Committee heads to King's College for public evidence session
The International Development Committee is heading out of Westminster to gather insights on the future of the UK’s development work and what the public thinks about UK aid.
A live oral evidence session at King's College London next week brings together two panels featuring young activists, community workers, and opinion data experts. The speakers will take questions from MPs in front of an audience comprising politics and development students, university staff, and members of the public.
The session marks the latest part of the Committee’s inquiry into the future of UK aid and development policy. It comes in the face of a 40% overseas aid budget cut and a shift from providing grants to providing expertise – something that the Committee quizzed the Minister for International Development about on 20 January.
Meeting details
The first panel will be made up of young grassroot activists and community workers from lower-income countries.
These speakers will talk about what they see as key opportunities for the UK to support grassroots actions in a world of diminishing aid budgets. Within this, they could be asked about how the UK’s approach to development needs to change to have the most impact and how the UK can best support their countries in the causes they are fighting.
The second panel will feature experts on the public perception of aid in the UK and the media’s standpoint. The Committee will explore what organisations’ data tells us about the public opinions of the current UK approach and how the Government can inspire more confidence in what UK aid is spent on.