LONDON: Members of parliament will be given the option to decide on whether the UK maintains massive cuts to Britain’s foreign aid budget.
The government had initially sought to circumvent parliament to avoid putting the planned aid cuts to a vote.
But on Monday, Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said that MPs would, on Tuesday, be able to give “a yes or no answer” on whether to reverse the cuts from next January.
If the government is defeated, Britain’s foreign aid budget would be returned to 0.7 percent of GDP from the 0.5 that the government reduced it to at the start of 2021.
Rees-Mogg also confirmed that, if the government loses the vote, then they would ensure that funding is immediately restored at the start of 2022, rather than by some roundabout route, as some Parliamentary critics had feared.
The 0.2 percent cut represents around $5 billion in real terms; a devastating amount for millions of vulnerable people — including in some of the Middle East's poorest countries.
Lebanon, Yemen, Sudan and Libya would all see reductions of tens of millions of dollars each in funding, cuts that Mark Lowcock, former head civil servant at Britain’s Department for International Development, said would “cause many more deaths” and “damage the international reputation of the UK.”
The potential humanitarian and political impact of the cuts prompted a rebellion from within the Conservative Party, as well as uproar from the humanitarian and aid sectors in the UK.
Tory rebels said earlier this year that they were “confident” they would be able to reverse the cuts, despite failing at one point to amend a separate law to include a clause that would see the cuts reversed.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak warned that, should the overseas aid budget be restored, that there would be “consequences for the fiscal situation, including for taxation and current public spending plans.”
Other politicians, including Ruth Davidson, the former leader of the Scottish Conservative Party, warned that the cuts would once again ensure that the Tories are viewed as the “nasty party,” as the “horrific pictures” of famine in Ethiopia and elsewhere repel voters.
