The UK risks becoming increasingly inward-looking if Brexit is combined with reduced overseas spending, aid groups have warned.



Since calling the election on Tuesday, Theresa May, the prime minister, has refused to recommit to a legal requirement to spend 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) on aid, fuelling fears that it may be dropped in the Tory party’s election manifesto.



Bill Gates, the millionaire philanthropist, has warned May that lives would be lost in Africa, along with British influence, if the Conservatives drop the target.

The Tory right and Ukip, as well as right-wing newspapers including the Sun and the Daily Mail, have repeatedly called for the aid pledge to be dropped and the budget cut. They claim the pledge is inflexible and ineffective.



But Romilly Greenhill, senior research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, said the 0.7% target allowed Britain to “punch above its weight” on the international stage.

“Bill Gates is right to say Britain’s aid contribution is saving lives and putting children in school,” said Greenhill. “The first message is that it is needed, the second is that it is effective, and the third is that, in terms of a global Britain, it is very significant.

This is not the time to shirk our global responsibility or step back from the world Tamsyn Barton, chief executive of Bond

“I’ve observed a lot of UN negotiations and developing countries and richer countries see it as a real indicator of Britain’s place on the international stage. It buys Britain a lot of kudos; particularly when we leave the EU, it will demonstrate that we are punching above our weight.”

The UK’s overseas aid budget, which was £13.3bn in 2016, is the third largest in the world, after the US and Germany, and the Department for International Development (DfID) is ranked highly in terms of effectiveness and transparency. In a 2016 report from the Global Campaign for Aid Transparency, DfID was ranked among the most transparent major aid donors (pdf).

According to DfID’s development tracker, the UK aid budget has been used to support 11 million school children since 2011, half of them girls. Through organisations such as WaterAid, it has provided 64 million people around the world – equivalent to the population of the UK – with access to clean water or sanitation. Nutrition programmes, implemented by organisations such as Save the Children, have helped 30 million children under the age of five and pregnant and breastfeeding women. British aid is saving lives in countries affected by famine or other crises, such as Yemen and South Sudan.

Saira O’Mallie, the UK director of international advocacy group One, said: “We’ve been following the news closely since the [election] announcement. We represent millions of people across the UK who see the UK as a moral leader and one of the ways it achieves this is the 0.7% commitment. There’s a lot of nervousness.

“Up until the last couple of days, we’ve been seeing positive commitment from the PM, from Priti Patel [the international development secretary] and we hope that they hold their nerve. We hope Theresa May will listen to the British public and to the huge amount of support it has across the political spectrum.”

Tamsyn Barton, chief executive of Bond, the UK membership body for development groups, said: “It would be a travesty if the UK’s 0.7% commitment, made to help the world’s poorest people, was not committed to by all political parties.

“This is not the time to shirk our global responsibility or step back from the world.”

Charlie Matthews, ActionAid’s head of advocacy, said: “A truly global Britain must be outward looking. UK aid and the commitment to 0.7% is helping to feed millions of hungry people in east Africa whose lives have been devastated by drought. Aid saves lives and helps the world’s poorest people, especially women and girls.”

Jeff Crisp, a research associate at the Refugees Studies Centre at the University of Oxford, said dropping the aid budget was not inevitable, but would be one way for May to appease the Tory right before difficult Brexit negotiations.



“With the Brexit negotiations Theresa May is going to have to make compromises which will be unpopular with hard Brexiteers,” said Crisp.

“She will have to appease the right wing of her own party. One of the ways will be to get rid of it [the pledge] or to reduce it. Another way she could appease the right wing of the party would be to increase the way the overseas development budget will be used for things that are not strictly development.”

Some senior figures within government have reportedly called on May to roll aid money into a combined defence and security budget, which would then increase spending to almost 3% of national income.

However, those plans would run into problems as there are strict rules set by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development governing spending on overseas aid.