Should remittances, money migrants send to family abroad, count as UK foreign aid?
Remittances do not count as UK foreign aid. Under OECD rules, official development assistance must be government-funded and aimed at development in countries on the DAC list, and private transfers between individuals are excluded. UK aid is being cut from 0.5% of national income towards 0.3% by 2027/28 (about £9.2bn) to fund defence. Migrants in the UK sent an estimated £9.3bn home in 2023, a sum comparable to the whole aid budget, although official data on destinations are patchy.
3 Opinions
A mature country plays by international OECD rules; and doesn't try to pass off citizens private cash as state charity to look good. I understand cutting the aid budget, but trying to hide that cut by claiming £9.3bn of private remittances as 'UK state aid' is insulting.
It's a separate money flow so should be recorded separately. By all means cite both numbers but don't pretend they are the same, because they are not.
We are already incredibly, overly generous in the number of migrants that are allowed in, which are net drains on the economy in the case of thousands, that care more about their homelands than Britain. End foreign aid entirely, the soft power we get is meaningless. If we need to point to a number, let it be the remittances to these countries that often refuse to take back their rapists, like Pakistan. Edited