The United Kingdom will not return to spending 0.7% of gross national income on international aid until at least 2030, following the Labour Party’s first budget back in power — and immediate spending cuts look inevitable.
As expected, the government rejected pleas to top-up the development budget to offset the billions diverted to pay for hosting asylum-seekers, prompting a fresh warning that overseas program spending will “plummet” this year.
More significantly in the long-term, the budget book revealed Labour has abandoned the idea of setting its own economic tests for reversing the 2020 decision to slash aid spending from 0.7% to 0.5% — and will stick to the rules set by the previous Conservative Party government.