AID CUTS

ONE YEAR ON
HOW AN INDEPENDENT
SCOTLAND COULD APPROACH
AID SPENDING DIFFERENTLY

July 2022
SNP Westminster Foreign Affairs Team

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SNP Wesminster Foreign Affairs Team Aid Cuts One Year On

Foreword
The SNP is committed to ensuring that Scotland continues to be a good global citizen, working in
partnership with others across the world to address global challenges that can only be tackled collectively.
We are committed to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Developments Goals (SDGs) for peace and prosperity
for people and the planet, and we recognise that issues such as global poverty and inequality, ongoing
and future humanitarian crises, and the evolving climate emergency will not be overcome by nations
working alone and in their own self-interest.

Recent global events have brought all of this into sharp perspective.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a worldwide health and economic crisis, disproportionately affecting
already vulnerable and disadvantaged groups of people. In 2020, the steady decline of the number
of people living in extreme poverty — on less than $1.90 per person per day – was interrupted when
poverty rose for the first time in nearly 25 years. While this has recently resumed its downward trajectory,
the World Bank estimates that between 75 million and 95 million additional people could be living in
extreme poverty in 2022 compared to pre-Covid projections.

Ongoing and emerging conflicts around the world have similarly plunged people into poverty and
contributed to a cycle of displacement, disease and death.

Now more than ever, the international community should be redoubling efforts to face these challenges
head on, providing the resources required to play an active role in alleviating global poverty, and striving
to achieve the SDGs. We should be stepping up, not stepping away.

Yet against this backdrop of the past two years, the UK Government has done the opposite having
u-turned on its own manifesto commitments, defied its own legislation, and most significantly betrayed
its commitments to the poorest and most vulnerable people on the planet. It has retreated from the
world at the exact moment it should have been leading.

When it was announced in June 2020 that the Department for International Development was to be
abolished and merged into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, warnings were made that it would
lead to a loss of focus on poverty alleviation in favour of acting in the UK’s national interests prioritising
aid-for-trade, a brain drain with key knowledge and expertise within the department disappearing, and
an imminent threat to the aid budget.

Tragically, these warnings have become reality.

The merger of the departments has meant that there is no longer a Secretary of State for International
Development in attendance at cabinet. Within the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development
Office, there is no International Development Minister advocating for those without a voice. And during
the first year of the department’s existence, nearly 100 former DFID technical directors left the FCDO with
no one hired to replace them.

Despite a legally-binding commitment to spend the internationally agreed target of 0.7% of GNI on
official development assistance and despite all political parties in Westminster committing to this in
their manifestos, the UK Government used the impact of Covid on the country’s finance as an excuse to
introduce an ideologically-driven cut to the aid budget.

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While other G7 countries such as Canada, France, Italy, the US and Germany increased their aid
spending in response to the pandemic, the UK was alone in turning inwards.

The reduction in spending from 0.7% to 0.5% has been catastrophic. Over £4billion has been wiped
from the aid budget, a cut of nearly one-third compared to the previous year. Life-saving programmes
focussed on healthcare, climate, conflict, and nutrition have faced cuts of up to 35%. Countries facing
some of the worst humanitarian crises such as Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Yemen have seen cuts to
bilateral aid of up to 65%.

Furthermore, the UK Government’s recently published International Development Strategy is almost

entirely business-and-trade focused with aid viewed as an investment and profit venture rather than
focused on protecting and safeguarding those in the most acute need around the world. Regrettably,
it provides no concrete roadmap to reinstating the 0.7% of GNI aid budget or indication of when and
how cuts will be reversed.

The cuts are not just figures and percentages on a spreadsheet, these cuts cost lives.

This week marks one year since Tory MPs in the House of Commons voted in favour of this indefinite
aid cut. The SNP has been consistent in our opposition to this, will continue to argue for a return to
0.7%, and want no part in the damage being inflicted on vulnerable people throughout the world.
And while the UK Government has shown that it can no longer be a trusted partner, the SNP Scottish
Government has shown that it is committed to playing its part in assisting and empowering other and
delivering aid for the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

Scotland was the first country to set up a dedicated Climate Justice Fund which will double to £24
million over the next four years. The Scottish Government’s International Development Fund will
increase from £10 million to £15 million. Scotland is already demonstrating that it sees international
development very differently from the UK Government and is stepping up its global contributions
rather than retreating inwards and focussing on self-interest.

Building on the work already undertaken by the Scottish Government, spending 0.7% of GNI on ODA
focussed on poverty alleviation, and embedding policies targeting the most marginalised groups,
Scotland can fulfil its role as a good global citizen and make distinctive contributions in addressing the
global challenges we face.

With the powers of independence, Scotland can and

will go further.

Chris Law MP
SNP Shadow Secretary of State for
International Development

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SNP Wesminster Foreign Affairs Team Aid Cuts One Year On

Aid Cuts - One Year On

The UK Government’s aid cuts have had a devastating effect across an entirety
of programmes. The move to cut aid spending from 0.7% to 0.5% of Gross
National Income (GNI) in 2021 compounded cuts made in 2020 after GNI fell
as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is estimated that these cuts have led to:

o 105,000 additional preventable deaths.

o 105,000 children who would have otherwise been vaccinated.

o almost 1 million children out of school.

o nearly 72 million people to miss out on treatment for neglected tropical

diseases during the six-month period from October 2021 to April 2022.

o An estimated 20 million women and girls who will not receive support
from UK Aid this year, compared to 2019.

o 2 million fewer women will be supported by humanitarian assistance.

o 9 million fewer women will be supported to access clean water and

sanitation.

o 8 million fewer women and girls supported by nutrition interventions.

o The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) has seen an 85% reduction in support

from the UK, cutting a flagship supplies programme from £154m to £23m –
and core funding from £20m to £8m. This funding would have helped prevent
a quarter of a million child and maternal deaths, 14.6 million unintended
pregnancies and 4.3 million unsafe abortions.

o 6.2 million girls under 2, and 12 million babies overall, won’t receive
nutritional support.

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 SNP Westminster Foreign Affairs Team Aid Cuts One Year On

o Cuts to girls’ education programmes are estimated to result in 700,000

fewer girls receiving an education, including 360,000 girls in Bangladesh.

o In Rwanda, 150,000 girls and 50,000 boys, including 8000 adolescents

with disabilities, are no longer able to partake in an education and life-skills
programme.

o In Egypt, a project designed to support local women-led organisations to

provide gender-based violence (GBV) services during the pandemic was cut.

o 1200 Nigerian women displaced by violence and conflict and women from
host communities in Bauchi State will not be able to partake in a programme
developing their vocational and business skills to improve their livelihoods.

o Concern’s Promoting Sustainable Partnerships for Empowered

Resilience (PROSPER) programme in Malawi, and ‘Essential Healthcare for the
Disadvantaged (EHD) programme in Bangladesh that were both completely
cut mid-way through implementation, were targeting over 3.7 million of the
poorest communities in these countries.

Figure 1: Aid Estimates by Priority Area (£ Millions)

Source: https://www.one.org/international/impact-of-uk-aid-cuts/

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 Key Policy Proposals
Strategy
• Make ‘helping the furthest behind first’ the basis for all International
Development policy in an Independent Scotland.

• Establish a separate Department for Foreign Affairs and Department for

International Development in an Independent Scotland.

• Fully embed the UN Sustainable Development Goals and Grand

Bargain Commitments into the international development strategy of an
Independent Scotland, especially Goal 5 (Gender Equality).

• Commitment for an Independent Scottish Government to spend 0.7% of

GNI on international aid on a statutory basis with a view to increasing
that to 1% in coming years.

• Work to decolonise development by ensuring development projects are

partner-led rather than donor-led. Recognise all Scotland’s colonial crimes
by removing/adding plaques that acknowledge the harm all tributes to that
era in Scotland, issue official apologies to communities affected, ensure
all museums address colonial past and promote the establishment of a
decolonisation officer within an Independent Scotland’s Department for
International Development.

Women & Girls

• Increase the proportion of ODA spend on programmes that have gender
equality as the main objective. By 2035 no less than 95 percent of Indy
Scotland’s bilateral international development assistance initiatives will
target or integrate gender equality or have a focus on the empowerment of
women and girls.

• Commit to funding a number of projects that support women’s rights

defenders and women’s movements/civil activists/organisations/networks
with grants and placements.

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Climate
• Work with international partners in the Global North to encourage states
that haven’t already to lead by Scotland’s example, and to set up domestic
Climate Justice Funds of their own.

• Further the reach and impact of the Glasgow Women’s Leadership

Statement on Gender Equality and Climate Change.

Health
• Double aid spend commitment focused on projects covering to sexual and
reproductive health and rights, family planning and the provision of free,
sustainable period products over 5 years following Scottish Independence.

• Actively encourage, support and direct funding towards research projects

that focus on decolonising global health and tackling global women’s
health issues.

Conflict & Peace Building

• Continue to embed gender-conflict analysis recommendations and a
conflict prevention approaches to extreme poverty programming responses.

• Commit to funding programmes in fragile state that improve women

survivor’s access to justice and psychosocial support.

• Support safe-houses for women vulnerable to experiencing gender-based

violence in fragile states such as Afghanistan.

• Prioritise and strengthen the criminal prosecution of gender-based

violence internationally through sponsorship of resolutions at multilateral
for a such as the UN.

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AID CUTS
ONE YEAR ON