Stephen Pollard

to give generously to alleviate suffering. But this is not what is happening at the moment. The way we hand over foreign aid today has almost nothing to do with sparking our charitable instincts when the need arises. It is a box-ticking exercise in which Whitehall departments find ways to spend money simply to meet the entirely arbitrary 0.7 per cent target. Actual need and usefulness are almost irrelevant.

Under Priti Patel the Department for International Development has made great strides in striking out some wasteful spending. But there is a long, long way to go – and so long as the 0.7 per cent figure remains any improvements will be marginal. For one thing the figures show that 26 per cent of aid spending – £3.5billion – is now pushed out by the rest of Whitehall, away from the Department for International Development.

Last year for example the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy handed over £687million in aid, along with £362million from the Home Office, £71million from the Treasury and £67million from the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The whole of Whitehall is caught up in this mad dash to hand over our money. As I’ve

THE Department of Energy and Climate Change spent 98 per cent of its allocated aid spending for 2016 in the final quarter of the year. In other words they couldn’t find anything to spend the money on but knew they had to – so as the clock started ticking towards December 31 they went berserk trying to give it away.

The NHS, schools, the police and Armed Services are struggling to cope with the pressures on them. None of that matters as we search the planet to find ways to stuff £13.3billion into someone else’s pockets.

But it’s worse even than that. The NAO discovered that despite the headlong rush to hand over our money £8.7billion of it has still not even been cashed by the recipients. Nearly 20 per cent of aid is given in the form of “promissory notes” – a sort of IOU that the Government gives out to be cashed when needed. Despite desperately handing them out to meet the 0.7 per cent target they still can’t hit the mark.

Mrs May is struggling to assert her authority and establish an identity. If she had any sense she would announce that she was scrapping the ludicrous 0.7 per cent target, promise that Britain will stop handing over money for the sake of it and stick to genuine aid – when it is needed.

‘It comes from our hard-earned taxes’