Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 3
Fifth Report - Global Health, Global Britain
Published 30 Sep 2021
Paragraph 14
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Foreign Affairs Committee Global health security All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
To be more effective and independent, the WHO needs more reliable sources of funding, based on predictable fees from member states, rather than earmarked voluntary donations. We welcome the UK’s commitment to increase its core funding to the organisation. This should be accompanied by greater efforts to bring together other countries in support of increasing non-earmarked core contributions. We recommend that the Government campaigns for an increase in member state fees ahead of next year’s World Health Assembly.
From: Foreign Affairs Committee, Fifth Report - Global Health, Global Britain (HC 200), paragraph 14, 30 September 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 16 December 2021 (deadline 30 November 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government sets out action across the Committee's recommendations, supporting a pandemic treaty and WHO reform while saying it is "yet to see evidence" for a single, non-renewable term for the WHO Director-General.
- On WHO funding, it says it has led calls in the WHO working group for more flexible, reliable funding and for an increase in Assessed Contributions, and it announced a £340m, four-year flexible funding programme that is "now live".
- On vaccines, it says it will "donate a total of 100 million doses by June 2022", with 80% of doses going through COVAX.
- On the BBC World Service, it states that the BBC is editorially independent, so additional services to tackle disinformation are "for the BBC World Service to decide". It cites an £8 million uplift for 2021-22, of which £3 million was for disinformation.
- On aid cuts, it describes the reduction to 0.5% of GNI as temporary, saying it will return to 0.7% "when the fiscal situation allows". It will publish a Health Systems Strengthening Position Paper before the end of the year, with decisions on publishing a global health strategic framework "in due course".