Measures to cut global inequality will be put at the heart of British aid policy under new plans unveiled by Labour.
The party’s green paper said a Labour government would introduce Britain’s first explicitly feminist international development policy, with a threefold increase in funding for grassroots women’s groups.
Under the plans, which follow recent revelations of abuses within the aid sector, civil society and grassroots groups and communities will be favoured over large aid organisations.
In the paper’s foreword, Jeremy Corbyn accused the Conservative party of “reducing aid to a matter of charity, rather than one of power and social justice”.
“This sets out our vision to build a world for the many, not the few, and to make sure everything we do tackles inequality,” he said.
“International development budgets can do more than just reduce the worst symptoms of an unfair world. We don’t have to accept the world that global elites are building for us.
“Let’s help people around the world be more powerful and make their societies fairer – and in the process make our planet more safe, more just and more sustainable.”
In 2018, the Department for International Development (DfID) spent 13.88% of its budget on disaster relief, the largest amount for any single issue. In addition, 11.39% was spent on health, 5.9% on government and civil society, 5.04% on education and 3.97% on banking and financial services in developing countries.
Speaking to the Guardian before the launch, Kate Osamor, Labour’s shadow minister for international development, said Britain needed to get its “moral compass back” in terms of aid spending. She said the UK needed to be “a bit more honest” about who it was leaving behind.
“We are looking at a feminist policy, because women are often the people who bear the brunt, who get paid the least amount, especially in developing countries. They are bearing the brunt of wars. We’ve seen this in the #MeToo campaign, this is happening more so in developing countries.”
Entitled “A world for the many, not the few”, the paper will be launched on Monday in parliament, when Osamor will say: “We cannot rely any longer on the myth that trickle-down economics will somehow solve poverty. That bubble has finally burst.
“Equal societies fare better on social indicators, are happier and more harmonious, and enable more sustainable economies. Yet we forge ahead with channelling wealth into the hands of an elite few. It is little surprise that in almost every city in the world extreme wealth and poverty now coexist.”
Reducing inequality is enshrined in the global goals, which UN member states, including Britain, signed up to in 2015, but is not currently an explicit aim of DfID aid funding.
Labour announced 34 specific actions, including helping countries that receive British aid to halve the income gap between the top-earning 10% and the poorest 40% by 2030, stepping up support for climate change and ending DfID’s investment in fossil fuels. The paper also proposed an end to the “opaque and controversial” conflict, stability and security fund, and to support for the privatisation of public services overseas.
Labour accused the government of undermining positive work through “incoherent policies”, such as selling arms to the Saudi-led coalition while sending aid to Yemen.
Alex Thier, executive director of the Overseas Development Institute, welcomed Labour’s proposals. “Inequality has risen up the global agenda as a fundamental factor in terms of poverty reduction,” said Thier.
“What we have increasingly realised is that adding inequality is fundamental to long-term transformation, and that is why we think it’s so important to call it out explicitly as a goal. That is true in the UK as well as across the world.”
However, the TaxPayers’ Alliance described the proposals as “pernicious” and badly thought out. Alex Wild, the campaign group’s research director, , said: “There are legitimate criticisms of the government’s approach to aid spending, not least the fact that they appear more motivated by inputs rather than outcomes.
“But aiming for arbitrary inequality targets isn’t going to do much to help the poorest people in the world. If aid spending is based around inequality, taxpayers are going to end up seeing their money heading to places like Singapore and the US.”