Ministers are trying to bury the consequences of UK aid cuts. But what we know is catastrophic
TThe Pandemic Fund was established in the wake of the Covid-19 emergency, as the world realized we were dangerously unprepared for the next major global health threat, and boasts enthusiastic support from the UK. Now.
Similarly, our country proudly funded the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, which won the battle to eradicate a devastating disease that paralyzes children. That money will stop now, even as record low vaccination rates put our own young people at risk.
I never thought I would see the day when a Labor government walked away from projects to prevent the pandemic and polio, but this is now emerging as a shocking consequence of the UK’s decision to cut 40 per cent from its international development budget.
Ministers did their best to hide the full truth in an equality impact assessment scandalously lacking in detail, but we were given a glimpse of the horror that would follow. The document acknowledges that canceling development programs in Sierra Leone and Malawi, two of the world’s poorest countries, would result in around 250,000 young people losing access to family planning and up to 20,000 children dropping out of school.
The assessment recognizes that families in poverty and people unable to work because they are disabled or too old will be hit hard in Ethiopia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia.
In just four years, by the end of this decade, bilateral aid to African countries will have decreased by 56 percent; This was a repeat of the sting of the Conservatives, under the Labor government, which my party had attacked so forcefully at the time a few years earlier.
Even when there seems to be a hopeful story to be told, it turns out to be smoke and mirrors. Ministers say they are focusing support on the most fragile countries, mostly those gripped by conflict; But even there, the funding cut is around 25 percent.
It is no longer possible to hide that the decision to cut £6.5 billion a year from our aid budget will have disastrous consequences not only for the world’s poorest parts, but also for our country’s international standing and influence.
And it is equally clear that it is based on a false premise: there is a choice between spending money on defense or international development; Any military expert will tell you that the best line of defense is to spend wisely to help people stay safe and secure in their own homes and hold their governments accountable.
Instead, the effects of denying girls the opportunity to go to school in South Sudan and ending numerous other yet-to-be-announced projects will be felt here at home, as they are in countries that have lost a helping hand.
The inevitable result will be more refugees crossing the Channel in small boats, filled with people fleeing conflict and famine, seeking the chance to feed their families and the hope of a good life.
This is what happens when, as the respected Center for Global Development calculates, our aid cuts will be even bigger than Donald Trump’s cuts in the US and the largest among the G7 countries.
Next year, minus the billions of dollars earmarked to fund housing costs for asylum seekers in the UK, spending on overseas programs will reach the lowest level since records began in 1970; It will be only 0.24 percent of national income.
And even the claim that cutting aid allows the government to beef up defense is untrue, because – as the esteemed Paul Johnson, former president of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has pointed out – most defense funds are investments, not day-to-day spending cut from aid. There is no direct connection.
It is time for ministers to have the courage to put this debate to a vote in parliament, to comply with the law and allow MPs to put forward better alternatives that will avoid such short-sighted destruction.
Otherwise we’ll be stuck on the dreary path of cutting aid that our prime minister once admitted “helps build a more stable world and keeps us safer in the UK”. It’s time to change course.
Sarah Champion is chair of the House of Commons International Development Committee and Labor MP for Rotherham.
This article was produced as part of The Independent. Rethinking Global Aid project
