Charities have criticised findings from a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) report, with ActionAid UK stating the “UK has damaged itself and destroyed its reputation”.
The findings of the FCDO's Equality Impact Assessment, published by the International Development Committee (IDC), were provided to ministers earlier this year to inform their decisions on where cuts to the official development assistance budget for 2023-24 would fall.
The FCDO published its programme allocations for the next two years last month, showing that official development assistance is due to rise slightly in 2023-24 and then increase by 12% in 2024-25 to £8.3bn.
Spending is yet to return to pre-2020 levels, which is when the government reduced international aid spending from 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) to 0.5%.
Gideon Rabinowitz, policy and advocacy director at Bond, said: “It is firstly important to say that we welcome the report, which comes after years of the government resisting any sharing of these assessments.
“This report illustrates the devastating impact of continued cuts to the UK aid budget and the urgency of restoring spending so we can meet our international obligations.
“Though the allocations of some vulnerable countries have increased, we are still short of the funding needed to reverse the damage of multiple rounds of cuts, and the most marginalised communities continue to bear the brunt of these politically driven cuts.”
Sarah Champion MP, chair of the IDC, said evidence submitted to the committee over the last few years had revealed cuts would take a human toll, “but this astonishingly honest assessment of the real impact makes grim reading”.
She said: “It is a litany of the people – living in poverty, suffering hunger, women, girls, disabled people – who will no longer be supported by the UK’s direct aid spending, and the consequences they will face.”
She added: “There will be a further political hit to the UK’s leadership on global and regional programmes.”
Champion said it is crucial that promised uplifts in the planned allocations for 2024-25 go to the people with protected characteristics “who, by FCDO’s own assessment, have borne the brunt of these cuts”.
‘No ifs and no buts, the UK's aid budget must be restored’
International aid charities have also reiterated calls for the government to reinstate the 0.7% spending commitment.
Mike Noyes, co-director policy, advocacy and programmes at ActionAid UK, said the FCDO’s own assessments show that cutting UK funding means “lives have been lost and others have irrevocably changed for the worse”.
He added: “In countries around the world, we can see the harm that has already been done, but our experiences show us that without swift government action to rectify this mistake and undo these cuts, the damage will only worsen. We urge the prime minister to support the efforts of women and girls in some of the most threatened and marginalised communities in the world to build a better future.
“This report shows just how much the UK has damaged itself and destroyed its reputation by betraying its promises to women and girls.”
Jennifer Larbie, Christian Aid’s head of campaigns and UK advocacy, said: “Even when marking their own homework, ministers cannot escape the horrible truth that their erosion of international aid represents a betrayal of the world's most marginalised people.
“The UK has a historic and moral responsibility for ending extreme poverty. We must not accept the false choice between responding to poverty at home and fulfilling our responsibilities to the vulnerable women and girls around the world. No ifs and no buts, the UK's aid budget must be restored.
“We need a government that will release new resources, not just by restoring the aid budget but also by getting private creditors such as the big banks to cancel the debt of countries whose people are in jeopardy.”
Kate Munro, head of advocacy at Action Against Hunger UK, welcomed the “commitment” that Andrew Mitchell MP, as minister for international development, “is showing to tackling hunger and malnutrition”.
However, she said living up to this ambition at a time when humanitarian needs are rising depends on renewing the UK's commitment to spending 0.7% of GNI on aid.
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