To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what recent steps his Department has taken to increase public awareness of the incidence and consequences of global poverty.

On 1 March I announced the key outcomes of the Bilateral and Multilateral Aid Reviews and set out the results that UK aid will deliver for the world's poorest people over the next four years. The announcement has been accompanied by a comprehensive communications effort to raise public awareness of the scale of the challenge and the difference that well spent aid makes to people's lives. This achieved widespread coverage across national and regional media and online with the main aid review documents being downloaded over 24,000 times. Communicating via our social media channels, Facebook and Twitter, we reached over four million people. We also engaged with a broad range of stakeholders who have in turn undertaken supportive public engagement activity. We will continue with this communications effort.

On 19 January DFID launched a review of the use aid funds in the UK to promote awareness of global poverty. I expect the review to be completed by the end of March. Ministers will then look closely at its outcomes and assess the relevance of these activities to the UK's development objectives, in order to determine the future of DFID's development awareness work in the UK.