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The international development minister Anneliese Dodds resigned on Friday in protest against Sir Keir Starrer’s decision to finance an increase in defense spending of 6 billion GBP by lowering the budget of the British aid.
“Ultimately, these cuts will remove food and health care from desperate people, which deeply harms the call of the United Kingdom,” said Dodds in a letter to the Prime Minister.
Starrer announced 6 billion GBP on Tuesday for a year Increasing military expenditure By 2027 and declared that it would be financed exclusively by reducing the budget of the British AID budget in Great Britain from 0.5 percent of the gross national income.
According to estimates of the House of Commons library, the reduced auxiliary budget is 9.2 billion GBP, but about half of this amount could be spent in Germany, also for housing buildings.
Labor’s general election manifest promised last year to increase expenses for help to 0.7 percent as soon as the fiscal circumstances allow this “.
Starrer’s announcement on the defense spending was preceded by his visit on Thursday to meet US President Donald Trump, who asked NATO partners in Washington to increase defense spending.
The U.S. Agency for International Development, the main channel for US help and development programs worth $ 43 billion per year, has also been managed by Trump.
“I know that they were clear that they are not ideologically against international development.” Dodds wrote to Starrer. “But the reality is that this decision is already shown as it follows in the cuts of President Trump to USA.”
She added that it would be “impossible” to support the support of Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine as well as vaccination programs and climate support “given the depth of the cuts”.
With sadness I had to move in my resignation as a minister of international development as well as for women and equality.
While I do not agree to the ODA decision, I continue to support the government and its determination to meet the change of our country. pic.twitter.com/44SCRX2P8Z
– Annelies Dodds (@Nannelies stack) February 28, 2025
Before she won power last year, the Labor Party had denounced cuts in the international help of the previous conservative government.
Dodds, who is on the left of the party, was a shadow chancellor in 2020 and directed the criticism When Chancellor Rishi Sunak at the time was violating the expenditure on Tory aid and violating his own manifesto of this party.
She was only told about Starer’s plan to reduce the auxiliary budget on Monday, Dodds confirmed in her letter. She added that she had resigned until the Prime Minister from Washington returned.
Starrer said in a letter in response to Dodds: “The decision I met on the effects on ODA was a difficult and painful decision, and not one that I take easily.
“We will do everything we can to return to a world in which this is not the case and to rebuild a ability to develop,” he wrote. “However, the protection of our national security must always be the first duty of a government, and I will always act in the best interest of the British people.”
The Prime Minister also vowed to continue to support the worst conflict zones in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip and the Sudan.
Almost a third of the UK auxiliary budget is already being spent on building the domestic asylum system.
In 2023, the last year, for which numbers are available, GBP of the auxiliary budget was spent in Germany for refugees, almost exclusively to cover the hotel costs for asylum seekers who are waiting for the claims to be processed.
If these asylum costs remain the same, almost half of the budget of the abroad is used in 2027 to finance the domestic asylum system. The government wants to reduce asylum costs.
Rigid This week, the increased defense spending would increase the British military budget to 2.5 percent of GDP.
He added that the United Kingdom in the next parliament, which is expected to run from 2029 to 2034, would try to achieve a level of 3 percent of GDP.
In her letter, Dodds admitted that the global arrangement after the war “came together” and asked for higher defense spending, but said that she had expected a collective discussion about the fiscal rules and the taxation approach from Labor.
“Even 3 percent can only be the beginning, and it will be impossible to increase the essential resources that are only necessary through tactical cuts in public expenses,” wrote Dodds. “These are unprecedented times when strategic decisions on the security of our country cannot be ducked.”
A Labor MP said they were “disappointed” by the resignation of Dodd’s: “Absolutely disappointed. She is brilliant, worked so hard, never complained, she was regularly in impossible positions and was always loyal. “
Dodds was one of several left-wing frontbenchers who were in the original Schadenkabinett by Starrer, but the Labor leader postponed the party further to the right.
She was downgraded in May 2021 From the shadow chancellor to party leaders and last July, the government roles received both the Minister of Development and the Minister of Women and Equality.
