The United Kingdom’s aid budget was reduced by £4.6 billion in 2021 due to its aid cuts policy, according to newly released documents from the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
The government spent nearly £11.5 billion on aid in 2021 — including on donations of COVID-19 vaccines purchased for U.K. citizens but never used, and nearly £1 billion spent within the U.K. — which amounted to 0.5% of gross national income.
But the original target of 0.7% of 2021’s GNI would have been around £16.1 billion — £4.6 billion more, an analysis of the documents conducted by Bond, the network for U.K. NGOs, showed. The total spend was also 20.6% lower than in 2020, a drop of nearly £3 billion despite the fact that the U.K.’s GNI in 2020 was lower, according to the report of provisional international development assistance spending.
Last time the U.K.’s aid budget was lower was nearly a decade ago, in 2013 — the first year the U.K. government hit the 0.7% aid spending target, with £11.4 billion in total. From then until 2020, the aid budget rose year on year.
But in 2021, aid spending to the African continent was cut by 39%, from £2.2 billion in 2020 to below £1.4 billion, and spending in Asia was cut by 32%, from nearly £1.6 billion in 2020 to less than £1.1 billion in 2020.
Two government departments were merged to create FCDO, but it appears that their portfolios didn’t wear the aid cuts equally. The figures showed “country specific bilateral funding formally under DFID’s portfolio bore the brunt of the cuts, whilst most areas formally under [the Foreign & Commonwealth Office] saw increases, as did spending within the UK by the Home and Cabinet Offices,” Richard Watts, a senior adviser on development finance at Save the Children UK, wrote to Devex.
He added: “This prioritisation led to dramatic reductions in sectors such as humanitarian assistance and health, at a time of global crisis where governments in the world’s poorest countries faced reduced fiscal space through constrained revenue generation and higher debt burdens.”
Aid to sexual and reproductive health in particular was depleted significantly by the U.K. cuts.
“The aid cuts left millions of women in Ukraine with no control over their bodies, futures, or lives, just as they did in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Sudan and Syria,” said Dr. Alvaro Bermejo, director-general of the International Planned Parenthood Federation, in a statement.
“The government already knew from the equalities impact assessment that these cuts to promised funds would be devastating,” Bermejo said. “Not only that, but the government also chose to distribute the dedicated aid budget to other government departments.”
The report showed £915 million went to the Home Office for spending in the U.K., nearly double the previous year, which Bermejo described as “staggering.” It also confirmed that £100.4 million in donations of the U.K.’s excess COVID-19 vaccines were charged to the aid budget.
“Counting excess vaccines as UK aid is morally wrong as it robs countries in crisis, such as Afghanistan and Yemen, of life-saving support,” said Simon Starling, director of policy, advocacy, and research at Bond.
The report also revealed that £108 million of aid was spent by the Cabinet Office on hosting the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in November.
The document was published on the same day as figures published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Development Assistance Committee showed the U.K. was an outlier among the major donors, who spent more on aid amid the pandemic.
“This historical spending reflects decisions made in previous years,” a U.K. government spokesperson said in a statement. “The Foreign Secretary will set out future spending priorities alongside our new International Development Strategy this spring.” The statement added that the government “will increase spending to 0.7% as soon as the fiscal situation allows.”
Update, April 13, 2022: This article was updated to include a statement from FCDO.
About the author
William Worley@willrworley
Will Worley is the Climate Correspondent for Devex, covering the intersection of development and climate change. He previously worked as UK Correspondent, reporting on the FCDO and British aid policy during a time of seismic reforms. Will’s extensive reporting on the UK aid cuts saw him shortlisted for ‘Specialist Journalist of the Year’ in 2021 by the British Journalism Awards. He can be reached at william.worley@devex.com.
