Action Against Hunger welcomes the news that Andy Burnham is set to become the UK’s next Prime Minister.
During his previous time in government, he was part of a Labour government that prioritised aid investment, created the Department for International Development and placed humanitarian principles and poverty reduction at the centre of Britain’s international role.
In 2015, the UK joined the international community in committing to end world hunger by 2030. Yet a decade later, the proportion of people facing acute hunger across the world’s most crisis-affected countries is nearly double that recorded in 2016, according to the 2026 Global Report on Food Crises.
Sir Keir Starmer chose a very different path, breaking both with the development legacy of previous Labour governments and with Labour’s own 2024 manifesto commitment to restore ODA to 0.7% of GNI when fiscal circumstances allowed. Instead, his government announced a 40% reduction in the aid target, from 0.5% to 0.3%.
The scale of this decision will have an untold impact for years to come. UK aid will fall to its lowest level as a proportion of GNI since 1999 and his government’s own assessment identified serious consequences for health, nutrition and equality programmes, with latest figures suggesting some African countries’ aid will be slashed by 90%.
We hope our new Prime Minister takes a new path of tackling preventable hunger, not taking meals away.
The UK Government must now:
- reverse the planned reduction to 0.3%;
- establish a credible timetable back towards 0.7%;
- protect humanitarian, nutrition and conflict-affected country spending;
- retain an appropriate level of expertise and capacity in the FCDO to deliver this;
- restore international development as a central pillar of Britain’s foreign policy and soft power.
This is an important moment. Across Sudan, Palestine, the DRC and Yemen, conflict and hunger are devastating millions of lives. With the UK set to host the G20 next year and the G7 the following year, the new Prime Minister has an opportunity to prioritise conflict driven food insecurity, nutrition financing and the post-2030 development framework.
The new Prime Minister’s response to these challenges will be an immediate test of whether humanitarian principles, global cooperation and international development are once again central to Britain’s role in the world.
We will be watching closely. These crises require strong global leadership, and the new Prime Minister must not retreat from that responsibility as the outgoing administration did.