Patel’s joy as restrictions on funding overhauled

MINISTERS yesterday secured an international agreement to allow British aid cash to be spent on emergency relief for overseas territories hit by natural disasters.

In a major rule change, officials at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development accepted that money spent on “catastrophic humanitarian crises” such as hurricanes can come from the UK’s £13billion annual aid budget.

The move followed widespread fury when Britain was banned from using aid to help the recovery effort after Hurricane Irma caused havoc to Caribbean territories Anguilla, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the British Virgin Islands last month.

Yesterday’s agreement is seen as a significant victory for International Development Secretary Priti Patel.

She had argued for the change at a two-day meeting of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee in Paris.

Income

The meeting concluded yesterday with the committee agreeing an overhaul of rules that prevented aid spending in territories classed as “high-income countries”.

In another boost for Britain, the committee also agreed to increase the amount of spending on United Nations peacekeeping missions that can be classed as aid from seven per cent to 15 per cent.

And it went on to confirm that 85 per cent of British funding to the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank will count as aid.

Together, the rule changes mean about £100million of UK spending can be classed as aid and therefore counted towards meeting the internationally agreed target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid.

Ms Patel said: “As a result of our influence, we’ve made huge progress on ensuring official development assistance can be used when vulnerable nations are struck by crises or natural disasters.

“Today’s agreement is a real step forward.”