UK Aid Policy: Global Funding Trends

John McDonnell Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Efford. I thank the right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) for raising this important issue and for the passion and detail that he conveyed. I welcome the Minister to his place; I very much look forward to what he has to say. I also look forward to the contribution of the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), who is always here in these debates.

We meet at a sobering hour. The global landscape for official development assistance is contracting before our very eyes, and funding is falling right across the west. At home, our aid budget is projected to come down to 0.3% of gross national income. I understand the intense fiscal pressures facing our nation and the absolute necessity of strengthening our national defence in a dangerous world, but as the aid pot shrinks, our moral responsibility does not diminish; it intensifies. When there is less to go around, it is a matter of profound duty to ensure that every single penny that we set aside is well spent. We cannot afford waste, bloated bureaucracy and Whitehall-centric projects that fail to hit the ground.

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman raises the principal point that this money will go from aid to defence. The reduction will be £4.8 billion in 2026-27, and then £6.5 billion. We obviously appreciate the need for defence investment, but that money is being transferred to the most profligate and incompetent spending Department in Government: the Ministry of Defence. Those of us who have been here for a number of years can remember Nimrod, which cost £4 billion and was scrapped. The Bowman radio system cost £2.5 billion and was scrapped. The Daring-class destroyer went £1.5 billion over projected expenditure. The Ajax armoured fighting vehicle has cost £4 billion and probably cannot be used. The sale of married quarters lost £4 billion. We are taking money that is desperately needed to save lives and giving it to a Department that has wasted money time and again.

[Jim Shannon]

The right hon. Gentleman has made his point well. I am not sure whether the Minister will be able to answer that, because he is not in charge of defence, but the point is none the less well made.

Being wise stewards of public money also means that we must take a hard, honest look at where our money is going. Aid was never meant to be a permanent, open-ended dependency; its ultimate goal must be to help nations to stand on their own two feet. We still see today vast sums of British taxpayers’ money flowing into middle-income countries with excellent economies. For example, India has a fast-growing economy, an expanding space programme and burgeoning domestic wealth. Surely common sense must prevail. We should be deeply wary about continuing to fund countries that are now clearly on their feet and fully capable of looking after their own citizens. Our priority must shift; I have a solution that I will put to the Minister at the end of my speech. We must concentrate our precious, limited resources on the poorest of the poor—on those forgotten nations that desperately need a helping hand just to get on their feet.

To achieve true value for money, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office must radically change how it delivers aid. For too long, vast sums of UK aid have been swallowed up by massive international agencies and expensive consultants sitting in metropolitan hotels miles away from the suffering. The right hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale mentioned conferences being held in hotels while people starve on the streets. This is not efficiency. If we want maximum impact for the British taxpayer and maximum relief for the world’s most vulnerable, we must empower local, on-the-ground bodies. We must trust the people who know the area, speak the language, live among the communities and truly understand the complex realities on the ground.

In particular, I want to champion a group too often overlooked by modern technocrats: our Church missionaries and faith-based organisations. They have been doing their job for literally hundreds of years, carrying out physical, emotional and biblical charity. These men and women do not fly in for a three-month contract and fly out when a crisis hits. They have been in place for years, sometimes for decades and often for generations. They are there in the poorest villages of Africa, the remotest parts of Asia and the most dangerous corners of the middle east. They have built deep, unbreakable bonds of trust with local people. They know exactly who is starving, which clinics lack medicine and how to distribute resources without a single penny being siphoned off by corruption.

I say respectfully to the Minister, who knows me well, that when the FCDO partners with established missionary networks, it is not funding expensive administrative overheads. My Strangford constituency has many churches and faith groups, including the Church of Ireland, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Presbyterians, the Elim Church and many others. They are funding pure, direct delivery. They are utilising infrastructure that is already built, relationships that are already formed, and a dedication that money simply cannot buy.

As I have mentioned in other debates—I hope the Minister can give me a reply today—the networks are there and the people are there. In particular, the Elim missions in Zimbabwe and Swaziland are working with farmers to till the land and produce their own food. At the same time, they are involved in healthcare and education. As we reshape our aid footprint, will the Government commit to bypassing the bloated international middlemen and graduated economies? Will the FCDO actively channel our precious, reduced resources into the trusted, long-standing Church missionaries and local bodies that offer the ultimate value for money?

Let us ensure that British aid is defined not by the billions we spend but by the lives we save through those who know how to save them: the Church missionaries and faith-based groups. They are happy to partner with the Government, and they should be invited to do so.