UK Overseas Territories Minister Baroness Elizabeth Sugg resigned today in protest over the British government’s plan to reduce spending on overseas aid.
In its manifesto, the Conservative government had undertaken to spend the equivalent of 0.7% of gross national income on its foreign aid budget, but Chancellor Rishi Sunak told Parliament today that the government would instead spend 0.5% on overseas aid.
In a resignation letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, which she posted on Twitter, Sugg, who was also the minister in charge of sustainable development, said, “I believe it is fundamentally wrong to abandon our commitment to fund 0.7% of gross national income on development. This promise should be kept in the tough times as well as the good.”
She added, “Given the link between our development spend and the health of our economy, the economic downturn has led to significant cuts this year and I do not believe we should reduce our support further at a time of unprecedented global crises.”
The chancellor, in a speech on a review of annual spending this morning, told MPs that the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic meant “sticking rigidly to spending 0.7% of our national income on overseas aid is difficult to justify to the British people”.
Sugg, in her resignation letter, said it had been a matter of great pride for her that the UK had been “a development superpower and contributed so much to the world”, adding that she believed it was in the UK’s national interest to tackle global issues such as the COVID pandemic, climate change and conflict.
She told the prime minister, “Cutting UK aid risks undermining your efforts to promote a Global Britain and will diminish our power to influence other nations to do what is right. I cannot support or defend this decision, it is therefore right that I tender my resignation.”
Sugg was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State and Minister for the Overseas Territories and Sustainable Development in February this year. As overseas territories minister, she had responsibility within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, for Cayman and other OT jurisdictions.
Earlier this year, she played a prominent role in the legalisation of same-sex unions in Cayman when she approved Governor Martyn Roper’s use of his reserved powers to push ahead with the Civil Partnership Bill.
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