Category Archives: Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

‘Step up’ and face Grenfell inquiry, minister tells cladding firm bosses

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Stephen Greenhalgh said executives should not ‘hide behind’ rarely used French law

The UK government has demanded that executives who supplied combustible cladding to Grenfell Tower “step up to the plate” after their refusal to give evidence to the public inquiry into the disaster provoked anger among the bereaved and survivors.

On Sunday, Stephen Greenhalgh, the building safety minister, escalated a legal and diplomatic dispute over the position taken by three current and former executives at the French division of the US company Arconic. He told them to stop hiding behind an arcane French law.

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UK pledges an extra £47m in aid as agencies warn of ‘catastrophic hunger’

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Coronavirus, conflict and cuts to UN funding are increasing the risks of food insecurity and acute malnutrition in 2021

The government has promised £47m in extra emergency aid for 2021 as it becomes clear that the coming year will see a dramatic rise in people struggling for food.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office said on Wednesday it will provide more aid for food, water, hygiene and shelter in 11 countries, including £8m to Africa’s Sahel region, where the UN has warned of catastrophic hunger.

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Senior Tories fear £4bn cut to overseas aid will be made permanent

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MPs campaigning against chancellor’s plans believe they can ‘humiliate’ the government into U-turn

Senior Tories fear that the cut to Britain’s aid budget will become permanent, amid a growing campaign inside and outside parliament to reverse the decision.

Conservatives opposed to the move are already vowing to “humiliate” the government by forcing it to stand by its manifesto commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on overseas aid – a vow chancellor Rishi Sunak said he would breach in his review of public spending last week. He announced that £4bn would effectively be cut from the aid budget by reducing it to 0.5%, despite pleas from Tories and the archbishop of Canterbury.

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Kylie Moore-Gilbert’s release shows dangers of making deals with Iran

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Talks over other dual-national detainees risk encouraging Tehran to see hostage-taking as a winning strategy

The release of Kylie Moore-Gilbert, the British Australian academic, is a bittersweet moment for the relatives across the globe of other Iranian dual nationals still trapped in Iranian jails. Many families celebrated her release, but also asked themselves again whether their own governments are doing all they can to bring their loved ones home.

Sherry Izadi, the wife of a 66-year-old British-Iranian construction engineer, Anoosheh Ashoori, jailed for 10 years, told the Guardian: “It is extraordinary the lengths the Australian government was prepared to go to secure her release. They seem to have persuaded the Thai government to exchange three Iranians accused of terrorism in return for her release.” The three-way negotiations between the governments took six months.

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UK aid cuts ‘unprincipled, unjustified and harmful’, say experts and MPs

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Cuts announced by Rishi Sunak will hit girls and women in poorest countries hardest, with charities predicting huge numbers of deaths

The UK aid cuts announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak could see a million girls lose out on schooling, nearly three million women and children go without life-saving nutrition and 5.6 million children left unvaccinated, causing up to 100,000 deaths, charities, aid experts and MPs have said.

They described the slash in funding to overseas aid, from 0.7% to 0.5% of Britain’s gross national income, as “unprincipled, unjustified and harmful” just as a global health crisis is throwing decades of progress on poverty, healthcare and education into reverse.

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UK’s foreign aid budget to be reduced to 0.5% of gross national income

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Chancellor announces £4bn cut in spending, breaking Tory pledge to keep to 0.7% target

Britain’s overseas aid budget is to be cut from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%, slicing more than £4bn from the annual package and breaking a Tory manifesto commitment made only a year ago.

The cut was announced in the spending review by Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, which also saw a large three-year increase for the defence budget. Sunak clearly decided to brush aside warnings from across the political spectrum that Britain’s commitment to foreign aid symbolised an outward looking and generous UK.

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Boris Johnson urged to commit to aid budget after defence boost

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Nearly 200 charities and NGOs call on PM to keep spending at 0.7% rather than 0.5% of GDP

Nearly 200 charities and aid organisations have called on Boris Johnson to reconsider plans to cut billions from the international development budget by reducing it to 0.5% of GDP.

Save the Children, Greenpeace UK, Christian Aid, VSO International and others urged the prime minister not to cut Britain’s aid spending while the world was in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic.

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UK aid budget facing billions in cuts

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Treasury seeking to slash target for aid spending from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%

The Treasury is planning to slash billions from the overseas aid budget despite the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, praising the government’s 0.7% aid target on Monday as representing UK values in front of aides to Joe Biden.

The Treasury wants to cut the aid budget from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5% next year and plans to make the announcement as part of next Monday’s one-year spending review.

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