CAFOD responds to report proposing cuts to overseas aid
Source: CAFOD
Former Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson MP, is promoting a new report which proposes cutting billions of pounds of overseas aid and closing the Department for International Development.
The report: Global Britain: A Blueprint for the 21st Century, authored by Bob Seely, a conservative MP and member of the foreign affairs select committee, and James Rogers of the Henry Jackson Society think tank, has been fed into a Foreign Office review on a post-Brexit Britain.
In response to this report, Neil Thorns, Director of Advocacy at CAFOD, said: "The aid budget exists to tackle poverty, and the causes of poverty. In a world of growing inequality, increasing humanitarian crises and the deepening impacts of climate change - the aid budget is an expression of our common humanity, recognising we exist on one planet. The UK is recognised as a global leader in part because we do not tie aid to UK's self-interests.
"If Boris Johnson and Bob Seely think that changing how we spend the aid budget will benefit our global influence when quite the opposite will be the case. The aid budget should not be used to play politics, it is a rich gift and a sensible long-term investment recognising we all co-exist and depend on one planet. Just because the aid budget is not currently spent this way is not a reason to push it even further away."
Read the report here: Global Britain: A Blueprint for the 21st Century: https://henryjacksonsociety.org/publications/global-britain-a-twenty-first-century-vision/