DI’s response to Raab’s statement on aid cuts

After months of speculation about which programmes would be affected by UK aid cuts, neither yesterday’s written statement by the Foreign Secretary nor his appearance before the International Development Committee this morning have provided the necessary details.

Rather than setting out transparently where cuts will fall, yesterday’s written statement focussed instead on what will be allocated this year to the seven priority areas announced last November. What the statement failed to highlight is that the scale of cuts to the UK aid budget means even spending on priority areas has been cut. The £400 million allocated to getting girls into education represents a cut of around a quarter from 2019, while humanitarian preparedness and response has been cut by 34% from £1.5 billion to £906 million this year.

Questions from MPs on country allocations were deflected by the Foreign Secretary on the basis that first, these details are still being worked through and second, this information is not normally published at the beginning of the financial year. Yet this is not a normal year – it is a year in which the UK’s aid budget will be cut for a second time, reducing aid spending by around £4.5 billion compared to 2019.

Harpinder Collacott, Executive Director at Development Initiatives, said “The lack of transparency about where cuts in the aid budget will fall is hugely damaging to the reputation of the UK’s aid programme, a world leader on transparency under the former department (the Department for International Development). Uncertainty about where these cuts will fall is problematic for country programmes, making planning impossible and threatening to undermine the effectiveness of the programmes.

“Failure to protect vital areas for aid spending such as responding to humanitarian crises and promoting gender equality is extremely worrying. The impact of the scale of these cuts will both be felt immediately by those living in poverty who are dependent on basic services delivered through the UK’s aid programme, as well as affecting global poverty and inequality for years to come.”