Labour MPs call for Andy Burnham to restore aid spending target set by Brown

Influential backbenchers are calling on Andy Burnham to reclaim Labour’s leadership on international development and chart a course back to spending 0.7% of national income on overseas aid.In a collection of essays to be published soon by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) thinktank, MPs lay out proposals for a Burnham-led government to rethink foreign policy.The project emerged from gatherings of MPs and policy experts, including David Miliband, who has been touted as a potential foreign secretary in a Burnham government, and Mark Malloch-Brown, a former deputy secretary general of the UN.In the pamphlet, Fleur Anderson, a former minister whose career before entering parliament was in international development, calls on Burnham to promise to return to spending 0.7% of national income on aid.She suggests setting a 10-year road back to meeting that goal, which future governments could deviate from in times of crisis.“What matters is not mechanical annual targets, but establishing a credible long-term trajectory that partner governments, multilateral institutions, NGOs and local organisations can plan around,” she says in her contribution.The 0.7% target was legislated for under Gordon Brown, but ditched in 2020 by Rishi Sunak, ostensibly as a temporary measure during the Covid pandemic.Instead of reinstating it, Keir Starmer chose to make further significant cuts to aid spending and use the money for defence – prompting the resignation of the development minister, Anneliese Dodds.Anderson writes: “The need to strengthen our national defence demands serious answers. But retreating from development commitments is ultimately a false economy.“A more unstable world will not become safer because wealthy countries disengage from tackling the conditions that drive instability in the first place.”Meanwhile, Liam Byrne, the chair of the Commons business and trade committee, calls for the UK to use its chairing of the G20 group of countries in 2027 to convene discussions on a global wealth tax.The UK will take up leadership of the G20 from the US, which, under Donald Trump, has sought to downplay its role.Byrne argues that taking up the cause of an international wealth tax would pick up the baton from previous chairs, including South Africa and Brazil.“The UK – respected for institutional design and coordination – could take this momentum and help solve the problem of designing a tax that actually works, and which helps transform domestic resource mobilisation in countries both rich and poor,” he writes.Development campaigners have been urging Starmer’s government for some months to set out an ambitious agenda for the G20.In the last Labour government, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown used the UK’s time as G8 chair to help secure international agreement on an ambitious programme of debt relief for the world’s poorest countries.The G20 is a wider group whose membership includes Brazil, South Africa and China, and which gained prominence during the global financial crisis as a forum for discussing issues including financial stability.Another former Labour minister, Gareth Thomas, has suggested using the G20 – and the UK’s role as chair of the G7 the following year – to kickstart discussions on what should replace the UN’s sustainable development goals, which are due to expire in 2030.“While the G20 and G7 are insufficient forums for establishing these global goals themselves, the UK’s presidencies are an opportunity that should not be missed to ignite the process,” he said.He also suggests there could be scope to mobilise significant resources for development, as a clear demonstration of what can be achieved.“Defending institutions will not, on its own, inspire citizens to believe in multilateralism. It is better to show than tell what cooperation can achieve by focusing on a discrete and tangible goal,” he says.He cites the recent success of Gavi, the public-private vaccines alliance, in vaccinating children in war-torn countries for $1 a dose, alongside the International Rescue Committee, which is led by Miliband.Thomas argues: “The UK’s forthcoming G20 presidency could aim to pool $1bn towards an ambitious multi-year rollout to immunise a billion children living in fragile states; an initiative that would serve both Britain’s strategic interests and Labour’s values.”The NEF’s chief executive, Danny Sriskandarajah, said: “A lot of foreign policy has been defensive in recent years, trying to stop things from getting worse, but there is also an opportunity for the UK to show global leadership on key progressive issues.“The good news is that there are plenty of concrete and workable proposals for what the UK can do on development, wealth taxes and shaping the next generation of multilateral institutions.”