Keir Starmer came into government promising to work to end hunger across the world but seems to be doing the opposite.
UK Funding to World Food Programme cut
It was reported on 7 February that Keir Starmer had been called a hypocrite after cutting funding to the UN World Food Programme by over 30% while still pledging to tackle “suffering and starvation”.
It was further argued that the reduction in UK funding to the World Food Programme (WFP) to $435mn last year from $610mn in 2024 to is “part of a wider hit on aid spending that campaigners say is putting lives at risk”.
Although the government hosted a two-day conference last year on starvation and malnutrition in Afghanistan it failed to make any financial pledge, as well as making the drastic cuts to the WFP.
Michael Bates, a former Conservative aid minister, and member of the House of Lords said that ministers were cutting funding as cases of starvation were growing “exponentially”.
Bates commented: “If this was just a UK story it would be bad enough, but we are seeing it is a French story, it is a German story and a US story.
“All these countries are cutting. There will be a time lag but this will cost lives. We have a responsibility to protect these lives.”
Bates also claimed that it was “hypocritical” to reduce government spending in an area in which the UK had been a global leader, while still talking about the need for action.
The UK first made a commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development to comply with a UN target in 2015. The Johnson government cut that commitment to 0.5% in 2021.
Having become Prime Minister, Starmer told a G20 summit in Brazil that his government would tackle “suffering and starvation” and make “the fight against hunger” a priority.
However, in February last year it was announced that Starmer was cutting aid spending to 0.3% of GDP by 2027, in order to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP in the same time frame.
A spokesperson for the government said that the UK was still the fifth largest donor to the World food Programme.
Aid funds funnelled into other areas
It has also been noted that in December last year, charities and foreign ministers heavily criticised the UK leader for cutting aid while “funnelling funds into initiatives to crack down on illegal immigration from Bangladesh”.
International Rescue Committee (IRC)’s UK executive director, Flora Alexander, said at the time: “With the aid budget at its lowest in decades, every pound must go where it saves lives and tackles the root causes of crisis.
“That means prioritising fragile and conflict-affected states, where needs are greatest and where smart investment can help reduce the pressures that force people to leave their homes.”
The cuts come at a time when the United Nations has warned that there is a hunger crisis in central and West Africa, which could affect as many as 55 million people.
It was said that “four countries – Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon, and Niger – account for 77% of the food insecurity, with some 15,000 people in Nigeria currently at risk of food ‘catastrophe,’ or famine-level hunger, for the first time in nearly a decade, according to reports”.
Starmer must stop hitting the most vulnerable
It is highly embarrassing to a Labour Prime Minister that Conservative peer Michael Bates has called out his hypocrisy in terms of foreign aid. Starmer clearly said when coming to power that he would make the fight against world hunger a major priority. However, in practice he has done the complete and utter opposite.
In February of last year, he raided the aid budget which had already been cut by Johnson and Sunak in 2021 from 0 .7% of GDP to 0 .5%, by another 0.2% down to 0.3% in order to kowtow to President Trump’s bullying over the defence spending in NATO. Whilst it can be argued that Starmer might have felt it necessary to keep Trump onside regarding Ukraine, there were many other sources of income he could have turned to.
There is no question that those cuts to foreign aid will harm children due to lack of vaccinations while also denying girls the education they deserve.
The decision over the World Food Programme cut is a poor decision which will hit the most vulnerable and which have done so much to contribute to Labour’s opinion polling plunging to deaths not seen since before the Second World War.
Perhaps Starmer might like to reconsider the aid cut and the cuts to the World Food Programme as well as bringing in policies to help the most vulnerable in our own society.
We can only hope so.
