Starmer links migrant crossings to cut in foreign aid

Following a week in which record numbers of migrants have attempted to cross the English Channel, the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has this morning suggested there is a link between the crossings and the government’s recent cuts to foreign aid budgets.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, Sir Keir Starmer said, “The answer is not what you do when people are on the boat in the Channel.  The answer is what you do to prevent people getting on the boat in the first place.  And we have not had strong enough agreements with France on this, and we have not done the work upstream”.

Starmer reaffirmed how the UK’s foreign aid budget was used in part to “deal” with some of the problems that are driving the movement of people across the world:

“You will never solve the immediate problem if you don’t solve the upstream problem.  This has been going on for a very long time.  The Home Secretary repeatedly says in strong language what she is going to do about the immediate problem but delivers absolutely nothing”.

“And if you are going to do the work upstream, you can’t at the same time can’t your foreign aid budget, as that budget is used in part to deal with these very problems”

Starmer’s comments come after a period of relatively still weather has seen an increased number of migrant crossings in the Channel during the last week. A new single day record occurred last Thursday when 1,185 people crossed the English Channel by boat.

In 2020 at the start of the Coronavirus pandemic, the government initially announced cuts in its commitments to foreign aid. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak defended the 0.2% aid budget cut as means of restoring the UK’s national economy and predicted an annual saving of £4 billion.

In his 2021 budget, Sunak announced plans to restore the UK’s foreign aid spending to 0.7% of GDP by 2024-205.