USAID Funding Pause

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the USAID funding pause and its impact on UK international development.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank everyone who has come this morning either to participate or to observe. Although a decision about an American Government Department’s funding may seem distant in geography, it is dangerously close in consequence. The recent cuts to the United States Agency for International Development—USAID —by President Trump on his first day in office pose a grave risk to millions of people around the world, as well as to global stability. I believe they are either a mistake and a blunder, or a cruel and cynical ploy for popularity that will result in harm and suffering for the poorest on the planet.

The implications for our aid programme are threefold. First, the UK has effectively lost a key partner in aid, and one with which we have done great work in the past. Secondly, the sheer scale of the USAID cuts means that the gaps in funding cannot be filled by other donors, especially as almost all Governments, including our own, are now following the US example and reducing their aid spend to put more into their militaries. Thirdly, it could be argued that we, and indeed the world, should have seen this coming; we had become too reliant on the USA.

Having said that, I find it indefensible for the UK to follow suit and cut aid in an attempt to raise funds for increasing defence spend.

My hon. Friend is making some compelling points. Does he agree that the crucial point is that if Britain retreats from our role as a leader in international development, we not only undermine our unique soft power but leave vital regions exposed, ceding ground to the increasing assertiveness of hostile powers and geopolitical rivals?

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, and I will cover many of those points. I find the cut totally indefensible and counterproductive. Apart from the soft power that our aid programme offers, it is a betrayal of principles we hold dear: reducing poverty and assuring global security.

On a personal note, aid cuts hit close to home for me. For much of my career I have worked in international aid, primarily in water, sanitation and hygiene, working to give people across Africa and the developing world access to clean drinking water, safe sanitation and good hygiene. Those simple things are vital to health, survival and prosperity.

According to WaterAid, the UK’s annual budget for WASH has already been cut by approximately 82%, from a high of £206 million per year down to a critical low of just £37 million a year in 2022. Further cuts are likely to this most vital of sectors. Such cuts will hardly dissuade potential refugees from coming to our shores; they may even drive those refugees towards us if life becomes increasingly intolerable as a result of climate change, war and famine.

One impact of USAID cuts is growing hunger. Globally, almost 50% of all deaths among children under five are attributed to malnutrition. The USAID-funded famine early warning system—FEWS NET—the gold standard for monitoring and predicting food insecurity, went offline in January because of Trump’s cuts, leaving organisations without a key source of guidance on where and when to deploy humanitarian aid. At the same time, other USAID cuts have led to feeding programmes themselves coming to an abrupt end. For example, therapeutic feeding centres in Nigeria have been closed, as have community-run kitchens in Sudan, at a time when famine threatens millions in that country. Meanwhile, thousands in Haiti have lost access to nutritional support. We are told that USAID emergency food rations are now rotting in warehouses.

The hon. Gentleman is making an excellent speech. I have been in contact with the International Rescue Committee, my former employer, about the impact that the USAID cuts will have on it. It is estimated that the cuts to that agency alone will mean that 280,000 people in Yemen will lose access to primary care, mental healthcare and reproductive healthcare, and 3,000 people in Lebanon will be left without education. That is devastating not just in terms of the humanitarian impact; we need to think about it in terms of our own stability and security. It means diseases left unchecked, which cross borders and become pandemics, and it means young people left without education and opportunity and at risk of further marginalisation and radicalisation. Does he agree with that analysis?

I thank the hon. Member for her comments, and I will continue with more figures that emphasise those points.

During the 90-day freeze, an estimated 11.7 million women and girls have been denied modern contraceptive care. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that that will lead to 4.2 million unintended pregnancies and 8,340 women and girls dying from pregnancy and childbirth complications.

I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman about the impact that the cuts will have on women and girls. Does he agree that, as well as continuing to support women and girls through aid from this country, we must stand up for women’s and girls’ rights internationally? We have seen them rolled back in the past. That is why it is so important that we continue to do what we can to stand up for women, for example in Afghanistan, where their rights are being eroded every single day.

I completely agree with the hon. Member. An ActionAid project in Zambia safeguarding women from sexual exploitation was forced to close almost overnight.

Oxfam says that, thanks to the cuts to USAID, 95 million people could lose access to basic healthcare, potentially leading to 3 million preventable deaths a year, and 23 million children could lose access to education. When services collapse and diseases can spread unchecked, people lose hope, and they do not stay put. Migration pressures rise, conflicts hit new boiling points and markets react. As covid taught us all too well, deadly viruses such as Marburg and Ebola could leap from remote villages to our high streets in a matter of weeks, especially when the staff to deal with them have been given stop orders and removed from frontline duty.

We are already seeing other powers whose interests do not align with ours begin to fill the gaps left by USAID. China and Russia are expanding their influence in regions where western credibility is weakening. Just last week, some of us on the IDC heard from an official in the Burma/Myanmar freedom movement that USAID’s withdrawal has happened at the same time as China has made quick inroads to prop up the military and curry influence in its efforts to get hold of rare earth minerals from that troubled country.

The United Kingdom has long prided itself on being a force for good in the world. Our work and leadership with British aid has not only saved lives but championed the best of our British values: fairness, the rule of law, health, education and opportunity across the globe. That is soft power in its most tangible form, and it is worth its weight in gold—and, more importantly, in lives and livelihoods. Sadly, we have made our own aid cuts recently, from the 0.7% GNI commitment down to 0.5% and then 0.3%. The reality is that with so much being spent on hotels for asylum seekers, instead of allowing them to work and pay their way while their status is determined, as little as 1% of UK GNI is now being spent on genuine aid.

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to be called. I will call the Front Benchers at 10.28 am. It looks like all Members will get to speak if they stick to six or seven minutes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank the hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew) for securing this debate, which is a timely one, given that we are approaching 20 years since the Gleneagles summit held in Scotland in 2005. Twenty years ago, Nelson Mandela spoke in Trafalgar Square calling on us to make poverty history. World leaders gathered in Gleneagles in 2005, and they rose to the challenge, cancelling debt for some of the world’s poorest countries and boosting aid.

In 2025, aid and development are firmly in the spotlight, but for very different reasons and in a very different context. While this debate is focused on the impact of USAID funding cuts, there is no doubt that those cuts will have a seismic impact on the landscape globally, and on our own approach to development. The US is the world’s largest aid donor, providing around 20% of all aid from the 32 members of the OECD. In February, we announced the very difficult decision that UK aid would be cut to boost defence spending.

While I welcome the uplift in defence spending, for people such as me and the hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes who have worked in development for many years, it was a painful decision. However, it is important to emphasise the difference between the decisions made in the United States and those made in the UK. While I will not comment too much on the rationales for different Governments’ decisions, the UK Government have been clear that this was not an ideological decision but one driven by financial pressures. I believe, and I am sure that the Minister will assure us, that there is a commitment to continuing to develop aid.

On the question of whether the Government’s decision was driven by financial motivations, does the hon. Member agree that whether it is 0.7% or 0.3%, the key is that UK GDP must rise, as her own Chancellor has said? If our economy shrinks, the 0.7% figure becomes almost irrelevant because it is 0.7% of a much smaller budget. All that matters overseas is the amount of cash they get, not the percentage of our domestic product, so we must drive the economy first before we try to deliver the mechanism that I am sure most of us are in favour of.

The hon. Member is right; this is an internationally agreed percentage of gross national income, but too many countries have not met that target. As has been mentioned, some countries are stepping back, so it is important to be clear that we will keep our commitment to getting back to 0.7% as soon as the fiscal circumstances allow. However, in this new reality, we must ensure that our aid delivers maximum impact where it is spent, that we take actions to mitigate the effect of these cuts and that we keep the commitment to return to 0.7% in the long term.

In that spirit, I will focus on five key areas where the Government should act. First, they must cut in-donor refugee costs. As many Members know, we spend a significant portion of our current aid budget in the UK on those costs, which were approximately £4 billion in 2023. That trend started under the previous Conservative Government—who also left us with huge backlogs in the asylum system—and I know that this Government are determined to tackle it. We have seen some progress in bringing down those costs, and provisional estimates suggest that they were £2.8 billion in 2024, but we need to continue that trajectory with a clear timeline and a commitment across Departments to get them down.

Secondly, we must maximise the impact of our aid. It is important that we align with the “leave no one behind” principle in the 2015 sustainable development goals. I would not want to be in the shoes of the Minister for International Development in the other place, because there are difficult decisions to be made, as members of the International Development Committee recently heard. It is important that Members of Parliament, including Back Benchers, clearly see the criteria and the vision against which those decisions are being made.

The “leave no one behind” principle must, as I alluded to earlier, include a focus on women and girls. It is clear that the USAID cuts will have a big impact in that area. In 2023, the US was the largest single donor in areas including population, reproductive health and family planning. Under the Conservative Government’s last round of cuts to the aid budget, we saw that women and girls were disproportionately affected, so it is important that does not happen again. I recently asked the Minister for Europe in the main Chamber whether women and girls would remain “at the heart” of our policy, and he assured me that they would.

The UN has warned us that more than half of frontline, women-led organisations could shut down within six months due to global aid cuts. That is not just a funding crisis; it is a humanitarian catastrophe. Does the hon. Member agree that restoring funding to those groups must be a priority if we are to prevent the complete collapse of women’s services in conflict zones?

I fully agree. We have had programmes, such as the Equality Fund, where we have been clear on the importance of women’s rights-led organisations. I have met many women’s rights defenders of all ages who are doing amazing work. We must continue to back them and listen to them, because they know what is best in the context in which they work.

I am sure other Members will speak to the importance of investing in multilateral efforts, such as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and the Global Fund, which I also want to back. Those funds have a proven return on investment for the UK taxpayer. The World Bank’s International Development Association fund and the African Development Fund also have important roles to play in alleviating poverty, and we have been big backers of those in the past.

As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the United Nations, I would also like to underline the value of the United Nations. There is, of course, space for reform, and I am sure we are all aware of some of the flaws in the system, but it is a unique vehicle for coming together as a world to tackle some of the biggest challenges we face and to increase the value of our aid.

We must also look beyond aid to leverage other forms of financing, many of which we could leverage without cost to the taxpayer. As the Independent Commission for Aid Impact pointed out, foreign direct investment, remittances and other forms dwarf the overall aid budget, so I hope the UK will continue to lead on innovative financing. That includes how we can recycle International Monetary Fund special drawing rights. In 2020, we received an allocation of £19 billion from the IMF as part of the response to covid. We could re-channel that to provide zero-interest finance to low-income countries or through multilateral development banks. We could also put idle foreign reserves into action. A small portion of the UK’s largely idle exchange equalisation account could be used to support low-income countries.

I remind Members to stick to the time limit as much as they can.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse.

I thank the hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew) for leading the debate. He and I have talked often about his previous job before he came here. I put on the record my thanks to him for what he did. His heart is in this debate, as was clear in his comments. This is a huge issue: since Trump signed the initial executive order in January, there has been a moral obligation on countries like ours to do our best to pick up what may be lost in terms of humanitarian safety, so it is great to be here to discuss that impact.

The United States is the world’s largest aid donor, providing 20% of all aid. In addition, in 2023 it was the largest single donor in areas including population, reproductive health and humanitarian aid. In March 2025, the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, stated that 82% of all USAID programmes would be ended. I will try to be respectful, but I have to say that if the richest country in the world cuts back on aid to that extent, it reflects badly on that country; I think there is something wrong there.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell) and I are Christians, and we tithe our money so 10% of our income goes to charities and Christian work. We are not better than anybody else— I make that quite clear—but we do that because we feel we are morally supposed to. The reflection on the USAID programme is absolutely unbelievable and incomprehensible for a country with so much money.

I was telling my hon. Friend about a conversation between two American ladies—I do not know who they were—that I overheard in my hotel in Waterloo this morning. I heard one say to the other, “Oh, by the way, I had to get my leg done and it cost $100,000.” I nearly spilt my coffee on the floor—$100,000 and there was not another word about it. The US as a country has an obligation to others across the world, and it needs to play its part. I say that with respect and in all honesty.

On the NGOs and the other groups helping people at home, the House of Commons Library summary indicates that over a quarter of UK aid has been spend on refugees based in the UK. Does my hon. Friend agree that that would be better deployed overseas to try to assist the economies of developing countries, because of the concern about massive immigration into the UK? If those economies were helped and assisted, it would do more to reduce the numbers of people coming to the UK and offset the problems that we occasionally see on our streets.