A full week on, the government is unable to say what impact the cut would have on international climate finance — a key plank of U.K. green diplomacy through which money is invested in poorer countries to help them build cleaner energy systems or protect against the effects of climate change.
“It’s too early to be able to respond,” Energy Minister Philip Hunt admitted to the House of Lords when asked on Monday. Hunt could only point peers to the government’s spending review, due in June, when more detail may be released.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband last year promised the U.K. would step up and fill “a vacuum of leadership” on global climate policy. But government officials repeatedly refused to say, when asked by POLITICO, whether Downing Street had consulted Miliband or his department before announcing the cuts.
Miliband represents the U.K. at international climate summits and is jointly responsible with Foreign Secretary David Lammy for Britain’s effort to bring the rest of the world along on the road to net zero. His department had the fifth biggest foreign aid spend in the U.K. government, £440 million in 2023.
“This cut was made in Number 10,” said Nick Mabey, chief executive of the E3G climate think tank and a former adviser to multiple U.K. governments. “It was a top-level, top-down political decision.”
Parliament’s cross-party International Development Committee criticized the impact of the cuts Wednesday morning, citing the hit to “global efforts to address poverty, inequality and climate change.”