Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Nusrat Ghani Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. If colleagues could keep their contributions to under 10 minutes, it would help other Members. I call the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

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[David Mundell (Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (Con)]

Let me begin with a very specific request to the Minister, which I hope he will be able to grant. My request is for a continuing commitment to Abercrombie House in East Kilbride as the FCDO’s second headquarters. The Government scrapped plans to build a new headquarters in Glasgow, and have so far confirmed that they are staying at Abercrombie House. However, as the International Development Committee has heard, that building requires significant investment, and at a time of such significant cuts in the FCDO budget and, obviously, staffing changes, there is concern about whether this will actually be done.

As a member of the International Development Committee, I now want to turn to the issue of official development assistance and development finance. As the Financial Times has reported, recent analysis from the Centre for Global Development reveals a startling reality: that this Labour Government are presiding over cuts in our overseas aid budget that are not only deeper but faster than those being implemented by the Trump Administration across the water. I cannot believe that that was the objective of a Government who said that they wanted to achieve global leadership in these matters.

I understand the necessity of financial discipline, and, of course, the funding pressures with which the Treasury is wrestling, even if some of them are self-inflicted. I have often argued in the House that we must be pragmatic and strategic with our development resources, looking for where we can make the best and most profound difference. I agree with the Chair of the International Development Committee, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), that scrapping ICAI, which is monitoring how we obtain value, is the best way to achieve that. There have been some very significant ICAI reports, including the 2020 report that dealt with the extent of the value the Government obtained from investment in nutrition for every pound that was spent. As a champion of nutrition, I have long supported the Child Nutrition Fund. With a relatively modest investment from the UK Government, the fund can leverage philanthropic and private capital while mobilising domestic resources to dramatically improve the wellbeing of millions of women and children. In my view, the child nutrition fund meets the test of public expectations for ODA funding: it puts food in stomachs and jags in arms.

Because I realise that we are in a changing world, I have also supported the IDC’s inquiry into the future shape of aid. We recognise that things will have to be different, but we want to see leadership from the UK Government in this regard, and we want to see a plan. When the UK Government are slashing development spending by some 27% by 2027—outpacing the reduction proposed in Washington, as I have said—one must ask: how does this stack up against other Government objectives, and where is the plan? Whereas the US Congress has acted as a vital check, I see little of the same approach here in the UK, despite the very best efforts of the International Development Committee. As I have said before, if cuts have to happen, they need to be thought through, and that thinking needs to come prior to the cutting. Sadly, that has not been the case. Unless the Minister pulls it out of the hat at the end of this debate, there is no evidence of a plan.

Reductions in ODA were announced over a year ago, but the UK’s future of aid conference will not take place until May this year—if at all, I suspect. In the meantime, services that could be put on a sustainable footing through new and innovative approaches, or through being transferred to capable local partners, are falling over. The change in US policy has significant ramifications, which we should address now, particularly the withdrawal of funding for LGBT and family planning issues. This is most certainly not the time for the FCDO to cut its LGBT budget, as the Elton John AIDS Foundation, among others, has highlighted. We are told that the reductions are to fund our defence capabilities against Russian and, indeed, Iranian aggression. However, the Government must be careful not to create a vacuum of influence and allow malign actors to move in while we do this, as others have already highlighted. One need only look at the example of Russia’s Wagner Group and its operations in Africa, particularly around critical minerals.

As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on HIV/AIDS, I want my final remarks to focus specifically on the impact of the changes on the fight against HIV/AIDS. I particularly commend The Independent newspaper and its correspondent, Bel Trew, for highlighting some of these issues. Last November, I was pleased to welcome the Government’s pledge of £850 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. At a time of tight resources, it offers real value for money by dealing directly with devastating and widespread diseases, but also by building capacity in the health systems of partner countries. The fund can be a crucial pathway to ending dependency, but although £850 million was welcome, it was none the less a £150 million reduction from 2022, and it was also coupled with uncertainty for other organisations, such as the Robert Carr Fund, Unitaid and UNAIDS. The One Campaign expects the shortfall to result in a very tangible 250,000 additional deaths and 1 million new infections. Here in the UK, the Government’s ability to reach our own target of zero new transmissions by 2030 would be imperilled by rising rates of HIV elsewhere. The UK’s life sciences and pharmaceutical sector—for which the Global Fund, among other organisations, is such an important partner—will also suffer.

What that tells us, as we have heard already, is that the reductions come at a cost, particularly if they are not thought through. They come at the cost of influence, the economy and, sadly, lives. At the end of this debate, I want to hear from the Minister what the Government’s plan is. Everybody understands that there will be reductions, but they must be on a planned basis.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

There is now a speaking limit of seven minutes.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.