Three former British leaders criticise Johnson's merging of international aid department with foreign office

The move came under fire from both Conservative and Labour MPs

Minsters have condemned UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's decision to abolish the Department for International Development on Tuesday. AFP

Three former British leaders condemned Prime Minister Boris Johnson's decision to abolish the Department for International Development on Tuesday, in a move to create a new ‘super ministry’ to deal with the post pandemic world.

Mr Johnson said that the Foreign Office would merge with the aid department to form the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, which would “bring strength and expertise to bear on the world’s biggest problems”.

The move has come under fire from both Conservative and Labour MPs, including David Cameron, a former Tory prime minister. Former Labour prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown also strongly condemned the move.

In a statement to Parliament Mr Johnson said it was “outdated” to keep the departments separate.

He told the Commons: “We must now strengthen our position in an intensely competitive world by making sensible changes.

“And so I have decided to merge DFID with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to create a new department, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.”

He argued that when working abroad the two departments sometimes had contradictory aims and said the current pandemic showed that the era of diplomacy and overseas aid was “outdated.”

In the new department British ambassadors will have sole responsibility for all overseas aid budgets and programmes. “Aid and foreign policy are the same goals and serve our national interest,” Mr Johnson said.

But the former prime minister David Cameron argued against the decision. He wrote on Twitter: “The Prime Minister is right to maintain the commitment to 0.7 [per cent of the UK budget being devoted to international aid] – it saves lives, promotes a safer world and builds British influence. But the decision to merge the departments is a mistake.”

Sir Keir Starmer, the Leader of the Opposition, said the announcement was a “distraction” from the high unemployment figures released earlier in the day.

He added that DFID was one of Whitehall’s “best-performing departments” and Mr Johnson’s move “diminishes Britain’s place in the world”.

Andrew Mitchell, a conservative MP who was in charge of the department between 2010 and 2012, said abolishing it would be a “quite extraordinary mistake” and would “at a stroke destroy a key aspect of Global Britain”.

The department, he added, had been "one of the most effective and respected engines of international development anywhere in the world".

Mr Johnson’s announcement came after the government changed its mind on giving British children free school meals over the six-week summer holidays.

It caved in to the Manchester United footballer Marcus Rashford’s campaign to provide vouchers to impoverished children to ensure they are properly fed during the break.