Enough chasing percentages - Burnham should only fund foreign aid that makes Britain safer and stronger

Who runs the Foreign Office matters more than the politicking that has dominated the speculation thus far. Whoever gets the job, conceivably our tenth Foreign Secretary in a decade, inherits a complex and dangerous world under a Prime Minister with little appetite for foreign policy.

One item in their in-tray, a sharp test of how Britain sees its place in the world, is foreign aid. In a crowded field of unpopular policies, the Government’s decision to cut aid stands apart for commanding broad public and cross-party support. But the rush to curtail it risks repeating the mistake that got us here: chasing a number, not an outcome.

Britain’s about-turn on aid isn’t unique. Globally, it fell by a record 23.1% between 2024 and 2025. Contrast this with the New Labour and Coalition years, when the 0.7% of GNI target hardened into an unassailable moral duty. Even at the height of austerity, we became the first G7 country to enshrine that target in law.

Aid had become dogma; the metric of our morality.

Then came Covid. Russia invaded Ukraine. The cost of living skyrocketed. In 2021, 0.7% became 0.5%. Boris called it temporary. Starmer, who had decried that decision, cut it again last year to 0.3%. Still, we’re told, it’s only temporary.

Cue outrage. From charities, the soft-left, non-profits, from anyone really - except the British public. While some see this as a blight on our national conscience, it is the necessary end to a misguided fixation.

For over two decades, we heralded how much we spent on aid as it climbed. Today, paradoxically, parties race to the bottom with the same misguided certainty. The Conservatives would cut aid to 0.1% of GNI. Reform to just £1 billion a year, a mere 0.033%. We may be moving in the opposite direction but our leaders are making the same mistake: prioritising the number on the cheque over why we cash it.

So what is it all for? Foreign aid is not charity, or at least it shouldn’t be. It is an instrument of statecraft, wielded much as Palmerston wielded a gunboat - with less noise perhaps but no less deliberately - and always asking, unapologetically: does this serve our best interests?

While Britain chased arbitrary percentages, China was building ports and railways across the Global South, tightening its grip on critical minerals, and buying up bilateral debt - converting it all, ultimately, into geopolitical handcuffs that have bound nations to its will.

Confronted with a drip-feed of UK-funded programmes that do little for our own interests, aid becomes an easy target when belts need tightening. Is £730,000 to revive faith leadership for rangeland conservation in Nepal really the priority? Nepal is an important strategic partner, nestled between nuclear-armed rivals and home to the British Army’s Gurkhas. That’s not where our focus should be.

But the answer is not to decimate aid. The opposite. Dig around and you find resourceful programmes that help thousands and advance Britain’s interests. That distinction matters. In a volatile world, cutting aid blindly is as short-sighted as spending blindly.

Trump may have shuttered USAID but read the small print. The HALO Trust, for example, receives more funding from the administration today than it did under Biden. Clearing landmines plainly serves American interests.

We have to break the cycle. Aid must be strategic, conditional and accountable; driven by outcomes not percentages, measured against our strategic interests and communicated clearly as statecraft not sentiment. Every programme should be assessed against a simple test: will this make Britain safer, stronger, more prosperous or more influential?

Many have already passed this test. Vaccines that curb the spread of diseases before they reach our shores. Refugee camps sheltering those who might otherwise flee west. Good governance offers an alternative to violent terrorist proxies. Disinformation stymied by trusted British broadcasting. But we fund these in the same breath as the whimsical and call it all aid, without distinction.

How much we spend should never have been the goal. To what end we spend it is. Whoever Burnham taps for Foreign Secretary, they would do well to remember it.

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Harry Coulson is Chief of Staff at the Coalition for Global Prosperity.

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