Rishi Sunak urged to restore UK aid spending after Ukraine invasion | help

Rishi Sunak is urged to increase UK spending in this week’s mini-budget after an in-depth study by a leading think tank showed government cuts had the biggest negative impact on the world’s poorest countries.

Campaign group One said the aid budget is at “stress point” and will come under renewed pressure as a result of humanitarian spending and refugee spending in response to the war in Ukraine.

One UK director Romilly Greenhill urged the Chancellor to use her spring declaration on Wednesday to speed up returns to the UK and spend 0.7% of national income on foreign aid.

A study commissioned by One from the National Institute of Economic and Social Research think tank concluded that $4 billion auxiliary cut had implications for both the UK and recipient countries.

“Recent cuts in UK aid offer negligible direct savings to the UK, are at the expense of the UK economy and have significant humanitarian and social costs in many poor countries,” the NIESR report said.

Sunak announced a cut in aid spending to 0.5% of national income in November 2020 as the Treasury faced the rising costs of the Covid-19 pandemic, but promised a return to 0.7% by 2020 in the following year’s budget End of Parliament provided certain conditions were met.

The independent Office for Fiscal Responsibility is expected to report on Wednesday that government finances are in a healthier state than assumed when the budget was drafted last October, giving the chancellor additional spending power.

According to the NIESR, the aid represented good value for money, helped recipient countries financially but also increased the UK’s national production. It said the cut in foreign aid had cost the UK between £322m and £423m in lost exports.

“The Chancellor argued that the cut in aid was necessary for fiscal reasons. However, this paper argues that restoring the aid budget would not significantly worsen the UK budgetary position and could actually support UK exports, whilst supporting the livelihoods and food security of many poor people in many developing countries.”

Greenhill said: “We are in a different world than when the aid budget was first cut. The circumstances have changed since the chancellor announced the cut in 2020, and the reasoning at the time no longer applies.

“The Government cannot deliver on its own agenda with the current budget and as more spending is added, UK aid is being stretched to the breaking point. It advances existing anti-poverty work.”

A government spokesman said: “The UK has a long history of helping others in need and we are one of the largest donors in the world, above the OECD average.

“We will continue to help protect people fleeing the conflict in Ukraine and already have 220 million largest aid contribution ever.”

Separate research by One into the impact of the war in Ukraine on the rest of the world showed that rising food and fuel prices and increasingly fragile supply chains could push millions of people into extreme poverty, destabilize parts of the African continent and lead to new geopolitical alliances.

“Conflict in Ukraine is already driving up wheat prices, which in turn is hitting those in Africa who are food insecure hardest, while many of these people are seeing basic food programs cut,” Greenhill said.

“It is absolutely right that people fleeing violence in Ukraine need support and people affected by famine in East Africa need support. But by cutting our aid budget unnecessarily Britain is unable to do both, it is forcing itself into a situation where it must choose between people in crisis.”

The NIESR report said aid cuts in sub-Saharan Africa had fallen sharply. Up to 1.5 million people in the region could remain malnourished as a result, she concluded.