Foreign aid cuts: Boris Johnson sees off Tory revolt

Boris Johnson has seen off an attempt by Tory rebels to block a controversial cut to foreign aid spending in a surprise Commons vote.

MPs voted 333 to 298 to back reducing overseas aid spending from 0.7 per cent of gross national income to 0.5 per cent to offset pandemic spending.

Opening the debate, Boris Johnson said ministers had spent £407bn during the pandemic to “shelter our people from an economic hurricane never before experienced in living memory” and insisted “there must inevitably be consequences.”

The government’s decision to break its manifesto pledge and cut the overseas aid budget sparked outrage among Tory backbenchers when it was announced last year, and many prominent Conservatives spoke out against the cuts at today’s debate.

Former prime minister Theresa May said she would rebel against the Conservative whip for the first time, arguing that cuts to foreign aid would mean that “fewer girls will be educated, more children will go hungry and more of the poorest people in the world will die”.

May mocked the government for focussing on a £4bn cut to foreign aid at a time when it had borrowed 100 times that during the COVID pandemic, saying: “We’ve borrowed £400bn. Where are the dire warnings about that? It seems that £4bn is really bad news but £400bn, who cares?”

The Conservative former defence minister Tobias Ellwood also voiced his concern about the cuts. He told the Commons there was a new “cold war that is slowly emerging” and warned the UK needed to maintain its international aid commitments to compete with powers such as China.

Yet Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, managed to shore up enough support to win the vote with a promise to resurrect the budget when the criteria of an “independent” mechanism are met.

According to the Chancellor’s new “double lock” criteria, foreign aid would be restored when the Office for Budget Responsibility’s fiscal forecast says that, on a sustainable basis, the government is not borrowing for day-to-day spending, and that underlying debt is falling.

But the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer claimed the government’s conditions for returning to the 0.7 per cent commitment were “typically slippery” and meant that foreign aid “will effectively carry on indefinitely”.

The vote was also met with dismay by charity leaders. Danny Sriskandarajah, Oxfam GB chief executive, described the vote as “a disaster for the world’s poorest people” and said a delay in restoring aid “will be felt for generations to come in parts of the world ravaged by conflict, climate change and Covid”.

Daniel Willis, of the campaign group Global Justice Now, said: “When the inevitable death and suffering from aid cuts hits the news, each and every MP who has voted to sever the UK’s 0.7 per cent commitment should know that blood is on their hands.”