Dispute erupts at UK Labour Party conference over restoring DFID

An internal argument over whether the Labour Party should restore the Department for International Development if elected has erupted at the party’s conference, convened this week as the party looks to shape its image as a government in waiting.

Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy voiced his opposition to bringing back DFID in “very strong terms” on Monday.

But other senior figures, such as shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, backed restoring DFID at the conference. Labour leader Keir Starmer said as recently as July that his party would restore DFID if elected.

Sarah Champion, chair of the international development committee, told Devex that “The last two years has clearly shown not having a separate development department significantly weakens our impact internationally. This is not about money and bricks and mortar, it’s about the loss of experts, projects proven to reduce poverty and the standing of the U.K. as a country that does right by others. Having a physical department demonstrates that we care.”

But speaking at an event on Monday, Lammy said, “Can I just say this in very strong terms: I know that the aid sector deeply wants DFID back; you have to accept it has gone.”

Lammy, a senior member of Parliament elected in 2000, said Labour would create a “new model” for international development that “fits the 21st century” but gave no details on what it would look like, other than that it should be “innovative.”

“I'm very keen to listen to the sector on how that innovation should work [in] 2027,” said Lammy, indicating the party’s plans for a new development agency are far from set in stone, despite an election being due by early 2025. “Help us develop what that is,” Lammy asked of the sector.  

Preet Gill, shadow international development secretary, played down the party’s disagreement, telling Devex: “Just as DFID evolved from [19]97 the separate department will have a new forward looking focus.”

DFID, opened by the Labour government of Tony Blair after the landslide election victory of 1997, was controversially closed by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and merged with the Foreign & Commonwealth Office to form the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office in 2020. The merger was widely seen as a dysfunctional process and is not yet complete.

After an audience member mistakenly thanked him on Monday for saying he would bring DFID back, Lammy interjected, wagging his finger.

“We said we committed to a new model; we can’t just reinvent what was there before,” said Lammy, who called the idea of bringing back DFID “a bit kneejerk.”

“So it is not a commitment to bring back DFID. Very sadly, the Tories ruined it. It is a commitment for a new model. … This is not 1997, we should be more ambitious than recreating 1997, I’m clear about that, Preet [Gill, shadow development secretary] is clear about that, Kier [Starmer, Labour Leader] is clear about that,” Lammy continued.

“It’s not as simple as — I want to say this in categorical terms — of bringing back DFID. They [the Conservatives] should never have got rid of it, but on the basis they have got rid of it, let us look at the world’s challenges as we are today, and the world today is hugely different to the world in 1997,” he said.

Labour would have a foreign policy centered on climate action and feminism, Lammy told the event. He said a Labour government would also see the United Kingdom recommit to multilateralism.