Bond Submission to the International Development Committee’s Inquiry on the Future of UK Aid
14th November 2025
Executive Summary:
When the Prime Minister announced back in February that UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) would be cut from 0.5% of gross national income (GNI) to just 0.3% GNI to fund an increase in defence spending, Bond and our members felt both alarmed and let down by a Labour government that promised so much in their own manifesto to support people facing poverty, climate change and conflict around the world. These cuts will cost lives, and it’ll be the most marginalised communities that will bear the brunt.
As a sector, we are not naive. We see the challenges the Prime Minister faces. We understand that this is perhaps the most volatile and violent world we’ve faced since the Second World War, and we understand that the priority of government should be to keep its citizens safe. But cutting UK aid to fund defence is short-sighted, short-term, and incredibly damaging to our reputation on the global stage. And the instability, poverty, and chaos caused by these cuts is likely to lead to more conflict, more migration, and more suffering.
The UK aid budget has been instrumental in achieving significant development and humanitarian outcomes globally, enabling girls’ education, providing essential food and healthcare to families affected by conflict, and strengthening communities and governance systems to reduce extreme poverty. However, governments of all stripes have too often undermined public confidence in UK aid, despite its proven impact and relatively small share of total public expenditure.
Our submission sets out a vision for the UK’s role as partner in international development moving forward and practical recommendations that the UK must adopt to mitigate the impacts of the latest round of cuts both on the most marginalised communities and on the UK’s international reputation. We’d like to draw attention to the following priorities:
About Bond:
Bond is the UK network for organisations working in international development. Bond unites and supports a diverse network of over 350 civil society organisations from across the UK, and allies to help eradicate global poverty, inequality and injustice.
If you would like to meet discuss this briefing, please get in touch with Gideon Rabinowitz, Director of Policy and Advocacy, grabinowitz@bond.org.uk
Question Responses:
With a severely reduced UK ODA budget it is more important than ever that the remaining budget is focused on reducing poverty and inequality (as legally required by the International Development Act 2002), and is guided by the internationally recogised (in the SDG Declaration) principle to ‘leave no one behind’ (LNOB). Previous cuts to the aid budget have disproportionately impacted programmes intended to support gender equality, children, people with disabilities, older people and other people who are particularly vulnerable to and affected by poverty and inequality. It is vital that decisions on future ODA allocations, and subsequent cuts, are meaningfully informed by comprehensive equality impact assessments to avoid making the same mistake.
The UK Government must use all of its international policies and cooperation to support efforts to leave no one behind. A coordinated, whole-of-government approach to LNOB should include:
With 65% of the world’s extreme poor projected to live in Fragile and Conflict Affected Situations (FCASs) by 2030 it is vital that more UK aid is rebalanced towards FCAS through flexible, multi-year, and risk-tolerant funding. Predictable and adaptive ODA in these contexts will deliver greater impact and reinforce UK leadership on stability and resilience. Humanitarian, development, and peace efforts must also align to address both immediate crises and long-term fragility.
The government rightly states that it wants to align its ODA spending with the asks of partner countries, and mobilising the private sector can play a role in this. However, as shown at this year’s Fourth Financing for Development Conference, partner countries from low- and middle-income countries are still urging donor countries to meet their existing 0.7% commitment. The outcome document to which the UK has agreed, makes it clear that private finance is needs to be additional to and not a replacement for ODA.
Our experience and that of our members tells us that government-civil society engagement is most effective when it is meaningful, inclusive and deliberative. It should begin early, be regular and consistent, balance transparency and confidentiality, encourage accountability and be well-resourced.
Both government and INGOs have more to do to ensure diverse voices are shaping policy and programmes. Well-organised engagement has the potential to support greater equity, diversity and inclusion. It can enable decision-makers to hear and consider the perspectives and experiences of different groups when making decisions or designing policies and programmes that impact them. Yet all too often, it is the same individuals and organisations who are invited to take part, and there is limited participation from people who have been racialised or marginalised, who are from global majority countries or who have lived experience of the issues being discussed.
The UK Government should prioritise listening to voices and communities from Global Majority countries as part of their engagement with civil society. As outlined in the Civil Society covenant, civil society and Government need to work together “to co-produce solutions with those communities and citizens that are most affected”. It is expected that civil society organisations will involve those with “lived experience” in their work where relevant and “represent the interests of the people or causes they have been established to support”, so both Government and UK INGOs need to get better at engaging with communities. UK INGOs should recognise their privileged access to the UK Government, and where relevant give up their seat in conversations with Government to those based in Global Majority countries.
The UK must reaffirm its support for principled humanitarian action and International Humanitarian Law by protecting humanitarian budgets, ensuring impartial, needs-based aid, and upholding UNSC Resolution 2417 on conflict and hunger. Visible UK leadership in championing humanitarian principles is vital to maintaining access, credibility, and influence in crises and multilateral forums.
Since the merger between the Foreign Office and DFID, and the creation of the FCDO, there has been a decline in development capability in the department, which has only partly been reversed under the current government. Amongst other challenges, this decline in development capability and capacity seems to have weakened understanding of the importance of civil society, and the role that it plays in helping the UK achieve their development objectives. The UK Government should safeguard existing development expertise within the department and promote the unique partnership that civil society plays.
A significant new change process is currently ongoing in the FCDO, which has led to a reduction in the number of directorates (with all global policy issues now under the responsibility of one Director General), and is planned to reduce staffing by 25%. These plans raise concerns about further losses in development capability and limited recognition of the capacity required to drive effective delivery through multilateral organisations (where a growing proportion of UK aid will be focussed), to develop and drive forward the shifts that are taking place in UK aid (as set out by the Development Minister), and to deliver on the ambition to strengthen the sharing of expertise.
Given the limited resources that FCDO and other departments delivering UK aid will have in the future, they should support countries where their funding makes the most difference, the poorest and most fragile countries and communities. They should invest for the long term in these countries, building long-lasting meaningful relationships with the communities that they work with, invest in local civil society and give unrestricted funding that helps organisations flourish. They should move away from transactional relationships to ones that put people first, identifying windows of opportunities to connect with partners and work with them beyond due diligence.
The UK government should invest more time and resources in building relationships with civil society, increasing staff capacity within the FCDO so that they can work directly with civil society rather than through intermediaries. This will involve visiting partners regularly so that they can build strong relationships, trust and keep in touch with local challenges.
The UK Government needs to continue to invest in its expertise and resource in Safeguarding to ensure the continuing endorsement of the Common Approach to Protection from Sexual Exploitation, Sexual Abuse and Sexual Harassment (CAPSEAH) – the strength of which comes from wide ranging, international engagement. The FCDO’s ongoing work with Bond and other agencies has supported the development of accessible sector-wide safeguarding resources which have improved safeguarding standards through the sector.
If the UK Government is genuine in their desire to move to an authentic partnership model with those in the global majority countries, the UK Government should recognise its colonial history. It should address structural racism within the FCDO and the international development sector by creating a comfortable environment for feedback from global majority countries and diaspora and implement recommendations from the IDCs inquiry into Racism in the aid sector. They should have difficult conversations that focus on redressing power imbalances. They should facilitate sector-wide discussions to achieve an equitable power balance and commit to being an advocate and ally as a funder to build trust with civil society and design all of their funding so that it supports locally led development.
The FCDO should develop a coherent approach to partnership across the department and should prioritise developing the local leadership strategy as a cross-department piece of work, developed through a meaningful and inclusive manner that centres the voices of the global majority and the diaspora.
This government must challenge long standing assumptions about how development works, such as the belief that the UK should always take the lead, that directly funding global majority CSOs is inherently risky and that those identified as ’international’ should automatically get paid more than ‘national’ staff.
The FCDO should design funding that at its core is transformative, supports locally led development and invests in civil society. The government should meet the commitments in the Grand Bargain and work towards ringfencing at least 25% of humanitarian funding to go directly to local actors, and consider applying similar targets to all aid spending. It is estimated that if 25% of ODA was shifted from the international to local intermediary structures, that local intermediaries could deliver programming that is 32% more cost efficient than international intermediaries, by reducing layers of expenditure on international staff costs and indirect or overhead costs.
UK ODA funding should be designed so that at its very heart, it supports the local delivery of aid and decision making around development. This can be done by:
Employing a transformative approach to partnerships will be difficult. It challenges the traditional assumptions and risk narratives about how development works. It will require a whole department approach, ensuring that all teams are joined up and working together to achieve this fundamental shift.
It will be challenging, but if the UK Government develops a strategy, that embraces risk as a necessary element of social change they will have the ability to embrace failure. They should make commitments to talk about them publicly, as you won’t learn without it as well as long term commitment to communities which will allow for overcoming failures. The FCDO should design funding mechanisms that invite risk and create a safe space for making mistakes from which to learn.
The UK NGO landscape is likely to fundamentally change over the next ten years as part of this transformation process, with some organisations closing and others changing their strategic objectives and remit. The transformation required from the UK Government and INGOs will not happen immediately. There will be a transition period, where UK INGOs are needed and where they have to adapt and refocus to their strengths. The UK Government should provide support for INGOs to transform towards more equitable practices, and where the FCDO is funding their work, they should require INGOs to report on partnership transformation in their programme results frameworks.
While scrutiny and value-for-money assessments are important, and public support for development and humanitarian assistance also needs to be reprioritised by the UK INGO sector, the use of UK aid as a political “punch bag” by successive governments of all stripes has contributed to an inaccurate and unfair public perception that UK aid is wasteful or ideologically driven. It is also important to note that, though it is true that only 18% of people polled thought UK aid is “effective” or “very effective”, it stands at 51% for charities and NGOs and 57% for international organisations (many of whom are funded by the UK aid budget). This rhetoric risks eroding one of the UK’s most effective tools for promoting global stability, prosperity and sustainability, and influence.
The government should adopt a more balanced approach to communicating about UK aid, emphasising impact, transparency, rebutting inaccurate stories of waste, sharing more human stories, demonstrating accountability, and the tangible benefits to both communities and the UK’s global standing, security and sustainability.
The government must work to strengthen impact measurement and transparency. Prior to the merger of the Foreign Office and DFID, the UK was a global leader in transparent UK aid reporting. We were able to tell the British public, clearly and confidently, how many children were vaccinated, how many girls gained access to education, and how many people received life-saving support during humanitarian crises. This data and the accompanying human stories were vital in demonstrating the value of UK aid and building public trust. However, this level of reporting and visibility has significantly diminished, and the ability to communicate evidence-based results has weakened. The government must work to reinstate comprehensive impact-tracking mechanisms across UK aid programmes to ensure consistent, verifiable reporting on outcomes. As a supplement to this, the FCDO could explore a requirement for all grant recipients to incorporate public impact communication into their reporting obligations, ensuring that the British taxpayer can directly see the results of their investment.
Public understanding of the UK’s role in international development has also declined. The previous inclusion of global development education within the national curriculum helped to build public awareness of UK aid and its impact. There is a need to reprioritise this work with an updated understanding of development and humanitarian assistance, grounded in partnership, mutual respect, and locally led development principles.
The Uk government should consider reinstating a modest public education fund to support teaching resources and outreach initiatives on global development and humanitarian response, framed around locally led approaches and modern development practice.
Anecdotally, from observing how the public engages with government announcements on UK aid, taxpayers generally assume that UK aid should reach those who need it most so instinctively they support the UK’s funding pledges to any humanitarian crisis. They are also quick to criticise language that feels patronising or self-congratulatory. For example, when The Telegraph reported that the UK would be giving “advice” rather than “aid” to lower-income countries, many readers reacted negatively to what they saw as patronising.
There is an inherent tension between the public’s expectation that UK aid should alleviate poverty and help countries facing crisis, and the government’s emphasis on ensuring that UK aid supports UK prosperity, particularly through future trade relationships. That said, many segments of the British public value understanding how UK aid contributes to their own lives, whether by preventing future pandemics, supporting energy security, or helping stabilise global food prices. These are messages that resonate and land well, show how interconnected we all are.
We must continue to make the case for UK aid and explain how it is invested in communities around the world in a proactive way, and that includes via government communications. Too often, inaccurate stories are being left without any quick official response from the government. The British public clearly believe in partnership and in the UK doing its fair share globally. Maintaining that trust requires a strong communications loop: showing the impact of UK aid spending and making clear that the UK’s aid budget remains a relatively small portion of overall government expenditure.
Ensuring value for money cannot mean cutting corners on safeguarding or impact monitoring. These are essential investments, and it is encouraging that the FCDO continues to prioritise them as part of delivering effective and responsible aid.
The UK should play a leading role in building a more inclusive and democratic multilateral system where all countries have an equal voice. Majority World countries are demanding equal participation, not just platforms for accountability, making it untenable for rich nations to continue dominating in these spaces.
This government should work with and influence multilateral lending institutions to promote fair lending practices that do not lead to an increase in poverty for deprived and marginalised populations. The UK should champion FCAS-responsive reform across multilateral and financial institutions by amplifying fragile states’ voices in governance and prioritising accountability to affected populations. The UK should also advocate for reforms that make the aid system more inclusive, transparent, and responsive to protracted crises and ensure financing strategies reflect the realities of working in fragile contexts.
In the context of UK aid cuts, it is all the more important that the UK shows solidarity and supports proposals from LMICs to make the international financial architecture and their decision-making structures fairer, such as those tabled under the recent Fourth Financing for Development (FfD4) conference particularly around debt, tax and illicit financial flows.
As one of the major legal jurisdictions for sovereign debt, the UK has an opportunity and responsibility to play a positive role in tackling the debt crisis and help LMICs to increase their fiscal space for their own development at low to no costs for the UK. This should include private creditor legislation to compel private creditors to participate in debt relief, support a UN intergovernmental process to agree reforms to the global debt system, reform of the G20 Common Framework, and IMF/World Bank reforms including reform of the Low-Income Countries Debt Sustainability Framework.
On tax it is crucial that the UK supports the United Nations Tax Convention and its protocols to strengthen global tax cooperation to raise revenue, enable transparency measures, deliver reform, ensure a just and sustainable global financial system. The UK should also consider taxing the richest and most polluting people and companies.
Illicit financial flows (IFFs) drain capital and weaken financial systems in LMICs and in many cases IFF outflows exceed ODA inflows of countries. In Africa alone, IFFs cost $89 billion annually – equivalent to 3.7% of Africa’s GDP. The UK must remain a key leader on this issue and must push to enhance global financial transparency, promote data integrity and exchange between law enforcement, and address tax avoidance, evasion and crimes.
Lastly, the WTO needs reform because its current systems are inadequate for today's global economy, leading to a crisis where its functions are eroding. The existing rules are not sufficient to govern new challenges like food security, pandemic responses, and climate change, making new agreements like plurilateral agreements necessary. Also, the criteria and benefits for developing countries are outdated and need to be reassessed to ensure fairness and effectiveness. Countries around the world, especially G20 member states which hold 75% of world's trade, must mobilize political will and commitment to effective multilateral system to redesign WTO so it can foster rules-based international cooperation and support sustainable development respecting huma rights, sustainability commitments and supporting climate action.
Investment is important for development, and the private sector has a role to play in this, particularly in creating decent jobs, building resilient and responsible supply chains and sustainable infrastructures. However, as it stands the evidence for demonstrable development impact from private finance is limited and DFIs (including UK’s BII) have been criticised for their limited focus on poverty reduction. It’s unclear what evidence has informed such a wholesale departmental shift towards ‘investor’ and as such, we question whether such an intense focus on reframing the UK’s role to that of investor is the right course of action. Such a broad slogan belies and undermines the critical work and lifesaving work the FCDO does that is entirely distinct from this heavy focus on private sector-oriented solutions, including support the UK offers partners in the humanitarian, health and climate space, which have been outlined as clear strategic priorities.
The ’donor to investor’ approach also misinterprets the type of partnership LMIC partners are looking for. While LMICs partner governments are calling for more private investment, they have also been clear that private finance investment needs to be additional to and not a replacement of ODA. At the recent Financing for Development Conference (FfD4), statements clearly offered a more nuanced position than the ‘donor to investor’ approach responds to. The Kenyan National statement reinforced that, "public international finance remains indispensable. Africa is not asking for favours. We want fairness, partnership, and investments." While the collective Group of G77 and China statement stated, "we emphasize the importance of fulfilling all official development assistance (ODA) commitments, and of providing adequate, predictable, timely and concessional finance to developing countries, in line with their national priorities and development strategies.”
At a time of fiscal constraints, it is important to consider how the UK uses its resources on the core ODA mandate to reduce poverty. The heavy focus on private finance is not only at odds with calls for democratising and reforming the global economic system but also risks diverting a heavily reduced ODA budget from where it is needed and can achieve the most to reduce poverty and inequality.
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