Defining a new era for UK international development: Part 1

Bond’s working groups outline the issues that the new UK government must prioritise to bring in a more effective era of UK overseas development assistance and international cooperation.

This blog is part one. Part two will be released in the coming weeks.

Funding Group

We would like the government to set out tangible steps to take UK overseas development assistance (ODA) spending back to 0.7% of GNI.

We are keen to see development funding prioritised in the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office’s (FCDO) agenda. We support the new government’s five priorities, and look forward to working together as more detail is added.

But people in crises can’t wait for new governments to bed in – they need support now. Over the past five years, various initiatives have been delayed, paused or cancelled due to funding constraints – including the spending of ODA within the UK. We look forward to the new UK government reinvigorating the funding pipeline, and refocusing ODA spending to where it belongs – in the communities and countries facing the world’s greatest challenges.

We would love to see the UK government ensure more funding directly reaches local and national actors, as well as building local actors’ agency in decision making. We would also like to see a commitment to diversifying funding opportunities for small and medium-sized civil society organisations. This would support different types of projects, instead of predominantly awarding large contracts to only the largest of entities.

To enable us to work in partnership with the FCDO, we are keen to understand the priorities – both thematic and geographic – of the new government. The UK government must honour funding commitments to civil society. Where funding needs to be cut, it should be achieved by not starting new programmes. We look forward to seeing the new prime minister set the vision for the FCDO, and then enabling the FCDO deliver on that vision.

The merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development (DFID) led to a significant loss of international development and technical expertise. We urge the new government to build back this expertise in tackling global development issues and reclaim its position as a significant contributor on the international humanitarian and development stage.

Transparency Group

We welcome the FCDO achieving a ‘very good’ rating in the 2024 Aid Transparency Index. We call on the FCDO to support its partners and other government departments to do the same, including British International Investment (BII) – learning lessons from DFID’s strong levels of transparency and related mechanisms. Achieving and maintaining good transparency involves political will to be driven from the top along with external checks and balances to monitor progress.

Sustainable economic development and a fairer global financial architecture

We urge the UK government to prioritise reforms of global financial institutions and mobilize political support across the world to ensure that countries, especially those facing devastating consequences of climate change, strangling debt crisis, conflict, chronic poverty and inequality, can access finance that supports transformative and sustainable socioeconomic change.

We are calling on the UK government to focus on the following issues:

• Develop a UK trade strategy that puts trade at the service of sustainable development, tackling poverty, inequality and modern slavery, and promoting the development priorities of low- and middle-income countries.
• Introduce new legislation that mandates companies, the financial sector and the public sector operating in the UK to carry out human rights and environmental due diligence and holds them to account when they fail to prevent human rights abuses and environmental harms.
• Significantly reduce the volume of UK aid being used to capitalise BII while it undertakes reforms to ensure that it has the strategic focus, business model and ways of working to significantly increase its contribution to poverty reduction and sustainability. BII must also end its investments in education and health services.
• Support a universal UN Framework Convention on Tax, a fully representative global tax body and the introduction of comprehensive beneficial ownership registries in all countries and jurisdictions to curb illicit financial flows and tax abuse, reflecting the City of London’s unique global influence.
• Ensure there are transparent, fair and globally representative systems for governing global debt, tax and other economic policies, including by supporting calls from low- and middle-income countries for decisions to be taken in the more democratic spaces of the UN
• Support the longstanding calls from low- and middle-income countries for a UN sovereign debt workout mechanism, which will provide a predictable rules-based system involving all relevant actors
• Utilise the UK’s significant responsibility for how private lenders operate by legislating to compel all creditors, including the private sector, to participate in debt relief processes
• Champion and deliver a more effective, fully representative and transparent system of multilateral development banks, which significantly increases the provision of finance for sustainable development without adding to unsustainable debt burdens and undermining social and environmental standards
• Ensure that international finance institutions stop applying economic conditionality to their assistance and stop promoting austerity policies, and allow governments in low- and middle-income countries the fiscal and policy space they need to deliver essential public goods and promote gender equality.

Commercial Contracts Group

There is significant and continuing interest from our members to work with the FCDO to deliver the new government’s development agenda.

We would urge the new prime minister to recognise the valuable and distinct role that INGOs can play in designing and delivering development programmes that inclusively and sustainably address global development challenges. INGOs are well-placed to promote the rights of women and girls, take a ‘pro-poor’ perspective and deliver concrete progress in the localisation agenda.

The FCDO should seek to increase its consultation and collaboration with INGOs and local and national actors as this would support stronger UK aid spending and allow the department to draw on the wealth of technical expertise available within INGOs.

EC Funding and Policy Group

The new UK government has the potential to deepen the relationship between UK and EC aid policy and programming. It is promising that the new Foreign Secretary David Lammy has stated the government’s intention to work more closely with the EC across a range of shared policy interests, including security, illegal migration and foreign policy issues. Similarly, the UK’s acceptance of the invitation from EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borell to attend the October meeting of the EU foreign affairs council is a positive step in rebuilding trust between the two sides.

The opportunity for more positive engagement with key EC institutions for international development (DGs INTPA, NEAR and ECHO) on collective programming with the UK and other international donors, with common objectives driven by the needs and rights of the communities in need of support in low- and middle-income countries, will be extremely welcome. The UK should use its influence to contribute to redefining aid programming as rights-based and led by low- and middle-income countries, rather than a means to promote trade and other UK or EU global priorities. A global approach to untying aid is needed, which does not unfairly prioritise the UK or EU interests ahead of other entities or organisations better able to provide appropriate interventions.

An important area for increased cooperation between the UK and Europe will be reaching a more positive and collective agreement on putting the rights of women and girls at the heart of humanitarian and development programming, including on gender-based violence, health, education, and equal access to resources, employment and positions of power.

Bond’s working groups are communities of practice and learning led by Bond members. Bond has over 40 working groups with over 3,000 members, each focuses on key thematic areas in the development and humanitarian sector. This blog includes contributions from the following working groups: EU Funding and Policy, Commercial Contracts, Transparency, Funding, Conflict Policy, Reforming Global Financial Architecture and Sustainable Economic Development.