Edward Leigh: The aid cut doesn’t add up — and that’s why I won’t be voting for it

This week Global Britain, the “pen holder” on Yemen at the United Nations, cut aid to millions of people on the brink of famine. We’re not doing it because we think that will help end the conflict but because we cannot find room for it in a 0.5 per cent foreign aid budget, having cut it back from 0.7 per cent. What is the Government playing at?

Big increases in aid spending have been good for our international standing. But the abolition of the Department for International Development and the cut in aid have both pre-empted the Government’s integrated review of diplomacy, defence and development. Cutting aid isn’t a foreign policy-driven decision.

Announcing the aid cut, the Chancellor said it was one of many “tough choices” he faced. But the only other saving to the public purse in the spending review was the public sector pay freeze and he argued that was not to save money but on the grounds of fairness, given what is happening to pay in the private sector. Where is the sound public accounting logic for this policy?

The cut to aid will be nothing more than a rounding error on the Treasury spreadsheet. It represents just one per cent of this year’s borrowing and the Government has said it is a temporary cut which will return “when the fiscal circumstances allow”. When asked by a committee of MPs what criteria would be used to decide on when to return, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: “I think it will be a mixture of arts and science.”

That might be how diplomats do their work, but as a former chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, I can assure you that isn’t how the Treasury works. Every penny of taxpayers’ money spent should be justified by ministers. But so too should the cancellation of projects before they are finished, of programmes before they have delivered. The 0.7 per cent commitment means aid is falling already. Presumably, the FCDO has identified further waste and inefficacy having already implemented these cuts. But what evidence is there?

Nothing has been published by ministers regarding the cuts already made. Nor was anything published alongside Rishi Sunak’s Budget yesterday or spending review last November. The only statements made by Mr Raab to Parliament have been about his priority areas. Nothing about the failures or failings of the aid budget and nothing to show that the 0.7 per cent has not delivered value for money.