Minister vows to overhaul £14billion foreign aid budget
Minister vows to overhaul Britain’s ‘unsustainable’ £14billion foreign aid budget and says profits from overseas investments should be poured back into the NHS
- Penny Mordaunt admitted Britain’s foreign aid spending target is unsustainable
- International Development Secretary pledged to overhaul £14.1billion budget
- Miss Mordaunt said she would seek to get the international rules on foreign aid rewritten so the profits could be used on the NHS or other domestic priorities
Britain’s foreign aid spending target is unsustainable in its present form, Penny Mordaunt admitted yesterday.
In a presentation to the Cabinet, the International Development Secretary pledged to overhaul how the £14.1billion budget is used.
She suggested profits from the UK’s investments abroad should count towards the target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income on aid – and be spent on the health service to reduce the burden on the public purse.
Miss Mordaunt vowed to turn the Department for International Development (Dfid) from being a ‘spending department’ to a ‘fundraising’ one.
Penny Mordaunt vowed to turn the Department for International Development (Dfid) from being a ‘spending department’ to a ‘fundraising’ one
She also told her Cabinet colleagues that she wanted other Whitehall departments, such as the Ministry of Defence, to play more of a role in spending the cash.
The move by Miss Mordaunt, who has been tipped as a potential future Tory leadership contender, will fuel speculation she is attempting to boost her standing with the party membership by shaking up the controversial foreign aid target.
More than £4billion of foreign aid is currently invested in private sector projects overseas through Dfid’s finance arm CDC. This is aimed at creating jobs in the poorest countries of Africa and Asia.
‘Support us Boris!’: Theresa May clashes with Johnson in…
Philip Hammond blames France for being the ‘hardest’…
Share this article
But any profits made on schemes do not get counted towards the 0.7 per cent target if they are re-invested and are subtracted from the total if they are withdrawn.
Miss Mordaunt told ministers that she would seek to get the international rules on foreign aid rewritten so the profits could be used on the NHS or other domestic priorities.
She said that this would bring ‘more return directly to British taxpayer’ and place ‘less of a burden on the public purse’.
Miss Mordaunt told ministers she would seek to get the international rules on foreign aid rewritten
Under the target brought in by then Prime Minister David Cameron, the UK is committed to spending 0.7 per cent of national income on international development every year, but many Conservative MPs resent the commitment. The rules on what can be counted towards the target are set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Any changes need the unanimous support of all 30 Development Assistance Committee (DAC) member countries.
Miss Mordaunt is likely to face resistance from other nations to her proposal.
In November she faced disappointment as the committee refused to change the rules to allow the money to be used to provide emergency humanitarian relief on countries hit by devastating hurricanes.
Britain requested the change after it was prevented from using the aid budget to help Caribbean islands hit by hurricanes Irma and Maria the previous autumn – but Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, and the Turks and Caicos were all deemed too wealthy.
Britain’s foreign aid budget increased by £682million to a record £14.1billion in 2017. Of the increase, £232million came from Dfid and £450million from other departments such as the Foreign Office and the Department for Business.
It means £67.7billion has been spent on foreign aid since the goal was first met in 2013 – £2,300 per household.
Schemes funded included conservation projects to help protect the Chinese giant salamander and the Bengal bustard.
Source: Read Full Article