USAID Funding Pause

Laura Kyrke-Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Brian Mathew]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and I will cover many of those points. I find the cut totally indefensible and counterproductive. Apart from the soft power that our aid programme offers, it is a betrayal of principles we hold dear: reducing poverty and assuring global security.

On a personal note, aid cuts hit close to home for me. For much of my career I have worked in international aid, primarily in water, sanitation and hygiene, working to give people across Africa and the developing world access to clean drinking water, safe sanitation and good hygiene. Those simple things are vital to health, survival and prosperity.

According to WaterAid, the UK’s annual budget for WASH has already been cut by approximately 82%, from a high of £206 million per year down to a critical low of just £37 million a year in 2022. Further cuts are likely to this most vital of sectors. Such cuts will hardly dissuade potential refugees from coming to our shores; they may even drive those refugees towards us if life becomes increasingly intolerable as a result of climate change, war and famine.

One impact of USAID cuts is growing hunger. Globally, almost 50% of all deaths among children under five are attributed to malnutrition. The USAID-funded famine early warning system—FEWS NET—the gold standard for monitoring and predicting food insecurity, went offline in January because of Trump’s cuts, leaving organisations without a key source of guidance on where and when to deploy humanitarian aid. At the same time, other USAID cuts have led to feeding programmes themselves coming to an abrupt end. For example, therapeutic feeding centres in Nigeria have been closed, as have community-run kitchens in Sudan, at a time when famine threatens millions in that country. Meanwhile, thousands in Haiti have lost access to nutritional support. We are told that USAID emergency food rations are now rotting in warehouses.

The supply of HIV treatments and medication has been severely disrupted. The UNAIDS executive director has warned that if funding is not replaced, an additional 6.3 million AIDS-related deaths are expected over the next four years. We were likewise warned by a senior World Health Organisation staff member during the recent International Development Committee visit to Geneva that, with AIDS again running rampant, it is likely that drug-resistant variants of tuberculosis will now multiply and become a risk to us all, even in the developed north.

When healthcare systems are hit, sexual and reproductive health is often one of the first casualties.

[Laura Kyrke-Smith (Aylesbury) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. I have been in contact with the International Rescue Committee, my former employer, about the impact that the USAID cuts will have on it. It is estimated that the cuts to that agency alone will mean that 280,000 people in Yemen will lose access to primary care, mental healthcare and reproductive healthcare, and 3,000 people in Lebanon will be left without education. That is devastating not just in terms of the humanitarian impact; we need to think about it in terms of our own stability and security. It means diseases left unchecked, which cross borders and become pandemics, and it means young people left without education and opportunity and at risk of further marginalisation and radicalisation. Does he agree with that analysis?

[Brian Mathew]

I thank the hon. Member for her comments, and I will continue with more figures that emphasise those points.

During the 90-day freeze, an estimated 11.7 million women and girls have been denied modern contraceptive care. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that that will lead to 4.2 million unintended pregnancies and 8,340 women and girls dying from pregnancy and childbirth complications.