Our High Commission in South Africa regularly raises issues of concern with the South African authorities where necessary, in particular where UK nationals are involved. We work with South African law enforcement, providing training and capacity building to the South African Police Service and support links between our legal systems. UK nationals should always consult Foreign and Commonwealth Office travel advice, which is regularly reviewed.

Our High Commission in Pretoria and Consulate in Cape Town have regular engagement with the South African host authorities on safety and security. We keep our travel advice under constant review and make regular updates to ensure it reflects our assessment of risk to British nationals, including highlighting hotspots where British nationals would be at more risk of being the victims of crime or violence.

The UN estimates that 10.9m people are in need of humanitarian assistance in Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) (an increase of 600,000 over 2018), all of whom are food insecure. An estimated 10.3m people are under-nourished. The UK provides no bilateral funding to the DPRK. The UK contributes to the UN Central Emergency Fund (CERF), along with other bilateral donors. CERF provided US$10m in humanitarian funding to DPRK in 2018, including allocations to the World Food Programme and Food and Agriculture Organisation for work on nutrition security. The CERF makes independent decisions on the allocation of resources based on assessed need.

I visited the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in April 2018 and discussed electronic voting machines with the Electoral Commission (CENI). At their request, the UK funded a technical analysis of the machines to help identify and mitigate the challenges around their use in DRC’s elections.

The UK has repeatedly encouraged CENI to adopt the recommendations from the analysis and address concerns of stakeholders with the electoral process, including most recently through a UN Security Council Statement on 21st November, and a meeting between senior officials and CENI on 11^th December.

The Government of DRC, with support from the World Health Organisation (WHO), is leading the response to the current Ebola outbreak in extremely challenging circumstances. The UK Government is in regular contact with the DRC Minister of Health, his officials and the WHO to understand how the UK can best support an effective response.

The British Government remains closely engaged with South Sudan's leaders, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development and its Member States, our Troika (USA and Norway) partners, and the wider international community to encourage the implementation of the peace agreement signed on 12 September.

The parties to the conflict must show they are genuinely committed to its implementation and must abide by the commitments they have made. Key indicators of this commitment include an immediate end to all violence, the release of all political detainees, and the removal of impediments to humanitarian access.

As part of our support for long term peace in South Sudan, we also continue to urge the region and the international community to hold accountable those who are working against peace, which must include the robust enforcement of UN sanctions and the arms embargo.

For each of the last five years the impact of DFID’s work has been set out in the Departmental Annual Reports and Accounts. The DFID Annual Report and Accounts 2017-2018 also shows the results achieved during the period April 2015 to March 2018. In that period, UK Official Development Assistance reached 26.8 million people with humanitarian assistance and supported 40.3 million people to access clean water and/or better sanitation. Between January 2015 and December 2017, it supported the immunisation of approximately 37.4 million children, saving an estimated 610,000 lives. We are committed to improving the effectiveness and transparency of UK aid to ensure we are attaining maximum impact from our aid budget. The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) has the remit to provide independent scrutiny of the impact and value for money of all UK Government aid spending and reports its finding to Parliament’s International Development Committee.

The Millennium Development Goal targets for clean water in sub-Saharan Africa were not met by the 2015 deadline. Between 2015 and 2018, DFID supported 17.5 million people in Africa to access clean water and/or better sanitation. For example, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, over 2.7 million people gained access to clean water with DFID’s support between 2015 and 2018. In Ethiopia, DFID supported 1.9 million people to access clean water and/or better sanitation.

​We remain concerned at the infringements of religious freedoms, including the demolition of churches, and will continue to raise our concerns with the Government of Sudan as part of our regular dialogue on human rights. Promoting freedom of religion or belief as a means of enhancing tolerance and inclusion will remain a key part of our ongoing engagement with the Government of Sudan.

We are concerned by clashes involving pastoralists and local farmers of all faiths. We judge that the best approach is to raise our concerns bilaterally at State and Federal government levels. We welcome President Buhari's commitment to focus on assisting the affected communities, bring perpetrators to justice and examine longer-term peaceful solutions to the conflict.

The UK is proud to support the Africa-led movement to end FGM, which has been instrumental in achieving the significant decline of the practice seen in recent decades – in 1985, 51% of girls around the world aged 15-19 had undergone FGM; today the figure is 37%. We are a global leader on this issue, having made the largest ever donor commitment to ending FGM, and we have galvanised others to take action of their own through our international Girl Summit.

We continue to support and accelerate the Africa-led movement, and encourage others to step up too, because if current trends in population growth continue the number of girls undergoing FGM will rise significantly over the next 15 years. Support from the UK has been critical to progress so far; in the last three years alone over 18 million people across 16 countries have publically pledged to abandon the practice, two more countries (Nigeria and the Gambia) have made the practice illegal and the largest ever collective of African organisations tackling FGM (600+) has come together to accelerate the Africa-led movement to end the practice.

The Northern Ireland Universities Air Squadron intends to increase student numbers up to 60, commencing at the start of the next academic year in September 2018.

Around 10,000 jobs have been sustained in designing and constructing the Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers. This includes 7,000 to 8,000 workers at shipyards around the UK plus a further 2,000 to 3,000 across the UK supply chain.

The government is committed to launching a retail sale of Lloyds Banking Group shares and to fully returning its stake to the private sector in 2016-17.

Those applying to invest less than £1,000 will be prioritised. Members of the public will be offered a discount on the market price and, to encourage long term share ownership, investors who hold their shares for more than a year will be entitled to bonus shares.

This government is committed to ensuring that older people are able to live with the dignity and respect they deserve and the State Pension is the foundation of state support for older people. That is why the government has committed to increasing the State Pension by the triple lock, with someone on a full basic State Pension receiving around £570 more in 2016-17 than if it had been uprated by average earnings since the start of the last Parliament.

In total, the government will spend around £95 billion on the State Pension in 2016-17.

As set out in the Equality Act 2010 (Amendment) Regulations 2012, HM Treasury will review the implementation of the principle of equal treatment between men and women in the access to and supply of goods and services in respect of insurance services, including annuities, within 5-years of these Regulations come into force; by 21 December 2017.

65+ Guaranteed Growth Bonds were a special issue aimed at helping pensioners who rely on their savings in retirement. There are currently no plans for a further issue.

The latest Office for Budget Responsibility forecast published in November 2015 shows that the government is on track to reduce public sector net debt as a share of GDP in 2016-17. The government remains committed to continuing the job of returning the public finances to a more sustainable position. In a low inflationary environment, taking account for economic shocks, the most reliable way to bring debt down as a share of GDP is to run a surplus and maintain it in normal times.

HM Treasury has not received any representations on financial institutions' plans to offer negative or zero rates of interest to savers.

The levels of interest being paid to savers and their disclosure was explored as part of the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) Cash Savings Market Study report, which was published in January 2015. The report found that competition in the cash savings market was not working well for many consumers and, in response, the FCA has consulted on and will subsequently be introducing new rules from 1 December 2016 designed to both improve competition and the information savers receive. As part of these new rules, firms will need to make it clear to consumers what interest rate they are getting for their account.

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) produce the forecast for public sector net debt. Based on the OBR’s November 2015 ‘Economic and fiscal outlook’, public sector net debt is expected to fall as a share of GDP in every year of the forecast period.