Labour continues to cut aid to the world’s most needy, following an agenda seemingly set by Reform.
Benefits of UK Foreign Aid
It has been noted by Save the Children that UK Foreign Aid has made a number of important contributions to helping struggling communities, facing war, poverty or climate breakdown.
This support has included, UK aid helping Save the Children to provide food, medical care, and emergency shelter through local partners in Ukraine. Meanwhile UK aid has helped communities in Somalia who have been hit by climate change and conflict and climate change, including training more than 500 doctors and nurses to support survivors of abuse and helping set up safe houses to protect children and women fleeing violence.
UK aid also helped fund tents after the devastating earthquake hit Syria and Türkiye. The tents that were used to provide education facilities to children living in displacement camps in Syria.
Yet all this support for those in need and much more besides, is coming under ever increasing threat from a Labour government. A Labour government.
Starmer condemned
It has been reported that charities and former ministers have condemned Sir Keir Starmer for using the UK aid budget to limit illegal migration from Bangladesh instead of using the much needed money to help deal with humanitarian crises across the world.
It has been revealed that the UK plans to give aid money to Bangladesh’s migration ministry to deal with rogue agents selling bogus visas and this has promoted the argument.
The aid budget is already stretched, having been slashed by chancellor Rachel Reeves to just 0.3% of GDP even though Labour had said that they would restore it to 0.7%.
Foreign secretary Yvette Cooper was reported as telling The Independent: “Working with Bangladesh to hold rogue visa agents to account, we are strengthening the UK’s immigration system so the rules are respected and enforced, and we are protecting people from exploitation.
“These reforms are already delivering results on the ground, giving victims an avenue to get their money back and undermining the business models of people who sell false promises of opportunities to work in the UK.”
However, there are many who argue that the money for Bangladesh should be coming out of the Home Office budget and not the Foreign Aid budget.
David Mundell, who is currently on the international development committee, and is a former cabinet minister commented: “The aid budget, particularly now it is reduced, should be used to support the most vulnerable around the world.
“A huge proportion of the Budget is already being used to pay for asylum seeker hotels in the UK, and this would be just another example of development funds being used to meet what are the responsibilities of the Home Office.”
Cuts in aid cost lives
The use of foreign aid in this manner comes in the wake of a report earlier this year, which laid bare the damage that the cut in UK Foreign Aid to just 0.3% of our national GDP was causing.
A report from Oxfam in June noted that the UK government had announced in February of this year that it was slashing the international aid budget in the largest cut of its kind in 25 years, with a cut to 0,3% from 0.5% of gross national income by 2027.
There was said to be rising concern about how very little will be left to spend on what it’s intended for – helping communities around the world facing increasing poverty, conflict, and climate disasters/ It was also noted that over £2 billion is currently being spent in the UK on refugee costs, and “a risk of greater proportions being diverted to profit-making investments like in private fee-paying hospitals”.
Helen Stawski, Oxfam Policy Lead commented in the report: “The G7’s retreat from the world is unprecedented and couldn’t come at a worse time, with hunger, poverty, and climate harm intensifying. The G7 cannot claim to build bridges on one hand while tearing them down with the other. It sends a shameful message to the Global South, that G7 ideals of collaboration mean nothing.”
The cost of cutting UK Foreign Aid
The report also stated that analysis from the ONE Campaign found that a blanket 40% cut to the UK’s aid funding could result in:
“606,000 fewer deaths averted over five years, due to cuts to Gavi, a life-saving programme that provides immunisations from deadly diseases
“37.9 million fewer children immunised, against measles, polio, rotavirus and other deadly diseases- equivalent to more than twice the entire child population of the UK
“293,000 fewer schoolchildren receiving, nutritious meals and essential food assistance through the World Food Programme”.
More pandering to Reform
So, the pandering to Reform and their brutal and destructive agenda by this Labour government continues. Cuts in and misuse of our Foreign Aid budget, which do little to solve the underlying crises in our country, still result in deaths and less chance of fulfilled lives for hundreds of thousands of people, and especially children, across the world.
Yet Labour continues to pander to Reform and their nativist agenda, so putting lives at risk, while gaining no respect or extra support from Reform supporters. It makes no sense, but still it continues.
The government seemingly has no sense of direction, vision or compassion. It is not anchored in any meaningful philosophy of what a good country could look like and hence it is drifting aimlessly, while giving in to the right at every turn.
In this further betrayal of vulnerable communities across the world, we see so much of what is wrong with the government and there are clearly lessons to be learned. Neal Lawson from Compass sums those lessons up as follows:
“First, power should always be gained for a purpose, otherwise it’s not being in power, it’s just being in office. Second, means always shape ends. The narrow hyper-factional culture they have relied upon creates a brittle, rigid and narrow governing style when what is needed is breadth, openness and agility. And third, there are no shortcuts in politics. It’s a long, hard pragmatics slog in which you need a lodestar and friends. Lots of them”
The country and the wider world desperately need a progressive, compassionate UK government, which can help people here and elsewhere deal with the problems they face. It can only be hoped that a change of personnel at the top of the Labour party will see such a government emerge.
