Talking Points Menu

For parliamentary contributions to Debates, Select Committees, Oral & Written Questions, Early Day Motions (EDMs) as well as for Social Media, here are handy talking points that Parliamentarians can use to express their activism: –

• DECLARE interest as a Member / Vice-Chair / Co-Chair / Chair of the APPG for Aid Match – This name-check amplifies recognition to parliamentary colleagues.
• KEY MESSAGE ‘UK Aid matching programmes, which match fund private sector contributions, doubles the public sector money available for effective NGO administered development projects, thereby impacting more lives with less waste. Scaling up matched funding from the current and meagre level of 0.3% of ODA* to at least 3% of ODA would support…..: –
• CUSTOMISE comments to a particular CAUSE/s whether through a specific region e.g., Ethiopia, Yemen, Ukraine etc, OR issue e.g., Women and girls, diseases, education etc, OR charity e.g., Water Aid, UNICEF, BRAC etc. OR general e.g., to help meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), end extreme poverty, reduce global inequality etc.

MENU for expanded and more detailed remarks, that represents a wide spectrum of parliamentary viewpoints

1. Ensure more direct aid delivery through frontline NGOs which are considered as more cost-effective implementers, delivering more bang for the taxpayers’ buck
2. Target funds to real projects as programming budgets have been drastically cut, some as much as 90% as a result of the ODA cut from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP
3. Be at no extra cost to Government because the scaling up of aid matching policies would come from the prevailing ODA budget
4. Increasing overall ODA will not necessarily guarantee major funding increases for NGOs but increasing the level of UK Aid Match (as part of existing ODA) will
5. Safeguard predictable funding for UK based charities which are struggling to raise adequate funds in the cost-of-living crisis, and at reduced fundraising costs
6. Demonstrate number of livelihoods impacted by tangible metric reporting from charity appeal partners, providing enhanced transparency to the UK taxpayer
7. Guarantee that more money is decided by the UK public, helping them have a say in how UK aid is spent via the UK Aid Match charity appeals
8. Get more aid on the ground through grass roots organisations, which are usually more effectively targeted by smaller organisations with local knowledge
9. Intentionally decrease opaque and bloated bilateral spending and can increase effective multi-lateral spending such as GAVI and efficient UN programmes
10. Invite wealthier citizens, foundations and companies to contribute their fair share to development programmes
11. Regain some integrated development expertise and focus (capabilities inherent with large INGOs) that was lost when DFID merged with FCDO
12. Count as bonafide ODA expenditure as opposed to dubious Home Office or other departmental diversion of aid spending masked as overseas aid
13. Create goodwill with the electorate after Government reneged on its election 0.7% GDP aid spend manifesto commitment to help the world’s poorest
14. Boost our soft power as part of our wider diplomacy, defence and development strategy having recently retreated as a ‘development superpower’
15. Help reclaim the UK ‘internationalist’ leadership’s position on the world stage than be viewed as insular and isolationist as a fall-out from Brexit
16. Prioritise urgent and basic needs for the most marginalised groups over boosting trade and investment partnerships
17. Ensure that these programmes would not be tainted by aid tied solely to our political, economic and defence interests
18. Ensure that we comply with our legal duty under the International Development Act 2002 to guarantee that aid spending is spent on poverty reduction overseas
19. Better foster an educated and healthy workforce to strengthen trading partners for us to export our goods to, thus actually serving our self-interests
20. Enrich the world intellectually or culturally because aid recipients could express themselves by being educated and ‘free’ and therefore more productive
21. Shift the focus back to lowest-income countries away from somewhat self-sufficient middle and upper-middle-income countries
22. Potentially divert aid money going to already wealthy countries such as India and China whose funding should be categorically stopped
23. Show Africa that we are their real friends by investing in real aid that would lessen China’s growing influence in the region
24. Complement our understanding of on the ground challenges from on the ground operators so as create partner-led rather than donor driven initiatives
25. Go a long way to ameliorate conditions in Heavily Indebted Poor Countries and should be coupled with significant debt cancellation
26. NGO funding alone, nor any funding is not the silver bullet solution and must be coupled with fair trade policies
27. Help to shake off our stained colonial history of exploitation by implementing Aid as a human progress issue whereby we all succeed together
28. Exhibit our moral responsibility, as one of the richest nations in the world, to assist the very poorest in the world
29. Fund programmes that address root causes of global crises such as instability associated with inequality, conflict and climate change
30. Provide proper accountability for the outputs which would help overcome the misconception that aid doesn’t work
31. Create a multiplier effect to dramatically boost the impact of our aid, thereby attracting more donations and increases aid effectiveness
32. Not require any new institution or agency to set up as this is a readymade, proven, oven baked and scalable framework
33. Unify Parliamentarians across both Chambers who want Government to deploy efficient programmes with less waste. Real Aid

OR points used to COUNTER and help alleviate some CONSTITUENTS’ CONCERN/s that: –

34. Governments continually cut Foreign Aid budgets and will always be demoted behind domestic issues
35. Setting an ‘arbitrary’ foreign aid budget target as a percentage of GDP – without which richer governments would not have an equal and shared responsibility
36. Too much taxpayers’ money may be going to some corrupt or undemocratic governments
37. Too much of taxpayers’ money is going through excessive bureaucratic channels before reaching people in desperate poverty
38. Too much of taxpayers’ money is lost on account of fraud, mismanagement and waste
39. Too much taxpayers’ money is going to consulting firms who are profiteering from poverty, instead of on the ground charities
40. Growing economic inequality is exacerbating instability thereby driving immigration and refugees to our doorstep
41. Aid can be viewed as indulgent, misdirected, and ineffective without any proper parliamentary debate or decision-making process
42. We are not investing enough in pandemic preparedness which would help minimise effects from future cross border disease transmission
43. We are not investing enough in peace & conflict prevention, and climate protection to address some of the root causes of poverty
44. Aid as promoted by Government is clouded by vague ‘strategic commitments’ rather than measurable NGO poverty projects, reporting and tangible results
45. There are enough excellent NGO projects, they just aren’t receiving enough directing funding
46. Not enough money is going to their favourite charities & humanitarian appeals to help the world’s poorest win their struggles
47. Charity is seen as a hand-out when actually the great British public’s generosity to humanitarian appeals establishes our goodwill for people far from our shores

*We have based our calculation of Total UK Aid matching programmes totalling £502m running between 2011-2023 as a percentage of the £151877m Total Official Development Assistance (ODA) for the same period (2023 ODA is estimated), to give an average yearly percentage of 0.33%.

N.B.- While some of the UK Aid Match funding rounds was awarded to various Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) appeals, this total amount excludes some additional money for DEC because historically an emergency fund has always been set aside for adhoc disasters appeals and this matching money would have, in any case, been awarded in the form of a grant, so we have therefore excluded these additional amounts that have been given over and above the formal UK Aid Match funding rounds. Some of this DEC funding breakdown can be found here www.gov.uk/international-development-funding/uk-aid-match#overview-of-uk-aid-