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The chancellor has advocated cutting the foreign aid budget, telling Sky News: “This is about trying to focus on the priorities that the British people have at a time of enormous difficulty.”
Speaking with Kay Burley, Rishi Sunak said the COVID-19 pandemic means she has had to make “tough decisions, of which help was one of them.”
In his spending review, the Chancellor abandoned a conservative manifesto commitment to fund the foreign aid budget at the equivalent of 0.7% of gross national income, instead cutting it to 0.5%.
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Chancellor Rishi Sunak says the priority should be on UK jobs and services.
The move has sparked a backlash among Conservative MPs and outsiders as well.
Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said it was “shameful and wrong”, while former Prime Minister David Cameron said he “deeply regrets” the decision.
He also brought Baroness Sugg, a foreign minister, to leave your paper in protest.
Mr Sunak said the government expected to again spend 0.7% of GDP on aid “when the fiscal situation allows it.”
“But we will continue to spend £ 10bn on aid next year,” the chancellor continued.
“If you look at it as a percentage of GDP, it is 0.5%, which will still make us more generous than almost any other major economy and we will continue to be one of the most active countries in the world.”
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Cameron on aid cut: ‘It’s a very sad moment’
He added: “We are doing a lot and people should hold their heads high about the role we are playing.”
On the broader state of public finances, Sunak admitted that the current levels of spending and borrowing caused by the coronavirus cannot continue in the long term.
When asked if taxes might have to go up in the future to get finances back on track, the chancellor replied: “Now is not the time to make those decisions because we are dealing with a lot of uncertainty.”
In defense of his decision to freeze the pay of 1.3 million public sector workers, Sunak said that wages in that sector are “generally higher” than those in the private sector.
He told Kay Burley that there was a “disparity” between the public and private sectors prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, and that “even when features and pensions are taken into account, there was at least one premium payment of the 7% for the public sector “. .
“That wage premium has certainly been widened in the last six months, because what we’ve seen in the last six months is that private sector wages have dropped by one percent and public sector wages have risen by about 4%.” said.
“In addition to that, people in the private sector are losing their jobs, their hours are reduced, they are terminated, none of that is happening in the public sector.
“So, given the context, I couldn’t justify a universal and widespread wage increase for the public sector.”
