USAID Funding Pause

Wendy Morton Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Wendy Morton (Aldridge-Brownhills) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I congratulate the hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew) on securing the debate. It is very timely, coming as it does one day before the Chancellor’s spending review announcement.

It is more than three months since the Prime Minister announced the reduction in aid spending, yet we still await a clear picture of what that means, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) eloquently set out. I appreciate that there are challenges for the Minister but, like the international development sector and partners, I still have many unanswered questions about what this means for UK development priorities, especially in the context of changes to USAID.

Decisions about the levels of US aid are, quite rightly, a matter for the US Government, but we should acknowledge that this is the new reality we are working with. It is therefore incumbent on Ministers to be across the changes and the detail, and to understand what they mean for the sector and our partners.

What assessment has the Department made of the impact of the changes to USAID? Understanding where the impact will be is crucial to ensuring that our programmes are as effective as they can be, given the global and domestic context. With that in mind, has the Minister assessed the number of UK aid programmes that are likely to be impacted and which sectors will be most affected? I would also be grateful for an update on her latest discussions with her counterparts in the US, as well as counterparts in other donor countries. Is she aware of any programmes or policy areas that the US is vacating where there might be appropriate opportunities for the UK to take on the mantle and further our own national interest?

Global health, as we have heard today, is an area where the UK has made a significant and positive contribution, for example to Gavi and the Global Fund. In 2020, while we hosted the global vaccine summit, it was the Conservative Government who committed £1.65 billion to Gavi. During the last two Global Fund replenishments, we pledged £1 billion in 2022 and £1.46 billion in 2020. These interventions really do matter: Gavi has saved 18.8 million lives and the Global Fund 65 million. Those are not numbers, but real lives, real people and real results. Sadly, we are yet to see a pledge from this Government.

Another example of global health in action is the Tackling Deadly Diseases in Africa programme. By working with African partners and the World Health Organisation to help to detect and tackle future epidemics and drug-resistant infections, the programme was integral to stopping Africa’s worst Ebola outbreak in 20 years. It is therefore rather concerning that we read in the press that the programme is at risk. Diseases do not respect borders, and we need to understand the risk of the changes for us at home. What assessment has the Minister made, ahead of the spending review, to inform her about how the global health budget should be managed?

On women and girls, the UK also has a good story to tell. In government, the Conservatives launched the women and girls strategy for 2023-30, which affirmed our commitment to the three Es: education, empowering women and girls, and ending violence. We worked with partners such as Education Cannot Wait and the Global Partnership for Education, demonstrating how the public and private sectors can work together to achieve maximum impact. Similarly, sexual and reproductive health and rights programmes are, as we have heard today, essential for saving lives and achieving gender equality, and, crucially, for empowering women. This is an area where the UK has a strong record of delivering.

As we are sadly all too aware, conflict has a disproportionate impact on women and girls. Too often, they are locked out of efforts to prevent and resolve conflicts, and to build peace. The women, peace and security agenda we championed in government is about building a more representative and effective approach to tackling conflict and advocating for women’s rights in an ever more challenging world. It matters because empowered and engaged women make societies more prosperous and more secure. The Minister’s colleague, the International Development Minister, recently told the International Development Committee that education and gender are likely to be impacted by the changes to ODA. As a priority, can the Minister therefore help us understand how that will impact on the FCDO’s work in women and girls’ education, SRHR, maternal health and the broader women, peace and security agenda?

There are so many other areas I would like to raise in the context of changes to USAID. As ever, I am conscious of time, but it is important that we do not lose sight of, for example, strong institutions and capacity building, and tackling corruption and illicit finance. Without that, we cannot help partner countries to become stronger and better allies—something that is increasingly important in today’s ever more challenging world.

De-mining in post-conflict and active conflict zones remains crucial. In that area, funding to the Mines Advisory Group and the HALO Trust—great examples of British NGOs—has helped not to just support the clearance of explosives, but to raise awareness of the danger of mines and, crucially, train and build capacity in countries so that they can help to clear the mines themselves.

I would also like to touch on nutrition, which underpins good development. The recent Nutrition for Growth summit in March this year is yet another example of a sector left in limbo where the UK did not make a financial commitment.

It has been clear throughout this debate that there are still many unanswered questions and much uncertainty in the sector. I know that I am not alone in having received answers to written questions telling me to wait for the spending review. My latest tally of such answers is 59, and the story is the same almost regardless of the policy area. Similarly, the Shafik review of international development appears to have been left gathering dust on the Foreign Secretary’s desk. There are so many unanswered questions, creating much uncertainty in an ever-changing and complex world of conflict.

I have a specific and topical question to press the Minister on regarding ODA spending on Chagos. What funds from ODA will be used as part of the payments and support for Mauritius under Labour’s Chagos surrender deal?

Finally, how have the changes to USAID impacted the Minister’s decisions on UK development priorities? Has her Department made a full sector-by-sector, country-by-country impact assessment ahead of tomorrow’s spending review that takes into account the new development landscape we are operating in?

As we adjust to the new reality with respect to USAID, it is vital that the UK is alive to the impact on our international development programmes while ensuring effectiveness in our delivery. Like many hon. and right hon. Members, I am sure, I remain patient and will wait until the spending review tomorrow, but let me reassure the Minister and her Department that if I am left with more questions than answers after that, I will keep asking those questions.

[Wera Hobhouse (in the Chair)]

I ask the Minister to leave a couple of minutes for the lead Member to wind up.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs (Catherine West)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse, and to have heard such excellent speeches from the hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew), my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) and others who have direct experience in this important field.

To repeat the words of the Minister for Development in the other place, this is a very difficult time for the development sector. The world is changing and the post-world war two consensus is under significant strain. We face increasingly complex, interconnected and politically charged global issues. As we have heard, cuts to USAID, combined with funding decisions by other donors, including the UK, will have significant implications for tackling global development challenges. We are working closely with partners to understand the impact and provide support.

The right hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) mentioned that she has asked lots of questions, which is, of course, part of her job as spokesperson. However, she might want to cast her mind back to the period between February 2020 and December 2021, when she was the Minister and got the axe out so quickly that there were in-year funding cuts, job losses and an enormous tremor across the sector. I remember many people coming to see me, as the Opposition spokesperson, and saying, “Could the Government not at least take a considered view over time, not rush to do these things and try to have some respect for the sector?”

[Wendy Morton]

In my comments, I was appreciative of the challenges that any Government faces in such circumstances. However, I gently remind the Minister that this is now happening on her Government’s watch and, as she rightly acknowledges, my job as the shadow development Minister is to keep asking those questions. What the sector needs is certainty, and the Government clearly have not learned that.

[Catherine West]

On the tone of the speech by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), we should also remember the 2010 to 2015 period, when cut after cut in public funding inflicted quite a deal of pain on the recipients of that public funding.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wendy Morton]

Can the Minister confirm that the Government are still committed to ensuring that half our development budget goes to women and girls?

[Catherine West]

It would be unwise of me, the day before the spending review, to give an exact figure. However, I reassure the right hon. Member that we will give extra-special attention to working with women’s organisations, particularly local organisations in crisis and climate-affected contexts, which I know are close to the heart of my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North. We will mainstream gender equality to put women and girls at the heart of everything we do.

We now have a champion for women, Baroness Harman. Some Members may remember her from this House, and she is not to be taken lightly. She will go over our proposals with a fine-toothed comb and support the work we do to help women political and economic leaders, like her, and activists in their home countries—those who have real legitimacy with their populations—to ensure that development and humanitarian programmes integrate women’s perspectives and needs, and address the barriers that they face. That is as relevant in conflict and peacebuilding as it is in education.

I will make some further brief points on global health. We will continue to invest in multilateral funds such as Gavi and the Global Fund. I know many here are champions of that work. There was an emphasis in this debate on child nutrition, which is paramount.

Moving on to the question of climate and nature, we will tackle climate change by backing investments that help countries to grow green and resilient economies. When we consider the COP meetings abroad, we see, following disasters and emergencies, that there is so much poverty and so much aid has to be spent. We must work harder through our financial institutions to bring forward prevention schemes for very climate-affected areas. Pakistan and the speech that Sherry Rehman made at COP two years ago come to mind, as do the Pacific islands—an area that my brief covers—which are literally under threat of sinking. Those are the sorts of areas where climate interventions are crucial and where climate will continue to be a very important point.

Members have mentioned some of the real hotspots we are looking at at the moment, including Yemen, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Myanmar, and I will briefly emphasise the importance of our humanitarian response. Colleagues will remember that following the dreadful earthquake in Sagaing in Myanmar, through support from the UK public together with the Disasters Emergency Committee match-funding UK citizens’ contributions, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office was able to provide £25 million in total, equivalent to China, to those who were suffering. The International Development Committee has heard from Dr Sasa and others from outside Myanmar who are championing proper political reform, so that less aid will eventually be required once the political system gets up and running there.

Afghanistan has been mentioned as a crucial area, particularly for women and girls. I want briefly to talk up the importance of the BBC World Service and its Bitesize learning modules, through which women can listen to the radio and learn English and other basic subjects. That came out of covid, and it is an example of excellence. When a young mother with perhaps eight or nine children is washing their clothes, she can listen to English and hope one day to be able to use that to empower her and her family, and also hopefully to have an improved future. Those sorts of interventions are incredibly important.

The UK remains committed to playing a leading role in international development. We will work with our partners, including the US and the global south. I thank all the Members who have spoken in this debate. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) did sound very evangelical in his speech, I liked it. I think it is important that we do have a moral heart in a lot of the work we do. We know that working with the US and the global south to reimagine a development system that meets our shared priorities, builds new partnerships, and harnesses the power of trade, AI, technology and private capital will not be quick or easy. But by working together, we can build a system that is inclusive, effective and gives voice to all who have a stake in it.