UN development chief urges UK to rethink ‘brutal’ cuts to aid budget
UN development chief urges UK to rethink ‘brutal’ cuts to aid budget
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Achim Steiner calls for ministers to discuss reversals to overseas aid squeeze imposed by Rishi Sunak. The UN’s development chief has urged UK ministers to have a public debate about reversing the “brutal” cuts to the country’s aid budget made by the Conservative government.
Achim Steiner, the administrator of the UN Development Programme, told the Guardian he found it “a little bit sobering” that Labour had not yet promised to undo the squeeze imposed by Rishi Sunak. While chancellor, Sunak suspended the UK’s commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on overseas aid during the pandemic in 2021, citing budget pressures, switching instead to 0.5%.
Speaking in Davos at the annual gathering of global leaders in the Swiss Alps, Steiner said: “The UK cutbacks were brutal, and they nearly broke the neck of a number of our organisations in the UN, because you moved from being one of the principal core funders: you simply slashed.”.
The UK chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has not set a date for restoring the 0.7% pledge, first introduced by the former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown, and made no mention of it in her maiden budget in October. Steiner said he did not want to lecture the UK – but urged the government to discuss the way forward. “The British public were simply told ‘there is no cost to reducing our engagement globally’. I don’t think it’s being told the truth,” he said.
