UK set to miss UK aid budget spending target by £320mn

The UK remains on track to miss its UK aid spending target of 0.3% of GNI by 2027, following a failure to confirm any upwards adjustment to the UK aid budget in today’s Autumn Budget.

Today’s OBR forecast for the UK’s GNI in 2027 has improved on previous projections, but money allocated to the UK aid budget will remain unchanged from 2025.

Following cuts to the UK aid budget announced in March 2025, the UK government has committed to spending 0.3% of GNI on ODA by 2027: already the lowest level since 1999. However, today’s improvements to the OBR’s forecast for the UK economy show that the 2027 ODA budget will see a shortfall of £320 million below 0.3% of GNI.

This is because funding for the UK aid budget until 2028/29 has been fixed since 2025, based on GNI projections available at the time. Following policy changes made in 2025, this means that if the UK economy grows, ODA funding will no longer be adjusted accordingly. Instead, it will remain at levels originally allocated in 2025.

With no additional funding announced in today’s Budget to close the gap, the UK is now on course to miss its 0.3% target for UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) spending.

Gideon Rabinowitz, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Bond, the UK network for NGOs, said:

“The UK aid cuts have already cost lives and forced lifesaving humanitarian, health and climate programmes to close. But failing to meet even the paltry target of 0.3% means the government is failing people facing the worst impacts of conflict, crisis and extreme poverty worldwide.

The government must urgently fix this injustice, by meeting its 0.3% commitment and setting out a roadmap for a gradual return to the 0.7% target. The Treasury should also ensure savings made by other departments spending UK aid are returned to the FCDO.

The government can also go further and use the UK’s upcoming G20 presidency to champion reforms to the global economic system including on debt, dirty money and fairer tax rules, to mitigate some of the damage done by sweeping ODA cuts, and build a more resilient and fairer world for us all.”

Notes to Editors:

1. GNI forecast released by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) alongside the Autumn Budget, projects a GNI of £3233.4bn in 2027. If ODA were adjusted with changes in GNI according to the latest OBR forecast, 0.3% of GNI would be £9.70bn in 2027. By keeping the ODA budget at 0.3% of GNI under the March 2025 forecast, it will only be £9.38bn – a shortage of £320mn.
2. In the Spring Statement 2025, the UK government announced it was decoupling UK ODA budgets from changes in projected GNI. As a result, all ODA budgets until the end of Parliament (and the 0.3% of GNI budget from 2027/28) have been set based on the OBR’s GNI forecast for the years 2026/27-2028/29 available at the time of the June 2025 Spending Review (i.e. the OBR’s March 2025 forecast).
3. It also decoupled UK ODA budgets from changes in ODA spending in other departments, meaning savings made in ODA spend by the Home Office are no longer returned to the FCDO, but instead recycled into the Home Office’s regular budget.
4. Over the summer, Bond warned that by removing the linkage between ODA levels and changes in GNI and by not returning the ODA savings from other departments to FCDO, the UK government no longer has a clear ODA target, and the UK ODA budget in 2025 was effectively cut by an additional c£700m beyond the stated £500mn.
5. Bond’s findings on this ‘stealth cut’ in 2025 were also corroborated by the NAO in their overview of the FCDO’s spending and performance, published on October 27. They stated that “in 2025, UK ODA spending was 0.44% of GNI, a larger reduction for 2025 than FCDO had previously indicated.”
6. Bond’s recent briefing on the impact of the UK ODA cuts is available to read here.
7. Bond’s briefing on what the UK government should prioritise during its G20 Presidency is available to read here.