Britain was one of six major donors that met or exceeded the UN’s target for international aid spending in the most recent year for which final data is available, according to official figures published on Wednesday.
Against the backdrop of a major onslaught from aid critics, data compiled by the Organisation for Economic Coooperation and Development (OECD) showed that UK aid spending in 2015, which totalled 0.7% of gross national income, was exceeded by only five countries: Denmark (0.85%), the Netherlands (0.75%), Norway (1.05%), Luxembourg (0.95%) and Sweden (1.4%).
While criticism of British overseas development assistance has been ratcheted up by opponents of Britain’s commitment to overseas aid, including Conservative MPs and sections of the media, aid organisations issued a qualified welcome to the figures.
Oxfam said it was heartening that the UK remained one of the largest donors of overseas aid. The charity said Britain should be proud of its commitment, which it described as a testament to the country’s generosity and support for some of the world’s poorest people.
Oxfam’s head of UK policy and government relations, Richard Pyle, said: “Those who are critical of UK aid spending should remember the incredible impact it has around the world, such as supporting 11 million children through school over the past five years. Britain is helping to lead the way in global aid spending, by hitting the UN’s development spending target.”
Tom Viita, senior UK political adviser at Christian Aid, said: “Aid is making a vital difference to millions of people around the world who are caught up in an unprecedented number of humanitarian crises.
“The British public is showing enormous generosity in its donations to appeals and the UK stands among the leading countries making a safer world for everyone. It’s encouraging that the global aid budget has slightly increased this year but it still falls far short of the human need in our world.”
Save the Children also defended the British aid contribution, saying that it helped save lives and “expand opportunity”.
“We should be proud that Britain stands up for the world’s poorest people, and our aid budget helps save lives and expand opportunity,” said Kevin Watkins, the charity’s CEO.
“We can be proud of the edge that gives us in international discussions – Britain is now thought of as an ‘aid superpower’, a country that still has great influence around the world because other countries know we will keep our promises.”
In 2013 (pdf), the UK became the first G7 country to meet the UN target for aid spending. The government subsequently passed a bill that enshrined in law its annual commitment to meet the 0.7% aid target.
The UN set out the 0.7% commitment to development spending in 1970. By 2013, just five other countries had achieved or exceeded the target: Luxembourg, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and the United Arab Emirates.
A UK government spokesperson said that the development budget was an important part of securing Britain’s place in the world.
“We are leading the way in combatting poverty, preventing the spread of disease and reducing the pressures of mass migration, and people in Britain can be proud of what UK aid is achieving.”
Paddy Carter, a development finance researcher at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), a UK thinktank, said it was impossible to hit an exact target share of gross national income when aid spending had to be planned on the basis of forecasts that will inevitably fluctuate.
“Getting to within five-thousandths of a percentage point of GNI is impressive budgetary marksmanship,” he added.
The OECD figures showed that the largest development assistance donors by volume were the US, the UK, Germany, Japan and France. Aid flows from the 30 major international donors who make up the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee totalled $131.4bn (£107bn) in 2015.
Most of the increase was due to higher spending on refugees following the rise in numbers of people coming to Europe. Refugee costs within the borders of donor countries themselves totalled $12.1bn, or 9.2% of total overseas development assistance (ODA). When refugee costs were excluded, net ODA still grew by 1.3% in real terms.
The largest recipient of ODA in 2015 was Syria, with $4.9bn, followed by Afghanistan with $4.3bn, Pakistan ($3.8bn ), and then Ethiopia and India, who received $3.2bn each. The total net ODA to the least developed countries was $43bn, which the OECD said represented a rise of nearly 8% in real terms from 2014.
Among several countries who are not members of the OECD’s 30-member Development Assistance Committee (DAC), the United Arab Emirates posted the highest ODA/GNI ratio of aid spending in 2015 at 1.09%.
Recent criticism of UK aid spending has focused on cash transfers to Pakistan, which a senior Tory MP and member of the Commons international development committee likened to “exporting the dole”.
The Department for International Development said the programme was helping the poorest families in Pakistan and was an efficient and effective way to make sure they had the support they need.
But Nigel Evans, a Conservative MP, warned that cash transfers were “clearly open to fraud”.
