Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Lincoln Jopp Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

I am honoured to speak in this debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) for securing the debate. I worked in international development for many years, specifically on water sanitation and hygiene, so I also appreciated the remarks of the hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew). I echo the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury about our strong support for the BBC. I would like to thank all the FCDO staff currently working very, very hard on behalf of my constituents who are in the middle east. The very quick response we have been able to put up, with flights coming in straight away, is commendable. It just shows the strengths and abilities of our embassies across the world, and how important they are.

I am delighted that after years of weakness, isolation and decline in our international standing under the Tories, Britain is firmly back on the international stage, leading on the international response to Ukraine, making the forgotten war in Sudan a priority, and transforming our relationship with Europe—worth mentioning on the day that the FAC released our report on the UK-EU reset.

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady remember who led on the international response on Ukraine?

[Fleur Anderson]

This is not a party political issue. We have led on Ukraine for many years and we still are doing so. I am very proud of the role we have played, under both Governments. The Labour Government are now moving forward far further and far faster. I am also proud that we recently signed the global ocean treaty.

This debate is on the spending in the Department. I am concerned about the continuing cuts in aid, and that they are undermining our strong, and growing, international position and undermining our security. I am concerned about the false division that has been put up between defence and development. It is not defence or development. Defence and development are important for our strategic interests and security. Development spending is not charity; it is strategic investment. Our development budget is one of the most effective tools we have for sustaining British influence. Defence and development should not be seen as competing priorities, but I fear that they are seen as such. Defence responds to crises; development works to prevent them. Development underpins our conflict prevention around the world. A defence posture without sustained development investment risks becoming permanently reactive to events. Good development is good defence.

I am very concerned that the FCDO’s workforce faces reductions of up to 25%. The FAC has repeatedly asked where those cuts will be made. Which staff? Which programmes? Do the cuts match the priorities given by Ministers? I am concerned that they do not. We are not given the answers that we need to scrutinise this very big change in our country’s priorities, and at a crucial time in international relations that are so important for our security. It is important for my constituents to know what our foreign affairs priorities are and whether they are being matched in terms of staffing and budgets.

This is called an estimates debate for a different reason, but estimating is all we can do as a Committee—if MPs cannot see that the priorities given by Ministers are being backed up by spending and action, we cannot properly scrutinise their work. It is also a real concern for development agencies and local organisations on the ground in the countries where we are working, which are not able to plan their work as they do not know what the spending will be.

In the past year, £500 million has been cut from the ODA budget. Aid to Africa, at the time of the Africa strategy being released, has fallen by £184 million. Support to Sudan has been reduced by roughly 18%, at the very moment it faces the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, despite it being a stated priority.

Global health is also a priority for this Government, and rightly so. As I said, I previously worked in water and sanitation. I went to work for WaterAid before I was an MP because, when I had worked with other aid agencies, I had seen the impact that conflict and water have on a community. With action on both those things, a community can have peace—if a community has the water needed for crops and its health, it frees up girls and women from having to go off to get water; instead, they can go to school. It leads to development and resilience against insecurity, which stops conflict. That is what we should be seeing. However, £550 million has been cut from global health programmes. Let us not forget the lessons from covid.

Some £206 million has been cut from education, gender and equality programmes. There is a 25% reduction in women, peace and security funding, despite a feminist foreign policy being a stated priority. I am glad that the proposed cuts to the BBC World Service have been highlighted as well. We have a huge benefit in our BBC World Service. Trust in this service has built up over decades, and any reduction in that gives space to China and Russia. Cuts to development leave room for the Chinese Government to step in, as I have seen in countries across Africa. Cuts in poverty reduction fuel instability and conflict. Cuts in conflict prevention programmes that have been built up for years, which are locally led and are working, are dangerous.

The 0.7% target was not a vague aspiration, but a manifesto commitment that this party stood on. It remains important for our security. I know that these are difficult times for development spending, but we need to keep talking about that as an aspiration. I am concerned that the official policy of His Majesty’s Opposition is now to reduce spending to 0.1% of GDP. I do not know where that will leave our country.

Will the Minister confirm that this Government are committed to the soft power superpower we have in the BBC, to conflict reduction, to the education of girls, to water, sanitation and hygiene, and to global health? Will he confirm that we are committed to working with the poorest countries, not using the move towards investment as a move towards working only with middle-income countries? Lastly, will he confirm that all these commitments will be backed up with funding and our fantastic staff in our embassies on the ground?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lincoln Jopp]

I am grateful to my constituency neighbour for giving way on that point. Would she like to give us a couple of examples where overseas development aid has prevented crises in the way that she describes?

[Monica Harding]

I would love to, and I will come back to the hon. Member with those at another point, but I am up against the clock at the moment. As I go through my speech, there may be some examples.

Aid is not charity, as the Minister for International Development suggested to the International Development Committee. It is a strategic tool that makes Britain safer and secure. It reduces the drivers of migration to these shores and strengthens health systems before pandemics cross borders. While we retreat, China and Russia expand their influence across Africa, the middle east and south Asia, filling the vacuum that we leave. UK aid to Africa has already been reduced by £184 million.

Countries such as Ethiopia, Syria, South Sudan, Somalia and fragile Sahel states—tinderboxes—have seen significant bilateral cuts, alongside a very thin Africa strategy released quietly before the Christmas recess. Africa has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population and a projected $30 trillion economy by 2050. It represents a huge future trading opportunity, but our cuts risk weakening those relationships—relationships on which our country’s growth relies.

Even international climate finance, which has been rhetorically protected, could fall by nearly £3 billion, we are told by The Guardian. Programmes such as the biodiverse landscapes fund, the blue planet fund and the climate and ocean adaptation and sustainable transition programme are under threat, and support for Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility, which we co-designed, has yet to materialise. Intelligence chiefs have warned that the collapse of ecosystems like the Amazon and coral reefs will not just risk our climate obligations but trigger food shortages and unrest and lead to war reaching our shores.

In reality, the cuts are even worse than they look. Around 20% of the aid budget is projected to be spent on in-donor asylum costs by 2027-28, meaning that the amount reaching people overseas could fall to just 0.24% of national income. Is the British taxpayer aware that the money earmarked for the poorest in the world is being spent on asylum hotels in this country?

What is most striking about these supplementary estimates is not only their scale but the absence of a coherent strategy underpinning them. There has been no clear argument made, no case put forward and no honest reckoning with what is being lost and what the impact will be. There is no published road map explaining which capabilities we are prepared to lose and whether we intend to rebuild them later. There has been no serious articulation of why slashing bilateral aid strengthens Britain’s long-term interests. There is just a quiet hope that the cuts will land without anyone looking too closely.

In fact, the future of the very organisation tasked with scrutinising the UK’s aid and development spend—the Independent Commission for Aid Impact—is in doubt. One of its inquiries is on the impact of the Government’s ODA cuts. The very oversight mechanisms that hold the Government to account are being dismantled.

I will briefly turn to our soft power institutions. I will not dwell on them because other Members already have. The BBC World Service and the British Council—two of Britain’s most powerful instruments of influence, funded at a tiny cost to the taxpayer—are having their budgets eroded, the latter burdened by a Government loan with interest payments of up to £15 million a year.

Then there is the vital question of capacity and expertise. The FCDO is planning staff reductions of up to 25%, and the Department for Business and Trade, which works in-country to promote trade relations, is facing a 20% staffing cut, yet the Government have failed to produce a workforce plan before the cuts. It is cuts for cuts’ sake. All of this represents a hollowing-out of capability. Rebuilding that expertise later is neither quick to do nor cheap, and it is very difficult to bring back once it has been torn down.

The question is unavoidable: what is the plan? The Government must change course and set out a clear, binding timetable to return to 0.7%. I look forward to the Minister updating us on how he will do that. The Liberal Democrats will take a different approach to funding the defence uplift, and we have laid it out in this House. In the meantime, the Government must act to limit the damage that these cuts will cause. That means backing meaningful debt relief for low-income countries, redirecting the share of the aid budget spent on in-donor asylum costs back to aid, and safeguarding vital accountability mechanisms such as the ICAI.

In an era of intensifying geopolitical competition, rising instability and growing humanitarian need, Britain faces a choice: we can be an engaged, outward-looking power, shaping events, building partnerships and investing in prevention; or we can shrink our presence, reduce our expertise and hope that the consequences do not rebound on us—a decision to retreat, a decision for the short term, not the long term. The Government’s cuts show that we are drifting towards the latter. Once expertise is lost, once trust is eroded, and once influence is surrendered, it is far harder to recover than it is to protect.

Britain still stands tall in the world, but these cuts threaten to diminish that. Britain does not lead by retreating. We lead by showing up, keeping our word and standing with our partners when it matters most. I urge the Government to reclaim our moral authority, rebuild our global influence and lead once again on the world stage.