To ask His Majesty’s Government when they intend to announce the Official Development Assistance programme allocations for 2026–27.

My Lords, noting my registration in the Register of Lords’ Interests, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.

My Lords, the Government will publish the multiyear official development assistance programme allocations for 2026-27 and 2028-29 in the coming months. These allocations will be informed by consultation and impact assessments, and will provide greater predictability for delivery partners as we transition to spending 0.3% of GNI on ODA by 2027. The UK remains committed to international development and is modernising its approach in order to deliver greater impact, value for money and transparency.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her Answer and her engagement on this difficult set of decisions over recent months. There are those who are already suggesting that the drastic cuts announced earlier this year should be supplemented by further cuts in the Chancellor’s Budget, which will be announced at the end of this month. Can the Minister provide any reassurance that this will not, in fact, be the case and that, although we will still have a challenge, we will at least be working within the budget that was announced previously? Do the Minister and the Government recognise that those who are most affected by conflict, violence and instability are those who suffer from the least development and the worst circumstances? In the new, reduced budget, will there be priority for conflict-affected and fragile states, a focus on those states, and a specific budget for conflict prevention and peace- building, which can help us ensure that peace leads to development?

I completely agree with my noble friend about the impact of conflict on populations. We see this in Gaza, Yemen, Sudan and Myanmar. He is absolutely right to draw our attention to that. We focus a great deal on our work in fragile states and speak with our friends in the World Bank to keep them engaged in fragile contexts to make sure that they—who have far more money than we will ever have through an ODA programme—invest in these countries, as that really matters. However, I am going to disappoint my noble friend, in that I will not comment on the forthcoming Budget. I do not know what is in it; I am not expecting any further decisions to reduce our development assistance, but I do not think it would be wise for me to speculate at this stage.

My Lords, we all know that women and girls are disproportionately affected by conflict. There are, I think, about 116 conflicts raging around the world. The UK is a penholder for the women, peace and security agenda at the UN Security Council. We talk about leading the world on this agenda. Can the Minister reassure the House that we will continue to support women in conflict and not cut support to them at this time?

It is vital, particularly at the moment, when many of our ideas and values regarding women are being challenged internationally, but we are determined that our work to support women will continue. We want to see this reflected through everything we do, and we are working on the detail of how we responsibly mainstream our work on gender throughout our programming. That is part of the story, but the other thing we need to do is to use our voice and influence internationally to make it clear that our position on these issues remains constant, even though others may change.

My Lords, given the impact of cuts in aid and the advance of Russia and China as funders in developing countries, will the Government seek an urgent initiative to promote public and private debt relief to ease the burden in those countries? Will they also do more aid matching to engage the British public, and work with the private sector to encourage development-led partnerships between the public and private sectors?

The private sector has an enormous role to play, and we have a responsibility to enable that to happen in a far larger way than it has in the past. I am leading an emerging markets and developing economies task force with the City of London; we have big players around the table, including the ratings agencies, HSBC and Aviva. We are seeing real success in breaking down the barriers to get that investment into developing economies.

The noble Lord is right to raise the issue of debt. Some countries spend far more on debt repayment than they do on health and education public services. That is not sustainable and we need a solution. Various options are available, and we support all of them to find which are most appropriate for the different nature of debt, to which the noble Lord alluded, in 2025.

My Lords, when the noble Baroness publishes the ODA allocations in the coming months, will she tell us how much of that money, instead of being spent to help the poorest people in the world, is in fact being used to fund tax cuts in Mauritius under the Chagos surrender deal?

Noble Lords:

Oh!

I think the Chamber speaks for me on that. Our development assistance is all about supporting the poorest people in the world and empowering them to enable them to develop and support themselves, alongside our life-saving humanitarian assistance.

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, talked about supporting nations and communities in conflict. I hope that the Minister will also focus on challenging areas, such as access to education for women and girls, particularly in the most challenging parts of the world—for example, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We have to continue to support those women because the men who govern Afghanistan, in particular, do their best to stop girls getting access to education.

The noble Lord is right that in Afghanistan in particular—but not only Afghanistan—there are real problems in accessing education for girls. We will continue to support work on that in those places. More widely on education, especially for girls, the best thing we can do is support countries to strengthen their own education system so that they are able to educate their children and that girls get the protection that access to education provides. We look not only at access but at quality and standards so that, when a girl has completed her education, she has a good standard of literacy and is able to move on, support herself, and contribute to her community and country in the way that so many women want.

My Lords, the previous Government established women mediator networks; I gave evidence recently to the IDC on this. In agreeing with my noble friend Lady Hodgson, I offer a suggestion in a practical and positive way. We really need to empower those women mediator networks because, as the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, who raised this Question, said, avoiding conflict at its beginning is crucial. When women are involved, conflicts are resolved quicker and peace lasts longer. Can we please make sure that those mediator networks are working to their fullest capacity?

I thank the noble Lord for raising that point and in a constructive way, as he always does on these occasions, and for the experience which he brings. The initiative he describes has a lot of merit and I will look into it. He is absolutely right to point to the pivotal role of women in these situations.

My Lords, while we are on the theme of supporting women, as I travel around I find that one of the greatest impairments to young girls completing their education is that they are forced into pregnancy—sometimes by their families—at a very young age, pre leaving school. What can His Majesty’s Government do to help prevent young girls being made pregnant, usually by older men and in very difficult circumstances?

We know that the single most significant protective factor against that is education and being in school. We work with countries to try to enable that. Separately, I think that we are now the largest contributor to the UNFPA, which distributes contraceptive devices and products. Those do not always reach the people that the right reverend Prelate talks about, of course, so the work that we do on education is incredibly significant when it comes to preventing what none of us wants to see: very young girls starting their families sometimes years before they would have finished their education.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend very much for her warm words about education, which I am sure all of us in this Chamber would echo and welcome. Can she also please bear in mind the absolute centrality and importance of education when the replenishment conferences roll around next year for the Global Campaign for Education and Education Cannot Wait?

I think my noble friend means the Global Partnership for Education. They are both incredibly effective and we have to think how we best support our work on education. I think that the best thing we can do is work with other Governments, strengthening systems and enabling them to take the lead themselves. That is the most sustainable approach. Education Cannot Wait works in disaster situations, where a more standardised approach to education is just not feasible. That is very different and it is vital that that work continues.