By Will Dickson
The future of Britain’s foreign aid budget has become a major source of debate both within the UK and abroad. The ruling party has proposed substantial aid cuts in response to a tough fiscal year. Opponents of the estimated £4 billion reduction, meanwhile, argue that such drastic measures imperil the lives of millions and threaten the international standing of a post-Brexit Britain. The proposed cuts face strong legal and political challenges, as well as criticism for a lack of transparency. Those political challenges are so robust that on February 8th British media reported that a vote on the budget cuts will be delayed until after the G7 summit in June 2021. Nevertheless, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has requested that speedy and dramatic cuts be planned during February.
The debate over the foreign aid cuts has been building since June 2020 when the FCDO was created as a merger between the Department for International Development and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in an effort to improve cost efficiency. At the time, government officials insisted that the aid budget would not be slashed.
Maintaining the budget was a popular campaign promise made by both major political parties in the lead-up to the last election.
The UK’s commitment to a robust foreign aid budget has become a source of pride for the nation. Britain is the only G7 country to spend 0.7% of its Gross National Income (GNI) on improving the lives of impoverished people around the world. In 1970, the UN General Assembly adopted the resolution that each country would aim to spend 0.7% of GNI on foreign aid each year, a target set as a means to quash poverty through international cooperation although only a small handful of countries have ever met it. The UK, by far the largest economy to meet the 0.7% mark, has met that commitment every year since 2013. In 2015, the International Development Act made that target a part of UK law, legally requiring the government to set aside 0.7% of GNI to invest in foreign development.
The £4 billion cut will reduce the aid budget to only 0.5% GNI. Foreign secretary Dominic Raab claims that the International Development Act does not apply in this case because the cuts are only temporary but he would not provide details as to when the cuts would expire. Controversy over the reduction in aid grew when it became apparent that determining what to cut would be a rushed, closed-door process. Projects developed over the course of years are to be selected and shuttered over a matter of weeks. Furthermore, because funding for multilateral aid programs has already been allocated for the year, bilateral aid programs will be left to face dramatic hits of between 50% to 70%.
Compared to multilateral programs where several wealthy nations contribute, bilateral aid programs are usually smaller-scale projects and are often for the poorest countries with many being basic infrastructure projects. With directors forced to find cuts quickly, and infrastructure programs often lasting several years, these infrastructure programs will likely be the first to go. The result is wasted planning, broken promises, and nothing built.
Aid experts, charities, and government officials have criticized Her Majesty’s Government’s decision to cut aid. Former UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has estimated that “100,000 children’s lives that could have been saved will be lost, and 4.5 million fewer children a year will receive an education.”
There are, however, no details as yet about specific programs to be cut. In an effort to minimize potential harm, Raab did provide a list of the government’s foreign aid priorities: “an overarching pursuit of poverty reduction: climate and biodiversity, COVID-19 and global health security, girls’ education, science, and research, defending open societies and resolving conflict, humanitarian assistance and promoting trade.”
