CAMERON’S FURY AS FOREIGN AID IS SLASHED
FORMER PM CAMERON SLAMS CUT TO FOREIGN AID FOR WORLD’S POOR THAT ‘SAID SOMETHING GREAT ABOUT BRITAIN’
DAVID CAMERON has led condemnation of Rishi Sunak’s decision to cut overseas aid, after the government vowed in last year’s Conservative election manifesto to maintain current levels.
The former prime minister accused the chancellor of ‘breaking a promise to the poorest people’ by slashing the aid spending target from 0.7 per cent of gross national income to 0.5 per cent.
While in Downing Street in 2015, Mr Cameron enshrined in law the commitment to spending 0.7 per cent.
And he said yesterday: ‘That commitment said something great about Britain, that we care and we were actually going to do something about it. The 0.7 was a noble thing for this country – it inspired others to do more, it vaccinated children,
it fed the hungry, it made a massive difference helping with refugee situations and humanitarian situations.’
Mr Sunak said he hoped to return to 0.7 per cent ‘when the fiscal situation allows’ but the ‘economic emergency’ had made the estimated £4billion cut necessary. The aid budget, £15.2billion last year, was already expected to fall by £2.9billion this year because of the decline in the economy. Foreign Office minister Baroness Sugg, who was due to answer questions in the Lords about international aid, resigned in protest at the ‘fundamentally wrong’ reduction.
The Most Rev Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, called the cut ‘shameful and wrong’ and urged MPs to ‘reject it for the good of the poorest, and the UK’s own reputation and interest’.
MPs could push for a vote on keeping the 0.7 per cent target, which the 2015 act passed by Mr Cameron (pictured) allows to be disregarded in exceptional economic circumstances.
Tory former international development secretary Andrew Mitchell said the reduction would be ‘the cause of 100,000 preventable deaths, mainly among children’. Charities accused the government of undermining its reputation ahead of chairing the G7 and hosting UN climate talks in Glasgow next year.
Tearfund head Nigel Harris said it was ‘a cruel, badly calculated decision and could not have come at a worse time’.
Former prime ministers Sir John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown also called for aid to be preserved at 0.7 per cent.
Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai tweeted ‘a generation of girls are leaning on that support’.
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact has rejected claims the 0.7 per cent benchmark had led to splurges of inefficient spending.
The new target is still above France’s 0.44 per cent and Spain’s 0.21.