Cardinal Vincent Nichols Cardinal Vincent Nichols urged the UK government to reconsider a proposed cut to its foreign aid budget.
In a letter to MPs released November 26, the president of the bishops’ conference of England and Wales expressed concern at the proposed cut in overseas aid from 0.7% of gross national income to 0.5%.
“In today’s figures that amounts to a cut of around £4 billion in spending on help to the world’s poorest people,” he wrote.
Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced November 25 that the government intended to abandon its commitment to the 0.7% target contained in the Conservative Party’s 2019 general election manifesto.
He insisted that cutting the overseas aid budget by a third was a temporary measure that was necessary as the country faced its worst recession in more than 300 years.
In his letter, Cardinal Nichols acknowledged the pressures on government officials responding to an economic emergency caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“A clear measure of a nation’s greatness is the manner in which it responds to the needs of its poorest. The same is true for the response to poverty between nations. If we truly wish to be a great nation, then cutting the overseas aid budget is a retrograde step,” the archbishop of Westminster said.