Would a lower foreign aid target be so bad?

Whatever happened to David Cameron’s promise to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid?    Amid much criticism, it survived Cameron and Osborne’s (failed) efforts to bring the public finances back into balance. Then, following Covid, the then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak cut the target to 0.5 per cent, saying that it would be restored to 0.7 per cent once the government was no longer having to borrow money to fund day-to-day spending.

But could it be reduced further still in the Autumn Statement? That is what some fear. Indeed, it has been argued that Britain’s overseas aid budget has already dropped to far lower than 0.5 per cent of our national output. Stefan Dercon, professor of economic policy at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, argues that when you take subtract the £3 billion of the £11 billion aid budget being spent housing refugees physically within Britain, we are spending only 0.3