Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and his Tory cabinet colleagues have been accused of having “blood on their hands” over the £4 billion cut to the UK’s overseas aid budget.
The SNP’s Hannah Bardell made the claim as Raab came under sustained fire during a Commons session on the Government’s decision to reduce spending to 0.5 per cent of national income rather than the 0.7 per cent pledged in the Conservative 2019 election manifesto.
Speaking in the Commons the Livingston MP said: “I think the real question is does this Tory Government even care? Even one of his own backbenchers has admitted that these cuts will kill.
“The other G7 countries have stepped up their aid budget, but the UK’s the only one to cut it, it’s utterly shameful… how does he and his Tory Government sleep at night knowing that they have the blood on their hands of some of the poorest people in the world?”
Raab replied: “I think that was pretty unsavoury.. We sleep at night because we’re the third biggest ODA (Official Development Assistance) contributor in the G7.”
Ministers have repeatedly stated the reduction to 0.5 per cent is a temporary measure until the nation’s finances are repaired following the coronavirus pandemic, although no timetable has been outlined.
Other nationalist MPs piled in on the Foreign Secretary too.
Steven Bonnar MP said: “Can the Foreign Secretary not see that this is not about left or right, it’s about right and wrong, does he recognise that this is not propaganda, this is about life and death for the most vulnerable people. So will he now U-turn on this decision before it is too late for them?”
Dundee West MP Chris Law asked: “Thinking of those children, will the Foreign Secretary finally commit to reversing the decision or is he willing to let the ink dry on the death sentences of these innocent lives?”
Earlier Conservative former cabinet minister David Davis also warned the aid cut has “potentially the fatal consequences of a medium-sized war”.
Davis said: “On Ethiopia, where the UN tells us 350,000 faced imminent starvation, the minister for Africa yesterday could not tell the House the size of the cut in our aid.
“I understand from impeccable sources we propose to cut that aid by £58 million, more than half."
“Can the Foreign Secretary confirm the size of that cut and tell the House what we intend to do to reduce the hundreds of thousands of deaths arising from our policy?”
Raab replied: “I don’t accept the proposition he’s put forward, we continue to be a global leader in ODA, we stretch to put as much in as we possibly can, of course we’ve got temporary financial exceptional circumstances, but we will get back to 0.7 per cent as soon as we can."
