Response: Future of UK aid and development assistance

1.      This response is submitted by James Copestake, Professor of International Development at the University of Bath.

2.      It expresses his own views and draws on a public symposium hosted by the University’s Centre for Development Studies on the current state of international development hosted by the University’s Centre for Development Studies on 11 September 2025 to mark its 50th Anniversary.

3.      The Centre for Development Studies (CDS) is home to researchers engaged in critical and interdisciplinary development research aimed at tackling diverse but interconnected 21st century challenges for societies in the global South. It builds on a 50-year legacy of research, teaching, and policy engagement to generate progressive ideas on the political economy of resources and food, environment and sustainability governance, labour, poverty and inequalities, conflict and humanitarian practice - https://www.bath.ac.uk/research-centres/centre-for-development-studies/

4.      Professor Copestake and the CDS team are keen to support this inquiry by supplying supplementary or oral evidence.

How should the Government be prioritising UK Official Development Assistance in the coming years?

5.      Twin criteria should dominate prioritisation:

• How to address challenges that are fully global in scope, and tend to be neglected at the national level. The nature of global public goods, including measures to reduce existential risks, has been widely researched, and opportunities and to meeting them are well understood.
• How to use public funds to support and promote durable bonds of solidarity between citizens of the UK and of countries eligible for ODA.

6.      The term ‘partnership’ is overused, tired and weak. Government support for intermediary development agencies to serve as potential brokers of UK-global citizenship solidarity should be based on evidence of (a) alignment of their goals and activities with global challenges, (b) evidence of the depth, reach, balance and alignment of involvement in their governance and activities by citizens of both the UK and ODA eligible countries.

How does the UK’s delivery approach for a) development and b) humanitarian assistance need to adapt to the changing funding and values landscape?

7.      Government engagement with UK-based International NGOs should be contingent on how well they align with the two criteria set out above. It is better to make a smaller commitment to ODA that is transparently focused on shared longer-term interests and goals (including global peace, disaster preparedness, pandemic prevention, climate change) than to have a larger programme that includes fudged attempts simultaneously to serve shorter term national economic and inter-governmental political interests.

8.      FCDO and other departments can mobilise a lot of expertise to do this, with those responsible for delivery having a clearly demarcated mandate for doing so, without this being compromised by pressure to deliver on other UK foreign policy interests. Experience with a more granular approach to funding diverse, grounded and creative approaches to development (e.g. using challenge fund mechanisms) was eroded in the rush to massify delivery during the heyday of DFID but can readily be rebuilt - including through cooperation with like-minded countries across Europe and beyond. The internet, fintech and genAI open up new possibilities for running them more openly, democratically and efficiently. 

What needs to change to realise the goal of moving from paternalistic models and relationships to partnerships?

9.      Allocation of funding should be subject to a test of the strength and breadth of participation of local citizens in areas to which funds are allocated, and the depth of solidarity-based civil society connections within those areas, as well as with civil society and like-minded citizens in the UK. This will entail sometimes difficult government-government dialogue in DAC-eligible countries to which funding is directed through approved civil society-led links.

10.  Opportunities arise from the experience and dynamism of UK civil society’s involvement with global issues. This extends beyond specialist NGOs to include educational institutions, devolved government agencies, the NHS, faith-based organisations and professional associations, and can build on new forms of person-to-person collaboration made possible by the internet and social media. Organisations that have capacity for to foster productive solidarity-based international collaboration range from the RSPB and the RNLI to trade unions and football clubs. There is also much to learn from and to build on within the University sector, including experience with the Global Challenges Research Fund.

11.  More robust ways of assessing and rewarding coherence, strength and depth of solidarity-based networks are possible. The UK has significant international expertise (including across the membership of BOND and the UK Evaluation Society) in facilitating use of these and ensuring approaches are consistent with those used to assess UK based public spending.

12.  With the exception of social enterprises (broadly defined) private business involvement in ODA should be radically curtailed on the grounds of weak citizenship participation, poor alignment with global goals, and the need to move away from tired, burdensome and often self-defeating approaches to outsourcing and public procurement that conflate market value with assessment of (global) public value.

13.  Coordination of humanitarian relief and development efforts is itself a global public challenge, and the emphasis can again be placed on how organisations dedicated to it can deepen and widen their accountability to UK and DAC eligible countries’ citizens.

How should the Government be communicating the results of UK aid, and its importance, to the public?

14.  Communications about UK aid should emphasise mutual benefits and shared interests, showing how tackling poverty, pandemics, and climate impacts overseas helps create a safer, more stable world for everyone, including the UK.

15.  Effective communications also require partnership with trusted voices, NGOs, diaspora groups, researchers, and local communities, to communicate results authentically and avoiding top-down narratives. The UK again has a wealth of experience to offer in doing this well, including within the BBC and BBC media trust.

16.  More funding for global citizenship education and solidarity is needed (Ireland’s Citizenship Education Strategy provides one model here) and strong public messaging to explain and promote the role of ODA in fostering global solidarity in response to shared global challenges.

How can the UK Government align its development work with taxpayers’ expectations’, and ensure value for money?

17.  Public response to a more tightly defined and participatory UK aid programme will be strong and positive, particularly when they recognise UK citizenship engagement and global solidarity are keys to leveraging public aid money in support of citizen-led activities.

18.  This should prioritise equity of opportunity among citizens and civil society over technocratic attempts by Governments, civil servants and private sector consultants to allocate and manage aid according to abstract criteria of equity. In short there is scope for (re)building a stronger sense of citizen ownership of UK aid.

19.  This also helps to realise untapped governance capability within UK civil society.

20.  Value for money should not be linked to opaquely evaluated ‘results’ or ‘impact’, but by evidence of the strength and depth of public engagement – much of it generated through participatory self-reflection and learning. There is a growing body of experience with participatory approaches to value-for-money assessment.

Where is reform needed in multilateral agencies and development banks the UK is a member of, and funds?

21.  The UK should be willing to withdraw from agencies that cannot demonstrate the strength and depth of citizens’ engagement in the countries where they operate.

22.  They should support reform efforts to bring agencies closer to the people they serve – which means fewer posts in Geneva and New York, for example. It can push for greater public accountability by making its funding conditional upon it.

What is needed to achieve the Government’s objectives in terms of transforming its role to one of an investor from that of a donor?

23.  The government can effectively work with philanthropic funding sources to the extent that they are aligned with the two criteria set out in Paragraph 5.

24.  Business development and private investment in DAC-eligible countries is best supported through British International Investment and private impact investors rather than through direct government investment or subsidies.

25.  Public involvement in other DFIs is harder to justify, beyond contributing enough to retain a seat on strategic boards. 

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