Senior UK Labour MP says party must set up aid department 'on day one'

U.K. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer must stick to his pledge to bring back a separate international development department “on day one” in power, a senior party lawmaker has said. Sarah Champion, chair of the House of Commons committee scrutinizing aid work, criticized a Labour review — revealed by Devex last week — into whether to set up an “agency” within the existing Foreign, Commonwealth, & Development Office instead, to avoid “disruption and cost.” At a London think tank event, Champion dismissed the idea it would be expensive to reverse the 2020 folding of the Department for International Development into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office by the Conservatives, arguing a “new” agency would in fact be more costly. She also warned her party against settling for a model that “wasn’t working” before Labour set up DFID in 1997, saying: “We need a ringfenced budget and policy [for development] and a seat at the top [Cabinet] table.” Asked at the Center for Global Development event about her top priority for Labour winning power, Champion replied: “From day one, we would have a development department.” Starmer’s officials are exploring two options: Either a separate department or an agency which a senior source likened to the pre-1997 setup of an Overseas Development Administration within the Foreign Office. Labour says an agency would have operational independence, although the ODA was widely seen as lacking the clout to prevent scandals such as the notorious Pergau dam affair in 1993. Starmer could be accused of a policy U-turn if he opts not to restore an aid department after he gave an unequivocal commitment to reverse the merger in July of last year. Asked if Labour would bring back DFID, he replied: “We are, for so many reasons,” describing a distinct aid department as “a massive asset” and the merger as “totally misguided.” Mark Lowcock, a CGD fellow and a former top civil servant at DFID, warned of the pre-1997 structure: “Nobody would have said that Britain was a leader in international development at that time.” Labour is unlikely to make its decision before the end of 2023, a timetable leaving “plenty of time” to develop a full plan for development before an election expected a year later, the party believes. At the event, Champion praised the “amazing” work of Andrew Mitchell, the development minister appointed in October, in stabilizing an FCDO he had admitted was in “disarray.” But she warned it was a long road to recovery after the botched merger and steep cuts to the aid budget, saying of the U.K.’s current reputation: “I’m embarrassed when I go abroad.” As well as an autonomous department, Labour’s priorities should be a return to focusing on extreme poverty and to asking the poorest people “What they need and how we best support them.” “If we get those core things right, then I genuinely think we can get back to being one of the global superpowers when it comes to development,” Champion told the audience.