Explain something to me in simple terms - sending money abroad/our black hole

whistles

My thinking is, yes the welfare system does need sorting out, as does a lot of things.

But, why can't we actually send less money overseas this coming year so we don't have this black hole debt and need to cut money off our most vulnerable in society.

Then we can go forward and make decisions without debt and a clean slate?

As I said please explain it on simple terms because my on this subject my brain isn't the same age as my body, politics generally fly over the top of any brain cell and it's just too complicated.

Emilee

As a member of the UN and the World Bank we have agreements in place to support global development, part of the UK’s commitment involves contributing to aid and funding as part of these global partnerships, the country can not just stop doing that.

Giving financial support presents economic benefit to the UK, both now and future.

Global stability is important to the UK, when countries are economically stable and peaceful, they are less likely to fall into conflict or create large numbers of refugees. This helps the UK through controlled migration and international trade.

Pre-Brexit, we used to receive significant funding from the EU for development, agriculture, and infrastructure.

Amaya_Ringo

Our entire local area depended on EU funding to the point our Eurosceptic MP basically begged people to vote remain, but they still didn't :/ Our area is surviving but a lot has been lost or cut back and I don't know what will happen in the future.

The media like to focus on the money we send away, but the reality is we used to receive a lot more money because of the EU for projects and development that now has to be filled by government.

Far more money has been wasted on internal things that aren't necessary or functioning as they should. And cuts in taxes and NI, while popular with certain sections of our population, mean cuts in services for vulnerable people, cuts in the NHS and so on.

Jimm_Alumni

We've made agreements and deals to give this support/aid. Think of countries as a group of people. If someone in that group was always breaking their promises or not following through on agreements you'd start to not trust them. That would be very bad for international relations and any future deals we want to have made.

It is also in our interest to support other countries. As others have already mentioned, stability in other nations does benefit the UK. Instability causes war, strife and more. Which in turn creates refugees who have to flee their home or risk dying in the conflicts.

It's also a relatively small part of the national budget. I believe I once read that the entire foreign aid budget would only keep the NHS running for a few weeks at best.