Influential Labour backbenchers are urging Andy Burnham to reclaim the party's leadership on international development and chart a course back to spending 0.7% of national income on overseas aid. The call comes in a collection of essays to be published soon by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) thinktank, where MPs lay out proposals for a Burnham-led government to rethink foreign policy.
10-Year Roadmap to Restore Aid Target
The project emerged from gatherings of MPs and policy experts, including David Miliband, touted as a potential foreign secretary in a Burnham government, and Mark Malloch-Brown, a former deputy secretary general of the UN. In the pamphlet, Fleur Anderson, a former minister with a background in international development, calls on Burnham to promise a return to spending 0.7% of GDP on aid. She suggests setting a 10-year roadmap to meet that goal, allowing future governments to deviate in times of crisis.
“What matters is not mechanical annual targets, but establishing a credible long-term trajectory that partner governments, multilateral institutions, NGOs and local organisations can plan around,” Anderson writes. The 0.7% target was legislated under Gordon Brown but ditched in 2020 by Rishi Sunak as a temporary measure during the pandemic. Instead of reinstating it, Keir Starmer made further cuts to aid spending and redirected funds to defence, prompting the resignation of development minister Anneliese Dodds.
Defence vs. Development: A False Economy?
Anderson argues: “The need to strengthen our national defence demands serious answers. But retreating from development commitments is ultimately a false economy. A more unstable world will not become safer because wealthy countries disengage from tackling the conditions that drive instability in the first place.”
G20 Chairmanship and Global Wealth Tax
Liam Byrne, chair of the Commons business and trade committee, calls for the UK to use its 2027 G20 chairmanship to convene discussions on a global wealth tax. The UK will take over G20 leadership from the US, which under Donald Trump has downplayed its role. Byrne argues that championing an international wealth tax would build on momentum from previous chairs like South Africa and Brazil.
“The UK – respected for institutional design and coordination – could take this momentum and help solve the problem of designing a tax that actually works, and which helps transform domestic resource mobilisation in countries both rich and poor,” he writes. Development campaigners have been urging Starmer's government for months to set an ambitious G20 agenda.
Reviving Multilateralism Through Concrete Goals
Another former Labour minister, Gareth Thomas, suggests using the UK's G20 presidency and its 2028 G7 chairmanship to kickstart discussions on replacing the UN's sustainable development goals, which expire in 2030. “While the G20 and G7 are insufficient forums for establishing these global goals themselves, the UK's presidencies are an opportunity that should not be missed to ignite the process,” he says.
Thomas cites the success of Gavi, the vaccines alliance, in vaccinating children in war-torn countries for $1 per dose, alongside the International Rescue Committee led by Miliband. He argues: “The UK's forthcoming G20 presidency could aim to pool $1bn towards an ambitious multi-year rollout to immunise a billion children living in fragile states; an initiative that would serve both Britain's strategic interests and Labour's values.”
NEF Chief: Opportunity for Progressive Leadership
Danny Sriskandarajah, chief executive of the NEF, said: “A lot of foreign policy has been defensive in recent years, trying to stop things from getting worse, but there is also an opportunity for the UK to show global leadership on key progressive issues. The good news is that there are plenty of concrete and workable proposals for what the UK can do on development, wealth taxes and shaping the next generation of multilateral institutions.”
