UK aid's tumultuous 2022

Another year, another three prime ministers and a new monarch for the beleaguered United Kingdom. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, the upheaval of 2022 has barely stopped.

For U.K. aid, it was the year the government’s failures went mainstream, as a serving minister and senior former officials brazenly criticized the last two years of policy, which has, in the words of International Development Minister Andrew Mitchell, culminated in the fall of the country’s position as a “development superpower.”

Despite an unexpected injection of £2.5 billion ($3.05 billion) over two years to allay runaway domestic spending on refugees, officials in the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office are embarking on the third round of aid cuts in three years, reducing the bilateral budget by 30% — despite many programs being stretched beyond their limits by the two previous rounds of cuts. The first, of £2.9 billion in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic shrank the U.K. economy and the value of 0.7% of the national income target, and more controversially in 2021, when the government cut the budget to 0.5%, by around £4.6 billion. 

And after having staunchly defended the controversial 2020 merger of the Department for International Development with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which created FCDO, the government is now looking again at the departmental structure, according to Mitchell. Concerns have continued about development expertise within the department — never in doubt with the Department for International Development — after Mitchell told politicians on Dec. 6 there were 200 jobs vacant and “morale issues” among staff.

Mitchell has said FCDO will, however, continue to be guided by the international development strategy, which was signed off by former foreign secretary Liz Truss in May after a long wait and much redrafting.

The changes have coincided with a long-term weakening of the aid budget, according to Stefan Dercon, former policy adviser to Dominic Raab, who was Foreign Secretary until September 2021.

Dercon told members of Parliament on Dec. 13 that the U.K. government used “creative accounting,” and the aid spending was “increasingly not a development budget. ... It's increasingly to fill up holes,” with government departments able to squeeze it without FCDO’s control. Spending rules have come to dictate U.K. aid policy, rather than the government’s priorities dictating spending, according to Dercon.

"The whole idea of how to have a coherent, consistent [U.K. aid] portfolio of development action, that's disappeared," added Dercon. He said FCDO bilateral aid spending could fall to below £3 billion in 2022, a level not seen since the early 2000s, though that was disputed by another development finance expert.

Another former senior FCDO official, Moazzam Malik, also went on the record in June with a series of recommendations to his former department. He wrote: “FCDO needs clear, stable, long term objectives — pursuing "national interest" doesn't mean anything. Without clear objectives (eg conflict/insecurity, climate change, poverty, and prosperity), FCDO cannot build the expertise or evidence necessary to be credible or effective.”

Improving development policy in FCDO has been greatly complicated by the department’s massive preoccupation with Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has soaked up resources. Outside of that conflict, the U.K. government continues to look east with its Indo-Pacific tilt strategy, introduced in March 2021, and has been increasing its activity in the region, by supporting energy transitions in Indonesia and Vietnam, and attempting to join the Trans-Pacific free trade agreement. In a keynote speech on Dec. 12, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said he wanted U.K. international policy to take a long-term approach, focused on results 25 years into the future.

“I am determined that we will make investments of faith in the countries that will shape the world’s future,” said Cleverly, mentioning India, Brazil, and Indonesia. “We will press on with developing clear, compelling, and consistent U.K. offers, tailored to their needs and our strengths, spanning trade, development, defense, cyber security, technology, climate change and environmental protection.”

Cleverly also said the U.K. supported “the ambitions of the Bridgetown Agenda to reform the financial system and unlock more resources.”

Tempest at the top

The changes in FCDO have taken place amid a backdrop of political chaos. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who once predicted to govern for a decade, stepped down in September, though he effectively stopped working in July, leaving the government in a state of limbo as Conservative contenders campaigned to replace him.

This period saw the freezing of “non-essential” U.K. aid budget spending, sending the country’s development sector into further confusion and despondency as expected funding once again failed to emerge. Andrew Mitchell, who took over as minister in October — more on that later — told MPs the decision was necessary “because the budget was effectively out of control.”

The definition of nonessential aid spending was never really clarified beyond prioritizing protection “against immediate threat to life and wellbeing,” humanitarian reasons, or delays to accessing health care, primary education, sanitation, and clean water, according to Vicky Ford, who served as minister for international development between September and October.

But it later became clear that the restrictions on aid spending were much tighter than indicated by Ford, even barring funding from reaching the response to the food crisis in Somalia. Spending exempt from the freeze “had to be absolutely critical. … You’d have to make a very, very strong case on humanitarian grounds,” according to Mitchell. He gave no clear criteria but agreed the spending was “essential but not absolutely critical.”

After Liz Truss, who was foreign secretary, won the Conservative leadership race to become prime minister in September, she appointed her former deputy at FCDO, James Cleverly, to her old job.

Cleverly, whose briefs as a junior FCDO minister included the Middle East and later North America, tended to be viewed favorably by those who had worked with him, with one FCDO official saying he was an “altogether smarter and more sophisticated operator” than Truss.

Cleverly was seen as a relatively safe pair of hands taking over the department and has retained the job since, generally avoiding blunders.

The same cannot be said for Truss. Her rise to the office once held by leaders such as Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee had sparked much concern and apprehension among those who knew Truss and had worked with her. “She’s very childish, seems to have no idea what’s going on,” an FCDO official told Devex at the time.

Their fears were not unfounded. Not long after the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Truss launched a disastrous mini budget with her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, which sent the markets into meltdown, quickly followed by her premiership. The politician who imitated the so-called Iron Lady, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, failed to outlast the shelf life of head of lettuce, resigning on Oct. 20, after just 44 days.

Rishi Sunak took over as prime minister shortly after. It was he who, as chancellor under PM Johnson, ordered the aid budget cut from 0.7% to 0.5%, causing extensive damage to development. Finding himself in charge of a factionalized parliamentary party, Sunak neutralized a potential political threat from Andrew Mitchell by unexpectedly appointing him as international development minister.

As a backbench MP, Mitchell criticized the merger and fought the aid cuts, leading a rebellion against the policy in Parliament which ultimately failed but caused the government a series of headaches and further exposed divisions within the Conservative Party.

The Thrasher

Mitchell — famously nicknamed “Thrasher” — was a passionate DFID secretary between 2010 and 2012, and is still much loved by the U.K.’s development organizations, who view him as an ally within a government that has been hostile to the sector. He called his reappointment an “example of life after death” in his political party.

Mitchell told MPs in December that he has five priorities as a minister: increasing the quality of official development assistance, or ODA, increasing the quantity of ODA, working with the International Development Committee as an “ally and friend” in achieving development objectives, making FCDO “work better,” and improving public support for aid and development.

A more experienced politician than Cleverly, Mitchell has — according to Devex sources — caused a marked change in FCDO’s internal approach to aid and development. External FCDO communications promoting development also appear to have stepped up, with Cleverly tweeting a video promoting a U.K. aid consignment in Ethiopia, explaining why aid “does make a difference.”

Sunak’s view of development is also said by sources to have softened since he became prime minister and had to take into account factors such as international relationships that go beyond the public financing which occupied him as chancellor.

Labour dispute

Meanwhile, the broader political winds have been shifting in the U.K., and polls have been showing favorable chances for the opposition Labour Party at the next election, due by January 2025. Preet Gill, shadow development secretary, announced plans to integrate development and climate spending at the party’s conference in September.

Under former Prime Minister Tony Blair, the party established DFID in 1997. But despite Labour leader Keir Starmer pledging to restore the department in July, the party has since been riven with division over the issue.

Shadow Foreign Secretary David Lammy has taken positions that have appeared at times to undermine Gill, first voicing his opposition to bringing back DFID in “very strong terms” and then casting doubt on Labour’s commitment to returning to a 0.7% aid budget, despite the party’s continued criticism of the aid cuts.

Labour is now working on a “new model” of governance for development policy, and Gill has said a review of aid spending will take place on “day one” if Labour enters government, with a view to setting out a pathway back to a 0.7% budget.