Sources · Cutting foreign aid
This house would cut the foreign aid budget.
Fact bank v1 · 12 cards
- AID-01False
“The UK still spends 0.7% of its national income on foreign aid.”
The UK spent 0.7% of its national income (all the money the country earns in a year) on aid from 2013 to 2020, but not since. In 2025 it spent 0.44%, down from 0.50% in 2024.
In 2020 the government of the day announced a 'temporary' cut from 0.7% to 0.5%, starting in 2021, because COVID had hurt the economy. In February 2025 the government decided to cut aid to 0.3% by 2027 to pay for more defence spending. It says it wants to go back to 0.7% when the money allows. UK aid came to £13,095 million in 2025.
“The UK spent 0.7 per cent of its GNI on ODA between 2013 to 2020.”
GOV.UK (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office)·Statistics on International Development: Final UK ODA Spend 2025Government / parliament · 17 Sept 2026 ↗ - AID-02True
“The UK is cutting its aid budget to pay for more defence spending.”
Confirmed: in February 2025 the government said it would cut aid from 0.5% of national income (all the money the country earns in a year) to 0.3% in 2027, to pay for higher defence spending.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer said defence spending would reach 2.5% of GDP (the size of the economy) in 2027, which he said meant £13.4 billion more every year from 2027. He said the aid cut would fully pay for this. Official figures show aid had already dropped to 0.44% of national income in 2025.
“we will cut our spending on development assistance, moving from 0.5% of GNI today to 0.3% in 2027”
GOV.UK (Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street)·Prime Minister's Oral Statement to the House of Commons: 25 February 2025Government / parliament · 25 Feb 2025 ↗ - AID-03True
“A big part of Britain's aid budget is spent inside the UK on asylum seekers and refugees.”
Confirmed: in 2025, £2,403 million, or 18.4% of UK aid, went on support for refugees and asylum seekers in the UK. It was the biggest single area of UK aid spending for the fourth year in a row.
Global aid rules let rich countries count some costs of looking after refugees and asylum seekers from poorer countries, in their first 12 months, as aid. This can include food, shelter and training. In 2025 the Prime Minister said some aid money had gone on hotels for asylum seekers. The UK share has been falling: it was about 28% (£4,273 million) in 2023 and 20.1% in 2024. Across all rich donor countries together, 13.2% of aid went on this in 2025.
“The largest amount of bilateral ODA was focused on the sector ‘Refugees in Donor Countries’ (£2,403 million and 18.4 per cent of UK ODA).”
GOV.UK (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office)·Statistics on International Development: Final UK ODA Spend 2025Government / parliament · 17 Sept 2026 ↗ - AID-04True
“Other rich countries are cutting their foreign aid too.”
Confirmed: early OECD figures show aid from rich donor countries fell by 23.1% in 2025, after allowing for rising prices. That is the biggest one-year drop ever recorded, and the second fall in a row.
In 2024, aid from these countries had already dropped by 7.1%, the first fall in six years. As a group, rich donors gave 0.26% of their national income as aid in 2025, down from 0.34% in 2024. These are early figures, and final ones are due in December 2026.
“Total ODA from DAC country donors in 2025 was £174.3 billion, decreasing by 23.1 per cent in real terms”
GOV.UK (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office)·Statistics on International Development: Final UK ODA Spend 2025Government / parliament · 17 Sept 2026 ↗ - AID-05Mostly true
“The UK is one of the most generous foreign aid donors in the world.”
By amount, the UK was the third-biggest rich-country donor in 2025, giving £13.1 billion, behind Germany and the US. But measured as a share of national income (all the money the country earns in a year), it came ninth, at 0.44%.
Only Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden and Denmark gave more than the UN target of 0.7% of national income. Rich donor countries as a group gave 0.26%, so the UK gave a bigger share than average. The UK plans to cut its aid to 0.3% by 2027. The figures for other countries are early estimates.
“the UK is the third largest DAC donor by volume (£13.1 billion) in 2025, behind Germany (£22.1 billion) and the United States (£22.0 billion).”
GOV.UK (Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office)·Statistics on International Development: Final UK ODA Spend 2025Government / parliament · 17 Sept 2026 ↗ - AID-06False
“Foreign aid takes up a huge share of the US federal budget.”
In the 2023 budget year the US set aside about $99.9 billion for foreign aid of all kinds. That was about 1.5% of the total federal budget.
That total includes military aid and extra help for Ukraine after Russia's 2022 invasion. In 2019, US aid was about $48.18 billion, or 1% of the federal budget. Since 2025 the Trump administration has cancelled many aid programmes and largely ended USAID's role in handing out aid.
“This represented about 1.5% of the total federal budget”
Congressional Research Service·U.S. Foreign Assistance (CRS In Focus IF10183, updated 20 August 2025)Government / parliament · 20 Aug 2025 ↗ - AID-07Mixed
“The United States is the world's most generous foreign aid donor.”
The US gave the most aid in dollars in 2024. But as a share of its national income, it came 24th out of 32 donors.
Big economies can give more money in total, so comparing aid as a share of national income shows how much each country gives for its size. These figures leave out military aid. Early figures for 2025 put Germany just ahead of the US by amount, after deep US cuts.
“the United States ranked first in 2024 in dollar terms, and 24th out of 32 as a share of gross national income”
Congressional Research Service·U.S. Foreign Assistance (CRS In Focus IF10183, updated 20 August 2025)Government / parliament · 20 Aug 2025 ↗ - AID-08Mostly false
“Most foreign aid is stolen by corrupt elites and hidden in offshore bank accounts.”
A World Bank study found signs that some aid is stolen, but not most. In the 22 countries that depend most on World Bank aid, about 7.5% seemed to leak into secret offshore bank accounts. The authors say the vast majority of aid is not moved to foreign bank accounts.
When aid arrived, money held in tax havens such as Switzerland and Luxembourg rose at the same time. The leak was bigger, around 15%, in the 7 countries that rely most on aid, and much lower, maybe zero, in countries that rely on it less. The study only counts money sent to foreign banks, not cash spent on things like property or luxury goods, so total theft could be higher. It covers 1990 to 2010.
“the vast majority of aid is not diverted to foreign bank accounts”
World Bank·Elite Capture of Foreign Aid: Evidence from Offshore Bank Accounts (Policy Research Working Paper 9150)Intergovernmental body · 18 Feb 2020 ↗ - AID-09Mixed
“Foreign aid doesn't help poor countries' economies grow.”
Studies disagree. A well-known study by two IMF economists found little solid evidence that aid either raised or lowered growth. A later study found that when aid went up by 1% of a country's national income, its yearly growth per person rose by about 0.35 points (for example, from 2% to 2.35% a year).
This is hard to measure, because aid often goes to countries that are already struggling. The later study used a clever test: when poor countries got richer than an income cut-off for one big aid fund, their aid, as a share of national income, fell by about 59% on average. It looked at 35 countries that crossed the line between 1987 and 2010. The IMF economists said their results were about the past and did not mean aid could never work.
“we find little robust evidence of a positive (or negative) relationship between aid inflows into a country and its economic growth”
International Monetary Fund·Aid and Growth: What Does the Cross-Country Evidence Really Show? (IMF Working Paper WP/05/127)Intergovernmental body · 1 Jun 2005 ↗ - AID-10True
“Malaria bed nets, which aid helps pay for, are proven to save children's lives.”
Confirmed: a Cochrane review (a careful summary of all the good trials) found that insecticide-treated bed nets cut child deaths from all causes by 17% compared with no nets. That is about 5.6 lives saved each year for every 1,000 children protected.
The review rates this evidence as high certainty, its top grade. The trials were done between 1987 and 2001. Since then, many mosquitoes have become resistant to the insecticide in the nets. The authors say it is unclear how much this matters, and that the evidence that nets save lives is still strong. Malaria nets are one of the goods that US aid has paid for.
“This corresponds to a saving of 5.6 lives (95% CI 3.6 to 7.6) each year for every 1000 children protected with ITNs.”
Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (via PubMed Central, US National Library of Medicine)·Insecticide-treated nets for preventing malaria (Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2018)Government / parliament · 6 Nov 2018 ↗Further sources for this card
- AID-11Mostly true
“America's cuts to USAID could cause about 14 million extra deaths by 2030.”
A major study in The Lancet estimated the cuts could cause more than 14 million extra deaths by 2030, including about 4.5 million children under 5. It is a forecast based on a worst-case scenario, not a count of real deaths.
The likely range was about 8.5 million to 19.7 million deaths. The study assumed an 83% funding cut in 2025 and an end to USAID funding from 2026. Looking back at 133 countries from 2001 to 2021, it linked USAID funding to about 91.8 million fewer deaths, including 30.4 million young children. The authors say this strongly suggests, but does not prove, that USAID caused the drop.
“unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur”
The Lancet (via PubMed Central, US National Library of Medicine)·Evaluating the impact of two decades of USAID interventions and projecting the effects of defunding on mortality up to 2030 (The Lancet, 2025)Government / parliament · 30 Jun 2025 ↗ - AID-12Mostly true
“Giving cash straight to poor families boosts the whole local economy, not just the people who get it.”
Mostly true, based on one big trial. In rural Kenya, one-off cash gifts of about $1,000 to poor households also helped neighbours and local businesses. Each dollar given raised local economic activity by about $2.40.
The study covered over 10,500 households in 653 villages chosen at random, and prices barely rose. The money came from the charity GiveDirectly, not a government, and one of the authors co-founded it. It was published in Econometrica in 2022. It is one study in one part of Kenya, so results elsewhere could be different.
“We estimate a local transfer multiplier of 2.4.”
National Bureau of Economic Research·General Equilibrium Effects of Cash Transfers: Experimental Evidence from Kenya (NBER Working Paper 26600)Independent research institute · 1 Oct 2021 ↗
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