Sunak's secret stealth tax.

The UK is rightly sharing COVID vaccine doses with the poorest countries, who so far have less than 1% of global supply, and the Government has committed that the doses it shares this year and next will not be counted within the budget allocated for aid. But the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, is locked in a battle with Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, about the rest of the UK aid budget.

Doubling aid to Afghanistan could mean she has to cut aid from other refugees camps in other warzones. If our increased assistance to Afghan refugees comes at the cost of further cuts to Yemen, for example, which is facing the worst humanitarian crisis on earth, then we will have robbed Peter to pay Paul.

Worst of all, Sunak wants Truss to make cuts to life-saving projects because of a windfall from the International Monetary Fund, known as ‘Special Drawing Rights’. The UK is set to lend some of them to the poorest countries to deal with the pandemic. Again, this will mean no new money from the UK this year.

The poorest countries need all the help they can get in recovering from the pandemic, meeting climate change targets, educating girls, creating jobs and building sustainable health systems. We’ve cut our aid budget while every other G7 country has increased theirs. Britain has stepped back while others have stepped up. Sunak needs to junk this secret stealth tax.

Photo: Gov.uk