Anneliese Dodds' resignation shows how hard it will be to cut the aid budget

In the past five years the staff at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office have seen a merger, a pandemic, a break from the 0.7% aid target, and several global crises – including the withdrawal from Afghanistan. And the pressures keep mounting. Amid global political turmoil, in just the last month the department has had to respond to both Trump’s crackdown on USAID, a fresh cut to the development budget from 0.5% to 0.3% of GNI, and the resignation of the development minister.

Keir Starmer described the cut in aid spend as a hard choice. But the prime minister’s announcement was the easiest part. It is foreign secretary David Lammy and Anneliese Dodds’ as yet unannounced successor who must decide where the cuts will fall. FCDO ministers and senior civil servants, the latter under the new leadership of permanent secretary Olly Robbins, will need to provide clarity to both diplomatic and development staff.

Ministers need to set out where aid cuts will fall

Development minister Anneliese Dodds resigned over the depth of the cuts, saying that it would be impossible to maintain existing priorities. She is right. The ambition will have to be scaled back, and priorities reset. FCDO staff will need time to make assessments of how best to use a smaller aid budget. Decisions about the balance of bilateral and multilateral spending, the geographic footprint, and the types of programming the UK does are complex at the best of times. Add in a development community still reeling from, and trying to understand, the USAID cuts, and a department trying to bring a new development minister up to speed, and the decisions become harder still. Ministers must act quickly, but not at the expense of rushed analysis.

What the government must not do, however, is avoid those decisions. Reducing the large proportion of ODA currently spent in the UK (28% of the total, primarily by the Home Office on housing asylum-seekers) will help. But releasing that cash is complex and the FCDO cannot bank on it happening quickly. 

The FCDO should set out a strategic approach that will guide decisions on how to spend the smaller budget, and so where the axe will fall. The upcoming spending review would be good place to do so. FCDO staff will need clarity on the approach, and leaders must recognise this means doing less.

The FCDO should minimise the loss of its expertise 

Morale in the FCDO has been rocky since the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for International Development joined forces in 2020, not least as many former DFID staff felt subject to a takeover rather than a merger. Morale in the department fell sharply after the merger. It ticked up in 2023, and held about steady last year, but uncertainty over programming and staffing will hurt it again.

The FCDO lost about 20% of its professional development capability just after the merger, mainly in senior roles, and last year 60% of its expert advisory roles were unfilled. This is unsustainable. To retain its development expertise and the soft power that comes with it, the FCDO must ensure it keeps hold of those senior staff, and the advisers, who are expert in one of 13 specialist cadres like humanitarian or conflict.

Earlier this year the FCDO said it would be hiring an additional 200 development staff – those posts were, however, due to be funded through ODA and so will be an easy target for cuts. Senior civil servants in the FCDO will need to decide what expertise and capacity the department needs in this new environment. They then need a plan informed by the strategic aims of the UK’s smaller aid budget, and by the expertise the department already holds.

Clarity of objectives will limit the damage done by aid cuts

Cuts of this size may well mean pulling the plug on existing programmes. That damages the UK’s international reputation (predictability is important in development). The best way to mitigate that is clarity on where and when the cuts are coming, and a strategic vision and set of objectives that staff understand, get behind, and can articulate to partners. 

That strategy will need to be honest about what programming stops entirely, especially with USAID no longer involved. Fudging those choices and stringing along partners, or trying to deliver programmes on unrealistically small budgets, will only do damage in the long run.

The hard choices lie ahead, they must not be dodged.