UK's Starmer was advised to bring back aid department — but said no

Keir Starmer rejected top-level advice that he could restore a separate United Kingdom aid department with “negligible” cost and disruption, according to a new book by former senior development officials. One of a series of “confidential papers from recognised experts” concluded the Labour government could easily replicate the 1997 creation of the Department for International Development “from day one,” it said — through sharing buildings, information technology, and corporate support services with the Foreign Office. However, Starmer opted to retain the much-criticized 2020 full merger of diplomacy and development work he inherited from the defeated Conservative government despite, the book claims, having “seemed to rule out” that option in the summer of 2023. The prime minister has never explained his decision, but his Foreign Secretary David Lammy told Devex that the rise of China and the growing climate emergency had created “a very different world” to 1997 when DFID was set up. A review is now working towards further integration. Lammy publicly opposed breaking up the huge Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office he now runs, while Lisa Nandy — who favored separation — was moved from the development brief after the July election victory and replaced by Anneliese Dodds. The book, by former DFID top civil servant Mark Lowcock and economic adviser Ranil Dissanayake, argued that Starmer will regret his caution, stating: “Talking about leadership without distinctive policy ideas, new resources, or real organisational improvements will not be admired internationally.” Entitled “The Rise and Fall of the Department for International Development,” the book charts the “successes, struggles, and lessons” from the 23-year history of a department the authors view as having enjoyed “a stellar international reputation.” It also lifts the lid on Labour’s intense discussions about what to do if it won power, after Starmer rowed back on his 2022 pledge that DFID “should be reinstated.” As Devex revealed, the Labour leader asked officials to explore whether a development “agency” within FCDO — with operational independence — could repair the U.K.’s tarnished reputation without the “disruption and cost” of another big institutional shake-up. Lowcock and Dissanayake wrote that Starmer was advised the move would be more “time-consuming and disruptive” — carrying an annual price tag of at least £100 million (about $131 million) — and at the further cost of “fragmentation of responsibilities.” Instead, crucially, “top mandarins” advised a separate development department sharing a platform with the Foreign Office, “at negligible cost and with less turmoil from day one of the new government — just as had happened in 1997.” The setup would build on the limited separation made by the outgoing Conservative development minister Andrew Mitchell, who installed a new top civil servant focused on development work in June 2023. However, Labour was silent for months. The election was called earlier than expected, in May 2024, shortly after which the party’s manifesto announced it would stick with the merger while making no commitment to restore the 0.7% aid spending benchmark. Lowcock and Dissanayake also noted Labour’s adoption of Conservative language that “development work must be aligned closely with our foreign policy aims.” This is very different from the stance of former Labour prime ministers from the 1960s onwards, who “thought that supporting development was right in its own terms,” they wrote. Speaking to Devex, Lowcock warned of a danger of a return to the disastrous pre-DFID policy of tying development work to trade or procurement from a donor country — estimated by an early 1990s study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to have “wasted more than $7 billion a year” worldwide. “The track record of using the aid budget to leverage diplomatic and other objectives is very bad. That’s what got the Conservative governments of the 1980s and 90s into the Pergau Dam scandal,” said Lowcock, who served as DFID permanent secretary from 2011 and 2017, and later the United Nations humanitarian affairs chief. “The effect of all these wheezes is to reduce the effectiveness of aid. If you want to sweeten political relationships or promote trade, fine. But don’t pretend that it’s development — because you will waste a lot of money.”