Is cutting the aid budget to the bone really the legacy Labour wants to leave? – Inside track

This post is by Christine Allen, executive director of CAFOD.

It has been almost a week since the prime minister announced that the aid budget would be reduced to fund increased defence spending. In 2027, Official Development Assistance (ODA) will amount to just 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI), down from an already slashed 0.5 per cent: a cut of more than £6 billion. For perspective, last year the UK spent £53.9 billion on defence.

This decision could not come at a worse time. In the context of President Trump all but shattering USAID, the UK following suit is another blow to the world’s most vulnerable people. CAFOD works in some of the most unstable countries across the globe, ravaged by war – the PM’s priorities, Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan, among them – and they need our support now more than ever.

It makes no moral or economic sense
The UK, unforgivably, is abandoning them. The outgoing development minister, Anneliese Dodds, said as much in her resignation letter: “…it will be impossible to maintain these priorities given the depth of the cut; the effect will be far greater than presented.” As well as humanitarian spending, Dodds also warned of the devastating impacts of the cut on international climate action. She said, “It will likely lead to … a reduced voice for the UK in the G7, G20 and in climate negotiations. All this while China is seeking to rewrite global rules, and when the climate crisis is the biggest security threat of them all.”

I couldn’t agree more with Anneliese Dodds’ principled stand. It makes no economic or moral sense to strengthen our hard power capacity to respond to global instability on the one hand, while weakening our prevention of that same instability on the other: treating the symptoms, not the cause. There is no use in defence spending on a dead planet.

This year is an incredibly important time for CAFOD, and many of its partners worldwide. It is a Jubilee Year, a special time of renewing our relationships and, importantly, cancelling debts. Pope Francis has written powerfully on the need for the Global North to address its “ecological debt” with the Global South, due to centuries of colonial extractivism and industrialisation which have enriched us while condemning them to environmental disasters. CAFOD is picking up this challenge. However, instead of beginning to address that debt, the UK government (along with several other European nations) is withdrawing from its historic responsibilities.

Climate and nature action has been a legacy to be proud of
Indeed, climate and nature action will likely be one of the casualties of the PM’s decision. ODA funds much of the world’s capacity to respond to climate disasters. Since 2011, UK aid has provided 82 million people with improved access to clean energy; supported 32 million people with improving their resilience to climate change; reduced or avoided 105 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions; and avoided losing 750,000 hectares of ecosystems. This is one legacy we can be proud of.

If Labour really are serious about keeping to their manifesto commitments to “rebuild Britain’s reputation on international development” and “restore the strong global leadership needed to tackle the climate crisis”, they have a strange way of showing it. Also true of their promise to get back to 0.7 per cent of GNI on aid. Will fiscal circumstances ever allow? Every move the government makes away from 0.7 per cent makes it much more difficult, and politically perilous, to get back to it.

We must prioritise the poorest
We truly wish the incoming development minister, Baroness Jenny Chapman, well in her new role. She will have the unenviable task of overseeing where the axe falls and trying to carve out a coherent direction for ODA while it’s being cut to the bone. I would urge her to keep the very poorest at the forefront of her choices and preserve the nascent efforts Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office has been making on the all-important localisation agenda. The evidence is clear that organisations closest to those affected are often the most effective in providing the support that people need; it would be a calamity if these small operations were the ones who were defunded first.

Finally, I want to echo the calls made in BOND’s recent letter to the ministers chiefly responsible for this announcement. One hundred and thirty eight leaders of organisations came together to speak out against it, decrying the very real impacts it will have: “…children are now at risk of missing out on vaccines, girls may lose access to education, and healthcare services in refugee camps are being withdrawn.” We will continue to do our best to redouble our efforts, supporting those affected, and only hope that this is a temporary stop responding to very challenging global headwinds. But readers should not be in any doubt that the effects of this cut will be tangible and devastating.

This simply cannot be the legacy that the Labour prime minister wants to leave for people or the planet.

Figures quoted in this post were updated following publication to reflect the latest figures for UK climate aid benefits, published by the government in September 2024. Image rights to Number 10 on Flickr.