![\"Ed](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Ed-Miliband-outside-Downing-Street-e1788370070819.jpg\")
\t\t\t<\/p>\n\t\t\tThursday 03 September 2026 4:38 am
\n\t\t\t\t\t\u00a0|\u00a0\u00a0Updated:\u00a0<\/p>\n
\t\t\tWednesday 02 September 2026 6:29 pm\n\t<\/p>\n
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Labour is plotting to reverse cuts to foreign aid, but the UK\u2019s spending history reveals a questionable use of funds, writes Anne Strickland<\/p>\n
Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband have privately indicated that they want to find \u201ca route back\u201d to spending 0.7 per cent of national income<\/a> on foreign aid. Currently, no timeframe has been set, and Downing Street points to Labour\u2019s manifesto pledge to restore the target only \u201cas soon as fiscal circumstances allow\u201d. The Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that this informal commitment would cost roughly \u00a313bn a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Britain is already facing a record high tax burden, with the tax take now over \u00a31.1 trillion every year. Finding another \u00a313bn would mean either higher taxes, lower spending elsewhere or more borrowing, but knowing the inclination of this government, the likely option will almost certainly be a combination of more spending and more borrowing. Either way, \u00a313bn is a serious price tag for a policy that is built around hitting an arbitrary target, rather than funding whatever the world\u2019s genuine emergencies actually require in a given year.\u00a0<\/p>\n Where has Britain spent its foreign aid budget?<\/p>\n If you look at where the money already goes, it is hard to feel confident that this \u00a313bn will end up anywhere better. The Taxpayers\u2019 Alliance uncovered a story last year<\/a> that \u00a388m had gone to fund a contraception programme in Pakistan, with \u00a374m of that specifically used to promote branded condoms through shops and pharmacies. Another \u00a320<\/a>m was spent on training tax collectors and simplifying the tax system in Ethiopia; an irony that\u2019s hard to beat, given Britain is lumped with one of the most complicated tax codes in the world. In Guyana, \u00a352m went on building a road through the Amazon rainforest that\u2019s since been dubbed a road to nowhere, funded through a climate scheme now overseen by none other than our new foreign secretary Ed Miliband. All ultimately paid for by British taxpayers.\u00a0<\/p>\n And that\u2019s before you even get to what doesn\u2019t reach anyone overseas at all. 20 per cent of the entire aid budget, \u00a32.8bn in 2024, went on housing and supporting asylum seekers here in Britain, all under accounting rules that let the Treasury count it as international development. A fifth of so-called \u201cforeign aid\u201d doesn\u2019t actually leave British shores.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\tA case by case approach <\/p>\n Contrast that with the humanitarian crisis currently happening in Nepal. The death toll from last week\u2019s devastating flash floods and landslides on the Nepal-China border has passed 1,000, with thousands still missing and search efforts still under way. Britain\u2019s response was an initial \u00a35m and an offer of emergency rescue teams, announced within days by Burnham and Miliband, and given the scale of what has happened in Nepal, sending that money was simply the right thing to do, since responding quickly to a genuine crisis like this is exactly what foreign aid is meant for.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is the case for aid, properly understood. A crisis like Nepal obviously deserves support. But a policy built around always hitting a fixed target doesn\u2019t ask what the world actually needs in a given year, it asks how much has to be spent to hit a percentage, and once genuine emergencies like Nepal are covered, whatever\u2019s left over still has to go somewhere. That\u2019s how you end up with \u00a352m roads to nowhere: not because they were the best use of the money, but because the target demanded more spending than real need could actually account for. Judge aid case by case instead, and the money would go where it\u2019s needed, not towards an arbitrary target that successive governments have argued over for 15 years.<\/p>\n Anne Strickland is a researcher at the Taxpayers\u2019 Alliance<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tRead more<\/p>\n