The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, delivered a spending review statement on 25 November 2020. The Government said the review’s priorities were “to support the Government’s response to Covid-19, invest in the UK’s recovery and deliver on promises to the British people”. Alongside the spending review, the Office for Budget Responsibility set out its latest forecasts for the economy and for the public finances.
Documents to download
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International Development: Sustainable Initiatives (221 KB, PDF)
The UK primarily achieves its promotion of sustainable environmental initiatives through International Climate Finance (ICF). ICF is jointly funded by the Department for International Development, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Schemes supported by UK International Climate Finance include:
- The Green Climate Fund, which supports programmes to preserve natural habitats;
- The Darwin Initiative, which helps to protect biodiversity globally; and
- The Clean Technology Fund, which finances large-scale technologies, like solar power.
At the United Nations (UN) General Assembly in September 2019, the Prime Minister announced that the Government would double the UK’s international climate finance spend. A press release published by the Department for International Development on 23 September 2019 stated that “the UK will up its ICF support to at least £11.6bn over the next five years, between 2021/2 to 2025/6 […] this significant uplift in UK aid support will held developing countries pursue low carbon, climate resilient and environmentally sustainable development”.
In a report published in April 2019, the House of Commons International Development Committee reviewed the Government’s use of aid to combat climate change around the world. The report stated that “the UK has historically shown leadership in advancing both the climate change and sustainable development agendas” but that “there does not appear to be an active strategy underpinning the Government’s International Climate Finance spending”. The report goes on to say that “currently, the support provided to the fossil fuel economy in developing countries by UK Export Finance is damaging the coherence of the Government’s approach to combating climate change”. The committee announced a follow up to its inquiry on 5 September 2019.
The UK is due to hold the UN’s climate change conference, the Conference of the Parties (COP26), in Glasgow in November 2020.
Documents to download
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International Development: Sustainable Initiatives (221 KB, PDF)
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Catch up on economics articles you may have missed from September and October 2020. This month we look at household savings during the Covid-19 pandemic, and whether the furlough scheme is discriminatory.
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The House of Lords is scheduled to debate four statutory instruments relating to the financial services and markets sector on 10 November 2020. Three of them relate to the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee has not raised concerns about any of the regulations. The House of Commons is yet to consider them.
