Stella Creasy, the chair of the Labour Movement for Europe, says international development must be “urgently” added to the agenda following cuts to the aid budget to fund defence spending, announced by the Prime Minister last month.
In an article for The i Paper, Creasy says the soft power the UK is set to lose over cuts to the aid budget could be recouped by the government collaborating with the EU over how the new budget is spent, with cooperation making the money go further.
“As we now struggle to keep up with the new White House, the hostilities of the Middle East and Ukraine as well as an emboldened China, mending our savaged relationship with our continental neighbours is imperative to our ability to defend ourselves.
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Spending by all EU members on aid accounts for 44 per cent of the world’s total, the largest share internationally.
Creasy adds: “This cut off our capacity to shape not just humanitarian activity but the soft power of conflict prevention – from the Commission’s ECHO directorate on humanitarian assistance, to the €300bn Global Gateway infrastructure programme – Europe’s answer to China’s powerful Belt and Road Initiative.
“The multiplier effect of collaboration also means our funds have allowed us to punch above our weight – jointly funding family planning around the world has saved the lives of millions of women.”
The move led to the resignation of his aid minister Anneliese Dodds, who warned it would “remove food and healthcare from desperate people – deeply harming the UK’s reputation”.
Thomas-Symonds and Sefcovic are expected to discuss AI and data protection, climate and energy cooperation and regulatory cooperation in financial services when they meet on Monday and Tuesday.
By Stella Creasy
The promise of ‘Brexit freedoms’ has weighed heavily on British politics. No longer shackled to EU rules, it was claimed the UK could be agile, able to strike deals and liberally pursue our national interests.
Recent events have shown why such hubris quickly disintegrated on hard contact with reality. For agile substitute isolated, for able to strike deals read at the back of the queue.
The prize of new trade deals floundered on sales of pork to South Korea and hopes for Canadian cheese. In truth our diplomatic influence ultimately depended on America agreeing with us.
As we now struggle to keep up with the new White House, the hostilities of the Middle East and Ukraine as well as an emboldened China, mending our savaged relationship with our continental neighbours is imperative to our ability to defend ourselves.
As with trade, security and diplomacy, this is true of foreign aid too. If you add up the aid budgets of all EU members, and the spending done through the EU institutions, the EU is the world’s biggest single donor, accounting for 44% of all global aid spending- EU institutions contributed $26.5bn in 2023 alone.
The Johnson government in its wisdom decided that we would not pursue any formal cooperation with the EU on international development in the Brexit deal.
This cut off our capacity to shape not just humanitarian activity but the soft power of conflict prevention – from the Commission’s ECHO directorate on humanitarian assistance, to the €300bn Global Gateway infrastructure programme – Europe’s answer to China’s powerful Belt and Road Initiative.
In development as in defence, money talks. This is a field where the amount you can spend – the vaccines you can buy and administer, the humanitarian aid you can ship, the conflict resolution you can fund – is what gets you into the crucial meetings and what changes partners’ minds.
The multiplier effect of collaboration also means our funds have allowed us to punch above our weight – jointly funding family planning around the world has saved the lives of millions of women. So too shared climate finance helps countries like Bangladesh transition away from fossil fuels.
This is not just aid for trade. This is prevention as protection. Aid funds projects tackling the violence which drives refugees to flee from conflict zones and halt the flow of people in the first place.
Investing in initiatives to counter disinformation and subversion of democratic processes also counters threats that are active in our own social media timelines as well as in central Europe.
We see how defence and development are not distinct but interlinked not least from how our competitors also use it – with China offering loans for reconstruction to countries such as Syria and Afghanistan, and in Gaza.
With the withdrawal of the US Aid funds, the opportunities for further global influence will grow even if such deals are clearly at greater cost to those who take them.
In turn the impact of cuts in our own aid budget to fund defence spending are compounded by our isolation from our neighbours. The UK was globally respected for its expertise which has allowed us influence through working with the EU and other aid actors.
The Tories’ decision to fold DFID into the Foreign Office – a key Brexit corollary, under the misbegotten flag of Global Britain – now means what little is left of aid, once you account for the staggering amount spent not abroad but on support for asylum seekers in the UK, will not go far because we have sabotaged our reputation as a partner for others to work with.
Indeed, multiple reviews by the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) have warned about an “erosion of technical capacity and institutional memory” in UK development.
We are not the only Nato country struggling with how to fund both hard and soft power. France has just cut its ODA budget by 37%; Belgium by 25%; and Germany might soon follow suit.
However, we are the only ones trying to work out how to make best use of what money is available sitting outside the negotiating room. The EU is showing historic flexibility in looking for other sources of fiscal headroom for defence spending, including relaxing borrowing rules and opening up new industrial investment funds.
Even if you think hard economic self-interest has to come above altruistic aid spending, the risk here is that the EU Global Gateway will open up favourable markets for European companies while we are left behind if this bar to cooperation is not addressed.
In 2021 the Prime Minister argued funding international aid goes beyond moral obligation: “it also helps build a more stable world and keeps us safer in the UK”. That was right then, and it is right now.
As we try to recalibrate our security in the light of world events and Brexit, aid has yet to appear on the table for negotiations about our reset with Europe. With talks resuming again next week in Brussels it must urgently be added to the agenda. It’s time to put our national defence – and our aid budget – above delusions of Brexit grandeur.
Stella Creasy is chair of Labour Movement for Europe and MP for Walthamstow
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