UK ‘James Bonds’ warned against aid cuts, says former FCDO official

The “James Bonds” of United Kingdom’s intelligence services warned against the government’s aid cuts policy on the grounds of national security, according to a former senior official at the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.

Stefan Dercon, who served as policy adviser to former Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and his successor Liz Truss, from 2020 to 2022, was closely involved in slashing the UK’s aid budget by around £4.6 billion in 2021.

In a Twitter thread, Dercon discussed long-term changes to U.K. aid policy. “One high point, when I had to help the hunt for £4bn of AID cuts in 2021: a letter from our ‘friends across the river’ (the James Bonds) explaining that UK national security was at risk if an AID budget (I should not know about) were to be cut,” he wrote.

Cuts to the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, or CSSF, is understood to be one area intelligence services were particularly concerned about. The body, which receives non-aid funding as well as aid, and works to resolve conflict and reduce fragility, lost around £348.9 million due to the aid cuts, according to an estimate by the conflict prevention NGO Saferworld.

But Dercon was not convinced of the arguments made by the security services.

He wrote to Devex: “If they had explained that some developing country would be safer (and I can see our spooks could and no doubt some do great things for the safety of local populations… ) I could have been sympathetic but when the argument is reduced to national security then it cannot be aid, not even statistically so.”

Dercon agreed with the widely held view that development requires peace. “But not just peace and security in or for the UK,” he said, adding that there was a role for an organization like CSSF “but probably not run from [the] cabinet office but from FCDO, to make sure the development interest and focus is properly protected.”

This view has been met with sympathy by conflict prevention experts. “In some ways the cuts are bad for U.K. security but in no way should a very narrow national security lens be what’s driving aid, it should be a more widened approach to address poverty, to address problems like conflict that contribute to poverty, and can contribute to the U.K.’s national security as well,”  Lewis Brooks, advocacy advisor at Saferworld, told Devex.

CSSF has always had “tension within it” and walked a “balancing act” stemming from differing views of aid and national security, and has delivered programs of both kinds, according to Brooks.

Setting national security as its primary objective in an aid project can result in a “narrow intervention that doesn’t really contribute to ending poverty or to those wider objectives of aid, like preventing conflict or tackling insecurity, because you are focused just on ‘what is the threat to the UK’ rather than ‘what are the conditions we need to change?’” said Brooks.

Addressing wider conditions of conflict and insecurity can also contribute to safety for the U.K. and any region it is working, he added.  

“The UK remains one of the largest global aid donors, spending more than £11 billion in aid in 2021,” a U.K. government spokesperson said.

According to the spokesperson, the government remains committed to spending 0.7% of gross national income on official development assistance once the fiscal situation allows. “Our International Development Strategy will help address increasing global challenges, deliver investment, and get humanitarian assistance to those who need it most.”