Vote on £4bn foreign aid cut ‘is delayed over Tory rebellion fears’

A vote on cutting foreign aid looks like being delayed by ministers to avoid a clash with Tory backbenchers before the G7 summit.

Boris Johnson has vowed to slash £4billion from the aid budget as the Government struggles to fill the black hole in the nation’s finances.

He plans to lower the target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income on international development to 0.5 per cent. This would reduce the handouts to £10billion for the first time in almost a decade.

But Tory rebels have warned the Government it will face a parliamentary showdown with the possibility that the move – which would be a breach of the party’s 2019 election manifesto – could be blocked in both the Commons and the Lords.

Boris Johnson plans to lower the target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income on international development to 0.5 per cent but a vote on cutting foreign aid looks like being delayed by ministers

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Ministers, who are keen to avoid an embarrassing row about Britain’s place in the world, are now expected to postpone changing the legislation until after the Prime Minister has hosted the G7 gathering in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, in June.

Senior Tory figures including Theresa May and David Davis are expected to join the foreign aid revolt led by Andrew Mitchell.

The former international development secretary has claimed the reduction will be the ‘cause of 100,000 preventable deaths, mainly among children’. 

Sir Peter Bottomley, who as Father of the House is the longest continuously serving MP, has said he will ‘work with anyone across’ the Commons to ‘fight to maintain’ his party’s 0.7 per cent manifesto pledge on overseas aid.

Last month, Mrs May warned that Britain would be ‘abandoning our position of global moral leadership’ if it cuts the aid target which, she claimed, had ‘raised our credibility in the eyes of the world’.

However, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the country has a tendency to ‘self-flagellate’ about its place in the world and ‘perhaps don’t see ourselves the way others do’. He has insisted it is better to get the legislation to reduce the aid budget ‘right’, rather than to pass it ‘quick’.

When asked last month, Mr Raab refused to set out a timetable for the law change but said it would be provided soon. He insisted the reduction was a ‘temporary measure’ but was unable to say when it would return to 0.7 per cent.

The UK, US, Germany, France, Canada, Italy and Japan make up the G7 but leaders from Australia, India, South Korea and the EU are also due to attend as guests.