Rishi Sunak’s surprise foreign aid vote hangs in the balance

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced a surprise vote on foreign aid in an attempt to head off an ongoing Tory rebellion over the decision to cut the UK’s international development budget to offset pandemic spending.

The government’s decision to break its manifesto pledge and cut the overseas aid budget from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent of national income sparked outrage among many Conservative MPs when it was announced last year, but a Commons vote on the decision has been resisted until this week.

The surprise vote, to be held on Tuesday afternoon, will give MPs the chance to approve a compromise that would resurrect the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid 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.

Sunak said yesterday that if he loses he will put aid spending back up to 0.7 per cent next year, but warned that will mean “likely consequences for the fiscal situation, including for taxation and current public spending plans.”

Up to 50 Tories have opposed the decrease in spending, including former Prime Minister Theresa May – but there are already signs that the rebellion may be crumbling.

Writing in The Telegraph, Andrea Leadsom, former Cabinet minister and prospective rebel, said she would back the government and former rebel Huw Merriman tweeted that the new plan was a “sensible and reasonable approach”.

But government sources told Politico that rebel numbers were holding despite whips’ efforts to defeat the rebels and insisted the vote was still “in the balance”.

Andrew Mitchell, the Conservative former chief whip leading the rebellion, told The Telegraph: “What is being proposed may not return Britain to that commitment for decades to come”.

He urged his colleagues to “keep their promise” and “prevent hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths” by voting against Sunak’s motion.