Frances Guy: 'Cutting the aid budget, yes, it's problematic'

“Sorry,” says Frances Guy, “I’m going off in lots of different tangents.”

In the space of three minutes, the former British ambassador has covered US aid cuts, conflict in Africa, international finance systems, ‘soft’ power and the former Department for International Development.

If she has a lot to say, it’s because she has a lot to share. After all, she’s had a career most people can only dream of.

For the Foreign Office, Guy has worked in postings from Singapore to Sudan, serving as UK ambassador to Yemen and Lebanon and as official envoy to the Syrian opposition. For the United Nations, she was the representative for its UN Women programme in Iraq. At Christian Aid, she ran its Middle East operations. And now, from her hometown of Edinburgh, she is at the helm of Scotland’s International Development Alliance (Sida), an umbrella organisation encompassing 165 NGOs working across more than 140 countries. 

While drawing on the experience garnered across continents and time zones, it is work that has allowed her to take a step back from being, in so many previous roles, “on the frontline a bit”, she says. “I discovered that I take off my shoes and hide under a desk in times of trouble,” she smiles, telling Holyrood about a firefight that took place outside her offices in Yemen. “I clearly would rather run away in bare feet.”

Guy always wanted to go places. “I recall at 10, 11, 12, chatting to the girls I used to walk to school with about what you were going to do when you grew up, and I absolutely wanted to travel, and my friends absolutely had no idea what I was talking about,” she says. Where did the wanderlust come from? “I don’t really know,” she answers. “I suspect it’s from history books or something, or it could be a primary school teacher who had a map on the wall. I have got absolutely no idea.”

I certainly have an opinion [on Tony Blair]. Whether you’d wish to be printing it is another thing

Wherever it came from, it turned Guy from an Edinburgh schoolgirl brought up in the Sciennes area of the city into a jet-setting Arabist who spent two years in Damascus, where she worked for the British Council, learning the language. Once, she was so adept that she could think and dream in it. She can’t do it now, she says, but the Arab world has shaped her tastes, and she often nips out to buy labneh, the soft yoghurt cheese that’s a Middle Eastern staple. “I think if you have lived anywhere, a bit of you stays there somehow,” she reflects.

“I have lived in quite a lot of countries that are now in conflict or have been recently. Sudan, Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen – none of them are in a great state, unfortunately. All have great potential so that makes the tragedies of conflict even worse, frankly.”

She says she’s “not sure” if she’s brave, despite having spent so much time in so many places experiencing conflict and instability. And she’s not even sure she’s particularly unique in outlook. “Scotland’s always been outward-facing,” she says. “We were always big emigrators. Scotland, for better or worse, played big parts in the British empire, and there’s been that strand. So yes, you’re on an island, but it doesn’t mean you’re always isolated.”

Guy, who studied in Scotland, Italy and Canada, took the helm at Sida in 2021. A self-confessed “news junkie”, she says she’s “always wanted to know what’s going on in the world”. And so often she had a front-row seat. That made ambassadorial work “very tricky” at times, she says, because “what you see in country is different from how somebody’s seeing it from London”.

“There were a certain amount of disputes,” she says when asked about difficult experiences. She had plenty of these while working with UN Women and as gender adviser to the UN Development Programme, she goes on. “I met some unbelievably courageous and brave women, and yes, obviously I do wonder sometimes what’s happened to them, but I see them pop up now and again in the media or on social media. It’s very reassuring to see them in new guises and still persevering. I’ve had a great privilege to meet many very brave people. It keeps you very humble.”

Unsurprisingly, Guy is “totally appalled” to see the rights of women withdrawn by the Taliban in Afghanistan, where restrictions covering dress, speech and movement are now so tough that in a recent deadly earthquake, women were left to languish in the ruins of homes turned to rubble. The regime’s edicts meant there were no women on relief teams, and the so-called gender apartheid is so great that the men would not assist them. “The world should be calling that out much more loudly than it does,” Guy says. “Some of the Gulf states in particular have made, arguably, very big changes in the last 10 or 12 years, so it’s very, very shocking to see Afghanistan go in totally the opposite direction.”

Reform UK has suggested that it would do a deal with the Taliban to repatriate asylum seekers from Britain, paying the repressive regime to receive people rejected for status in the UK. Guy is unequivocal. “We absolutely should not be doing deals with the Taliban, and we shouldn’t even be suggesting that it’s possible.

An earthquake survivor | Alamy

“What happened in the earthquake sums it up in a way that nothing else can. There’s a whole issue about what the UN should be doing, and they have tried very, very hard to ensure the women are still employed in some of the UN agencies.” Has that worked? “No. They have kept some, but it’s such a fight.” 

Ambassador James Kariuki has repeatedly taken the UK Government’s condemnation of the Taliban’s edicts on women and girls to the UN Security Council. In September, the UK Parliament’s International Development Committee raised concerns of its own about that very council, stating that “increasing polarisation” there has “caused paralysis on crucial decisions to resolve conflicts” and maintain peace. 

As a penholder on issues including women, peace and stability, the UK must “go beyond symbolism in its work”, the committee said, and present a strategy for handling bids by China, Russia and America – all permanent members of the council – to remove references to women’s reproductive health and safety from resolutions.

Guy shares the committee’s concerns on polarisation. “If you look at what’s happened in Palestine, Americans have used their veto frequently,” she says. “It’s not the first time, though – we need to keep a historical perspective, this is what has happened in the Security Council ever since it was set up. In the Cold War, you had alternates between the Soviet Union and the Americans vetoing. It has been stymied before, this is not a first, but we are back again in that situation.”

If it could be said that problems within the council are a clear signal of the fragmentation of the international rules-based order, Guy says it could be argued that that happened with the Iraq war in 2000. Does she have an opinion, then, about whether ex-PM Tony Blair, an architect of that conflict, is the right man to run a transitional authority in Gaza? “I certainly have an opinion,” she says. “Whether you’d wish to be printing it is another thing. 

“There’s a problem with that whole setup,” she goes on, referring to a doctor who presented at Sida’s recent conference. “In October 2023, Palestine, the Gaza Strip, had more doctors and nurses per head than the UK. They don’t any more because many of them have been killed. But the point is that this is a very educated, very professional, very able population. There is no need for an oversight, pseudo-colonialist committee led by Trump and Blair. If the need is to act as some go-between with the Israelis, then the whole thing is a bit problematic. And Tony Blair as representative of the Quartet [of international powers – the US, EU, Russia and UN], I think it’s questionable what he achieved in that role. So why is he the best person to do it to try again?”

International aid funding is peanuts

With so much experience of working with and observing politicians, has Guy every been tempted to enter politics herself? “I can’t stand on a doorstep and say, ‘vote for me’,” she answers. Why not? “Because I don’t see why I would be better than anybody else.” But there must have been people along the way who haven’t been very good? “Yes,” she confirms with a wry smile, “but it’s better to snipe from the sidelines.”

There has been much commentary in recent months about the performance of the UK Government on foreign affairs and overseas aid. In February, Keir Starmer’s Aberdeen-born minister for international development, Anneliese Dodds, quit the cabinet after the foreign aid budget was slashed and the money diverted to defence. 

Starmer had announced a reduction in the aid budget from 0.5 per cent of gross national income to 0.3 per cent. It was not a decision he “wanted to make”, he said, but defended it by adding that there is “no driver of migration and poverty like conflict”. In a strongly worded resignation letter, Dodds said that while the “postwar global order has come crashing down”, choosing to have the Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) programme “absorb the entire burden” of increased defence spending will “remove food and healthcare from desperate people”.

It was the largest single cut to the aid programme in history and came after US President Donald Trump froze funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAid) in a move that saw billions of humanitarian dollars wiped out. Banding together, almost 140 charities accused Starmer of following in America’s stead and accepting a “false choice” of helping the world’s poorest or bolstering UK defences.

And it is something of a trend amongst western nations, with Germany, France and Sweden also cutting back on overseas development. 

Some projections suggest an additional 5.7million people across Africa will fall below extreme poverty levels over the year, with the figure then rising to 19m by 2030. Childhood immunisation against measles, polio and other deadly but preventable illnesses is expected to drop, and malnutrition to grow. In the six months since the arrest of USAid, an estimated 90,000 people are thought to have died due to the effect on America’s Aids relief programme alone.

Guy as British ambassador to Lebanon Last month, a report by MPs found UK money may not be reaching those most in need and expressed disappointment that the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office defines ‘value for money’ in terms of worth to the taxpayer, not improvement to the lives of those in poverty. 

Scotland’s humanitarian organisations vary in scale and focus, and Guy says the sector is feeling the impacts of the contraction of western aid spending. Malawi, formally linked to our domestic sector through cooperation agreements and partnerships, is particularly affected. “There have been ripple effects for everybody,” she says, with job losses and restructuring as a result.

“Immediate emergency funding is just being hammered by all of this, so that’s a problem in itself. And then there’s a different part of it, which is the more the longer-term development piece. In that context, international aid funding is peanuts, and the reality is that many countries are paying more in interest payments on debt than they are on their health and education budgets – and in some cases, in their health and education budgets combined,” she says.

“That’s where, if we wanted to make a real difference, changing those structural issues of why countries are in such terrible debt is actually more important than increasing aid budgets. But arguably, we have a UK Government that’s doing neither of those things.”

It’s a conversation Guy and Sida have been involved with through their membership of the UK Alliance, a domestic network also comprising similar organisations from Wales, Northern Ireland and England, and which itself receives some Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office funding.

“Cutting the aid budget, yes, it’s problematic, and it’s problematic in the way it was done,” Guy says, “because the UK was actually doing a lot of good work – the [former] Department for International Development had been seen for that around the world. That was a key piece of soft power for the UK and cutting it in the way that it was done, so that the prime minister could go and tell President Trump that he was going to spend a bit more on defence, was very galling to anybody working on international development because it meant it felt very cheap. And actually, investing in people’s and in countries’ futures is a better way to increase stability in the world and reduce conflict.”

These targets are not mythical

The cuts have hit with only a handful of years to go for the UN Sustainable Development goals, a set of 17 targets adopted by member states in 2015. By 2030, signatories are supposed to have taken action to end hunger, eradicate poverty, achieve equality for women and girls, create inclusive cities, take urgent climate action, and more. Guy is unimpressed with the progress made to date and says the cash cuts won’t help. “The impetus has come out,” she says.

“We are five years to go, and only 18 per cent of the goals are on target. If you want a generous interpretation, 35 per cent are nearly on target – that’s still way less than half. 

“[Former prime minister] David Cameron was part of some of the initial discussions on the sustainable development goals, but we are the worst one amongst the worst reporters – we’ve done one voluntary national review; most countries have done three or four. We don’t even talk about it any more in this country. We’ve lost connection on that. 

“We’re talking about targets that were agreed by every country. These targets are not mythical; they have been agreed by every national statistics office around the world. And yes, that means, in a very UN fashion, they’re very clunky but they apply everywhere. We’re not meeting some of them in Scotland, we’re not meeting some of them in the UK either. So it’s a difficult moment to have all of that cut, yes.”

While foreign affairs remain a reserved matter, the Scottish Government has worked to make itself visible on the world stage, opening a string of international offices and operating its own aid funding programmes which work primarily in Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Pakistan. Its International Development Fund, established in 2005, is expected to rise to £15m by the middle of next year and money was recently announced for a youth climate leadership programme in Africa, additional crisis relief in Sudan and South Sudan, and tackling inequality for women and girls in Zambia and Malawi.

First Minister John Swinney travelled to the latter countries last month, marking the first trip to Zambia for an FM and the only Malawian visit since a co-operation agreement between the governments was signed by then first minister Jack McConnell in 2005. “At a time when governments across the world are cutting aid programmes overseas, internationalism, and international solidarity, has never been more important,” Swinney said. “Scotland will continue to stand with the international community and to do our bit for a fairer, more equal world.”

John Swinney visits a project in Zomba, Malawi

The total remains a fraction of what has been committed by the UK Government even under the latest cut, which will take the FCDO’s programme budget down to less than £6.2bn in 2027-28.

Still, Scotland has demonstrated some “astute leadership” in this area, Guy says, with the establishment of the Climate Justice Fund announced by then first minister Nicola Sturgeon at Cop26 in Glasgow serving to “create a momentum and demonstrate what a small country can do”. “Scotland, in its small International Development Fund, has been doing some interesting work,” she says. 

“The Climate Justice Fund has done some imaginative projects. They’re small, but they’ve been able to take those examples back to subsequent Cop meetings and use them as examples for that other people might be able to follow. There’s a very practical role that small states can play in some of that. And now that we’re supposed to be doing a feminist approach to international affairs, and with the Women and Girls Fund, which is again a very small sum of money in relative terms, they’ve been promoting a participatory approach to how to create the projects in the first place. Again, that’s quite avant garde and quite innovative. So we can do positive things, actually. With small amounts of money you can make a positive impact, which can influence other changes elsewhere.

“Where we have less influence, probably, but not entirely tested I would suggest, is on those structural issues,” she goes on, referring back to the global financial systems to which so many poorer countries remain in hock. “But we have big financial institutions still in Scotland. There feels like there should be a space where we can, as a government, as a public sector, as civil society, influence a little bit more what those financial institutions are doing” she adds, just days before Swinney pledges his government’s support to the international Cancel Debt, Choose Hope campaign, which calls for a ‘debt justice’ law for countries in crisis.

In March, UK polling by YouGov found 65 per cent of adults in favour of increased defence spending financed by reduced overseas aid. The level was highest (91 per cent) amongst Reform supporters, but still in at 61 per cent for Labour supporters. With that in mind, is Guy hopeful about the direction of travel? 

Guy addresses the Sida conference 

“Twenty years ago was the Jubilee debt campaign,” she says. “Scotland was quite engaged in it, and it was all about all those people marching to Gleneagles. My question would be, have things really changed so much? Have people’s moral values changed? No, I doubt it. 

“What we have is a bunch of politicians who are calling out different things, perhaps, than happened 20 years ago, and maybe people feel a bit poorer, but I think people understand that the world’s very connected.

“The Scottish Government likes to talk about being a ‘good global citizen’. I think we would prefer to use the term ‘responsible global citizen’ – understanding the role of the country in the world, the role your emissions have, the role that your history has had, and that we’re all part of the same world. It means calling out people who are racist. It means standing up for human rights and respecting others.

“I don’t think populism is, per se, a threat to international development. I think there’s a strain of language that’s being used that likes to alienate the other.”