, and that has an effect.

I was in the Chamber when Boris Johnson bounced in about the cash point in the sky. It was despicable what he did.

I am being polite.

You are. But can I ask, are we going to see that leadership from you and the Foreign Secretary? Because Foreign Secretary, when you were speaking, the examples that you gave were all about crisis and humanitarian aid. I see development as a different thing that gets upstream of all of that.

You are going to see that, but we cannot do it by ourselves. We need help with this.

It would be very easy, faced with the kinds of reductions we have had to make, and the difficult decision to increase defence spending—would be simply to step back. That decision on defence was taken over a year ago, and we then had to implement it and still put together the best possible programme going forward. It would be very easy to say—and I am sure that other Governments in the past, faced with the same situation, would effectively have just said— “Let’s get out of this and walk away. Let’s not really do anything. Let’s not engage with international development. Do you know what? We do something else now.” We are doing the opposite. We are hosting a global partnerships conference because we believe in international development. We are championing the values and the arguments that show that this continues to be in the UK’s national interest because we believe in overseas development and because we see how central it is. Likewise, it is because we believe in it that we are making all these reforms to have the best possible impact, to lever in more private finance, to lever in more alternative finance through development banks, and to make sure that, through this change in partnership work with individual countries, that we are setting out a sustainable way forward. It is because of all of that that we are not walking away, even when faced with difficult funding decisions. We are accepting those decisions, but we are moving forward and saying that this is still an incredibly important part of our future and of our foreign policy going forward.

I do have to say that I do admire that the two of you have been very front-foot about this, and it is intensely frustrating that it comes parallel with such savage cuts. I do not envy your position, and I am not sure that the bigger picture is going to get heard for a while, so it would be good if you could prioritise putting out why we are doing what we are doing. My understanding is you would have done this anyway, and it would have been much more helpful had you had the cash to fast track it, but we are where we are right now. James Naish and David Mundell want to come in.

One of the things that the Conservative Government did that I think undermined support among the public was cutting support for development education in schools. Have you thought about this, and is there any scope to work with the DfE to try to restart some of that work? It might not show up immediately in the polls, I accept, but over the medium to long term, I think it is vital to helping get UK public support for development back up to a decent level.

You asked me about that last time I was here. I have not done anything about it, to be honest with you. I will speak to Education Ministers and see if there is any interest in doing that. We do not have a budget for it, and I know that the curriculum is always under pressure. Keep asking me because I will do it because I promised you that I would.

Thank you. We will put it in a note to you so that you will not forget.

That seals it. Okay.

Monica Harding wants to come back in.

Yes, sorry, but I did want to come back on defence versus development. Given that we all agree that development is an essential part of stopping conflict, how do we stop this narrative about development or defence and stop the defence budget eating away at the development budget again?

We had to make that difficult decision initially and it is affecting the funding for the next three years, but we have deliberately set out three years of funding and three-year agreements that allow people to plan, and that is now clear and announced. Don’t get me wrong. I still think we need to go further on defence spending over time, and we have set that out, but we have also set out very clearly what is the development funding going forward. You are right to say that all these things interact and that is partly due how we spend funding as well. Preventing instability across the world also helps to prevent the kinds of escalations that can lead to conflict. We need to be better at linking those issues, though. Take Sudan, for example. We desperately need a ceasefire in Sudan. We protected the humanitarian funding for Sudan, but we also need routes in to get the funding in in the first place. To be honest, the best thing we could do to ease suffering, the humanitarian crisis and the famine risk in Sudan would be to get a ceasefire, and so we need to better link the areas that we are prioritising around aid with preventing conflict and atrocities. That is part of what we are seeking to do with in linking development work and some of the broader foreign policy work as well.

And economic prosperity, Minister.

Yes.

Going back to multilaterals, Baroness Chapman, you said earlier that we are multilateralists. That is a fair position to take but can you explain to us the thinking behind which items were prioritised within the range of multilateral choices that you had and which were not?

I was looking for funds that were good at leverage and were prioritising the parts of the world and the issues that we really are interested in. The big ticket was IDA, where we uplifted by 40%. We have gone to £2 billion. The reason we did that is because over 70% of that goes into sub-Saharan Africa. That is the programme that focuses more on fragile states. We have a great team in Washington that has been able to exert pressure and get the World Bank to have a good fragility strategy, which we need to hold them to. We are listening to what partner Governments value, what they want to do, and IDA has the scale to deliver. I think we are in danger of forgetting sometimes. We think ODA is development and it isn’t. The development gap in Africa is currently being met at a scale of 5%. That is the ODA that is going in. About $65 billion a year goes into Africa and that is 5% of what is needed. We have to get serious about scale. The best way we can do that through the MDBs is through the World Bank’s IDA. We also wanted to prioritise the Africa Development Bank and its equivalent fund, the Africa Development Fund. That is all in Africa, but it is an African-led organisation and has different relationships within the continent than we do, can make grants in really hard-to-reach parts of Sudan where we do not have those relationships. Working that way gives us that scale and scope that we would not get any other way. We also protected the Asia Development Bank and Inter-American Development Bank. Then you get into the health funds, and delivering vaccination at scale. This is Gordon Brown being very clear with me: this is the single best buy that you can make in that space, which takes you to Gavi and the Global Fund and we protected those as much as we could. That was the thinking. It was about impact, and finding things. When you have less money to spend, you have to be really, really careful that you do not do things that just suit you and make you feel good. You have to make sure that you are getting impact, and ideally that you are able to leverage. With IDA, you get £4 additional for every pound you put in, so that was a pretty obvious bet for us to take.

What is going to be essential to make sure that we see a return on those things is the ability to leverage the multilaterals in a way that suits UK interests.

Yes.

How confident are you that we can retain the FCDO expertise that is needed to do that, given that overall we are looking to scale back our resources and we are going to need the best of the best to be able to influence these global funds?

It is about retaining while growing that ability. We do not have that sufficiently at the moment. We have to increase it. We do have great representation at the head offices of these funds. We have the spring meetings of the World Bank coming up. This is the conversation that I am going to be having with the president and anybody else who will listen. We want the ability to influence in Washington for sure, which I believe we have, and we can evidence that. What I am not yet convinced we have is a proper understanding by their country teams of what insights we need, what line of sight we want over what they are doing, what influence we want, what information we want, and what engagement we want from their in-country leads. It is patchy and that is not good enough when we are backing this fund to the extent that we are. Our teams in country, for their part, need to in many cases become less about managing a programme and more about convening and getting the MDB reps into a room with the country, agreeing plans, making sure that we can to influence and bring forward the skills that we have, and making sure our community’s expertise and what the MDBs are doing is complementary and not cutting across each other. There is a failure internationally to adequately be co-ordinated and organised just about everywhere on this agenda. That cannot go on. Everybody agrees with that. Quite what is being done about it is one of the reasons the UN80 process is so important. That is an important plank, and if we do not get it right our whole strategy will be weakened. It is vital work. To your question about expertise, we need to retain it and to increase it.

We talk about four essential shifts. From what you are describing there, are you suggesting that those essential shifts also need to happen within the multilaterals?

Yes.

We will be leading on that?

Yes.

Will there be the same four shifts or do you see there being a different set of changes needed within that multilateral space?

There will be a difference in emphasis, but essentially it is the same because the shifts are not just about how we spend money. The shifts are about how we get impact. I passionately believe that those shifts came about because we listened to what partner countries were saying. Everybody should be listening, not just the UK; the MDBs that have the big money to invest have to listen perhaps more than anybody else.

May I add one thing about the way the shifts apply to some things? If you take the fragile and conflict-affected states, somewhere like Sudan, for example, when you cannot work with a Government in the same way because of the scale and nature of the conflict, in a country like that you might be working directly with local organisations and so on. The fourth shift, from international to local providers, might be the more important one. For example, in the fragile and conflict-affected states, we would like reforms through the World Bank and others to mean being able to lend more, and to provide more funding for fragile and conflict-affected states. They may need to do that through different routes. It may not be working with a partner Government, because that just may not be workable in the same way in the midst of a conflict, but there may be other ways. The balance of the four shifts might be different depending on the location as well as on the institution.

Minister, it had been indicated previously that there might be no funding at all for UNAIDS, but I noted subsequently that there was some funding, which is in the circumstances welcome, particularly when we are at what is a potentially exciting time when lenacapavir could be rolled out more extensively. You had also indicated that there would be announcements in relation to Unitaid and the Robert Carr Fund. When are those likely to be forthcoming?

On UNAIDS, it is sunsetting. We have done the £4 million to finish off what we promised to do and we have also put in another million just to help with the transition, because we are worried about that. I cannot remember off the top of my head about Robert Carr.

We will complete the existing £10 million commitment we have to Robert Carr Foundation. That completes next year, 2026-27, and then after that we will just have to review what the future funding options will be.

Unitaid?

On Unitaid, we have not announced some multilateral funding, because it is in a replenishment cycle, so we want to hold back to the replenishment discussion before we actually set out what we will be funding. Our expectation is that we will be continuing some funding to Unitaid.

There is a point about the global health architecture. Everyone agrees that it needs to be simplified and streamlined, and in some ways our funding decisions being more focussed on Gavi and Global Fund and WHO, we are trying to support that move as well. There are discussions about how Gavi and Global Fund themselves might align more because we cannot afford quite so many different organisations. Like you said, what we need to do about HIV now is different because we have more choices about what we can do and longer lasting interventions than we have had before. It is about looking at this afresh. I would not want you to think we are just backing out of things unthinkingly, because we are really not. This is about making sure that we are able to secure the gains that have been made and then move on.

Minister, Foreign Secretary, this Committee recently did a review and report into value for money. One of our recommendations was that you do a review of our multilateral spend, because the last time it was done was 2016. Now seems to be the perfect moment for you to be committing to that, because it was flat refused when we put it forward. I would also be very interested if you do that to see how you measure success, how much influence you have and whether you are seeing a shift in the multilaterals to your four pillars, for example. I am optimistic for you, but I am not convinced, because these are big organisations that do not like moving quickly. It would be helpful if you were able to commit to a review of where our money goes and how much influence it actually has.

We have done a partial review in the process of making these decisions. We have had to do an assessment of which organisations have the biggest impact and also which we can influence by contributing where we have the greatest influence. I think that probably some of these further questions we will also be assessing as we move forward in order to get the reforms that we want going forward. It is also something we are keeping in mind in the run-up to our chairing of the G20 because some of those global architecture issues and how we get maximum impact will be part of those considerations.

Can I just add to that? I just want to be clear about how selective we already are with our multilateral funding. There are over 200 multilateral funds and programmes that could receive ODA in the development space. We are funding 34 of them, so we have already decided not to fund 170 of them. That number is going down further by about three over the course of the next SR. We have been incredibly selective already and going forward we are focusing just on those parts of the system that we think really matter and where we can shape and influence. A good example of influence is that the World Bank has unlocked £300 billion-worth of additional funding over 10 years without one penny of additional funding because of changes it has made to its capital adequacy framework. The UK started that conversation on capital adequacy about five to seven years ago. Some of these are slow burn, but if you track them through they make a huge difference in the long run.

That is why I think it would be interesting if we could track it through. The world has changed beyond all recognition, not just in the last 10 years since we did a review but, I would say, in the last couple of years. I am thinking about an organisation like WHO, which I think provides invaluable services. I think we are cutting our contribution by 20%, and America has just completely pulled out of that. It is where all the other players are influencing. Personally, I see some phenomenal organisations. To pick three, UNHCR, UNRWA and the World Food Programme do what no one else can do at absolute bare minimum costs. I also see others that have fantastic offices in fantastically expensive capitals around the world, and there is loads of duplication. They will not take responsibility, because when we meet the Secretary Generals, they say “Oh, it is for the members to decide, not for us to be telling them”. Well, actually, you are getting paid to take a leadership role, so why are we paying you? Is any of our multilateral contribution contingent on reforms and changes?

Yes, all of it, really. None of it is guaranteed. No one has a God-given right to have multilateral funding from the United Kingdom Government. I have just done the letters to all the UN agencies and all our multilateral partners telling them about decisions. In every single one of them there is a, “And the UK will expect to see the following”. You do not get everything you want straight away and, as Nick says, these are often slow-burning campaigns. I have a massive bee in my bonnet about resident co-ordinators with the UN and things are changing slowly. This is the stuff that really makes a difference over time. No one gets, “Here is your money. See you in three years”. I don’t think we ever have worked like that, but now our role as activist investor is going to be much more significant.

Knowing that and having it in a report would satisfy me, but I also think it would satisfy the public that we are making informed choices, that we are having influence on the international stage and that taxpayers’ money is being spent for the best value for money. Anything you can do around transparency of that we would be grateful for. Could I jump topics to BII, our development bank? We are a big fan of it, but obviously there is going to be a reduction in the cash that it has. We know that it had additional money in the last couple of years, so it looks probably more dramatic than what it would be. I wonder if the reduction in FCDO funding to it is likely to have a knock-on effect in its risk appetite. I have been very proud that it was one of the development banks that would go into the riskier situations. Have you any thoughts on that?

Part of what we have been doing with BII has been building up its capital so that it can then sustainably invest and continue to do so. Nick or Melinda can confirm the figures, but I think we are talking about it continuing to invest very much at current levels going forward, although it will need less new FCDO capital in order to be able to do so. We are expecting its continued investments to be, I think, in the region of £1.2 billion to £1.3 billion a year each year going forward and the fact of it being able to draw on us, having put that capital in—so there will be some new funding continuing, but the whole point about setting up BII in the first place and being able to strengthen what BII does was in order to have an established capital fund for it to be able to do further investments going forward.

Okay. One of the headline figures from last week was the fact that we are no longer funding G20 countries. Does that apply to BII as well? I am particularly thinking about its investments in India and South Africa, for example.

No. It was just about the withdrawing from the traditional bilateral funding, the donations funding, because there are areas for BII funding and that also includes some of the climate investment, particularly some of the climate finance as well, which will also continue.

That is reassuring.

We are in the process of having a conversation right now with BII about its next five-year strategy. There are three things to look out for. One is how much equity it gives because equity is really the highest risk investment that it generally takes. The second is what proportion it is working in Africa and least developed countries. In fact, we are expecting its Africa share to remain high, but I think it is potentially going to increase the share going to LDCs. The final thing is we are going to continue to give it funding for real catalytic investment. That is the stuff that it is taking huge high risk on and could actually lose money on. We will continue a small amount of money to allow it to continue to do that. It will also get funding from us for Ukraine because we want that funding to continue, and that is high risk for it. We are also looking to grow its climate portfolio and to do climate mobilisation, to mobilise private investment, particularly in places like south-east Asia where you have the big climate transition challenge. All those things will continue, but that will see a drop in its funding from us. However, as the Foreign Secretary said, it will continue to invest. It is about £1.4 billion a year directly. That in itself unlocks about another £1.2 billion of private sector funding alongside it. In all, it is investing about £3 billion a year with the private sector added alongside BII.

You mentioned Ukraine. This Committee was concerned about the dramatic increase in guarantees under the last Government, a lot of them going to Ukraine. We saw it as a risk for FCDO going forward. Do you still consider it a risk? Are there any ways that you have managed to mitigate that?

There is no doubt it is a risk because of the potential risk of a debt rescheduling. That said, all the guarantees we are giving Ukraine are through the World Bank. The World Bank is a preferred creditor, so it has preferred creditor status. Generally, the default rate for the World Bank is very low, but in the Ukraine circumstances that may change. The reality is if Ukraine does not have the fiscal financing that it needs, it is not going to win the war.

I want to turn to displacement. With ODA falling, development programming to ensure that fragile countries remain liveable continues to suffer. What is the Department’s strategy for reducing forced displacement resulting from this?

There is a mix of issues here. Some of it is that we are still prioritising the fragile and conflict-affected states for funding and continuing to fund support for refugees in country or in the region as well, which is hugely important. I suppose this goes back to the point I was making about us better linking issues around aid funding to wider policy issues as well. I think for a long time there has not been enough foreign policy prevention focus on some of the issues on displacement, migration risks, and so on. One of the things that we have been discussing at G7 level and with other European partners is what more we need to do around having a more strategic international approach to be able to support people and prevent displacement in the first place wherever there is conflict or wherever there is crisis, to be able to do so as part of the foreign policy interventions, and where there is displacement to make sure there can be rapid support in the region, including through organisations like UNHCR and IOM, to have practical support for people to return home where and whenever it is safe, and to make sure that we are also guarding against the continual risk around criminal gangs, organised immigration crime, exploiting people and exploiting desperation, because those are the situations that can be most easy to exploit. I think this is a combination of us prioritising the areas where that is the greatest risk but also trying to now better link it to international co-ordinated work. Some of this I will be discussing later this week at the G7 for foreign ministers in France. I will be discussing exactly these issues with having a broader prevention and mitigation approach.

Does the drop in funding for fragile and conflict-affected states, combined with ringfencing some of those key priorities like Sudan, Ukraine and so on, mean there is going to be less money spent on those other fragile and conflict-affected states?

One of the reasons we have made the prioritisation decisions we have is because we recognise the problem that you are talking about. You are shifting money from G20 countries. It is going to be 71% that will go on to fragile states, whereas I think it was 53% or 54% previously. It is a recognition of the point you are making. The other reason that we have made the multilateral bets we have is because we have picked the things that go into the most fragile places. I think we probably agree with you that this is a risk and that is reflected in the choices that we have made. I will come back to this: ODA is not an outcome in itself. It is about what it is buying and who you can work alongside to make sure that you are putting in the right things in the right places at the right time. We are quite good at knowing what those are, I think, because we have been in the development space for a very long time. It is trying to use that understanding and leadership to make sure that the world does a better job in places where there is real crisis than it has been.

Can I come back to the UK and the in-country refugee costs that the ODA budget is supporting? Given that the Government are trying to end that hotel accommodation by the end of the Parliament, is it your expectation that that money is going to come back into the ODA budget?

We have been given a three-year allocation. In terms of the FCDO’s ODA funding, that allocation is provided for us. That is why we have done the three-year allocations. I think there have been times in the past where effectively the FCDO’s funding fluctuated depending on what was going on in other Government Departments, which means you would then be at risk of losing funding if there is then some problem that means ODA funding is needed elsewhere. What the Treasury has done in this spending review is to give us an allocation, regardless of what happens anywhere else in the system, so we have that certainty to be able to do the three-year budgets.

I understand—

I know what you are asking.

I understand that, but will the money that you are saving come back to the ODA budget?

Not automatically is the truth. We have set up a new process. We did the allocations for the whole of Whitehall ODA through the FCDO. We ran that process. The deal was, as the Foreign Secretary said, that we are no longer spender and saver of last resort, which is a win for us. No one wants to be in that position. What we now have is a process across Whitehall where all the ODA spending Departments come together. There is open book; there is mutual challenge; there are shared strategies. That is a work in progress, I admit. This is the way that we are working. We have had some early successes on research and development. We are now working through all our climate spending together with DESNZ and DEFRA. This is new. This has never, ever happened before. Where there are ODA underspends in other Departments, there will have to be a conversation and a decision, and the right way to do that is through this process. That is what we all signed up to do. I hope, for many, many, many reasons, that the Home Office is successful in its work to get the costs of this down; no one needs incentivising. What happens to ODA gets decided at that board.

Can I ask one more question on this, because I think we have two votes imminently? I think you are right to prioritise the fragile states because that is where the most intense need is at the moment. We are looking at 61 conflicts around the world and growing. They are the ones that we know and recognise. My frustration is that development money, when it is done well, prevents these conflicts. We know that conflict as well as climate is one of the main drivers of people and all the horrors that spill out from that. Have you got enough development money left to actually do the prevention and the early intervention or are we just dealing with the outcomes of maybe historic underinvestment of development funding?

I would say it has to be development combined with policy interventions. I think development on its own will not help if you have particular local conflicts that erupt, different problems with corruption or things that can provoke, state to state rivalries and conflicts, and so on. It has to be an interaction between the two. It is also the development that we do, not just the policy interventions. It is why I have prioritised what work we can do to try to get the ceasefire in Sudan as a way of easing a humanitarian crisis. It is the worst humanitarian crisis of the 21st century and therefore we cannot just have a humanitarian response. One more example is that part of the reason we have prioritised Education Cannot Wait as a funding thing is because if parents cannot get education for their kids they will keep moving. They will absolutely keep moving because even if they have to deal with a crisis because of what is happening in their country, they still want to believe that their children have a future. Therefore, that funding can also be what prevents people then making dangerous journeys or facing worse calamities along the way if you get them that local education support, too.

I completely agree. Ministers, we are going to have to pause the session for votes. Could I ask you to come back swiftly? Yes, let’s suspend the session now and people can come back as soon as possible, please.   Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.   On resuming—  

We are now restarting this session. Monica, over to you.

Can I turn to the integrated security fund? The Government announced a restructure of the ISF, but there was no mention of key geographic portfolios. Will this work continue to be funded through the ISF?

Different bits of the ISF funding are being picked up by different Departments and by different budgets. Just say again which area of the ISF you are interested in.

The geographical portfolios for Africa, West Balkans and the Americas were absent from the statement that was given in February 2026 by the Minister of State for the Cabinet Office and Home Office. The geographical portfolios were missing. Will this work continue to be funded through the ISF via the FCDO?

I am going to turn to Nick and Melinda on this one because different bits of the ISF are being funded in different places.

I would say three things about the ISF. One is it will be slightly smaller if you compare it to two or three years ago; not significantly, but the numbers are coming down. Secondly, there is increasing attention to what you would call homeland security, so more money is going to programmes funded with focus on the UK’s security directly.

I was surprised at that shift, not that we do not need it but that it was coming from that fund.

Yes. That was an across the Government decision. The third thing is that there has been a narrowing of the geographic focus. The main focus, certainly from the FCDO’s perspective, is Iran and its proxies, Russia, Asia-Pacific, China, economic security, CT and cyber. What is not in there is Africa, so the Africa portfolio will close under the existing plans. There is then a question about what you do with the existing funds and programmes that were happening under the Africa portfolio. For instance, there is the Somalia security and stabilisation programme. We will pick that up in the first year and continue that funding, but we will have to review all the other portfolios to see what the options going forward are for the rest of the portfolio.

There is no sustained funding pot for all those programmes—it is case by case in Africa?

There has been a deliberate decision to narrow the geographic focus and the thematic focus to those areas I just laid out. That does mean that they have closed the Africa portfolio. Then the question is: is there anything in that Africa portfolio that you want to pick up elsewhere? That is a conversation and a piece of work that we are going to have to do.

That sounds slightly worrying to me. I wonder what the Foreign Secretary and the Minister would say. Given Sudan, given what is happening around Sudan, Somaliland and, of course, the Iran war now that we are in, does there not need to be a focus and a fund that looks specifically at that?

Part of what we are trying to do is to better link it with the policy work and work across the Department. Rather than seeing it simply in terms of what is the funding pot and then the ISF goes off and does things, we want to link individual areas more effectively to the policy objective. Sudan is the easiest area or clearest example to talk about. We have strengthened the capacity in FCDO working on Sudan. We have strengthened the team in order to put much greater focus and provide greater expertise to be able to work with not just the Quad and the US Quad-led process but also with the African Union to do work more broadly, and with Germany and Norway on some of the civilian capability-building and so on. We are doing some of that work through direct policy engagement, even where we do not have traditional ISF funding to do so. It comes back to what the priorities that we have to address are. The changing pattern of threats directly to the UK has meant a changing pattern of funding. That does not mean that any of these decisions are easy, but does mean that at a cross-Government level, those ISF decisions were taken based on the areas that pose the greatest direct threat or indirect threat to the UK.

How quickly can the programmatic spending pivot to places that look like they are about to erupt or are on the slow burn to being a place of conflict? Again, I am thinking about Somaliland and that part of Africa that is closest to the Iran conflict.

I can talk about Somalia a little bit. I was there a couple of months ago, and it is among the most fragile places on Earth. The ODA element of the ISF has been active there. The question is not about the money or the fund, it is: what was the impact of it and what was the effect? What do you need to do in terms of pivoting your portfolio to make sure that you are not exposing your place to any more fragility than it had previously? What are you able to do to strengthen that place? Somewhere like Somalia there is live conflict, there are Islamists and it is kinetic, but there is also massive climate risk. There is extreme poverty. There is virtually every kind of threat and risk that you could possibly imagine. To strengthen somewhere like that, you do not just look at the ISF-type interventions. You need to look at it more holistically. A good thing to point to there would be that few years ago, there was a drought. A quarter of a million people died as a consequence of that drought. Last year’s drought was nothing like that in terms of impact because even in a place like that, with all of those threats, challenges and difficulties, we have been able to work with the Government of Somalia on their own systems and to co-ordinate better the international response there in order to prevent that level of death. There are lots of things we can do in those places, where previously we would have maybe looked more to an ISF intervention. It is a really important flag, though. We probably need to have another look, just to make sure we have sufficient oversight of everywhere that ISF is operating in Africa—and it wasn’t the biggest area of activity, to give some perspective—to make sure there aren’t things we could be doing, that we are not currently doing, which would ameliorate some of the impact you’re concerned about.

The Foreign Secretary has intimated that we have a hard stop at 5 pm.

Sorry, I have an international call that I have to do at 5 pm. We were expecting to finish at 4.30 pm but we have just checked that we can continue. We should do an additional 10-plus minutes or so because of the Division so that we do not lose time.

All right. Can I say to Ministers, can we have snappy answers? Can I say to Members, can we blast through this? We have loved all of you and the problem is that we are fascinated by this topic and I know that you are very committed to it, but we are only on question 9 and we have another 20 to go, so very quickly, please, Janet Daby.

Secretary of State, can you confirm when country allocations of ODA will be made available?

We will do that as swiftly as possible. Ultimately, they of course will be published as part of the annual report. We want to do it significantly before that.

That is July, isn’t?

Yes, exactly.

You are doing it now?

We will do it as rapidly as we can. The process that we are going through at the moment is about the individual country discussions with the Governments, so before there is a public breakdown of it, we have those individual, country-by-country Government discussions.

We are talking about another week?

As soon as is practicable. We will let you know as soon as we have the timetable for doing it.

Okay. We know how to find you, Minister.

You do.

Lovely. Can you provide any more detail on the total level of bilateral ODA designated for the African continent over the next three years?

I will let Melinda and Nick supplement my answer with the precise figures, but effectively there are three central sources of funding for Africa. There is direct ODA bilateral funding. There is also our contribution to the African Development Bank, the multilateral development bank funding, which we have maintained at £650 million. Then there is the IDA funding. We have increased our IDA funding by 40% compared with the previous replenishment. Of the IDA funding, is it 60%?

It is 75%.

Of that, 75% also goes to Africa. For Africa, the total bilateral direct funding has reduced. The total figure ends up being £680 million, from memory.

£677 million. The average—

Not far off; £677 million in total. That is a reduction, and that is partly because the three countries we have protected in full are Sudan, Palestine and Ukraine. In addition, we have fully protected the development bank funding for Africa and we have increased the IDA funding for Africa.

Can I add to that? If you take into account what we are, in effect, putting into Africa through the multilateral banks, it is over £1 billion pounds a year. There is an additional £1 billion-plus going into Africa from the UK each year via the multilateral banks.

The sector is saying it is a 60% cut. You are disputing that?

Who is saying that, Sarah?

The sector is saying it is a 60% cut.

Right. The sector is saying this. It is wrong about this. I love ONE Campaign with all my heart but it is wrong about this. It has assured me that it will rework the figures to take into account the multilateral investments and leverage. That is how it assesses its own contribution to development in sub-Saharan Africa; it needs to play fair and subject us to the exact same methodology. I think it gets that. We will be having robust conversations with it to ensure that that is done because it really matters. The decisions we have taken have been done consciously and deliberately to protect sub-Saharan Africa and fragile countries. That is the right thing to do. That is what it would tell us to do. We have done that. To now simply say, “We have added up your bilateral and we have compared it to last year’s bilateral”, knowing full well that the real impact is gained through working multilaterally—it can do better than that, and I expressed that in a different way when I spoke to it last week.

Thank you. Melinda, did you want to come in on this?

I just wanted to make the same point. As you can tell, we feel very strongly about this.

Yes, we do. Yes.

Of all the multilateral funds, Africa is obviously outsized in terms of the proportion because that is where the need is highest. Even through the global health organisations, clearly the UN humanitarian organisations and the others that we are supporting, there would be an attributed share of UK spend on that that goes to Africa. We have focused on this throughout.

I am very sympathetic to what you have just said, and I have been less concerned about the prospect of bilateral cuts, based on the argument that $1 into the World Bank equals $4 out. Just to clarify what you’ve said: in a world where we had carried on at 0.5%, the total amount of money going to the African continent—through both bilateral and multilateral funding—would have remained at that level. In this new world, based on what you have said about the ability to leverage in more money, how does that compare at 0.3% for the African continent specifically, once you take IDA into account?

We do not know the full answer to that because we do not know how effective we are going to be at leverage through BII and all the other things that we do. My mission in life is to make sure that that number is bigger. Our theory rests upon the fact that being able to work multilaterally, being able to use leverage, being able to use influence over where other people’s money is spent as well as our own, and being able to do the work that we are doing through the Emerging Markets and Developing Economies Taskforce to get the cost of borrowing down for these countries where they are unfairly disadvantaged—all of that put together ought to add up to a lot more money flowing from the global north into Africa. At the moment, barely any does outside of ODA. That question you have just asked is the test of how successful this strategy will be.

Skills capability is absolutely key for us to be able to make the shift for FCDO 2030 restructuring to happen. Has either of you seen the risk register around the FCDO 2030 programme, and what are your key concerns about the risks that the programme entails given the scale of it?

The process that we need to go through is about both developing and increasing the skills and the capability, and making sure that we can have more focused and agile teams. Of course the process of change has challenges while it is being implemented, but that is a good reason for us to complete the process as rapidly as possible. We have to live within our means as well, and that is significant. One of the things I looked at the beginning of this process was, “Where are we starting from and how realistic is this?” in terms of what we are able to deliver overall. Looking at the comparison figures, from 2015 to 2025, the number of London-based staff covering Foreign Office and DfID territory, compared to the two separate organisations back in 2015, was 40% higher in 10 years. Now, that is not sustainable. That is partly why we have had to make reductions, while trying to keep focus and keep the country-based staff. You are right that it does include changing the development skills that we have. Jenny has alluded to some of that earlier on. The kinds of convener skills that you need in country are slightly different from spending-management skills.

We did a lot of work as a Committee around the changes in the staffing, as Baroness Chapman knows. We were particularly concerned about the lack of a meaningful skills audit up front and the potential lack of clarity around a strategic workforce plan. Are they on that risk register for when the key decisions were taken?

For the detail of the—

Yes. We do have a capability framework for the organisation, which lays out the skills that we think we are going to need to build for the future. We are, in fact, going through an exercise right now asking all our staff to self-assess against that skills audit so that we have exactly that, a baseline of what skills we have in the organisation compared to—

You must recognise, Mr Dyer, that there is a risk in doing that now after you have already made these big choices. You started losing and haemorrhaging staff on the basis of cuts before you knew what your skillset was.

I do not accept that. The fact is that we need an organisation that lives within its means. We need an organisation that tackles the fact that it is too big and bureaucratic, too slow, that is not nimble enough and that does not have the right technical capability that it requires for the future. We also need an organisation that is responding to the changing world around it, and that world, as we have just seen this year, is changing rapidly. We need to work on new things—geoeconomics, economic security—we need to work with new partnerships and alliances, and we need to create a structure that reflects that reality. That is moving at a pace. We need to build that structure and that is what we are doing right now.

There is an inherent risk here. These cuts have been known about since February last year. I believe we were flying up to Scotland to see the FCDO on the day that they were announced. We are 12 months into that process. You are saying that 12 months on, staff right now are going through the process of telling you what their skills are. FCDO must accept the risk that individuals who have the skillset you are looking for, but have not been able to specify, may have already started leaving. There is a risk that having made all these big choices, you will not have the skillset required to deliver that agenda.

The reason why this is taking more time is because we are trying to get it right. We are having twice-weekly consultations with the unions to share information on what we are planning and to get their feedback on the changes they recommend we should undertake.

The overseas network review is still not finished, is it?

No, but we have a choice here: we either do it badly or we do it properly. We are trying to do it properly.

You have made your decisions, though. A lot of the big decisions have been made already.

We have made the decisions about funding allocations. If we had not made the decisions about funding allocations until we had done the overseas network, we would have been in trouble because we would then have been starting the financial year and the spending review processes without the allocations being set out. If the counter-argument is that we should have accelerated the process of the country-based network, then we would not have been able to do the full skills audit, the full processes and analysis.

The original question, Foreign Secretary, was about the risk register. Just clarify that the FCDO is aware of the risks of the sequencing of all these events. There is no perfect solution—

No.

—and I am not saying there should be, but it must be recognised by the FCDO that there are some inherent risks in the way that this has been sequenced over the last 12 months.

There are risks involved in change but there are also risks involved in not changing, and there are global risks that we are dealing with that have massively changed in a short period. We are trying to adapt the institution and the workforce to be able to respond to those huge, changing risks and also change in response to the kinds of budget allocations and the decisions that we have to make. It is true that there are a lot of changes to be made alongside each other and that they need to effectively twin-track in different ways, but I do not think we could have changed the timetable of either of these things. We could not have changed the timing of the spending allocations and we could not have sped up the staffing decisions. Bear in mind that a lot of the biggest reforms in staffing are about what is happening in London, as opposed to what happens out in the country-based network.

Can I just add one—

Can I just pause at this point? Foreign Secretary, we know that you need to go in five minutes. Baroness Chapman, are you able to stay until 5 pm? That is when we thought you were here until.

Yes, I can.

Brilliant. Thank you very much. Please, Nick.

I have lost my train of thought. Two things. One is that as the Foreign Secretary has laid out, we have made a conscious decision to protect the overseas network. That is why the bulk of the reductions will fall in London. The biggest risk we have at the moment is that we have a whole staff network which is facing uncertainty and anxiety about the structuring that is coming. Now we have the allocations out and now we have the skills audit out, we need to move as fast as we can to get this restructuring done and do it quickly so that we can get over that hump of people being uncertain, and create the certainty and the stability that the organisation needs. That is the big thing that we are focusing on now, to get this done as soon as possible.

Thank you. Foreign Secretary, we have been speaking about the broader premise behind it. I wonder if we could bring it back down, bluntly, to the human level. We have been told that by this Friday, FCDO staff have to produce a 500-word essay to the title, “Thinking about the work you do now and have done in your career so far, what skills and capabilities do you currently possess that contribute most effectively to FCDO’s work?” It is the understanding of the Committee staff that allowances have not been made for people on maternity, long-term sick, or paternity leave. Also, I am very concerned, basically, about the bias. If you are very good at writing essays, do you get scored higher? What are the criteria that you are being scored against? Does this concern you?

I will pass to Nick on the detail of that.

It was more, Foreign Secretary, does it concern you, the process that is going on? Basically, if you can write a good essay and you can pitch it in the right terms, you will keep your job?

The reason I am going to pass this to Nick is because I think the detail of the staffing decisions within the FCDO needs ultimately to be done by the Permanent Secretaries. In terms of the overview we maintain on it, we are clear that we need to maintain skills, and we need to make sure that have proper equalities impact assessments and that diversity and so on are recognised as part of that. Individual Ministers—not just me—can challenge decisions, proposals, and so on. Ultimately, those management issues are for officials to undertake and then be able to explain and set out the processes.

Then, rather than turning to Nick, it is our understanding that the PUS—I do not know if he is the first PUS or the other PUS—is the person who is leading on this.

Yes.

Can you authorise him to come in front of our Committee, please?

Well, so—

That was a question to the Foreign Secretary.

Yes, in the appropriate way. Yes.

Thank you. I do not know what that is. Dressed would be appropriate, I think, and in a timely manner.

We will make sure the Permanent Secretary gets dressed.

We appreciate that.

Foreign Secretary, when will the Government respond to the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion on Israel’s forcible transfer of Palestinians from the West Bank?

Most of the issues raised in that report are already Government policy—both in terms of our approach to illegal settlements and the serious humanitarian concerns we have. I would also say that I am particularly concerned right now about what is happening in the West Bank. I am also deeply concerned about keeping the Gaza 20‑point plan process on track, and about the risk that developments in the West Bank are not being focused on, precisely because of the wider conflict in the Middle East and the huge impact that conflict is having. By the way, just to let the Committee know—this isn’t the question you asked, but I am conscious of it before I need to go—we are closely monitoring the potential impacts of things like the closure of the Strait of Hormuz on fragile states, on some of the least‑developed countries, and on countries facing the greatest poverty, which may feel the greatest effects of changes in energy prices and fertiliser prices. We are watching that very closely, and I am happy to come back to the Committee on those issues, because it is obviously a rapidly developing situation. To return to the Palestine issues: there is real, deep concern at the moment about what is happening in the West Bank—the E1 settlements, the scale of settler violence—and the fact that, in other circumstances, this would have been a major global focus, but in the current situation there is so much happening that there is a danger these issues are not receiving sufficient attention. As we come out of this broader Middle East conflict—with the attacks we are seeing from Iran in the Gulf and the wider regional tensions—we are going to need to build a broader regional security and stability framework that includes Israel, Palestine and Lebanon as part of a wider approach. It cannot just be about Iran and the Gulf.

Hear, hear. Foreign Secretary, thank you so much for your time. You need to scoot. We appreciate you making the time to be with us today.

Thank you very much.

Baroness Chapman, thank you very much for staying with us. Janet, over to you.

I want to talk about the delivery of disability inclusion. We are aware that the position of Head of Disability Inclusion at FCDO has been abolished and we would like to know what the future of the disability inclusion team is.

Our way of looking at this is to take the learning that there has been on disability and we have learned an awful lot. The UK has been a leader in this. We need to mainstream how we design programmes to make sure that disability is always taken into account. We know that interventions are better if they are designed with disability in mind, and they are better for everybody. There are lots of good reasons to keep this going. It will be structured in a different way, that is true, because we are reshaping the communities of expertise, but we will still have capability in disability and inclusion.

Did you say you will still have expertise in this? Is that what you have just said?

Yes, we will still have expertise.

Okay. That is the main thing in being able to maintain the service, making sure you have that expertise right at the top and all the way through the teams as well.

Yes, I think that is something we have learned. I have only had this job for a year and others have been doing it far longer than I have could tell what attitudes and what design thinking has changed over that time. My sense is that we have learned a lot through the work that we have been able to do.

Lovely. I am just going to move on to polio now. How will the Government continue to support global progress towards the eradication of polio?

Is this about GPEI, by any chance?

Yes.

Huge progress has been made towards the eradication of polio. We are not quite there but we have done incredibly well and have got close at various points in time.

I think that is the frustration, Minister. We are so close to it. Why not just push through that last bit and eradicate it?

We have thought about this, and some of this relates to the comments that we made earlier about global health architecture and wanting to streamline and simplify, because now Gavi does polio. We think that the way to finish the job is to support the biggest vaccine alliance that there is, to take the learning from GPEI and get Gavi doing it at scale. We think that is the best next step towards eradication. This is in no way any negative comment towards GPEI. What it has done is absolutely tremendous and the world is a much, much healthier place because of what it has done.

How is transitioning from one to the next being monitored and followed through in the countries where this is already happening?

How is it being monitored? In some ways this is a bad thing but in some ways it is helpful that in some of the other transitions that you can monitor, you can see quite quickly where there is a problem. I do not know if you remember but a year or maybe two years ago, we had to quickly vaccinate children in Gaza with polio vaccinations. They needed two doses, and even in that context, it could be delivered. We have learned a lot about how to do this at scale and at speed, and the reason we are staying in the WHO is because of the monitoring and early warning that it can provide. You have to look at what we are doing holistically. Gavi has the capability to deliver at scale, and it does not just do it itself either. Oh God, I have a vote now. I am not sure—

What do you want to do, Minister?

You know Roy Kennedy. He is my Chief Whip. I think I need to finish the question. I am unlikely to get there before the end of the bell anyway. We are looking at it holistically. We want to work in a way that rationalises the global health architecture because everybody says that is the right thing to do. We will monitor very closely the impact of what is happening and we will course-correct and intervene should we need to, alongside partners.

Minister, do you want to try to rush to the other end?

It’s okay; let’s carry on.

I appreciate it, thank you.

Can I ask one more question, while I have you? We recently met with South Sudan and they were talking about a girls’ education programme, GESS. A letter has been written by the Committee about a 90% cut that is in line to take place from the UK. This will affect the education of a significant number of girls’ education going forward. Over two million refugees have moved into South Sudan. I want to impress on you to respond to the letter, please, because it is something that weighs quite heavily on the Committee, hearing that significant education programmes like this are likely to be cut and we want to know what the situation is going forward.

As well as being about the impact on the girls who will not get an education, it is also about a return on investment when we have been investing in a very successful scheme and drawing in other countries in support alongside. It would be interesting to know where we are and if you are having negotiations with other potential donors to fill that gap.

I will look at South Sudan specifically. It is a very difficult country to operate in and there are many different challenges there. I will look at that specifically. On education more generally, as the Foreign Secretary said, we are protecting ECW because that is about—she has explained this already—education in emergencies. We want to do a lot more on system strengthening with education because countries want to deliver their own education systems. One of the things they say to us quite frequently is, “We want a universal healthcare system and a universal education system. We cannot import that from donors doing programmes, we need to build that ourselves, and to do that we need your help”, whether that is on raising the revenue to pay for it or building the expertise, systems and capability to deliver it in country. That is the conversation they want to be in. The big players in terms of getting kids into school and, in Bangladesh, getting as many girls into school as boys, gets done through IDA. It is probably the biggest player in delivering education globally. That was another reason for our contribution to that fund.

One last point: it is absolutely right to work with the grassroots and with Governments but somewhere like South Sudan is not yet in that position to be self-sufficient. That is all I wanted to say.

You are completely right.

I would stress, Members, that the Minister is being very kind. Brevity, please.

Just a light topic then, on women, peace and security. In a recent inquiry on women, peace and security, we heard that women and girls’ rights are under threat, as we know and as we touched on earlier. How is the Government ensuring that the UK remains a leader on women, peace and security?

Some of that is because we have protected the centrally managed funds/programmes for those issues, but a lot of it comes down to advocacy. We know—particularly when these agendas are under threat and women’s roles as leaders are being questioned in a way we did not expect them to be at this stage—that our ability to be able to stand up, particularly as the Foreign Secretary did very recently at the UN, and make a very clear, strong case, does mean something. That gets noticed around the world. Part of it is that we have control over what we do, what we say, and where we put our money. We can do that, but we need to be showing it visibly to others as well.

A very quick follow-up. We spoke about mainstreaming, and I know we have spoken about this quite a lot when you have been at evidence sessions previously. Are you confident that we can deliver that mainstreaming, given the cuts that we have had and the loss of potential expertise through the reorganisation of staffing?

Yes, I am. I have been on a journey with this, is the truth, over the last year. When I first came in and saw that 80% of our programming is gender this or that, I was like, “What is this?” However, it is really important. The fact that we can get to 90%—I am certain that we can, and we might exceed that—does speak to the quality of the people who we do have. I do not meet anybody who works in development who is not passionate about this. I am confident, Tracy, but you have to hold us to it. I know you will.

We will, Minister, we will. Thank you very much.

My question is about the UK’s international climate finance. There are two parts to it but it is one question. How confident are you that the UK can maintain its climate leadership role, with reduced allocation? Secondly, in your view, what are the risks associated with the Government’s increasing reliance on private finance to fill the UK’s climate finance gap against its equitable share?

I am very confident about this because we delivered it in the last ICF period. We got the £11.6 billion. I think we can do better than that. At the moment, we have our £2 billion a year ICF for the next three years. In addition, we are estimating—and I think this is a conservative estimate—£6.7 billion on top of that.

Million or billion?

Billion. We are getting good at this. We are learning and we are getting more and more partners coming to us. The private sector is very active in all of this. They see growth. My favourite stat of the week is that there is $120 trillion in assets under management in the global North. How much of that goes to Africa? Hardly any. About half of it goes to North America. People who are managing these funds are looking for new markets, they know that in Africa you are getting 8%, 9%, 10% growth, and they want a part of that. They are really nervous. They do not know how to assess risk. The ratings agencies are interested and we are working with them. I do not know of any other Governments that are doing this. The whole point of this is to get some of that money moving into those economies, and specifically—not only, but a lot of it—on energy and climate. This is exciting. This is genuine leadership from the United Kingdom. We do not make nearly enough of it and I think we ought to be really proud of it because this is a Government working hand-in-hand with the private sector, using the very best of what the UK has to offer. The big learning point for me was that some of these bankers have real hearts and values and want to do exciting things around the world. Some of them like the look of the return. It is great.

We did a session on this and were quite impressed by some of the development banks de-risking by bundling together. That seems very sensible.

Yes, exactly.

One of the things that concerns me is that it is only 3% of the adaptation investment that the private sector is putting in, and so SIDS and low-income countries are going to be very vulnerable. I think it is about understanding your strategy, what you prioritise, and trying to encourage BAI, for example, to prioritise so that those countries probably most at risk do not get left out when people are just looking for the bottom line.

Completely right. That is the reason that we are doing so much work with the insurance industry on pre-arranged finance, because you cannot get the investment into quality construction that will enable you to get cheaper insurance if you are getting hit time and time again. We are working with them to get pre-arranged finance or insurance that is parametrically triggered, just to get the cost of that down. Hardly any—about 7%—of insurance is done that way at the moment. We probably need to get that number up to about a quarter because that makes these places far, far more investable. It is part of a wider story that we might want to come back to and have a longer conversation about.

We would appreciate that. When should we be expecting ICF4 allocation?

What do you mean?

The next round of allocations for the International Climate Fund.

It shows you exactly where it is coming from. Some of that is funds that are undergoing replenishment and although we have talked to them privately, they have asked us not to publicise that while they go through their replenishment process. We are respecting that. Some of it you will see once the portfolios are done. Because we are asking teams to do it on a portfolio basis, we need to then go through and score for climate. Then we will be able to give a proper answer to that. Some of the portfolios are done, some of them not yet.

It is ongoing?

It is.

I have one of many questions I could ask you about nutrition. It is about the Child Nutrition Fund. It was good last night to hear Minister Elmore being very effusive about it but it would be good if you were able to commit to continuing support for the fund and potentially see how much that would be.

Do we have a number for that, Nick?

No.

No, we do not. You are right and Chris is right that it is vital. It is part of our health approach. Can we come back to you with a figure on that? I know you are interested in that specifically. You do not want to hear me whitter on about the importance of nutrition.

We were looking for reassurance, Minister, because there was no explicit mention of nutrition in the briefings, the statements, or any figures that we have seen. We are basically looking to make sure that it has not dropped off your agenda, because obviously it is fundamental.

No, absolutely. Often it is the humanitarian response, but it is definitely part of our work on health.

If you could write to us with more details, we would appreciate it.

Yes, for sure.

The very last question, because I am looking at the clock, is from Monica.

I wanted to talk about Sudan, and I know we could take up a whole Committee on talking about it. Can I ask you what conversations the Government is having with the backers of the belligerent parties in Sudan, and what action they are taking to deter them from the continued support of belligerents?

Yes, we are having conversations and our representative, Richard Crowder, is leading on those conversations. We are also doing a lot of work with civil society. We have a civilian path that we are working on alongside the Norwegians, which is going to be important whatever happens here. There has been—this is my personal view—a lot of optimism about the Quad process and where that might lead and having a truce. All of this stuff has not yet come about. However, even if this takes longer, at some point there will need to be a civilian-led Government in Sudan. Therefore, alongside the work that we are doing diplomatically with our allies and partners ahead of the conference that we are hosting alongside the Germans quite soon, we are looking at this longer-term piece of work. We all want peace but it has to be peace that lasts, and the only way you achieve that in a solid way is to do the work that we are doing. We are not doing this; this is Sudanese-led and our work is us very much in support, but it is a vital part of what we are doing in Sudan. It is very hard to get past the immediate humanitarian response, Monica.

My question is very much related to that. How are we engaging with the ICJ to ensure that crimes against humanity are being recorded, that action will be taken, and that belligerents know this? What we have heard is that they reckon they are completely free to do whatever they like, and they are behaving appallingly.

You can see why they think that, because that has been their experience. We do work with Geneva Call and with the Red Cross. When I first heard about this I was almost incredulous but in international humanitarian law with warring parties there is a lot of evidence that this improves—although there is still a huge problem—and it does make a difference and it does help so we are doing that. We are speaking with civil society groups. One of the reasons that I am so keen to work through the Emergency Response Rooms is that that is our only mechanism to get support to where it is needed in a lot of cases, but you are also building leaders of the future by working that way. All of this matters. I do not want to give you the idea that we are somehow on the verge of a solution or on the verge of peace because I just do not see it. However, accountability, us having the fact-finding mission and all of that work is incredibly important, and we will stick with this for as long as we are needed to.

Sadly, Minister, I share your pessimism. I think there was a glimmer of hope when President Trump took an interest. Maybe if he comes back to it we might be able to get the people around the table, because the suffering that is going on as a consequence of a few men is totally, totally despicable. Minister, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your colleagues who came along. It will not surprise you, Minister, that we had questions on Palestine, the Horn of Africa, the DRC, and the regional humanitarian impact of what is happening with the Israel-US war with Iran. If we could follow up in writing with those, we would be very grateful for your indulgence in giving us a response. Thank you all for coming. Thank you for what you are trying to do to re-shift our focus on development and make sure that it remains centre stage for all the work of this Government.