On the heels of the draconian gutting of the United States Agency for International Development, the Starmer Government’s own proposal to cut £6.1 billion in international development funding will have a devastating impact on the lives of millions of children and families around the world.
Not only will these measures lead to increased instability, violence, and harm in the Global South, but they will also have a negative impact on our own economy and lives here in the UK — in fact, the proverbial chickens are already coming home to roost.
The previous Labour Government set Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) spending at 0.7% of our Gross National Income (GNI) which was cut to 0.5% by the Conversative Government as part of austerity measures that began with closing the Department for International Development in 2013 — these cuts already had an immense impact on many live-saving initiatives such as preventing maternal and infant mortality, sexual violence, and HIV and AIDS.
Although many expected Prime Minister Keir Starmer to reinstitute spending to former levels, the current government has proposed further reductions to 0.3% GNI, claiming that the “modernised aid budget will focus on impact, value for money and transparency.” This is unconscionable, and, quite frankly, it is disappointing to hear the same corporate management speak coming from a Labour Government that would be more expected from Donald Trump’s cronies at the Department of Government Efficiency rather than here at home.
It can be difficult to grasp the magnitude of these cuts.
Bilateral aid to Africa is being slashed by about 12%, with reductions of up to 27% in crisis‑hit countries like Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Of the 13 programmes earmarked for termination, 11 target gender equality or disability inclusion, meaning support for the most marginalised is being dismantled. Health spending will be reduced nearly 46%, undermining reproductive health, maternal care, and pandemic preparedness and, in the words of the government’s own impact assessment, risking increased disease burden “particularly [among] those living in poverty, women, children and people with disabilities.”
These are not abstract budget line items that can be treated casually. They are an education programme for girls in the Democratic Republic of the Congo supporting access schooling for 170,000 children in post‑conflict rural Kasai. Another is the flagship Tackling Deadly Diseases in Africa Programme, which was instrumental in curbing the 2018 Ebola outbreak within just two months. Cuts to sexual and reproductive health funding could lead to up to 2.6 million unintended pregnancies and almost 3,000 maternal deaths. Likewise, reducing UK investments in AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria prevention may result in approximately 150,000 deaths.
While the most immediate human cost of the FCDO aid cuts will be felt abroad, the damage will not end there. Reducing international development aid will not make the world a safer space, but rather will lead to more epidemics, violent conflicts, and global instability that will have an impact on trade, public health, and migration into the UK.
As we all learned from COVID, the next pandemic will not respect national borders — it is foolhardy to be retreating at a time when we need to be investing more in disease prevention. And with the current immigration discourse already disrupting politics (and lives) at home, the last thing we need is increased global instability which will only increase the number of refugees seeking asylum in the UK. Moreover, these cuts are already having a negative impact on the UK economy and our status as a global leader in innovation and research. They undermine Britain’s global standing and moral leadership, and with it, the soft power that underpins our diplomatic influence, economic partnerships, and cultural outreach.
Slashing funding for UK institutions like the BBC World Service risks eroding the very assets that make Global Britain effective on the world stage. Universities, health institutes, and global charities based in the UK that generate jobs for British people are facing significant cutbacks.
As a Professor of Child and Family Global Health at the University of Oxford, I have experienced this first hand with the National Institute of Health Research cancelling approximately £30 million per year in global health research including £5 million for my own research programme aimed at reducing child mental health problems and violence against children in the Global South through technological innovation. In addition to funding research staff and administrators, these grants would have supported a new generation of early career researchers and start-up technology companies in the UK. They would have also allowed the testing of low-cost interventions that may also address fiscal challenges at home.
To be sure, we are facing serious fiscal pressures from rising National Health Service costs and local authority deficits due to economic stagnation and a growing need for public investment. Trimming overseas spending may seem politically and fiscally prudent, particularly when framed as prioritising “British taxpayers first.” Some, including Foreign Secretary David Lammy, also rightly argue that aid budgets are ripe for reform, citing past inefficiencies, duplication, or programmes perceived as poorly targeted or mismanaged. Others also question whether aid alone can deliver transformative change without deeper systemic reforms in recipient countries.
But here is the truth. Aid spending makes up less than half a percent of UK government spending each year. It is also a good investment with an estimated yearly average return of 7.3% on Official Development Aid spending. And well-targeted aid can save lives at a far lower cost than reactive spending on high-ticket items like border enforcement, emergency disaster response, or military intervention.
Funding from the UK government has supported my own research which has helped develop technology-based solutions to prevent child sexual abuse, improve child learning and development, and promote caregiver and child mental health at a cost of less than $6 per day — something finance administrators struggling to figure out how to balance the NHS budget would surely be excited about too. I also agree that reform is necessary to ensure that aid is efficient, effective, and inclusive, holding recipient nations and organisations accountable to measurable, evidence-based results. But making indiscriminate cuts across the board and consolidating what is left over to few large agencies like the World Bank is not the solution.
The Starmer administration cannot claim honour in fiscal prudence when it is abandoning humanity’s most vulnerable.
The government’s own figures demand accountability and urgent reversal — we are still waiting for the release of a suppressed foreign aid report by Baroness Minouche Shafik, financial advisor to the prime minister. These cuts will not fix Britain’s budget, but they will cost lives, weaken our global standing, and increase the very instability that spills over into our borders. If we abandon the world’s most vulnerable now, we are not saving money but rather paying a moral and strategic price we cannot afford. The time is now to put the pressure on our MPs and remind them that fiscal discipline does not require moral retreat.
We need smarter, not smaller, aid so that when those chickens come back to roost, they lay golden eggs.