“Savage” cuts to UK foreign aid will leave 55.5 million of the world’s poorest people without access to basic resources, The Independent can reveal.
Analysis by Save the Children, shared exclusively with this publication, lays bare the true impact of repeated cuts to the budget, the latest of which will see spending fall to just 0.3 per cent of gross national income (GNI) – the lowest level in 25 years.
Women and girls will suffer the most as the government is likely forced to scale back programmes across global education, family planning, water and food aid.
This could leave 12 million people without access to clean water or sanitation and result in 2.9 million fewer children in education, compared to 2019 when aid spending was at its peak at 0.7 per cent.
Save the Children warned the loss of funding would “devastate lives across the world”, while MPs from across the political divide condemned the government for abandoning the world’s poorest people.
Labour MP Sarah Champion, the chair of the Commons international development select committee, told The Independent: “The cuts made to UK aid over recent years are nothing short of savage. The prime minister told me at the liaison committee that his recent decision to slash the aid budget even further wasn’t a choice he wanted to make. But is he fully aware of the true cost of that decision?”
The latest cuts – announced by chancellor Rachel Reeves to pay for a boost in defence spending – will reduce the foreign aid spend to just £9.22bn by 2027, a substantial drop from £15.3bn in 2023. But the scale of the cuts is worsened by the fact that the UK’s asylum-seeker housing costs continue to come out of the same budget.
The latest cuts come despite a Labour manifesto pledge to return spending to 0.7 per cent after pressure on public finances during the Covid pandemic saw it reduced to 0.5 per cent, in what the Tory government of the time said was a “temporary measure”.
Ms Reeves’s announcement prompted outrage among Labour MPs and saw international development minister Anneliese Dodds quit, saying it would be “impossible to maintain [key] priorities given the depth of the cut”.
When Labour unveiled the plans, Sir Keir Starmer promised support for Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan would be protected.
However, the cost of keeping that pledge is around £6.98bn of the total £9.2bn budget. This includes, among others, £520m in aid and development spending for the three countries if current levels are maintained; at least £1.1bn for global health initiatives; and £1.6bn for climate change and environmental protection projects.
That figure also includes areas that are highly unlikely to be cut, such as legally binding multilateral funding (£365m), Gift Aid (£165m), and the UK Integrated Security Fund (£406m) which tackles high-priority national security threats overseas.
Meanwhile, the cost of housing asylum seekers in the UK, which also comes out of the foreign aid budget, is forecast to sit around £3bn in 2027, according to the Center for Global Development.
That is a third of the total budget, so on top of the £6.98bn to keep Sir Keir’s Ukraine, Sudan and Gaza commitments, the government will be left with a black hole of at least £750m. That leaves no room for the £1.1bn across other projects – meaning tens of millions of people will lose out.
“Breaking promises is baked into slashing the aid budget,” said Dan Paskins, director of policy at Save the Children. “But even the pledges Keir Starmer made in the same breath as announcing these cuts are at best back-of-the-envelope and at worst, disingenuous. These cuts cannot be made without delivering a hammer blow to his stated global priorities.”
The charity’s analysis found that 32.8 million women and girls could miss out on family planning support, due to a reduction in sexual health and other programmes, which will have major implications for maternal health, population growth, and even the spread of HIV.
The Women’s Integrated Sexual Health programme (Wish) is one such project at risk. The programme, which is currently budgeted to receive £49m in 2027, aims to “reduce maternal deaths and prevent the use and access to unsafe abortion, including for marginalised and young women”.
When approached for comment, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) did not dispute the estimates, saying that the specific cuts have not yet been decided ahead of the government’s June spending review.
“We will be taking a rigorous approach to ensuring all ODA [official development assistance] delivers value for money,” an FCDO spokesperson told The Independent.
“Detailed decisions on how the ODA budget will be used will be worked through as part of the ongoing spending review process, based on various factors including impact assessments.”
However, unless the government significantly slashes the projected cost of asylum-seeker housing, it is difficult to see how it can keep its promises.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper is taking measures to reduce the asylum backlog and tackle the cost of hotels but it is unclear how quickly costs will drop, with figures at £4.3bn in 2023; it is unlikely that they will get significantly lower than £3bn by 2027.
Based on Save the Children’s analysis, the aid budget will only have around £2.25bn for housing refugees in 2027, or £1.1bn if other budgeted funding for projects such as education is kept.
Steep asylum costs leave little room for aid
Charities and development organisations have argued that home-based asylum seeker costs should not be taken from the shrinking aid budget.
“We should not fund our response to one crisis at the expense of others,” said Mr Paskins. “The UK is absolutely right to be supporting refugees here in the UK, but those costs do not belong in the aid budget.”
Foreign secretary David Lammy previously argued that the costs should not be taken out of the aid budget, calling it “the definition of the ill use of taxpayers’ money”.
Ms Champion called for clarity on where the cuts will land.
She said: “We urgently need more detail on how these cuts will fall. Which programmes will be cut, which will be protected, and who is ultimately holding the reins? Without answers, I remain alarmed that we are retreating from our once influential position without a backup plan.”
Former international development secretary Sir Andrew Mitchell said: “Sadly it is clear that these terrible cuts will diminish Britain’s reputation and influence in important parts of the world which matter to our country.
“But it will also mean that desperate people go hungry, dangerous diseases won’t secure vaccinations and the causes of illegal immigration into the UK will not be addressed.”
Liberal Democrat international development spokesperson Monica Harding said the cuts represented a “staggering withdrawal of the UK’s global responsibilities.
“Millions more of the world’s poorest will face further deprivation because of these cuts. It will squeeze access to food and medicines for children and axe support and protection for them in conflict zones,” she added.
“By cutting overseas aid, Labour is allowing instability abroad to fester – which will only leave us less secure at home. It’s a strategic as well as a moral failure.”
This article is part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
