Monthly Action - March 2025 - Reverse UK Aid Cuts
Take action to reverse the cuts announced to vital UK overseas aid.
Reversing UK Aid Cuts
On Tuesday 25 February the UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a huge cut to the UK’s overseas aid budget from 0.5% of Gross National Income (GNI) to 0.3% to help pay for a rapid scale up in defence spending. It is widely recognised that there is a need to scale up UK defence spending. However, there are many other options for where that money could come from, apart from a raid on overseas aid. Wealth and fossil fuel taxation; scaling up efforts to collect tax already owing, but not currently being paid; using frozen Russian assets; a wider look at the budgets across government; and driving down welfare costs have all been raised as options in the last couple of weeks, alongside many others.
Finding the money from UK overseas aid will devastate the lives of millions of the world’s poorest people. As a result of the aid cuts more than 290,000 children will go hungry, more than 600,000 people will die from deadly diseases and over 37 million children will not receive life saving vaccinations.[1] Cutting aid to fund security is also counter-productive. International aid makes nations around the world more prosperous, stable and peaceful, reducing conflict, boosting the global economy and reducing the flow of refugees. Cutting aid dangerously undermines all of this. It also creates a vacuum into which other nations like Russia and China are stepping, making the UK less secure, not more.
These latest cuts continue a downward trend in UK aid which began four years ago. After many years when the UK was an internationally recognised leader in the field, in 2021 the proportion of GNI that the UK spends in international aid dropped from 0.7% (the internationally agreed standard that the UK has long championed) to 0.5%. And of the aid that remains more than a quarter is being spent on supporting refugees at home (which is important but all agree should be coming from other sources of funding), rather than being purely focused on reducing poverty in the world’s poorest countries. Now these new cuts have reduced aid even further. We explore the aid cuts and look at alternative options in a lot more detail in a recent blog.
Reducing poverty around the world
As Christians, we know that that God has a special care for those suffering in extreme poverty, and wants to see all cared for and their poverty ended. As the Psalms say, “He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry … The LORD watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow” (Psalm 146: 7 – 9). Arise’s 4 Shifts Report and Campaign looks at the lessons from the Bible, and at what has worked in the past, to successfully lift nations out of poverty. It finds that aid from developed nations like the UK is an important temporary boost to support low-income countries as they develop themselves, until they can move beyond the need for aid.
For countries to do this, two key shifts are essential. 1) Nations need to develop strong and fair national economies to create jobs and wealth. This mean developing a proactive national industrial and economic development strategy that uses a range of policies to create a diverse national economy that progressively moves up the value chain from agriculture to manufacturing to services to the knowledge economy. 2) They can then tax this economy to provide social spending and basic services like healthcare and education, to ensure all benefit, not just the richest in society. All nations that have developed successfully and lifted themselves permanently out of poverty have followed this route.
Will you take action as part of Arise’s 4 Shifts Campaign this month, and urge the UK to immediately reverse the cuts and return to providing 0.7% of GNI as international aid?
Take Action
Speak out in advocacy
Write to your MP in your own words, and ask them to …
- Urge the UK government to immediately reverse the cuts to overseas aid and instead immediately scale aid back up to 0.7% of GNI.
- Focus much of this on supporting nations to lift themselves permanently out of poverty by developing a proactive national industrial and economic development strategy and providing essential life-saving services.
Find your MP and their contact details here.
Write to them at …
(name) MP
House of Commons
London
SW1A 0AA
Pray
Pray for all those living in extreme poverty. Pray the UK will immediately reverse the cuts in overseas aid and scale up overseas aid back to 0.7% of GNI and focus this entirely on reducing poverty. Pray that nations will develop, creating booming economies, jobs, good wages, and key public services like education and healthcare to lift them permanently out of poverty.
Give
Give to Christian organisations like Christian Aid, Cafod, Tearfund or World Vision who do crucial work supporting the most marginalised and reducing poverty in countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Practical Action
Arise is looking for volunteers to help with setting up local Arise church groups, growing our network, administration and in many other ways. Contact us at info@ariseuk.org if you are interested in volunteering with Arise.
Ethical Consumption
Support developing nation economies by buying products and services with the Fairtrade mark, where a much higher proportion of your money goes to producers in the developing world.
Find out more
Latest news – Updates on previous campaigns and latest news from the Arise movement.
Join a local Arise group in your church or area – It’s great to take this action as individual Christians, but even better to come together with others to pray, discuss, worship, learn, have fun and take action together. Contact Arise if you are interested.
Arise Manifesto – Find out more about this month’s action in the Arise Manifesto, Arise’s big picture, researched, Biblical, holistic and practical vision for a better world.
Sign up – Found this action online, or sent it by a friend? Sign up to receive monthly actions from Arise directly.
[1] Campaigners warn UK aid cuts will cost lives as PM Starmer meets President Trump, ONE, (27 Feb 2025), https://www.one.org/press/campaigners-warn-uk-aid-cuts-will-cost-lives-as-pm-starmer-meets-president-trump/