In an era of global challenges, the UK has the opportunity to lead once again, leaving a legacy of positive change for generations to come.
Pakistan has long been one of our largest aid recipients, and between 2015 and 2019 Pakistan was the largest single recipient of direct British government-to-government bilateral aid. Yet its courts uphold forced marriages arranged by kidnapping.
When our political class feels that it cannot act, it cobbles together ad-hoc explanations for why its apathy is actually cunning strategy, hard-headed pragmatism, or just somehow grown-up.
“Collective responsibility, fortunately, is not retrospective”, says the Development Minister.
Asked about the UK’s £50m spend in the country, the Foreign Office minister adds that “we are looking to make sure that aid is better spent”.
Such initiatives are surely a deserving recipient of more of the UK’s overseas aid than China, which reportedly received £51.7 million last year.
There is a limit to what can fairly and sensibly be achieved by raising other taxes and cutting public spending – especially when it comes to pay.
It will be essential to ensuring people can return to their homes, farmers to their fields, and children to their schools.
We have a legal duty to intervene if chemical weapons are used, and that is a duty we must not fail.
It was always short-sighted to suggest aid spending prioritised helped foreign people at the expense of those struggling in Britain.
The UK needs a fresh, robust template. Central to it should be a differentiation between strategic and non-strategic areas.
The Chancellor and Home Secretary need to ensure our overseas aid and asylum policies are generous and humane.
Its development reputation has been tarnished, and nobody is able to define quite what the UK’s foreign policy actually is.
This is not just a priority for our foreign and overseas development policy – people face persecution and even violence right here in Britain.
Together, the United Kingdom and United States are leading the way in the fight to eradicate preventable diseases.