Seventh Special Report - Aid spending in the UK: Government response to the Committee’s Sixth Report

This is the government's response, published 22 May 2023.

Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.

The government says it cannot accept the Committee's recommendation to ring-fence the equivalent of 0.5% of GNI for development assistance delivered outside the UK, because it is "not affordable in current highly challenging economic and fiscal context".

• The government says it recognises the Committee's concern about the impact of in-UK ODA spending on international objectives, and sets out its own approach to "mitigating them".
• It states it provided additional ODA resources of £1 billion in 2022-23 and £1.5 billion in 2023-24 at the 2022 Autumn Statement, which it says will result in ODA spending exceeding 0.5% of GNI.
• It commits to publishing details of departmental methodologies for in-donor refugee costs in a report "prior to the publication of final 2022 Statistics on International Development in autumn 2023".
• It says it "remains committed to spending 0.7% of GNI as ODA when the fiscal circumstances allow", as set out to Parliament in July 2021.

Read the government's response ↗ Report an error