The British government has been accused of “betraying” women and girls after the harmful impacts of its aid cuts were outlined in a leaked report.
Completed months before the government confirmed in September which aid programmes would be cut, the equalities assessment report warned a reduction in aid would have a significant impact on programmes for vulnerable groups, including women and people with disabilities.
The report said the scale of the cuts would reduce services for women and girls who’d experienced sexual violence, while also affecting girls’ education and limiting attempts to advance gender equality. It warned the scale of funding cuts would affect the majority of social protection programmes designed to help “the poorest and most marginalised”.
Sarah Champion, chair of the International Development Committee (IDC), said it was “appalling” that she had to use parliamentary privilege to make the report public. She said the government had blocked the committee from scrutinising the report for close to a year.
“Our committee was denied access to the equalities assessment seemingly for ministers to dodge the humiliation of admitting their own aid cuts undermined the government’s key development objective: to support women and girls,” said Champion.
Before posting it on the IDC website on Tuesday, which was International Women’s Day, Champion made a final plea in parliament for the report to be published.
The foreign secretary, Liz Truss, refused.
“We are restoring the aid budget for women and girls back to previous levels and we’re also restoring the humanitarian aid budget, but it is a matter of policy that we don’t publicly report equality impact assessments because it has a chilling effect and people can’t be honest internally,” said Truss.
Champion responded that this was untrue, as the government had published similar reports into Covid policy.
Stephanie Draper, CEO at Bond, a UK international development network, said the government had put lives at risk by not publishing the report.
“It’s saddening that the harmful impact of the aid cuts on women and girls was known before it happened – and that nothing was done,” said Draper.
“If this assessment had been made public a year ago, NGOs and our partners could have mitigated risks to programmes protecting women and girls from gender-based violence and delivering clean water to marginalised communities.”
Rose Caldwell, chief executive of Plan International UK, called the government’s actions shameful.
“This is nothing less than a betrayal of women and girls around the world,” she said.
“To add insult to injury, we are only now learning about this through the legal immunity of an MP, and not in response to numerous letters and asks by MPs, peers, and civil society. This lack of transparency is unacceptable and suggests the government intended to bury these findings.”
