Latest news with #internationaldevelopment
The Guardian
a day ago
- Business
- The Guardian
£5bn UK overseas aid cuts cannot be challenged in court, say government lawyers
Cuts of £5bn to the UK overseas aid budget cannot be challenged in the courts, government lawyers have said, even though ministers have no plan to return spending to the legal commitment of 0.7 % of UK gross national income (GNI). The assertion by Treasury solicitors that ministers are immune from legal challenge over aid cuts comes in preliminary exchanges with the aid advocacy group One Campaign. It is the first step in what could prove a highly embarrassing judicial review. In the spring statement in March the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, said she was slashing aid from 0.5% to 0.3 % of GNI. The international development minister, Jenny Chapman, recently said in a Guardian interview that this level of spending was the new normal. The 40% cut, due to be imposed by April 2027, is being billed as necessary to fund a new permanent increase in defence spending required by long-term changes to the security landscape. The previous aid cut, from 0.7 % to 0.5 %, imposed by Dominic Raab, the then Conservative foreign secretary, was billed as temporary. It was accompanied by aspirational timetables for aid spending to return to 0.7%, the target set out in the 2015 International Development Act entrenching that figure as the government commitment on overseas aid. One Campaign says that for ministers to comply with the law, they face a choice of either repealing the act, a vote that some Labour MPs will be reluctant to justify to their electorates, or to set out a credible pathway to return to the target. The campaign said it is impossible for ministers to keep legislation on the statute book that places duties upon them they intend to defy. In their legal defence – a written exchange on the legal merits between government and One Campaign prior to a potential judicial review – government lawyers claimed a section in the act shields ministers from all legal challenge. They said the act's only mechanism for securing accountability is through a ministerial report to parliament. They pointed to a section of the act on the ministerial duty to report to parliament that states the reporting duty 'does not affect the lawfulness of anything done or omitted to be done by any person'. The lawyers told One Campaign that 'this puts beyond doubt that parliament intended the courts would have no jurisdiction'. This interpretation is being contested by the Liberal Democrat peer Jeremy Purvis, who helped draft the legislation and steered it through parliament. He said ministers cannot hide behind the narrow section of the act on minister's reporting duty to claim it ousts the courts. He added: 'This government has not just missed the target but is changing it, and there is no scope to do this. 'The simple fact is the government is seeking to avoid a vote in parliament, avoid the courts and avoid all accountability for reneging on all requirements under the act.' He added the government had set out no pathway to return to 0.7 %. One Campaign says the cuts are likely to be devastating. Its director, Adrian Lovett, said there was no evidence that ministers had met the requirement to undertake impact assessments of the cuts on poverty reduction and gender equality. Ministers say they only have to make such an assessment when cuts to specific programmes are being made.
South China Morning Post
4 days ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
China pushes SCO Development Bank as Russia pivots to Asia: analysts
As the United States scales back foreign aid and increases financial sanctions through long-arm jurisdiction, analysts said Beijing is strengthening its influence in international development finance and regional economic cooperation. Driven by rising geopolitical tensions and Russia's strategic pivot to the East, they said the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Development Bank, which has been stalled for over a decade, was now closer than ever to becoming a reality. Momentum is building ahead of an autumn summit in Tianjin, a northern port city 100 kilometres east of Beijing, where SCO leaders – including those from Russia and five Central Asian nations – are set to convene. In early June, China's Vice-Premier Ding Xuexiang highlighted the bank proposal, along with related initiatives for local currency settlement and digital finance, during a meeting with SCO finance ministers and central bank chiefs in Beijing. First proposed by China in 2010 to promote regional trade and the use of local currencies, the bank has frequently surfaced in high-level discussions – but progress has remained elusive.
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The Independent
12-06-2025
- Business
- The Independent
UK aid cuts are even harsher than they first appeared. And the scale is horrifying
Now the government has set out its spending plans for the next three years, we can see the true scale of the horrors to come from more than £5 billion of aid budget cuts – and the picture could not be bleaker. When the prime minister announced his intention to slash international development spending to its lowest level this century many of us hoped the worst damage could be avoided. Instead, the Home Office will continue to raid the aid budget for the costs of housing asylum seekers in this country, instead of spending it on health, education and humanitarian programmes overseas as intended. This means my party will continue to spend more than 20 per cent of this much smaller aid budget at home, here in the UK, just as we rightly criticised the Conservatives for doing – while the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) will see its share shrink by a third. Actual aid spent on international work will sink below 0.25 per cent of national income – not the 0.3 per cent the prime minister promised – putting the UK near the bottom of the table for the world's leading economies. The price will be paid by the world's poorest people, by the children no longer vaccinated against deadly yet preventable diseases, or able to go to school. Direct UK aid to many countries will stop altogether, and we already know that specific projects to support women and girls will be wiped out. It is alarming that, even though the cuts have begun, FCDO has provided no clear vision of what will be sacrificed and what will be saved. Instead, the aid minister told the International Development Committee I chair that 'everybody gets a cut' – exactly the sort of salami-slicing that inflicted such harm the last time cuts approaching this scale were made, at the start of this decade. Do not make the mistake of believing this is a crisis that will only impact overseas. Britons too will feel the effects when these aid cuts leave us more exposed to pandemics spawned abroad – we all remember how Covid-19 travelled around the globe with terrifying speed – when broken economies tempt more desperate people to climb onto boats to Europe, when efforts to build stable societies are abandoned and terror threats reach our shores. As the prime minister himself put it, when he opposed Tory aid cuts, this money goes 'beyond moral obligation' because it 'also helps build a more stable world and keeps us safer in the UK'. Those words ring just as true today. We also know from the government's own consultation on its promised 'new approach to Africa' that African leaders have responded by saying the UK's 'reputation and credibility' will suffer alongside the communities we let down by pulling projects. When the cuts were announced in February, the government had the chance to draw a line by ensuring the promised 0.3 per cent of national income for aid – however inadequate – really will be 0.3 spent on aid work. Instead, it is allowing that feeble floor to fall further, making the cuts even more horrendous to implement. The Tories were forced to admit their aid cuts would cause lasting damage. Including more preventable deaths, thousands of children being left hungry and without proper healthcare, and women being left with no medical help after pregnancy complications. My committee has already heard evidence that impact assessments will reveal the same appalling outcomes this time around. When they are published – as they must be – there will be nowhere for ministers to hide.
The Independent
11-06-2025
- Business
- The Independent
This short-sighted cut to foreign aid will come back to haunt the UK
There was no comfort in today's spending review for those across all parties who care about international development. The reduction of Britain's overseas aid budget to meagre 0.3 per cent will come back to haunt us. There are plenty of people who argue that cutting overseas aid should not overly concern us. Why should foreign people in distant countries profit from the UK taxpayers' hard-earned money? If any aspect of our budget is expendable, surely it is this. But much is missing from this simplistic analysis. Aid is not about giving handouts. It is about connecting the dots between conditions abroad and the UK's serious challenges on health, security and migration. Indeed the whole point of international development is to improve social conditions in vulnerable countries to contain the scourge of disease, conflict and extremism – all of which in turn step up the pressure on our borders. Morality aside, aid is a strategic investment of the highest, if not the most glamorous, order. We hear a great deal about the need to 'stop the boats.' And rightly so — irregular migration through small boat crossings is dangerous and deeply unsettling for the British public. But while deterrents and enforcement may grab headlines, they will never solve the problem alone. If we are serious about reducing irregular migration, we must first tackle the reasons that people feel they have no choice but to leave their homes. And that's exactly where well-targeted aid can play a decisive role. New research from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy provides compelling evidence. In Sub-Saharan Africa, a marked improvement in public services like healthcare and education was linked to a 27 per cent drop in migration intentions. In countries affected by conflict or climate stress — such as Sudan, Afghanistan or Syria — aid that stabilises fragile regions, supports livelihoods, or helps farmers adapt to a changing climate can reduce future displacement. Most of the people arriving in small boats today come from countries facing humanitarian crises. They're not mainly economic opportunists — they're often fleeing instability, poverty, or violence. When we invest in making those regions safer and more secure, we reduce the push factors that fuel irregular migration. Investing in development abroad also means protecting ourselves from future threats. There is growing evidence to support the link between development spending and our own security. Again, research from the Kiel Institute found that improving basic services, for example, reduces the aspiration to migrate: In Sub-Saharan Africa, a marked improvement in public services (such as health and education) was linked to the 27 per cent lower intentions to migrate. Similarly, aid that's used to stabilise fragile regions can prevent renewed conflict with mass movement and with far-reaching security repercussions. I still find it difficult to believe that a Labour government has raided the aid budget to plug short-term spending gaps. While I did not expect a return to 0.7 per cent of development spending any time soon, I genuinely believed that Sir Keir Starmer would stand by his manifesto commitment and had the strategic nous to protect the remnants of a budget that has been persistently plucked and picked at. Robbing Peter to pay Paul might play well populistically, not least in an age where the pulse-racing demands of social media are at odds with the slow-burn tempo of international development transformations – but make no mistake, it is a proverbial shot in the foot. Finally, we can't escape the human tragedy that the aid cuts will unleash. An old African proverb says "the axe forgets, but the tree remembers". International development has been denigrated and delegitimised over the years in a burgeoning climate of narrow nationalism flourishing from a broken international system. Those responsible for riding that populist wave will soon move on. But the people left behind will carry this for years to come. We too will suffer.
Wall Street Journal
06-06-2025
- General
- Wall Street Journal
Chinese Student Trolled Over ‘Humanity' Speech at Harvard
A Chinese graduate student drew wide applause with a speech at Harvard's commencement ceremonies in late May. Online, it was a different story. In her address, Yurong Luanna Jiang, who studied international development at the Harvard Kennedy School, spoke about her program's diverse student body, recounting how on an internship in Mongolia last year she helped Indian and Thai classmates in Tanzania translate writing on a made-in-China washing machine over the phone.
