Keir Starmer has been accused of hypocrisy after cutting funding to the UN World Food Programme by a third while pledging to tackle “suffering and starvation”.
The reduction in UK funding to the World Food Programme (WFP) from $610m (£448m) in 2024 to $435m last year is part of a wider reduction in aid spending that campaigners say is putting lives at risk.
On top of the WFP cuts, government has also failed to make any financial pledge despite hosting a two-day conference last year on starvation and malnutrition in Afghanistan.
A government spokesperson said the UK remained the fifth largest donor to the WFP.
The peer Michael Bates, a former Conservative aid minister, said ministers were cutting funding as cases of starvation were growing “exponentially”.
He said: “If this was just a UK story it would be bad enough, but we are seeing it is a French story, it is a German story and a US story.
“All these countries are cutting. There will be a time lag but this will cost lives. We have a responsibility to protect these lives.”
Bates said it was “hypocritical” to talk about the need for action and then to reduce government spending in an area in which the UK had been a global leader.
The UK made a commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on development in 2015 in order to align with a UN target. The Conservative government cut that commitment to 0.5%.
On entering government, Starmer told a G20 summit in Brazil that his administration would prioritise “the fight against hunger” and would tackle “suffering and starvation”.
But last year, Starmer announced that aid spending would be reduced to 0.3% of GDP by 2027, in order to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP in the same time frame.
The pivot by the government comes amid a global sea change towards aid spending.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development projects that total global aid fell by 9% in 2024, and that it will have dropped by between 9% and 17% in 2025.
A further drain on UK spending on global humanitarian causes is the decision to use part of the aid budget on asylum seekers already in the UK.
The Home Office expects to spend £2.2bn of overseas development assistance this financial year on hotel bills alone.
A government spokesperson said: “When we took the difficult decision to reduce our aid budget to allow more to be spent on defence and security, our funding for humanitarian support including to address hunger was relatively protected, and we recognise how important food assistance is for those in need.
“The UK is the fifth largest donor to the WFP, which remains a vital partner.
“In October, the prime minister announced a further £20m of UK aid to ensure water, sanitation and hygiene services reach tens of thousands of civilians across Gaza. This is in addition to the £74m we have already pledged.”
