How UK aid is spent
This report outlines how the UK’s international development spending has undergone substantial changes, with major budget reductions, competing crises and global turbulence since 2020.
This report provides an account of the UK’s development funding at the beginning of ICAI’s latest Commission (2024 to 2029), following several turbulent years that resulted in major changes to the development budget.
The report briefly describes the global development context before focusing on how UK development funding is currently being spent.
The report provides a baseline against which ICAI and other interested parties can judge future choices about the development budget. It is based on publicly available sources, capturing information available in late 2024. The report ends with some questions that we intend to scrutinise further over the next four years of this Commission, as the new government determines its priorities in a changed context.
We intend to repeat this exercise at the end of this Commission, to reflect on the impacts and performance of the government’s choices for international development funding.