Future Delivery of UK Development Assistance

That the Parliament notes the proposed merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development (DfID) to create a new department from 1 September 2020; acknowledges the call by Scotland’s leading international development organisations for this department to endorse four key pledges to enable it to maintain what it sees has been the UK’s global leadership in the delivery of international development assistance for over 20 years; supports the call for a commitment to poverty eradication and aid effectiveness, for accountability, transparency and scrutiny, for the delivery on the UN Sustainable Development Agenda and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the safeguarding of the world-class expertise built up by DfID at East Kilbride and elsewhere to continue to deliver overseas development assistance where it is needed most; calls for commitments by the UK and Scottish governments to provide global citizenship education for young people; believes that the principles of global citizenship apply to governments as well as people, and calls for these principles to be applied to future decisions on the structure, strategy, policies and priorities of the proposed new department.