UK vows no budget changes despite aid agency abolition

Britain on Wednesday insisted it would maintain its foreign aid commitments, as its flagship overseas development agency was shut and merged with the foreign ministry.

The new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said in a statement it was “committed to spending 0.7 percent of our national income on aid.

“The formation of the FCDO today will make sure our diplomatic influence and development expertise are combined to the best effect on the global stage,” it added.

Details of the merger between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development (DfID) were announced in June.

Unusually, it prompted former prime ministers Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron to publicly criticise the move, and warn it risked politicising aid funding.

Agencies such as Oxfam said it could hit the world’s poorest while lawmakers called for the aid budget to be ring-fenced.

But Boris Johnson’s government has dismissed concerns, arguing UK aid needs to be allied more closely to geopolitical threats, particularly from China and Russia.

Critics of Britain’s £15 billion ($19 billion, 17 billion euro) foreign aid budget, led by right-wing newspapers, argue the funding regime is often wasteful and open to corruption.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the new department would involve using Britain’s “diplomatic levers and aid expertise” for an international response to global threats.

He announced £119 million in new funding to tackle the coronavirus outbreak and famines affecting more than six million people in the world’s poorest countries.

They include Yemen, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Central African Republic, the Sahel region, South Sudan and Sudan.

Raab has also appointed Britain’s first special envoy for famine protection and humanitarian affairs to work with donors, UN agencies, NGOs and others to prevent famine.

“Coronavirus and famine threaten millions in some of the world’s poorest countries, and give rise to direct problems that affect the UK, including terrorism and migration flows,” he said.

“‘Global Britain’, as a force for good in the world, is leading by example and bringing the international community together to tackle these deadly threats, because it’s the right thing to do and it protects British interests.”

Britain takes over the presidency of the G7 group of leading economies next year, and the UN climate change conference known as COP26.

Raab promised to use both to urge other countries to help the developing world.