If anything sums up the Tory party’s attitude to international aid, it has to be Theresa May’s appointment of Priti Patel as secretary of state for international development. She is, after all, a Tory ideologue through and through. She even advocated the abolition of the very department she now oversees.
Patel comes from a long line of Tories who are sceptical about humanitarian and development aid programmes. Their remedy for grinding poverty and oppression in developing economies is straightforward: sell off public assets to private companies, charge fees for social services such as education and health and sign free trade agreements.
The Conservative’s support of Labour’s policy of allocating at least 0.7% of Britain’s GDP to foreign assistance programmes was a fig leaf. They feared – in the words of Theresa May – being labelled the nasty party.
Conservative pollsters know that most Britons strongly support effective foreign aid, so Theresa May’s new hard right government cannot abolish the foreign aid budget.
But it can do the next best thing: put Priti Patel in charge of it. Her plans – “to challenge and change the global aid system” – include using chunks of Britain’s foreign aid budget to subsidise big companies and contribute to the already substantial defence budget. This is a massive misuse of resources that are earmarked for humanitarian and development aid.
These are Priti Patel’s and Theresa May’s “core Conservative principles” at work. Never mind that they will destroy Britain’s capacity to manage one of the world’s most effective and accountable development programmes.
In a recent interview with the Daily Mail, Patel said that much of the UK’s aid budget was being wasted. Yet when challenged in parliament over her claims she couldn’t put a figure on it.
All independent audits of the effectiveness of the UK’s aid programme give the Department for International Development (DfID) the highest marks. Yet the new head of DfID wants to transfer large amounts of aid money to the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, which score significantly worse on accountability, according to the Aid Transparency Index.
If the Tories are serious about wanting to help developing economies, they should turn their attention to the hundreds of billions of dollars siphoned out of those economies through tax dodging and trade mispricing schemes. Many of these tax schemes are run by British companies, while the ill-gotten gains end up in tax havens such as the British Virgin Islands, Jersey and Guernsey.
If the secretary of state wants to cut poverty in developing economies, she and her government must do more to cut the criminal drain of capital from those countries which is undermining their people’s futures.
Africa’s economies lose more than $60bn (£46bn) a year through corruption and tax evasion – that’s more than 10 times what they receive in aid. Instead of acting to stop this scandal, this Conservative government is cutting resources for institutions – such as the Serious Fraud Office – that should probe and prosecute those responsible for such massive thefts.
Foreign aid is meant to cut poverty not bribe poor countries to do business with British companies. The government’s attempts to revive the discredited aid programmes of the past, which tied commercial contracts with British companies, turns our assistance programmes into a bargaining chip for human lives. It is morally wrong to tie food aid to a fighter jet contract.
Our aid budget should prioritise investing in education – giving every child the chance to bloom. We should contribute to health programmes, increasing the life expectancy of millions of the poorest people and help them live productive lives. Let’s use the aid budget to improve sanitation. Millions of people die needlessly every year from diarrhoea. It is easy to prevent this with clean fresh water.
Far more useful than peddling misinformation about our aid programmes, which are globally recognised as boosting opportunities in countries that have been torn apart by conflict, would be for this government to recognise that our aid programme works. It delivers help where it is needed. It represents good value for money – and it is the right thing to do.
- This article was amended on 29 September 2016 to correct the name of Publish What You Fund’s Aid Transparency Index, from the International Aid Transparency Initiative as an earlier version said.
Kate Osamor is the shadow secretary of state for international development
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