Tory rebels have lost their bid to reverse the government’s £4bn annual cut to the foreign aid budget, losing by a margin of 35 votes.
The government’s victory - by 333 to 298 votes - comes after Keir Starmer warned that failure to defeat the government on Tuesday would make the cuts “not temporary but indefinite”.
Former Conservative prime minister Theresa May was among the Tory MPs who rebelled against the reduction of the aid budget. “We made a promise to the poorest people in the world. The government has broken that promise. This motion means that promise may be broken for years to come,” she said.
Charity bosses were quick to criticise the result, with a senior figure at Save the Children saying that “children will die as a result” of it.
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson will urge social media firms to take tougher action over racism in a meeting today after the abuse of England football players, which he described as being “from the dark spaces of the internet”.
Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka have been the target of racist hate online after England’s defeat in the Euro 2020 final, which saw all three players miss penalties.
While ministers have condemned the abuse, England football star Tyrone Mings has accused Priti Patel of “stoking the fire” by criticising the team for taking the knee against racism as “gesture politics”.
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