Annaliese Dodds quit the Government today with a broadside at Sir Keir Starmer over his plan to use foreign aid money to re-arm Britain.
Earlier this week, the Prime Minister announced that defence spending will be increasing to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027, with a view to it hitting 3 per cent in the next Parliament.
But to fund it, development assistance aid will be slashed from its current level of 0.5 per cent of gross national income to 0.3 per cent in 2027.
Ms Dodds said she knew there were no ‘easy paths’ to increase defence spending in her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, but that she disagreed with the decision for aid to ‘absorb the entire burden’.
She warned that the move would affect the UK’s support for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine and could lead to the UK being shut out of multilateral bodies.
But the international development minister appears to be out of touch with UK voters, almost two-thirds of whom (64 per cent) feel international aid spending is too high.
That compares with just 14 per cent who think the same about defence, according to YouGov.
It follows controversy about where money is being spent
A study of the health of prawns in Bangladesh, a deal to fund prison transport in Albania using a Porsche dealer and millions to support ‘accountability and inclusion’ in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have all received money from Britain.
Ms Dodds said she knew there were no ‘easy paths’ to increase defence spending in her resignation letter to Sir Keir Starmer, but that she disagreed with the decision for aid to ‘absorb the entire burden’.
The Labour MP for Oxford East, in a letter to the PM, said that she had waited to resign until after his trip to Washington to meet US President Donald Trump, who has been pressuring Europe to increase defence spending.
Ms Dodds warned that the move would affect the UK’s support for Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine and could lead to the UK being shut out of multilateral bodies.
The Labour MP for Oxford East, in a letter to the PM, said that she had waited to resign until after his trip to Washington to meet US President Donald Trump, who has been pressuring Europe to increase defence spending.
She wrote: ‘Undoubtedly, the post-war global order has come crashing down.
‘I believe that we must increase spending on defence as a result; and know that there are no easy paths to doing so.
‘I stood ready to work with you to deliver that increased spending, knowing some might well have had to come from ODA.’
Ms Dodds said Sir Keir had been clear that he was not ‘ideologically opposed’ to international development.
‘But the reality is that this decision is already being portrayed as following in President Trump’s slipstream of cuts to USAID.
Other spending escapades included up to £500,000 of taxpayer money going towards 15 electric VW vans for Albanian prisons, secured through a local Porsche dealer, and the same amount to support the ‘gender mainstreaming strategy’ in the Jordanian army.
Among countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) only the US, Japan and Germany spend more on foreign aid.
The Trump administration has presented a plan to dramatically cut staffing worldwide for US aid projects as part of its dismantling of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
The plan would see thousands of workers lose their jobs, with fewer than 300 positions left in USAID to administer humanitarian aid programmes around the world.
At the same time the UK has actually increased its overseas spending. Last week Ms Dodds said the UK’s commitment to international aid ‘remains steadfast’ despite the Trump decision.
On Monday she was reportedly give 24 hours notice that this was not the case, and UK money would remain in the UK and be spent on the military.
Ms Dodds’ comments followed the publication of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) aid allocations for 2024/25, which saw total spending on official development assistance (ODA) rise to £9.3 billion from £8.1 billion in the previous year.
Under plans set out in 2023, the previous government had expected the FCDO to spend £8.3 billion on ODA in 2024/25.
The biggest single national recipient of aid is Ukraine, which is fighting off a brutal invasion by Vladimir Putin’s Russia. This is on top of the billions of pounds’ worth of military aide we have given to Kyiv.
Eight of the top 10 national recipients are in Africa, led by Ethiopia, which has been mired in a civil war since 2018.
There were some increases in funding, such as an extra £113 million in humanitarian support for Sudan and those who had fled to neighbouring countries, an extra £15 million for the Occupied Palestinian Territories – after the brutal war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza – and £50 million for Syria, where the Assad regime collapsed at the end of last year.
Allocations for Europe and the Indo-Pacific region, particularly India, were lower than plans set out in 2023, the last time the FCDO published its plans for 2024/25.
As well as money set aside by country and region, the largest singe pot of cash is reserved for British Investment Partnerships (BIP)s. These are programmes which bring together governments and private firms in the developing world to allow them to access finance that might otherwise be out of reach.
There is also a focus on health and education programmes.
But questions have been raised over whether the cash is being spent wisely.
Official figures show the past three years have seen the UK hand more than £133,000 to Bangladesh Agricultural University to study shrimp health, with the most recent payment made in September.
And last December the Foreign Office paid a contractor £9.5million to support ‘accountability and inclusion’ in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Other spending escapades included up to £500,000 of taxpayer money going towards 15 electric VW vans for Albanian prisons, secured through a local Porsche dealer, and the same amount to support the ‘gender mainstreaming strategy’ in the Jordanian army.
The FCO website said that the Albanian vans, part of a deal which sees the country take back nationals from UK prisons, were part of ‘the drive (sic) towards net zero and is part of a wider greening initiative’.
Further initiatives have been promoted in India, with £114million set aside for ‘inclusive green enterprises’ despite the country having a larger economy than the UK.
Some £5million has gone to ‘transforming feminist funding in Iraq’ while £264,000 went to ‘better understand disinformation in Ethiopia’ and £44,000 to studying Thailand’s alcohol policy.
