The politics of aid may be toxic, but the UK must do the right thing

In more than 10 years working in the aid sector, I have seen extraordinary innovations, from childhood education programmes for refugee children, to Al-driven flood warnings that alert farmers in some of the most vulnerable places on earth.

- David Miliband

Many of the initiatives I've seen are remarkably impactful and deliver serious value for money: it costs the International Rescue Committee (IRC) just £3 ($4) to administer a life-saving vaccine dose in the midst of a conflict in east Africa, for example.

The politics surrounding international aid, however, are increasingly toxic. The UK's Department for International Development and now the US equivalent, USAID, have been dismantled, despite the British public being more than twice as likely to say aid has a positive rather than negative impact.

Denmark has stuck to the UN target of spending 0.7% of national income on overseas development, yet it is an exception rather than a norm among European nations. The UK government needs to answer some hard questions about aid: what is it for, how should it be delivered, and who should pay for it? In the 1990s, the fight against extreme poverty was a success story.

In 1990, more than one-third of the global population lived on less than $2.15 a day; by 2015, that had shrunk to about 10%. Chinese and Indian economic development was critical, but so were aid and debt write-offs. Today, however, the World Bank warns that global poverty reduction has come to a near standstill, and 700 million people live on less than $2.15 per day.