Gordon Brown attacks Rishi Sunak’s plan to slash UK foreign aid spending by £5bn

Reneging on overseas aid commitments is ‘short-sighted,’ claims former UK prime minister

Former UK prime minister and finance minister Gordon Brown says Britain's global reputation will be damaged if it fails to meet aid commitments. Victor Besa / The National

Former UK prime minister Gordon Brown accused finance minister Rishi Sunak of savage cuts to foreign aid which, he said, will damage Britain's global reputation.

In a newspaper article, Mr Brown accused Mr Sunak of short-sightedness with his plan to cut £5 billion ($6.8bn) from Britain’s overseas development aid in the wake of the coronavirus crisis.

In his November spending review, Mr Sunak said he would cut international aid spending from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent of national expenditure. Mr Brown likened the move to "paying the bills for Covid off the backs of the poor".

Gordon Brown has warned cuts to Britain's aid budget will harm the world's poorest people. Reuters.

"At the end of March, the 30 per cent, £5bn reduction from the 2019 aid budget total will be so severe that it is in breach of UK law," Mr Brown wrote in The Guardian.

“Never in our history has the overseas aid budget been cut so peremptorily, so savagely and by so much,” Mr Brown wrote.

“What moral compass guides ministers towards severing lifelines of support in the midst of the most devastating peacetime humanitarian emergency in a century?”

Mr Brown cited calculations by the Centre for Global Development which showed cuts to polio and measles vaccination programmes in Africa and the Middle East could lead to more than 100,000 preventable deaths.

Cuts could also force about four-and-a-half million children out of education.

“It will take decades to undo the damage that is about to be inflicted”, Mr Brown said.

He proposed a “Marshall-style plan for Africa”, modelled on the US recovery programme for Europe after the Second World War, with a greater emphasis on debt relief to help alleviate poverty.

The plan to cut aid was a major blow to "Global Britain" Mr Brown claimed, especially as the UK was scheduled to host the COP26 global climate summit this year.

“When [British Prime Minister] Boris Johnson arrives in Glasgow to chair November’s COP26 climate change conference, he will have to explain why Britain’s contribution to solving what he says is the greatest existential problem facing the world is also about to be cut back.”

In his article, Mr Brown said coronavirus will only be eradicated when vaccine programmes are expanded to help poorer countries.

“Covid cannot be finally and certainly eliminated anywhere if it is not eliminated everywhere", he wrote.

“Given the risk that the virus mutates abroad and returns to ravage even those who have been vaccinated, it would be value for money for rich countries like Britain … to agree to share the burden of financing the vaccination of all the people of all the poorest countries.”