Conflicts: Impact on Older People

John Milne Excerpts

Thursday 9th July 2026 Westminster Hall

[John Milne (Horsham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate to shine a light on an important but often overlooked issue. It is strange that many of the voices who mourn Britain’s declining influence are the first to say that we should spend nothing on issues beyond our own shores, and that the 0.7% commitment to development spending was a national indulgence that we can no longer afford. However, our influence never relied on hard power alone. Our leverage in the world comes from working with others and leading by example.

That is what internationalism means, and that is why the Liberal Democrats believe that the commitment to international aid is not merely sentimental, but fundamental and strategic. It rests on the simple principle of equality: that we help those who need help most. I will not create a league table of suffering, but some groups bear a heavier burden in humanitarian crises. Older people, especially those who are disabled, are almost always among the most affected. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans in 2005, 75% of those who died were over 60, despite older people making up only 16% of the local population. When the Great East Japan earthquake and tsunami struck in 2011, 56% of those who lost their lives were aged 65 or over.

The world today is less stable than it has been in a generation. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights found that since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, older people have accounted for almost half of civilian deaths, where age could be verified. Older people, especially older women, remain at disproportionate risk, particularly in frontline areas.

Given that we know all that, it is extraordinary that the FCDO confirmed cuts to precisely the funds that support the most vulnerable groups in humanitarian responses. The International Development Committee found that FCDO equality impact assessments expect ODA reductions to programmes with a strong focus on equalities to be severe. The Committee also heard that work on disability and inclusion in South Sudan specifically will cease altogether, which will have a direct impact on elderly people.

UN figures show that more than 46% of people aged 60 or over live with a disability, and more than 250 million older people worldwide experience moderate to severe disability. In the UK, the House of Commons Library’s analysis shows that disability prevalence rises from 23% among working-age adults in the UK to 45% among adults over the state pension age, and 58% among those aged 80 and over.

Therefore, when disability inclusion funding is cut in a humanitarian response, older people will be hit twice over. It is not an unfortunate side effect; it is a foreseeable and measurable consequence. I want to press the Government on the false choice they keep presenting between defence and development, particularly in the context of Ukraine. Official development assistance budgets are part of defending Ukraine. For example, they partly fund accessible bomb shelters and healthcare adaptions for people with mobility needs or age-related conditions. If we are serious about supporting Ukraine, are the lives of its oldest citizens not part of that commitment?

Liberal Democrats reject the idea that we must choose. We have set out how defence spending can rise to 2.5% of GDP and beyond, through mechanisms such as defence bonds and a higher digital services tax on the largest technology firms—that is without hollowing out our aid budget. We advocate for the immediate restoration of ODA to 0.5% of gross national income, with a clear roadmap back to 0.7%.

The American example in this is not one to follow. USAID has been gutted by an Administration that treats development spending as something somehow unpatriotic. Within the older age group, the situation of women reveals a heightened danger. Amnesty International’s submission to the UN independent expert on the enjoyment of all human rights by older persons documents this starkly. In north-east Nigeria, older women displaced by Boko Haram faced particularly severe discrimination and invisibility. They were often unsuccessful when they tried to petition simply to be added to food distribution lists. In Ukraine, women’s pensions are on average 30% lower than men’s, which is a consequence of shorter careers and interrupted employment caused by caregiving responsibilities. Older women also experience higher rates of disabling conditions than men of the same age, such as arthritis, osteoporosis and frailty.

As a result, older women are disproportionately exposed to poverty when displaced. The social role played by women as caregivers, as mentioned by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), means that if they suffer, the impact is felt by the whole extended family. If they are left without income, accessible health care or a place in the food queue, the people who depend on their care feel it also. If the Government want to talk about return on investment in their development spending, this is exactly where that return is the greatest. Supporting older women is not a niche ask; it is a multiplier for entire households and communities.

I am speaking for the Liberal Democrats, but of course it is not just us. Amnesty International has set out practical and deliverable recommendations. We must disaggregate humanitarian data by age, gender and disability, so that we can see who is being missed out. We must ensure that older people are not systematically excluded from livelihood and cash assistance programmes on the discriminatory assumption that they cannot work. The humanitarian inclusion standards for older people and people with disabilities, developed by the sector’s own age and disability inclusion consortium, already exist and are freely available. Will the Minister confirm whether the FCDO is using them, and if it is not, why not?

To conclude, the Liberal Democrats believe that this Government do not need new evidence to act; they need to start listening to the evidence that they already have. They need to listen to their own equality impact assessments rather than commissioning them and then quietly setting them aside, as has happened all too often in previous rounds of cuts. They need to make use of the evidence-based inclusion standards that the humanitarian sector has already built, rather than trying to reinvent the wheel—or, indeed, ignoring them altogether. They also need to restore ODA, first to 0.5% of GNI, but with a published roadmap back to 0.7%, so that the targeted programmes reaching older people, and older women in particular, are not the first thing to be sacrificed when budgets tighten. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Mr Andrew Snowden (Fylde) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve once again with you in the chair, Mr Betts. I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for securing this debate—the last debate of his that I contributed to was a few weeks ago on stoma care, when we managed to get some rather interesting entries into Hansard on the names that people give to their stomas, some of them quite inappropriate.

An interesting point from that debate, which connects through to this issue, is the way conditions affect older people in different ways. Translating the very specific care needs that older people with stomas have, for example, into the context of a war zone or refugee camp gives an example of how that suffering would be greatened. As always, through referencing his constituent Margaret, the hon. Member brings to life the fact that, while we often talk in broad terms about statistics and facts in these debates, each of those represents a person with their own story to tell and their own suffering.

I thank the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for her contribution and for her long-standing commitment. I have been in a number of debates where she has spoken, and while I have a different view from her on aid spending and I support the Government’s position, I recognise that she has long-standing and very sincerely held views on this subject. Debates such as this are where those views can be exchanged, and she has remained consistent in her views and advocated for them over time.

I shall break the jolly consensus just to respond to one little point. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne), brought forward the idea that we can use defence bonds as a magic answer for defence spending, and that that would avoid having to make any cuts whatsoever to the aid budget and get us back up to 0.7% without worrying. Borrowing costs are at their highest levels in decades, and the bond market is not a great place at the moment—and bonds still have to be paid back. We have not yet seen any understanding from the Liberal Democrats about how those bonds would be paid back, and how those ever-increasing borrowing costs would be factored in. The solution is not as simple as taking out a few extra bonds and then all will be fine with the international aid budget.

[John Milne]

There is no easy fix, that is for sure, but the loans are not coming from the bond markets; they are coming from British people. We are not imposing on or demanding on the bond market. That is the difference. Such bonds have been used successfully in the past.