Labour MPs call for Andy Burnham to restore aid spending target set by Brown

The New Economics Foundation publication suggests a 10-year road back to meeting the goal of spending 0.7% of GDP on aid and development. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA View image in fullscreen The New Economics Foundation publication suggests a 10-year road back to meeting the goal of spending 0.7% of GDP on aid and development. Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA Labour MPs call for Andy Burnham to restore aid spending target set by Brown Thinktank urges prospective prime minister to reclaim UK’s role as an international leader on development Influential backbenchers are calling on Andy Burnham to reclaim Labour’s leadership on international development and chart a course back to spending 0.7% of national income on overseas aid. In a collection of essays to be published soon by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) thinktank, MPs lay out proposals for a Burnham-led government to rethink foreign policy. The project emerged from gatherings of MPs and policy experts, including David Miliband, who has been 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 whose career before entering parliament was in international development, calls on Burnham to promise to return to spending 0.7% of national income on aid. She suggests setting a 10-year road back to meeting that goal, which future governments could deviate from in times of crisis. One million women lost access to humanitarian support in past 18 months, UN report shows Read more “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,” she says in her contribution. The 0.7% target was legislated for under Gordon Brown, but ditched in 2020 by Rishi Sunak , ostensibly as a temporary measure during the Covid pandemic. Instead of reinstating it, Keir Starmer chose to make further significant cuts to aid spending and use the money for defence – prompting the resignation of the development minister, Anneliese Dodds . Anderson writes: “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.” Meanwhile, Liam Byrne, the chair of the Commons business and trade committee, calls for the UK to use its chairing of the G20 group of countries in 2027 to convene discussions on a global wealth tax. The UK will take up leadership of the G20 from the US, which, under Donald Trump, has sought to downplay its role. Byrne argues that taking up the cause of an international wealth tax would pick up the baton from previous chairs, including South Africa and Brazil. “The UK – respected for institutional design and coordination – coul