Select committee: Foreign Affairs Committee
Recommendation 13
Fifth Report - Global Health, Global Britain
Published 30 Sep 2021
Paragraph 40
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
Foreign Affairs Committee Global health security All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Government argued that the FCO-DFID merger would be an opportunity to align aid spending with diplomatic policy, with the potential for gains in global health security. We are concerned that the Government is squandering this opportunity by making ill-considered cuts to vital global health programmes. It is short-sighted to cut spending on neglected tropical diseases, or health research for lower-income countries, in order to focus on covid-19. These steps could undermine the response to covid, and put us all at greater risk from the next pandemic. In particular, cutting spending on important medical research and development programmes is a dangerous false economy, and could endanger Global Britain’s reputation as a science superpower. We are disappointed by the lack of transparency over the cuts, and over how the decisions have been made. In response to this report, we recommend that the FCDO provides us with a full account of the changes faced by aid-funded health programmes, with details on how decisions have been made on which to cut. It should publicly commit to reinstituting previous levels of funding to health research programmes as soon as the fiscal situation allows.
From: Foreign Affairs Committee, Fifth Report - Global Health, Global Britain (HC 200), paragraph 40, 30 September 2021
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 16 December 2021 (deadline 30 November 2021).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government sets out action across the Committee's recommendations, supporting a pandemic treaty and WHO reform while saying it is "yet to see evidence" for a single, non-renewable term for the WHO Director-General.
- On WHO funding, it says it has led calls in the WHO working group for more flexible, reliable funding and for an increase in Assessed Contributions, and it announced a £340m, four-year flexible funding programme that is "now live".
- On vaccines, it says it will "donate a total of 100 million doses by June 2022", with 80% of doses going through COVAX.
- On the BBC World Service, it states that the BBC is editorially independent, so additional services to tackle disinformation are "for the BBC World Service to decide". It cites an £8 million uplift for 2021-22, of which £3 million was for disinformation.
- On aid cuts, it describes the reduction to 0.5% of GNI as temporary, saying it will return to 0.7% "when the fiscal situation allows". It will publish a Health Systems Strengthening Position Paper before the end of the year, with decisions on publishing a global health strategic framework "in due course".