Britain’s aid budget is less generous than it looks
The world’s poorest are paying the price for Britain’s dysfunctional asylum system
How much the British government spends on foreign aid used to be a fairly easy question to answer. Through most of the 2010s, just gesturing to the United Nations target of 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) would have sufficed. Fixing aid spending at that level was an early David Cameron initiative, part of a bid to beef up his government’s humanitarian credentials. These days, it’s harder to say. In theory, 0.7% of GNI remains Britain’s long-term target. But over the past few years barely more than half that amount has actually been spent on development abroad. The cuts began under Britain’s last Conservative government, but look set to continue—and deepen—under Labour.
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This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “The foreign-aid fiddle”
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