Britain’s cut to foreign aid undermines threat prevention

Britain’s decision to cut foreign aid to fund defence spending overlooks the preventive role of foreign aid. It follows the pause and review of USAID activities and is an approach to foreign aid that Australia cannot afford to consider.

In late February, Britain said it would cut foreign aid. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the decision was extremely difficult and painful. Foreign Secretary David Lammy described it as a hard choice. Both said it was necessary to keep Britain safe.

But foreign aid does help keep Britain safe.

Threats come in many forms. This means there are hard-headed security arguments for foreign assistance.

If another, poor country’s health system can’t deliver vaccinations or cope with a disease outbreak, your country can end up with a pandemic. If a nearby country suffers government collapse, military coup or state failure, this will affect your country economically and politically. If people affected by climate change are not assisted, you could end up dealing with a migration crisis.

Development funding is worthwhile investment. Dealing with a full-blown security crisis is far more expensive than the small amounts that help prevent it from happening.

People often assume that overseas development assistance gets a much larger slice of the budget pie than it does. For example, the 2018 Lowy Institute Poll showed that people thought that Australia spent $14 from every $100 in the budget on foreign aid when, in reality, it was about . Now it is 68 cents.

Considering current threats, it makes perfect sense for Britain to increase defence spending. Lammy has said ‘Putin’s Russia is a threat not only to Ukraine and its neighbours, but to all of Europe, including the UK.’

But increased defence spending should not be at the expense of foreign aid: the preventive spending that guards against future threats. It is like taking money from preventive health care to fund emergency units. Britain is following the United States in a path that makes the world less safe.

This is something that Australia should not even consider.

The context is strikingly different. In the US, the target was the standalone aid agency USAID. Australia has already amalgamated AusAID into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, meaning development programs are integrated across the entire department. Minister for International Development Pat Conroy has described it as an egg that can’t be unscrambled.

Unlike Britain, Australia’s development spending has already endured huge cuts during the Abbott years, and the vacuum this created for other actors in the Pacific is a salutary lesson not to follow Britain and cut further.

For those concerned about what aid money is being spent on, the government has a transparency portal that tells them. It lists conflict and security development projects including early warning reports, mediation services, reducing illicit arms flows, monitoring landmine and cluster munition use, strengthening cyber and critical tech resilience and reducing the threat of violent extremism.

And unlike the US and Britain, Australia simply can’t afford to vacate the field. Australia is surrounded by developing countries, and if it wants to have friends and partners in the region it must support them in the things that matter to them. The damage to Australia’s long-term interests would be incalculable. That’s what’s at stake. An adequate development budget is non-negotiable if Australia wants to have influence in its region.

Cutting aid might feel like a quick budget fix, but it will cost more in the long term as the world’s problems become expensive crises. In the British parliament, the chair of the International Development Select Committee made this point: ‘Cutting the aid budget to fund defence spending is a false economy that will only make the world less safe.’ She said she was ‘bitterly disappointed’ with a decision she sees as ‘endangering our long-term security’.

Humanitarian organisations have described the move as short-sighted, reckless and a betrayal of Britain’s national interest. Importantly, they have called out the decision as a political choice, noting that other options were possible.

Cutting aid is not a hard choice; it’s a weak choice—and a counterproductive one. People who care about Australia’s defence and security should be making this point.

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