Foreign Office minister quits as Sunak cuts UK aid budget
Boris Johnson was struggling to contain a Conservative revolt as a Foreign Office minister resigned after the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, announced he was breaking a manifesto promise by cutting the overseas aid budget by a third and ending the Tory commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on aid.
Lady Sugg, whose brief includes sustainable development, submitted her resignation to Johnson in protest against the cut.
Sunak insisted the cut reflected people’s priorities at a time of unprecedented economic emergency.
But Sugg, a close ally of David Cameron and enthusiastic advocate of girls’ education, did not appear at the Lords dispatch box to answer questions on the aid cut that formed the most controversial measure in Sunak’s spending review.
In her resignation letter, she wrote: “Many in our country face severe challenges as a result of the pandemic and I know the government must make very difficult choices in response. But I believe it is fundamentally wrong to abandon our commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development.
“This promise should be kept in the tough times as well as the good. Given the link between our development spend and the health of our economy, the economic downturn has already led to significant cuts this year and I do not believe we should reduce our support further at a time of unprecedented global crises.”
Speaking in the Commons, Sunak said: “Sticking rigidly to spending 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid is difficult to justify to the British people,” adding that aid spending would fall to £10bn in 2020-21.
The aid target would be cut to 0.5%, Sunak confirmed, adding he hoped the 0.7% target could be restored when the UK’s finances allowed it.
A number of senior MPs warned Sunak he was endangering the government’s leadership role at a critical time for the world, including the British hosting of the UN climate change conference next year.
Andrew Mitchell, a former Conservative international development secretary, said the aid cuts “will be the cause of 100,000 preventable deaths, mainly among children. This is a choice I for one am not prepared to make. None of us will be able to look our children in the eye and claim we did not know what we were voting for.”
The former foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt said: “To cut our aid budget by a third in a year when millions more will fall into extreme poverty will make not just them poorer but us poorer in the eyes of the world.”
He added: “People will worry we are abandoning noble ideas that we have done more to champion than anyone else.”
Tobias Ellwood, the Tory chair of the defence select committee, condemned the move, saying the UK cannot genuinely claim to be global Britain “when our hard power is not matched by soft power”.
Peter Bottomley, the Tory father of the house, said he would work across party lines to block the cut.
Pauline Latham, the Conservative MP for Mid Derbyshire, said the aid budget would be decimated, “leading to more child marriages, more domestic violence, and we will not be vaccinating millions”.
The cut in aid spending contrasted with a large three-year increase for the defence budget, but Sunak clearly decided to brush aside warnings that Britain’s commitment to foreign aid symbolised an outward looking and generous UK.