UK Official Development Assistance (ODA)

For almost sixty years, the Liberal Democrats and their forebears, the Liberal Party, have been making the case for the UK to meet its commitments to the world’s poorest.

It was in 1964, under the leadership of Jo Grimond, that the Liberal Party first made overseas development a manifesto commitment, arguing that ‘A joint Western programme of aid and trade is essential to defeat world poverty.’

Development cooperation quickly became a mainstay of party policy. In 1970, the Liberals became the first UK political party to commit to spending at least 0.7% of gross national product on official development spending to developing countries. This commitment, first made just over fifty years ago, is a policy we still advocate for today.

In 1988, now the Liberal Democrats, the new party set out our desire to work for a world in which no one is enslaved by poverty, as well as advocating for universal human rights, equality, and liberty.

When in Government, we delivered on these long-standing commitments. In 2013, the Liberal Democrats achieved our goal of contributing 0.7% of the country’s gross national income to overseas development cooperation, despite opposition from many Conservative MPs. The UK was, and remains, the first G7 nation to meet this target.

Two years later, Liberal Democrats enshrined the commitment to spending 0.7% of GNI on development cooperation into law. When the Conservatives failed to deliver government time for legislation, Liberal Democrats Michael Moore MP and Lord Purvis of Tweed took the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act through Parliament. It received Royal Assent on 26 March 2015.
In recent years, Liberal Democrats have led the opposition against the Government’s attempts to undermine our development commitments. In 2020, Wendy Chamberlain MP challenged the Government’s decision to merge the Foreign Office with the Department for International Development in the Commons, and she played a key role in securing the future of the International Development Select Committee, a crucial scrutinising body.

Now, the Government has decided to shirk our legal and moral responsibilities by abandoning the 0.7% commitment. It is the Liberal Democrats who will stand up for the 0.7%, which we enshrined in law, and we will work cross-party to reverse the cut. Liberal Democrat Foreign Affairs and International Development Spokesperson, Layla Moran MP, has been instrumental in efforts to overturn the Government’s misguided decision.

As Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for International Development in the House of Lords, Lord Purvis of Tweed recently said, “We have breached our law; we are no longer meeting the commitment and we will have stopped a record for at least two decades of promoting the 0.7% to the other richest countries in the world. This is a retreat of global leadership, not a demonstration of it.”.

Even before this week’s announcement, the Labour Government had already reneged on its manifesto pledge and cut spending on international aid from 0.58% to 0.5% of Gross National Income (GNI).

Now they have gone even further by cutting aid to just 0.3%, less than half of the legally binding level.

Liberal Democrats remain firmly committed to spending 0.7% of Gross National Income on aid, prioritising development that both helps the poorest and ties in with our strategic international objectives on gender equality, climate change and the environment, human rights, conflict prevention and tackling inequality. This could be achieved without compromising our defence budget by increasing the digital sales tax of big tech companies or by seizing the frozen assets of sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

Andrew and the Liberal Democrats will continue to show principled leadership on this vital issue, in marked contrast to both Labour and the Conservatives.