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Britain is on a collision course with Joe Biden and other prominent international allies as it prepares to unveil dramatically reduced contributions to a major global fund to fight deadly diseases. the observer understands
All countries are being asked to improve their last contribution to the Global Fund, designed to fight malaria, tuberculosis and AIDS in the world’s poorest countries. Most G7 countries have already announced plans to do so, and Biden raised the issue during talks with Liz Truss last month. Britain gave £1.4bn to the fund during the last round of pledges in 2019.
Britain is now being asked to find £1.8bn for the fund over the next three years but is understood to be looking to contribute in the region of £800m – less than half the amount requested. It is likely that Britain will be the only major world power not to increase its donations.
Many sources have said the observer that the UK’s Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) budget is now in disarray as a large proportion of it is spent on housing and other costs relating to asylum seekers and refugees in Britain. Experts believe that more is now being spent in the UK than in poorer countries in need.
Aid bills for programs to help people in Ukraine and Afghanistan alone are said to be in the billions. Officials have for some time expressed concern that the Home Office’s failure to control housing costs is effectively draining the aid budget. However, only ministers are now beginning to get a handle on the expenditure that is actually being incurred.
Because the aid budget is set at 0.5% of gross national income, the huge costs of domestic asylum-seeking programs mean that other areas of aid spending have to be cut. The first major casualty is the contribution of the Global Fund.
Andrew Mitchell, the new international development minister, who as a backbench MP was a leading advocate for Britain’s foreign aid work, is now said to be undergoing a detailed audit of Britain’s aid budget and trying to prioritize the UK’s Global Fund contribution. However, it now has severely limited resources as a result of the chaotic way in which the aid budget is allocated.
Officials fighting for the UK government to make a bigger contribution argue that Britain has a strong record as a central player in the fund, with two-thirds of the money spent in Commonwealth countries. The US has already committed to contributing $6bn to the Global Fund over the next three years, a 30% increase on its last donation. Canada, Germany and the European Commission have also increased their pledges by 30% as requested.
Two former government advisers said they believed the UK now spends more of its foreign aid budget in Britain than in poorer countries, once contributions to institutions such as the World Bank are excluded. As much as £4bn is now being spent domestically, they believe, mostly on costs relating to asylum seekers and refugees. The Home Office pays millions a day for hotel stays with funds taken from the foreign aid budget.
said Stefan Derkon, former chief economist at the Department for International Development the observer: “You cannot stifle everything in development by claiming that you are not doing it on the backs of the poor. You just have to accept it and be honest. The Home Office has no incentive to be cautious. There is concern within the FCDO [Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office]. These eye-watering expenses are appalling, because you give a blank check to a department in your own budget. If something is not done, it will become a disaster. These are billions, and hence the concern.”
Ranil Dissanayake, a policy fellow at the Center for Global Development think tank and another former government adviser, said: “We must be generous to the refugees on our shores, and we must support them. But those things are not what we think of as development – helping other countries improve their economies, lifting people out of poverty, feeding people, giving them healthcare and improving education. All that stuff is getting squeezed. This is not a terminal. They can really turn this around. It requires that they choose to stop using the aid budget for the rest of the government.
An FCDO spokesperson said: “Across government, there is significant pressure on the 0.5% ODA budget due to the costs of accepting refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine, as well as wider migration challenges. The number of refugees arriving in a given period is not fixed, so there is no fixed price. We are one of the biggest global aid donors, spending more than £11bn in aid in 2021, and UK aid has recently gone to people in need in the Horn of Africa and Pakistan.”
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