Dear Chancellor of the Exchequer,
We are greatly encouraged by the UK government’s aid increases in 2008 and its commitment to deliver ￡7,477m in aid during 2009/10; we hope you will be sticking firmly to these plans in the 2009 budget.
We are though aware that given our lower than expected GNI at present, there may be voices calling for 2009/10 aid spending plans to be revised downwards in the budget in order to simply meet the 2009/10 aid/GNI target also set out in the CSR.
We therefore write to you today to implore you to resist such calls and stick to your absolute aid commitments for 2009/10. Such a course of action has cross party support and is consistent with the Prime Minister’s recent statement at the DFID Annual Conference that “we will keep our promises on aid”.
More importantly, such a response will help to save millions of lives as the economic crisis hits the poor hard and will help protect recent development achievements which are so fragile. There is no better time to have maximum ambition on aid.
We are aware that in the current economic climate such action does pose challenges, but we think the case for keeping these aid promises is strong, and we stand ready to defend them to the public alongside the government.
We hope you can do what you can to deliver on the UK’s aid promises for 2009/10,
Your Sincerely,