Over 120 international charities have expressed concern that UK aid spending will decrease to its lowest level since 2007, unless immediate action is taken in next month’s Budget. These charities are fearful that Chancellor Rachel Reeves will make cuts to overseas development assistance (ODA) spending, potentially by more than £2bn. This is expected to occur during what is predicted to be a cost-cutting budget. In a letter to the Prime Minister, leaders of development and humanitarian groups have warned against the trend of diverting large amounts of foreign aid to assist refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. Signatories including Oxfam GB and ActionAid UK have expressed concerns that the government will “enact damaging cuts to life-saving humanitarian and development programmes.”
The primary concern of the charities is the billions of pounds of foreign aid the UK government is spending on supporting asylum seekers and refugees in the UK. This is permitted under international laws but has seen a considerable increase recently. Over the last two years, the Conservatives added an additional £2.5bn to the foreign aid budget as a top-up to compensate for the money being spent on hotels in Great Britain. However, this funding came to an end in April, and the charities argue that the Treasury has not scheduled to renew it. This means that the overall UK aid spending would decline from its current level this year of 0.58% of national income (GNI) to 0.5%, translating to approximately £13bn per annum.
Despite the fact that Labour promised in its election manifesto to return aid spending to 0.7% of GNI “as soon as fiscal circumstances allow,” with so much aid money being spent in the UK, the charities estimate that the amount actually being spent on bilateral humanitarian and development requirements abroad this year will fall to roughly 0.36% of national income. The charities want the government to keep spending 0.58% of GNI on aid and lay out plans for how they will eventually increase that to the long-term target of 0.7%.
In a letter, charity bosses, including Care International UK, Save the Children UK, and International Rescue Committee UK, remarked as leaders of the UK’s development and humanitarian sector. They are deeply troubled that the current government’s spending plans will eliminate UK aid programmes to levels that have not been seen since 2007, including under recent Conservative governments. The Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, stated that the accommodation bill of the asylum seekers in the UK was “gigantic” as a result of a climate-fuelled migration crisis, signalling that the government wants to reinstate the 0.7% target as soon as practicable. It is a discussion that Lammy is continuing to have with colleagues in the Treasury
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