UK aid target: £400m shortfall forecast for 2027

The UK is on track to spend £410 million less on international aid in 2027 than planned, according to calculations released Monday by the Center for Global Development. That figure would leave aid at 0.29% of national income, short of the 0.3% target the government set for next year.

The researchers said a larger gap of £580 million, or 0.28% of national income, remains "very plausible" under their models. The smallest shortfall they modeled is £250 million. Ian Mitchell, a senior fellow at CGD and co-director of its Europe programme, called the numbers "material shortfalls in the spending power of UK aid."

Mitchell said closing a gap of £400 million would halve planned aid cuts to Africa. He said those cuts could cost thousands of lives and amount to a de facto UK exit from the south and east of the continent.

CGD attributed the projected gap to two factors. Inflation has run hotter than expected, pushing national income above the figures used at the 2025 spending review. A 2025 policy change affecting the budget of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office also contributed to the shortfall. The researchers urged ministers to add aid funding in this week's budget to avoid missing the target.

The 0.3% goal for 2027 sits well below the 0.7% figure in Labour's election manifesto. Keir Starmer lowered the target to free money for defence spending.

Fleur Anderson, a former minister on the foreign affairs select committee, said she wants to see higher aid spending in the budget. "I'd like to see this government going further and reversing these cuts altogether in time, but at the very least we should be hitting the reduced target that was set," she said. She called a shortfall "an abstract accounting issue" and pointed to communities without clean water, girls leaving school, undelivered vaccines and cuts to peace programmes in war zones.

FCDO figures released in September showed cuts under Starmer's government hit the poorest nations hardest. Funding to least-developed and low-income countries fell 6.7%, or £118 million. The overall official development assistance budget dropped to 0.44% of gross national income in 2025 from 0.5% in 2024, a fall of £987 million. An FCDO spokesperson said the multi-year aid allocations published in March 2026 set out spending plans for the next three financial years, based on gross national income at the time of the 2025 spending review. "Moving to a fixed budget reduces volatility and provides the necessary stability to deliver high-impact aid programmes," the spokesperson said. The Conservatives and Reform UK have pledged to cut aid from about £9bn a year to £1bn.

The budget is scheduled for this week.