The decision to cut the UK’s contribution to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria is a mistake. Hundreds of thousands of deaths that were preventable are now to be expected.
Our support to the Global Fund represents the best of Britain, working with other countries to deliver value-for-money impact. With our funding, the Global Fund made extraordinary progress in the fight against the most prevalent preventable diseases. Millions of lives have been saved, with health systems strengthened across the poorest countries. We are closer than ever to eliminating Aids.
Yet at this pivotal moment, the UK has become the first host country ever to cut its contribution.
It is tempting, at times, to be sceptical about the UN and multilateral funds. They can be remote, overly bureaucratic and detached from local realities that make aid truly effective. But the Global Fund has proven itself to be what we all want from the aid sector. Since its founding in 2002, it has saved 70 million lives and delivered extraordinary value for money. This isn’t charity; it’s partnership. My time working on the ground in Kenya made one thing clear: programmes succeed when they’re designed with communities as partners, not recipients. The Global Fund combines global scale with local knowledge. It works because disease eradication requires both.
This disappointing cut follows the UK’s 20 per cent reduction to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, earlier this year. A pattern is emerging: our retreat from the programmes that have delivered the greatest results. Cuts to multilateral programmes don’t just shrink spreadsheets in New York and Geneva. They cascade downwards, landing hardest on the programmes and people who can least afford it.
It is women and girls who will pay the highest price. They already face a disproportionate burden of these diseases, particularly HIV. Discrimination, unequal access to education, healthcare, water and sanitation, and gender-based violence drive up infections and create barriers to treatment. At a time when women’s rights are under assault globally, Britain should be standing against that tide.
We have watched this happen before. In 2021, when the Conservative government slashed aid recklessly, women and girls were the first to be abandoned. Clinics shuttered. Reproductive health programmes vanished. School initiatives stopped abruptly. The most vulnerable left behind, not because their needs had changed, but simply because there was no plan.
Now, that same uncertainty has returned. The development budget has been cut again, and we are still waiting for a clear strategy to emerge. Last year, the former development minister, Anneliese Dodds, had laid out her vision for Britain’s future in a well-received speech to Chatham House. Much has changed since then, but the need for strategic thinking hasn’t. As the new foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, considers how to deliver the temporary aid cut announced by the prime minister, one question remains: where will the axe fall? Without a plan, we’re poised to repeat the mistakes of 2021.
The upcoming Budget is a chance to change course. Britain needs what we’ve lacked for years: a long-term plan. A clear timetable back to investing 0.7 per cent of national income in international development. An end to the use of overseas aid to fund refugee accommodation in Britain. Properly directed, this investment serves our national interest, preventing the spread of conflict and disease to keep Britain safe.
Britain once proudly led the world in international development because we embraced a first principle: that cooperation and compassion are expressions of strength. Our strength and purpose must extend beyond our borders. Co-hosting the Global Fund’s 8th Replenishment alongside South Africa on 21 November sends a strong signal. But leadership isn’t measured by the conferences we host. It’s measured in the lives we save, and those that we don’t when we could.
Fleur Anderson is a member of parliament’s foreign affairs select committee, a former Northern Ireland Minister (2024-5) and Labour MP for Putney
This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project
