Alex Thier and Gideon Rabinowitz.

Q111 The Chair: Good morning. Welcome, Mr Thier and Mr Rabinowitz; thank you very much for joining us. This is our 10th public evidence session on the UK’s future relationship with the US, and it will focus on the US as an international development actor, and what shifts in US development policy may mean for the UK’s own development strategy and partnerships. The session will be streamed live on the Parliament website and a transcript will be taken and, once available, you will be shown a copy for minor corrections if necessary. Can I remind members that, if they have any interests pertinent to the question they are going to ask, to declare that when first speaking?

Perhaps I can kick off by posing the first, rather obvious question, and ask you as you answer to introduce yourselves. Can I ask you to describe the US’s role as an international development actor over the last 50 years and to explain to what extent recent developments, particularly under the current Trump Administration, represent a retreat from international development? Are we witnessing a permanent shift? Can Mr Thier go first, please?

Alex Thier: Absolutely. Thanks, Lord De Mauley; it is a pleasure to be with you and the members of the committee today. Sorry not to be there in person, and greetings to Gideon.

Let me start by saying that I really greatly appreciate both the spirit and urgency of this inquiry, sitting here in Washington. Maybe I can introduce myself by saying that a substantial part of my career has been spent at the very intersection of the issues that the committee is speaking about today. As the global chief of policy, planning and learning at USAID, I co-chaired the US-UK development dialogue for several years. In my years in government, whether overseeing US assistance in Afghanistan and Pakistan or negotiating new multilateral instruments such as the sustainable development goals, the Addis Tax Initiative and the sustainable development fund, it would not be an exaggeration to say that usually the first and last call that I and my colleagues would make was to our UK counterparts—our stalwart friends and allies in the business of international development, as with so many other things.

Simply put, you were our best partners for getting stuff done, and our partnership begat much larger partnerships, frequently increasing the scale and ambition needed to address some of humanity’s greatest challenges. Even today, as CEO of Lapis, we have created together an enormously important programme providing schooling for adolescent girls barred from education in Afghanistan. So for me, these questions are not abstract or academic. They get to the foundation of what I think is much of the success of international development over the last 60 years.

Let me briefly answer your first question by saying that, every year since 1961, when USAID was founded, the US has been the largest development donor in real terms. It has consistently made up between 20% and 30% of global overseas development assistance; usually over 40% of global humanitarian assistance; and, although comparatively low in percentage of gross national income, the US in 2023 hit a high of $65 billion of overseas development assistance. Although focus and priorities have shifted over time, this level of giving has made the US a market maker in almost every significant area of development advances that we have seen in the last six decades, from health to education, infrastructure, economic growth and food security. Through both its direct allocation of resources and a place at the table in all major international and multilateral institutions, the US has driven policy and investment at the global and country level.

It is always important for us to remember how profound the results of international development have been over this period. The global under-five mortality rate has declined 61% since 1990. That is going from 13 million child deaths a year to under 5 million. That is still far too many, but that is 8 million children not dying every year. Extreme poverty went from 43% of the global population in 1990 to about 8% in 2020. Of course, all of this change is not attributable to aid and certainly not all to US assistance, but researchers have recently estimated that US assistance has been responsible for saving between 2.5 million and 5.5 million lives each year. Do not get me wrong: a lot of my career has been devoted to the fact that aid effectiveness always needs to improve—we need to learn from weaker outcomes—but that is very different from the debate that we are having today.

So the answer to your question is yes. The wielding of power and influence and significant results makes this profound retreat that the US is now engaging in quite confounding, because the impact of this work has been so stark. The current Administration have not only cut most of the people, the resources and the institutions that are responsible for making these outcomes happen; even as we speak today, you will have seen in the news that they are also trying to claw back billions in previous commitments.

Overall, I do believe that the consequences of these changes are very profound, first and foremost, to those who benefit from aid. Beyond that, the quantum of expertise, systems and institutions that are being tossed aside is, to my mind, mind-boggling, having lived and grown up in this community. I would suggest, as an analogy, that it is like taking an electricity grid worth billions that is powering hundreds of billions-worth of economic activity and simply stripping it for the copper in the wires.

Gideon Rabinowitz: Good morning to you all. Thank you very much for having me join you. This is a really important topic and a very timely inquiry, so we congratulate you on putting an emphasis on it. I am director of policy and advocacy for Bond, which is the membership and representative body for international charities in the UK. We have over 350 member organisations who we represent—all the big names that you will be aware of, but also lots of medium and small organisations, so it is a very rich and diverse membership.

I do not think I need to say too much to add to Alex; I think he has given you a very rich answer. I have just a couple of headline points. As Alex has said, there is hardly an area of international development that the US funding cuts will not have touched. It is such an enormous funder globally of international development that it will affect almost every area. It will affect lots of areas that the UK has not necessarily prioritised in the past, maybe because the likes of USAID and the US Government more broadly have been very focused on them.

Let us take a sector like agriculture. The US is a world leader in supporting agriculture. That is not a sector that the UK focuses on a great deal. There are huge amounts of support in governance, participation and democracy promotion programmes—obviously the UK does bits and pieces in those areas, but it is not necessarily a priority sector. That is part of the context here: lots of gaps are opening up in areas that the UK has not necessarily prioritised in the past, so we will have to think about whether there are new ways that we can help underpin work in those sectors too.

I will give you a sense of how far reaching the US is from a resourcing perspective. We did a survey of our members in February, not long after the US cuts were announced, to find out how likely they were to be affected by the cuts announced by the US. Our estimates showed that around 100 of our members get funding in some way from the US Government—I can give you more of the details on our findings afterwards. At least one-third of them had at least £1 million of funding affected by the immediate stop orders. The impacts are very far reaching, even for UK international charities, including by undermining and stopping very significant amounts of funding being available to them.

In some ways, we were quite surprised by the findings. We did not have an awareness of quite how far the reach of the US Government was into the funding of some of our members, so it has been an eye-opening process for us to look into the impacts on our members.

Q112 Baroness Blackstone: I will start with Mr Thier. I begin by congratulating you on your work to try to develop adolescent girls’ education in Afghanistan; it is extraordinarily important but very challenging.

That is not the nature of my question. I will come back to one or two things that you said earlier. You made it clear that you thought that the change in what is happening to US aid and development, with the huge cuts, will have a profound impact. Can you put a bit more flesh on that and tell the committee where you think the biggest impact will be and in what areas?

Alex Thier: In case I did not introduce myself properly, my name is Alex Thier and I am the CEO of Lapis, a social impact organisation working on education and health across South Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Thank you, Baroness Blackstone, for your comment. The work to help Afghan girls at this time is tremendously important, and we should not forget them amid all the other challenges.

I have been thinking a lot about the subject of your question, because it is incredibly important. I will point to three things. The first, which Gideon also mentioned, is humanitarian assistance and food security. Widespread hunger, malnutrition and starvation simply have no place in 2025. It is absurd that people should be hungry in today’s world. We all know that this is, in large part, a political problem and not just a money problem, but millions of people today are going without sufficient basic nutrition for lack of resources. I would therefore commend this as a tremendous baseline priority.

Secondly, there is a massive gap in efforts now to support democracy, rights and good governance. I am a very strong believer that good governance and support for basic rights is the operating system that, ultimately, begets and brings global success for the US and the UK. The rise of authoritarianism and deadly conflict over the last decade is an incredibly dangerous reversal of decades of progress. So many groups out there have been reliant on this support.

However, this is not just about democracy, elections and human rights groups, which are incredibly important; the very conduct of development itself is fundamentally reliant on good governance and the rule of law. These investments are generally buoyed in their long-term success by attention to those issues. This is an area where, over time, the UK has invested a lot, and it is important that that increases. However, the US has been an overwhelming funder and political driver of this agenda.

Thirdly, there is now a gap in leadership. Looking at the poly-crises of climate, pandemic and conflict affecting us, we know from the last 80 years that big, long-term challenges require unstinting collaborative leadership. If the US is stepping back from that role on the ground and in multilateral fora, it is all the more incumbent on other powerful actors—the UK, the EU and others—to ensure that they are stepping up to meet some of these challenges.

Baroness Blackstone: Thank you very much. Can you tell us what you see as the impact of all this on the US’s global relationships and, in particular, reputation?

Alex Thier: I see it as enormously problematic on several levels. The US has spent an enormous amount of resource building up the talent and relationships to deliver this assistance around the world. I have been on the ground for NGOs, such as Oxfam, around the globe, and alongside the UN, the US Government with think tanks. What I saw over and over again is the depth of presence, the trusted relationships and the importance of being there on the journey with our partners through development. That is ultimately what carries success: those relationships and the depth of understanding.

To pull all that away has several consequences. First, it means that the US will of course be seen as a less reliable partner. The urgency and violence of the withdrawal over the last six months has meant that organisations have had to spend their time unwinding programmes, removing people and shutting down things rather than building them. That sort of work destroys trust and relationships on the ground. Secondly, it also means that, in the future, people will be more wary of US support and intentions.

This is also playing out at the global level. The US has twice pulled out of the Paris Agreement, and, domestically, it is trying to shut down its investments in response to climate change. All those things mean that partnerships, including with the UK and others—which have been on the path to looking at how we change the global systems responsible for climate change and how we positively engage in collective action to move towards renewable energy—will be much harder to rebuild. It is very difficult for the US, as a reliable partner and actor on that stage, to rebuild not only the trust but the many institutions that have been supported by US assistance that will now be lacking.

Baroness Blackstone: Mr Rabinowitz, would you like to comment on this?

Gideon Rabinowitz: On the gaps?

Baroness Blackstone: Yes. Can you comment on the effects of these changes both on the recipients of aid and on those who are participating in aid programmes, such as other donors?

Gideon Rabinowitz: A number of sectors are gaining attention in the analysis being done to understand the impacts. Health is probably the most prominent factor that is being discussed. The US constituted nearly one-third of aid for global health at the time of the cuts. The WHO did a survey of over 100 of their country offices, and it found that nearly three-quarters of member countries were seeing disruptions to health services following the US cuts. The impact is profound.

The US role is very much concentrated in specific areas. I will take one example: tuberculosis. That should interest us from a global health security and public health perspective, because the more effectively that TB is controlled around the world, the less of a risk it is to our own health services. The US provides half of global funding for addressing tuberculosis challenges. There are already reports from countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan that there will be cuts to the funding for tracking and identifying cases and to the community outreach required to treat them. That is just one very practical example.

Other sectors such as malaria and HIV/AIDS are hugely reliant on US funding. The US accounts for 40% of global funding for malaria, and the WHO has found that 64 malaria-endemic countries are facing disruptions to their malaria eradication and treatment programmes. Global efforts to tackle malaria have been extraordinarily successful—the global caseload has halved—but we are far from the level required to sustainably disrupt the transmission of malaria and to tackle this challenge. These cuts will have very profound effects.

HIV/Aids is obviously a really challenging sector now too. The US accounts for almost three-quarters of HIV/Aids funding. A recent survey was done of over 500 local organisations across 25 countries, and 95% were experiencing direct impacts from the cuts in HIV/Aids funding coming from the US. This is having a profound effect on local organisations.

I will mention two other sectors: humanitarian and gender. From a humanitarian perspective, as Alex mentioned, the US provides just over 40% of global humanitarian funding. Obviously, humanitarian support has profound implications in fragile states where there are conflict situations. In the context of a UK Government that have decided to take resources from the aid budget to put into defence to tackle national security challenges, we should be very aware, and thinking through the implications, of the fact that the global humanitarian system will be in crisis as a result of these cuts.

For countries where the UK has strong partnerships, these cuts will really be hard hitting. The US provides just over two-thirds of humanitarian assistance in the DRC, where there is a raging and deepening conflict now. In Uganda, it is 60%. In Nigeria, Kenya, Bangladesh, South Sudan and Jordan, it is over 50%. These are countries with which we have strong, long-held partnerships, and we are deeply concerned about future security and conflict dynamics. The humanitarian system is being shredded in those countries, and that should cause us great concern when thinking about how we support these countries in the long term to become more stable and to tackle the long-term security issues.

Finally, I turn to gender. We know that gender programming has been particularly hit across the board in the US. It has become a particular target of US Government funding cuts. It has been labelled as “woke” and “inappropriate” to provide support for gender programming, which is astonishing. UN Women did a recent survey of over 400 organisations that it collaborates with and their partners. Of these, 90% had been affected by the cuts and nearly half said that they expected their organisations to be shut down within six months. This is having a profound effect on the ability of women’s rights organisations and on organisations working on gender equality and gender programming across the world to do their work.

That is why we are extremely concerned that the UK Government seem to have taken a similar approach. We are yet to understand the full ramifications of that. Ministers have confirmed that gender equality programming will be subject to disproportionate cuts in the latest round of aid cuts that are being programmed right now. That context—the UK not being able to turn around and say, “Actually, no, now is the time for us to protect and promote this programming” after one of our major partners has pulled back—is really a great concern.

Q113 Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie: Thank you. Mr Rabinowitz, I would like to build on that. With the US stepping back, what can and should the UK do—if anything at all—to step up? Particularly given the context of our limited development capacity, which you just mentioned, and the 0.3% budget, where should the UK’s priorities lie?

The Government, as I understand it, have identified Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, the overseas territories and global challenges such as corruption, health security and climate change, which are three massive areas. You have pointed to areas where the US is stepping back. How do the UK Government identify their priorities among those massive subject areas? Can you define anything that we should encourage the Government to concentrate on specifically?

Gideon Rabinowitz: Even in a context where the aid budget remained at 0.5% of gross national income, the UK could not fill the enormous funding gaps left by the US—that is an important point to make. Obviously, from a resourcing perspective, it becomes even harder to think through how to fill these gaps with a budget of just 0.3%.

For our members, we are particularly concerned about the sectors that are hardest hit by these cuts. I have talked about gender equality programmes; I think the sector is genuinely shocked by the decision that has been taken. That decision is reinforcing the impact on gender equality programming and women’s rights organisations across the world. We urge the Government to rethink this and to try to do what they can to protect funding in those areas. We think that the Government have a disproportionate responsibility to look at those areas that we know others are pulling back from.

The organisations we work with are very focused on this challenge. They are very eager for the UK to continue to use its role in international organisations and multilateral institutions to make the case for those institutions to carry on resourcing this type of programming. Obviously, the US is a very significant stakeholder in institutions such as the World Bank. If it encourages the World Bank to take the same steps, this will multiply the impact that we are seeing in areas such as women’s rights and gender. The UK has a really important role to make the case internally, within the governance of those institutions, that they need to stay focused on tackling issues such as rights and on tackling health challenges.

The UK still has a lot of influence in those spaces. That would be really important, especially as it seems that the UK Government are saying that they will prioritise multilateral funding disproportionately in the decisions they are making. So they need to make sure that their role in those international institutions is helping to defend funding for those areas, because it will have a multiplier effect on the resources available in the sector.

Another thing is that, in global summits and global discussions about the policy change and reform that is needed across the world, the UK needs to remain a strong voice. We influence these issues not just with resources—although resources do help—but by being able to sit in UN spaces, in the G7 and in the G20 and make the case for the things that matter around the world that we know others are pulling back from. That will be really important.

In relation to the G7, for example, we are concerned to see signs that it is less focused on development today than it was in previous years. We think that that is partly because the US is less eager for there to be a focus on development in those spaces because it would put the spotlight on the US to do more on development. We therefore need the big global bodies to put development, and the emerging challenges and gaps in the international system, on the agenda, so that the international community can collectively address them.

Baroness Fraser of Craigmaddie: Thank you. Mr Thier, I would like to hear your perspective. Given your work on education for women and girls in Afghanistan, you would presumably echo Mr Rabinowitz’s focus on where the gender work is on this.

Building on his comments about what the UK can do with our influence in multilateral organisations, are you seeing that the US is looking at aid more? It seems that the US wants to do deals; it is talking about development loans. Mr Rabinowitz mentioned malaria—maybe the Gates Foundation can come in and help. Is that the kind of thing that that the UK should push support for? Am I summing this up right? Over to you for comment.

Alex Thier: Thank you, Baroness Fraser. I will describe how the UK might be guided in its decision-making.

To be hard-nosed about it, I believe that the UK should be guided by political imperatives and effectiveness. In many ways, that is always required; however, in some ways, with the US pullback, there are both greater needs and greater opportunities for UK influence.

I will give an example about something that your Government have been looking at very closely: Syria. I was in Syria recently. Now is an incredible opportunity for transformation and a leap in human development after a devastating 15 years. This is not a problem, or a set of problems, that aid has solved or will solve, but the boost that can be provided in a climate such as Syria—in this critical, transformative period—is enormous. If that is left without the support that it needs, simply because of the US pullback, that will be an enormous global loss.

Secondly, I want to emphasise again girls’ education, which has been such a long-term UK priority. If you went to any global education environment—and, indeed, most of the multilateral environments—the UK was always there at the table, or even making a table, to make sure that the focus on girls’ education around the world was not only a policy priority but a funding priority. The UK has been incredibly important in bringing together things such as the Global Partnership for Education. The reasons for that are incredibly important. We know that, after humanitarian assistance, educating a girl is one of the most profoundly long-term investments that can be made to get a high return. These are two areas where the imperatives and effectiveness can be combined.

Thirdly, I have mentioned the governance agenda, which I believe is critical. This is going out of fashion in a number of ways, just like the gender agenda, which we have also been discussing. This is an area where the UK will see long-term dividends by not going with the tide and by continuing to insist—in its own investments and in multilateral fora—that a focus on democracy, rights and governance is fundamental to the change that we seek in the world and who we are at home, and that it remains and must remain a priority.

I also agree with the point about we often call “development diplomacy”. It is absolutely critical to remain a voice at the table and to continue to push these things on the international agenda, not only because it is critical to our partners around the world, who need to see and hear that we have not given up on these things, but because we need to bring others to the table to scale up ambition.

You asked about things such as loans. Maybe we will talk more about this, but there are some important areas for potential continued US-UK development co-operation. I believe that they will be in areas of economic growth and investment, but I will leave that point there for further discussion.

Q114 Lord Bruce of Bennachie: I will declare my interests. I have been a corporate adviser to DAI for the past 10 years, which is a major development partner for both the US Government and the UK Government. I also chair a charity, Water Unite, which stands to benefit from a loan from the US International Development Finance Corporation—that is still on the table.

Mr Thier, I agree with all your fundamental analysis of what aid has been for and achieved, and of what the UK-US partnership has done. I have the same regrets as you about the way in which it is being decimated. However, could we try to look at the positives? What are we going to do in this situation and what potential is there?

Maybe there are two different approaches. One would be to ask: what potential is there for the US to rethink some of this? Does the Congress not have a say? I am interested to hear your take on whether the Congress might have some influence on this. In addition, because the Administration have a habit of changing their mind several times a week, might it be possible to persuade them that, for their relationship with the UK, certain aspects of these cuts may be damaging to our common interests?

There is also the women and girls issue. We have read about the scale of the cuts and what is left, and the US Administration say that they are doing it because what was there was “woke”. What they are doing, frankly, looks misogynist and absolutely hostile to the interests of women and girls. Is there nothing we can do to try to reset that? I would be interested to know whether you think that we can.

My final question is: who else can we tap? Are the public likely to be prepared to give more, so that NGOs or private foundations can be mobilised to a greater extent? What do you think is possible?

Alex Thier: Thank you, Lord Bruce. It is great to see you again; we had an opportunity to do some work together on the cause of ending modern slavery, which I know you have been a stalwart supporter of. Thank you for that.

On the future of co-operation, I believe that, in some senses, it is a little too soon to say. It is like reviewing the plans for your new home as the earthquake is still happening. However, my work over three decades in some of the most challenging places on earth has not cured my optimism—and so the first half of 2025 is not going to do that either.

We know some things about this. This Administration are already signalling a strong emphasis on economic development, particularly tied with trade and prosperity at home. However, with the coming debate about giving the US International Development Finance Corporation—like the British BII—more money, more authority and the opportunity to make equity investments, that will be the area where we see both political support and resources.

I can give an even more specific example of where this is already coming up: the area of critical minerals. This issue makes many people nervous, but, given the deeply entrenched nature of the resource curse for so many countries, it would be absolutely fantastic, from a development perspective, that this latest gold rush is done in a way that is principled and that creates better governance and inclusive growth, rather than predation, forced labour, corruption and environmental destruction. Critical minerals and mining are issues where the US and the UK have a geostrategic interest and a development interest, and where there is opportunity for real, meaningful and positive change. That is one of a variety of examples in the areas of economic growth where there is, or is likely to be, more of an open door in Washington.

I very much take your point and your recommendation: I do believe that the US-UK relationship will allow the UK to come in and make some positive difference in the thinking of the Administration. We are in the middle right now of a firestorm, but I do believe that, at some point, there will be substantial resources coming out of the US, even if dramatically reduced for development. It is important that the UK focuses on a few of those areas where co-operation might be possible.

The second area that I would recommend is around training. I say this because, while I believe that the focus on education is critical, focusing on education for education’s sake should go beyond preparing people for school and in fact prepare them for work—preparing the poorest and the most marginalised to thrive in the emerging world. There is an opportunity to look at the area of training and the area of women’s economic empowerment as pathways to helping a lot of people to thrive in the world. This is also consonant with a broader focus on an economic agenda and not simply on a development agenda.

Those are two areas in particular that I would look to. As far as the Congress is concerned, there has just not been a lot of demonstrated willingness at the moment to put forward a strong view. This very day—and last night—the Congress is voting on cutting out some $8 billion of previously allocated development assistance. The only exception to that appears to be for PEPFAR for global HIV/AIDS funding, which is a small piece of good news, but the broader picture is still one of an Administration and a Congress that does not look prepared to make substantial political or financial investments.

Lord Bruce of Bennachie: Mr Rabinowitz, do Bond and your members with relations with American partners—not just American Government or public sector partners, but also the voluntary sector—have a capacity to work together to try to find ways of co-operating? What would be the problems and obstacles? What would be the opportunities?

Gideon Rabinowitz: We have had some engagement with our counterpart in the US, which is called InterAction. Their CEO was here, I think, in April, and we had a really good discussion. We brought together a group of our members to talk through those very questions—and it was a group of our members that have been most affected by the cuts. One of the things we discussed is the degree to which and how those organisations would be prepared and able to work with the US aid efforts in a new context in which different conditions are being attached to aid. For example, in humanitarian assistance, a great deal of that funding may come back, just because of how emergent those needs are. There will be lots of Congress members who are very eager to lobby for that funding to be protected.

The humanitarian funding may come back, but the conditions that are going to be applied to partners to work on those programmes are going to look very different. Obviously, one of the key principles for humanitarianism is neutrality, and conditions around sharing information with the US Government, meeting certain security requirements and only working with certain partners will really seriously constrain the ability of our members who are looking to continue working with the US around humanitarian assistance to be able to do so, because it will challenge the fundamental principles by which they carry out that work. Actually, a number of those agencies were saying that, as things stand, given the conditions that they see are starting to be attached to programming, they would see it as very difficult to start re-engaging in that work through US funding mechanisms because of those concerns.

Q115 Baroness Coussins: I would like to probe a bit further on the question of multilateralism, which both of you have mentioned in previous answers. In the context of the US stepping back from its commitments to the WHO and Gavi, for example, could you say whether you think there are any other multilateral agencies or organisations that are likely to be vulnerable also to US disengagement? What impact might that have on the shared influence between the US and the UK on the international stage?

If I could start with you, Mr Thier, could I also ask you to weave into your answer a comment on what the US thinking is behind decisions like this to disengage from multilateral organisations? President Trump’s statements seem to say quite starkly that anything that does not align with US interests needs to go, but I wonder whether there is any attempt by anybody around him, or influences that he might listen to, to calibrate the medium and long-term influences on US interests—or does he just stop dead and cannot see beyond immediate impact?

Alex Thier: Thank you, Baroness Coussins. That is a profound and difficult question to answer. I would point to a couple of things and maybe draw some distinctions between what we are seeing as emerging preferences, albeit quixotic ones. It is, as Lord Bruce mentioned, sometimes hard to tell from day to day where the Administration is going to see those priorities.

In the big picture, we have now seen that the US has essentially disavowed the Sustainable Development Goals—the entire framework that the UN has positioned itself for on working on global development questions. It has pulled out of Paris. It pulled out, sadly, of the Financing for Development summit this summer in Spain. When you think about the idea that there is a broad global project that is meant to maximise collaboration across nations, that is a particular area where this Administration believes that it cannot be and should not be constrained by the desires of so many other nations, and where it believes that it contributes overly—as we have seen also in the debate around NATO—to these institutions and has paid too much of the bill and gotten too little out of it. Obviously, we can profoundly disagree with that, but I do think that that is the perspective. These sort of broader movements that bring together the world are ones that are particularly inimical to the way that this Administration sees itself proceeding, which is important for your question and the previous one about how the UK in particular can forge positive co-operation going forward.

We have, however, seen some areas like the multilateral development banks where those cuts appear to be perhaps less extreme—where there appears to be less of a desire because, whether it is at the World Bank, the IMF, and it is less clear on the regional development banks, the US does continue to see some value in the partnership. It sees some value in the role of the US dollar in these institutions. It sees some role in the debates that they are having because it touches a larger number of countries, or because it has to do with competition with China. Those are some areas where there is still an interest.

Again, I think that the primary interest—the one that will persist—is one that is very directly tied to a perception of US security interests and US economic interests. I have worked and talked with colleagues in the State Department many times in recent months. Of course, those institutions are still filled with wonderful, long-term, committed diplomats who want the best for the US and will be working over time to make things happen.

What they say, over and over, is that they are getting singular, simple messages from the top to constantly ask: how is this benefiting the prosperity and security of the US? Therefore, I think the search for places where there will be multilateral co-operation, as well as bilateral co-operation, will be those places that can, in the mind of the Administration, successfully answer that question.

Baroness Coussins: Mr Rabinowitz, what are your thoughts on the possible weakening of multilateral co-operation? How it can be preserved and strengthened?

Gideon Rabinowitz: I will be brief, because I know we have a couple of other themes to get through. I think it is very welcome that the UK has signalled, both with funding and politically, the continued importance of collaboration on global health multilaterally. The UK is a supporter of the WHO. We have already had an announcement of funding to Gavi; although it was around a 40% cut in real terms compared to the last replenishment, it was still in some ways higher than would have been expected given the cuts—it is really important to emphasise that. We hope that the Government will do likewise around the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Alex mentioned the UN FfD conference. We worked very closely on that with a global coalition of civil society organisations who were deeply concerned to see the US undermining efforts to tackle the long-term economic issues that we need to address globally to promote sustainable development. Then, the US pulled out at the last minute, which undermined that process. There is an important job to be done, if possible, with the UK engaging the US on how we make the global economic system fairer, more sustained and more stable, so that we can spread prosperity around the world.

The UN is obviously a big concern. This Government are putting a very strong emphasis on defence and national security. What will happen, for example, to US support for UN peacekeeping and those softer elements of conflict and security interventions around the world? The US is a very big funder of those types of interventions. I think there is a role for the UK to try to use those international fora to keep the US at the table on security and conflict intervention.

Q116 Lord Alderdice: In light of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and key climate finance mechanisms, what role can or should the UK play in sustaining climate resilience and adaptation efforts in the global South? How credible is its leadership given recent ODA cuts and limited US backing?

Gideon Rabinowitz: That is a very good question. It is a major concern of our members and the other networks we work with on climate and the environment. Up until now, the UK has taken the position of funding climate finance for mitigation and adaptation from the ODA budget. We have long called for additional resources to be mobilised and provided that go beyond ODA to fund climate change work around the world. That is what has been committed to by the UK as part of the international community through climate agreements: that funding for climate change will be additional.

Obviously, given the aid cuts, it will be very hard for the UK even to maintain the level of resource that it provides for climate change through the ODA budget. We think this makes the imperative on finding additional sources of resource for tackling climate change even more urgent.

A number of our members are working on the agenda of climate levies, polluter pays taxes and applying taxes to the industries and sectors that are polluting and contributing to climate change—they also have a role to help fund and resource the efforts to tackle climate change. Those types of levies and taxes need to be looked at again as an important source for raising that additional finance.

We do not pretend that this will be an easy thing to sell politically, but if the UK is to maintain its role on tackling climate change globally—and at least fill some of the gaps left by the likes of the US in pulling back from that agreement—it needs to look again at all the innovative and additional ways of raising that finance and mobilising additional resources to fund climate change interventions. Otherwise, the UK, along with the US, will lose credibility in the global fight to tackle climate change.

Lord Alderdice: If the UK were to follow up the lines that have been suggested by our colleague here, would that keep the US and UK together or would it increasingly push them apart, given that the US seems to have little appetite for increased taxation, for example, to address climate change?

Alex Thier: Thank you. I think that this is an area of divergence and one that the UK must nonetheless pursue with the rest of the world. The profound nature of the climate crisis, the long-term challenge that comes with it and the dangers of not acting now are so profound that this is something that certainly needs to persist regardless.

I will put forward one idea to consider. We have not talked about the debt sustainability crisis, which is upon us and is coming for many developing countries, but it is enormous. It is also an area that plays a little outside of the normal debates around ODA. As happened with the Jubilee 2000 campaign 25 years ago, there is an enormous opportunity to look at financial restructuring.

Something like a grand bargain that looks at financial restructuring on debt and longer-term investment with concessional financing for climate transformation is a very interesting idea. It could be one of those big transformative approaches that unlocks resources and takes care to potentially address two massive problems.

I think that the UK, in its long-term work both as global financial capital and the epicentre of the previous Jubilee campaign, would be a very interesting actor to take on an imaginative challenge to address this issue. If it is seen more through the multilateral, finance-led debt sustainability lens, that is potentially an area where the US could get on board with aspects that are not just about climate change directly.

Lord Alderdice: That is a very interesting and quite specific proposition, so thank you very much for it.

Q117 The Chair: Thank you both very much indeed. I will draw things to a close by going back to my initial question, when you both, perhaps not deliberately, answered the question about whether the current US Administration’s retreat from international development represents a permanent shift. Is it simply impossible to see through the haze, or is the answer that it depends on who is in office in future? Alternatively, has so much damage been done that it cannot be repaired?

Alex Thier: There is an important question underlying this about the value that the public place on international development. I would like to dispense with the notion that, somehow, US foreign assistance has not always been in pursuit of US interests. Indeed, as a contributor and co-drafter of the US’s 2014 national security strategy, I can say that development impact has always been fundamentally aligned with national security and prosperity.

However, the case needs to be made over and over, and it needs to be made effectively across a wide variety of actors and institutions in the domestic space. I feel a little bit like the ghost of Christmas future from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, coming to you from a land that is devastated by lack of having nurtured domestic US support for development.

Fundamentally, I do not believe that Americans think that helping the poor and hungry is a waste, but we have lost ground in the public debate to bomb-throwers, masters of misinformation and deep distrust in public institutions. So, fundamentally, I think that we have to undertake an effort—which is certainly one that those in the US and the UK who support it should be doing together—to reverse the long-term consequences of these changes, to demonstrate the importance and effectiveness of aid. It is a simple bromide but one which we have to constantly return to.

I believe that US assistance will re-emerge, even in this Administration, but powerfully in future Administrations. I believe that there is a broad swathe of people in this country, such as youth labour unions and people who deeply believe in solidarity with those around the world who are struggling and suffering. I believe that this will come through private finance as well as public finance.

The mission now is to think about how we rebuild towards that future and harness that political energy. Importantly, how do we identify vehicles, movements and opportunities that will inspire people to want to join and to make that change? Right now, you are in a stronger position than those in the US Administration to carry that torch and flame so that the future folk—like us when we were younger—will be inspired to make the political and financial commitments to return the US to the place that it should be in supporting global development.

The Chair: That is a bit of a shock to the system to the House of Lords to be told that they are young enough.

Gideon Rabinowitz: I agree wholeheartedly with Alex. One of the things that we and our members are spending a lot of time thinking about in the UK context is how we make the case anew for international co-operation. We do not think that public support has fallen off in the way that it has been characterised, but it is a challenge. We are not where we were a decade ago, or at least certainly not at the time of the Make Poverty History campaign in Gleneagles in 2005, but there is a serious job for us to do in remaking the case for this assistance.

It is going to be hard to build back. The political challenge of increasing a budget is always multiple times harder than reducing it, and the level of spend will set a new baseline that will be very challenging in the US context to build back again.

The other challenge is that, obviously, lots of countries, including our own unfortunately, have followed the example of the US and have been cutting their aid budgets. That poses challenges and creates a general culture around it. What we really want to see is the UK getting back as soon as possible to a position where it is increasing that budget again and giving an example to the likes of the US that it needs to follow suit.

It will be a challenge to return to where we were before these cuts, but it is a challenge in which we all need to be involved and engaged. A strong element of that needs to be public engagement that makes the case to the public that this is something that our Government should champion and put resources into.

The Chair: Thank you both very much indeed for a very interesting session; you have made a major contribution to our inquiry.