Former CEO of Save the Children has hit out at Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to slash development budgets

A leading global affairs professor has said Britain may be entered a “post-aid era” as it warned there is “no soft-landing” options for the UK Government in its cuts to overseas development funding. 

Kevin Watkins, a fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and former chief executive of Save the Children, has said the UK Government must “minimise the harm caused” by the “flawed decision” to cut the Official Development Assistance (ODA) budget by 40%. 

Sir Keir Starmer’s government has said it will reduce ODA spending from 0.5% of GNI to 0.3% by 2027 to fund defence, with cuts already underway. 

The slashing of aid budgets comes despite the Labour leader promising during the election campaign to increase ODA spending to the previous level of 0.7% of GNI. 

Significant concerns have been raised since the announcement earlier this year, but no change has been forthcoming, and April’s budget showed a start to the spending cuts has already started. 

Mr Watkins, a visiting professor of development practice at the London School of Economics, has warned of the cost of cutting ODA in the current climate. 

He wrote for the ODI: “There are no ‘soft-landing’ options. The UK’s descent from aid superpower to the lower leagues of development assistance generosity will have devastating consequences for people at the sharp end of global poverty, hunger, humanitarian emergencies and the climate crisis. The challenge is to minimise harm, maximise the impact of a diminished aid budget, and prepare the ground for a recovery in aid levels at some future point.

“The government has so far failed to develop a strategic response to that challenge. Announced ahead of Starmer’s meeting with Donald Trump, the decision to wholly fund an increase in defence spending out of the aid budget bears all the hallmarks of an impromptu gesture decoupled from a strategic vision for the future of aid. 

“Presenting the aid cuts as a pragmatic response to new security threats obscures the government’s failure to consider alternatives, not to mention the reversal of a clear manifesto commitment.

“The impending aid cuts will reinforce the deep reductions in official development assistance (ODA) announced by the United States, France and others. On one (conservative) estimate ODA could fall by around $40 billion in 2025-26.

He added: “Of course, Britain’s role in international development does not start and end with aid. With a new debt crisis now devastating many of the world’s poorest countries, the Treasury should again be at the forefront of multilateral efforts to reduce debt, reallocate IMF Special Drawing Rights and ensure that the Multilateral Development Banks punch above their weight.

“We may or may not be entering a ‘post-aid’ era. What is clear is that we are at a turning point. If the UK Government is serious about its commitment to international development, it needs to provide a vision, engage the public and demonstrate through its actions a serious intent to minimise the harm caused by a flawed decision.”