The Conservatives have “hijacked” the UK’s multi-billion pound aid budget and are using it to bankroll big business, military programmes and their own anti-immigration policies rather than to provide healthcare and education to millions in the developing world, according to the shadow international development secretary, Diane Abbott.
In an excoriating speech to be delivered on Saturday in London, Abbott will tear into the government’s new aid strategy and accuse the Tories of putting politics and national self-interest above efforts to help some of the planet’s poorest people.
Abbott will tell the national gathering of the campaigning group Global Justice Now: “Aid has been hijacked by this government, to subsidise big business, military and anti-immigration policies. They should be using aid money to help build public services, providing health and education for millions of people, not filling the coffers of western big business.”
She will say that the “slide towards using aid to subsidise British business and as a slush fund top up its military and security budgets” will undermine efforts to improve global health and education, and fight climate change.
The government’s aid strategy (pdf), which was published last November, has been criticised for being too “Treasury-led” and for focusing more on the UK’s security and prosperity than on traditional development goals.
In a recent report, the Commons international development committee (IDC) said the strategy could make it harder for the Department for International Development (DfID) to fulfil its core mission of reducing global poverty.
The IDC also expressed concerns over the new strategy’s provisions to allow government departments other than DfID an increased share of the aid budget, which is now enshrined in law as 0.7% of gross national income.
The proportion of the aid budget spent by DfID is expected to fall from 85% now to about 72% by 2020. In 2013, the UK spent £11.46bn on overseas aid, which is technically known as official development assistance (ODA).
Abbott will also accuse the government of specious arguments to spin what she terms “the dubious argument that communities in the world’s poorest nations share the interests of both UK business and the UK security state”.
She will add: “It is not for no reason that the refrain ‘Can we ODA that?’ is now common in the corridors of the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office – departments that can also claim national security to cover up any embarrassing aid expenditure.”
A DfID spokeswoman said: “The UK government’s aid strategy is focussed on making a difference in the real world - using aid to the very best effect, and under internationally-agreed rules, to tackle global challenges like poverty, economic development, countering extremism and violence against women. This is the right thing to do and it is firmly in our national interest.”
In 2014, the UK became the first G7 country to meet the 46-year-old UN target of spending 0.7% of its gross national income on ODA. The push to get the target enshrined in law was tortuous, with some backbench Tories doing their best to torpedo the debate.
Philip Davies, the MP for Shipley, had previously labelled the bill “a handout to make a few middle class, Guardian-reading, sandal-wearing, lentil-eating do-gooders with a misguided guilt complex feel better about themselves”.
Despite legislation to guarantee the target, controversy over how and where DfID spends its money has refused to die down.
On 13 June, parliament will debate a petition – signed by more than 230,000 people – that calls on the government to drop the 0.7% commitment and “provide money only for truly deserving causes, on a case-by-case basis”.
