The foreign secretary described the decision to cut development aid to fund defence as ‘extremely difficult’

Good morning. At Westminster MPs are still absorbing the implications of Keir Starmer’s decision to slash the aid budget to fund an increase in defence spending. Pippa Crerar and Kiran Stacey have all the details in their overnight story.

John Healey, the defence secretary, has been giving interviews this morning and he has faced a lot of questions about whether this announcement was entirely about pleasing Donald Trump. “No, it’s not,” he told Sky News. Healey pointed out that raising defence spending by 2.5% of GDP was a Labour manifesto commitment. (That’s true, but the manifesto did not say it would happen by 2027 – or that aid spending would be cut to fund it.) But Healey did not try to pretend that the timing of the announcement was unrelated to the fact that Starmer has his first meeting with Trump since the inauguration in the White House tomorrow. “President Trump, over the last two weeks, has been very direct in his challenge,” Healey said.

This is unfortunate. Lammy self evidently not been able to protect the foreign office budget since only weeks ago urged the US not to cut its aid budget saying it would be a big strategic mistake. By cutting to 0.3% of GDP, the UK, once an aid superpower, joins Italy in the G7 in being one of the least generous of industrialised countries. Fear of Reform, and Trump, drives No 10’s and Treasury choices.

To make this [higher defence spending] commitment, and stick within our fiscal rules, we have had to make the extremely difficult decision to lower our spending on international development. As the prime minister said, we do not pretend any of this is easy. This is a hard choice that no government – let alone a Labour government – makes lightly. I am proud of our record on international development. It helps address global challenges from health to migration, contributes to prosperity, and supports the world’s most vulnerable people. It grows both our soft power and our geopolitical clout, while improving lives. For all of those reasons, this government remains committed to reverting spending on overseas aid to 0.7% of gross national income when the fiscal conditions allow.

But we are a government of pragmatists not ideologues – and we have had to balance the compassion of our internationalism with the necessity of our national security.