BACK in July 2021, Keir Starmer – then leader of the opposition – stood at the despatch box lamenting a Tory plan to slash the UK’s foreign aid budget from 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) to 0.5%.
He said as the sixth richest country in the world Britain “has a moral obligation to help the world’s poorest”. He said the cut was “wrong” because investing 0.7% in international aid is in Britain’s “national interest”.
“Development aid—we all know this—reduces conflict, disease and people fleeing from their homes. It is a false economy to pretend that this is some sort of cut that does not have consequences,” said Starmer.
But now as Prime Minister, the Labour leader opted last week to slash the foreign aid budget from 0.5% of GNI to 0.3% in 2027. These funds will be reallocated to boost military spending to 2.6% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2027.
Bond – a membership organisation for charities working in international development – said it means by 2027, the aid budget will have been slashed by around £12 billion since the initial Tory cut.
Given Labour also pledged in their manifesto to restore development spending to 0.7% of GNI “as soon as fiscal circumstances allow”, cross-party politicians and aid charities have reacted with bewilderment at the latest decision.
“I’m not sure what’s worse: the sheer cruelty of it, the cowardliness of it or the counterproductiveness of it,” said former Green Party leader Caroline Lucas.
“I think we will look back at this decision in years to come and take stock of its disastrous consequences,” ex-Labour leader and Independent MP Jeremy Corbyn told the Sunday National.
“If you think that Russia and China, who have been actors of destabilisation, are not going to take advantage of this then you’re kidding yourself on,” said SNP MP Stephen Gethins, who used to work in the NGO sector specialising in peace-building, arms control and democracy.
On Friday, International Development Minister Anneliese Dodds quit the Government over the move, insisting it would bolster Russia and China.
Writing in the Guardian, Foreign Secretary David Lammy explained away the decision to cut aid spending by saying, “We have had to balance the compassion of our internationalism with the necessity of our national security.”
“We know the aid budget is about soft power as well as about a moral imperative to support some of the poorest people in the world. The idea you would cut the aid budget in order to make the country safer is ludicrous,” she told the Sunday National.
As Jamie Livingstone, head of Oxfam Scotland, explained: “The Prime Minister says his decision will make us safer but we know that military strength alone won’t achieve that.
“As we saw with the pandemic, the global spread of disease and health challenges directly affect British lives so it’s in our own interests to fund global health programmes. Cutting aid will also undermine the fights against poverty, malnutrition, the climate crisis and gender inequality.
“When the UK invests in development it helps reduce the causes of instability, making the world safer for all of us.”
“A grown-up approach to foreign policy would look at the underlying causes of war and alleviate them. This government is doing the exact opposite and accelerating the cycle of insecurity and war instead,” Corbyn added.
While there is a broad consensus that amid peace talks ongoing in Ukraine, defence spending needs to be increased, there has equally been a united outcry that the boost to that budget has not come from the introduction of some sort of wealth tax, with many describing the cut to aid as a “false economy”.
“We think the Government has presented a false choice that taking this money from the aid budget was the only option open to them,” said Gideon Rabinowitz, director of policy and advocacy at Bond.
“Even just a modest tax on wealth could have been sufficient to pay for this uplift in spend [on defence] and instead they’ve decided to balance the books on the backs of the world’s most vulnerable people. I don’t think we could be more upset.”
Oxfam’s latest analysis shows UK billionaire wealth grew by £35 million a day last year and so a small wealth tax of just 2% on individuals in the UK with assets worth more than £10m would raise £24bn a year.
Starmer described his decision to slash foreign aid as a “difficult choice”, but Lucas said a hard decision would have been to “stand up to the vested interests who would undoubtedly oppose a wealth tax” and impose one anyway.
Due to the move Starmer has made, there are now organisations across the world worrying about what vital humanitarian projects will be able to continue and how many vulnerable people in some of the world’s poorest countries will suffer as a result.
The UK’s decision to cut the foreign aid budget will compound a move made by the US Government last month to suspend all foreign aid to determine whether it was “serving US interests”. Since then, the Trump administration has said it is eliminating more than 90% of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) foreign aid contracts and $60bn in overall US assistance around the world.
Already aid organisations have been witnessing the devastating impact of the US decision and now fear worse could be to come.
Mark Adams (below), programme manager at the Scottish Catholic International Aid Fund, said: “I was talking to our colleagues in Ethiopia [about the US cut] and they were talking about the impact on humanitarian programmes for internally displaced people – nutrition programmes are stopping, health programmes are stopping, thousands of health workers are being made redundant, food aid which has been bought and due to be distributed in displaced camps is now blocked because they don’t have the finance to even move it.
“There are immediate real-world consequences and I think that’s the hidden story here because the people who are most affected are the ones who are hidden and have the least voice.
“I think there will be pretty immediate consequences for millions of marginalised people around the world and the chances for development and growth will be reduced and I expect that will lead to increases in conflict, instability and migration and I would be very surprised if those things don’t come back at us.”
“We’ve been sharing extensive information with the Government on how our members and organisations are being affected by the USAID cuts – HIV aids clinics closing overnight, emergency medical care being withdrawn from refugee camps, emergency disaster response funding frozen,” said Rabinowitz.
“We hoped that would help focus hearts and minds on what would be at stake if the UK followed suit and it’s frankly appalling that in that context, they’ve decided to add to the pain and anxiety that will be felt across many low-income countries as a result of this.”
The UK doesn’t even need to look at the consequences of the US move to realise the devastation this could cause given an Equality Impact Assessment by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office on the previous Tory cut to the aid budget detailed that 500,000 women and children in Yemen would not receive healthcare and that thousands of women across Africa would die in pregnancy and childbirth as a result of the UK cuts.
So why, when he admitted himself four years ago that such a severe cut to foreign aid has consequences, and his Foreign Secretary insisted just weeks ago that the US decision was “a big strategic mistake”, has Starmer U-turned once again?
Corbyn (above) said: “It fits with this Government’s strategy to enrich the wealthiest at the expense of the poorest. The Defence Secretary speaks of military spending as something that can drive economic growth. You know what that really means? Profits for weapons manufacturers that are rubbing their hands over this endless arms race.
“Meanwhile, what about the poorest people in this country being told there isn’t any money left? No money for Winter Fuel Allowance, cutting disability benefits and keeping the two-child benefit cap. Why is that the tough choices always land on the most marginalised in our society?”
“What he’s doing is raw naked populism,” SNP MP Brendan O’Hara added.
“He knows there aren’t going to be that many people taking to the streets to defend the foreign aid budget.
“We have a Labour Government that seems utterly addicted to punching down on the poor, whether it’s at vulnerable at home or the voiceless and defenceless abroad. This is a government that punches down because it is too difficult to punch up.”
Whatever politics may be at play though, the biggest concern now lies with those facing some of the biggest humanitarian crises across the globe, particularly given the message this UK decision may now send to rest of the world.
Lucas said: “We have a proud record of development and at a time when the need is greater than ever, for us to be stepping back would send a damaging message to the rest of the world.”
“The Government is saying we will prioritise the most extreme humanitarian contexts – Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan – but there are plenty of humanitarian contexts around the world which go more under the radar. They will inevitably see funding pulled,” said Rabinowitz.
“I think the incentives for any of the other major powers to hold firm on their aid spending are weakening every time a country like the UK takes that step, so what signal does it send to the rest of the world? There are so many global challenges the UK says it wants to be part of the effort to address, but it’s the moral standing to be able to bring people together and to find solutions that is going to be severely affected.
"Millions and millions of the most vulnerable people in the world will be worse off."
The FCDO declined to add further comment beyond the Prime Minister’s speech in the House when approached by the Sunday National.
