The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, has “taken from the mouths of the hungriest people in the world” by cutting aid spending, campaigners have warned.
The announcement that UK Official Development Assistance would be cut to 0.3% of gross national income (GNI) in order to fund an increase in defence spending was called cruel and shameful. Experts working in the aid sector said they feared a disproportionate impact on women and girls, and on sexual and reproductive rights globally.
The UK announcement comes weeks after a shock decision by the Trump administration in the US to freeze international aid and dismantle USAid, its flagship aid organisation.
David Miliband, head of the International Rescue Committee, said: “The UK government’s decision to cut aid by £6bn in order to fund defence spending is a blow to Britain’s proud reputation as a global humanitarian and development leader. Today, an unprecedented 300 million people are in humanitarian need around the world. The global consequences of this decision will be far reaching and devastating for people who need more help not less.”
Pete Baker, policy fellow and deputy director of global health policy at the Center for Global Development (CGD), said the US move had already prompted a severe health financing crisis in many low-income countries “with clinics shutting and health services disrupted”.
He added: “Rather than rising to this challenge and offering emergency support, the UK is delivering another blow to health systems around the world. This shameful decision will leave the world less safe from infectious diseases and further hinder global efforts to combat health crises.”
Elizabeth Sully, principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, said the UK reduction would be “devastating” for family planning programmes around the world.
Its data shows the US funding freeze has already resulted in more than 4 million women and girls being denied contraceptive care “which will likely result in many unintended pregnancies and preventable maternal deaths”, she said.
Further cuts from the Netherlands and UK, who are the two largest funders of family planning aid after the US “will be almost impossible to recuperate”, she said. “This loss of funding means that the rights, dignity and lives of people around the world, particularly women and girls, are even more at risk.”
Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now, said: “Starmer’s announcement today is politics at its most base. To appease Trump, he will cut aid to its lowest level in a generation, forcing the poorest to pay so he can push taxpayer money into the coffers of arms corporations.
“There are numerous policies the government could take to avoid this – from a wealth tax on the super-rich to scrapping white elephants like Trident. Instead, Starmer has taken it from the mouths of the hungriest people in the world. It is a day of shame for Britain.”
The prime minister described the decision to cut development aid as “very difficult and painful”. However, Ian Mitchell, senior policy fellow at the CGD, said that “cutting funding for the world’s poorest people is the easiest – and cruellest – choice he could make”. He called for “at the very least” a guarantee that the reduced aid budget would be spent overseas and “not on admin costs or refugee hotels in the UK”.
The UN has a target for countries to spend 0.7% of their GNI on overseas development assistance, which was achieved by the UK in 2013 for the first time, and made a statutory duty in 2015. However, in 2021 Boris Johnson’s government reduced spending to 0.5%, and in recent years more than a quarter of that has been spent in the UK on hosting refugees.
In its 2024 autumn budget, Labour had promised to restore spending to 0.7% “as soon as fiscal circumstances allow”.
The UK is the second largest funder of official development assistance to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), according to analysis by Deutsche Stiftung Weltbevölkerung (DSW), an international development organisation.
The US has historically been the main supporter of those programmes, meaning they have been hit hard by the USAid freeze. DSW said the previous cut in UK aid spending had already resulted in “significant cuts” to SRHR programmes.
Lisa Goerlitz, head of DSW’s Brussels’ office, said: “Seeing a further decrease would have dramatic consequences on women and girls in low- and middle-income countries but also for societies and sustainable development as a whole because access to SRHR is a pre-condition for most development objectives related to health, education and economic growth.”
Research on the previous round of UK cuts by Care International UK found that programmes focusing on women and girls in crisis had been disproportionately affected.
Claudia Craig, senior advocacy adviser at the charity, said it was vital that the new cuts were implemented with “transparency, clear communication and timelines”.
“The women leading their communities and defending their rights deserve not to be disproportionately impacted by the decisions of men, made in London,” she said.
