Boris flies into storm over £112m a year UK foreign aid for India and Pakistan
BRITAIN spent more than £112million last year on overseas aid projects in India and Pakistan – including almost £12million to promote contraception.
Another £619,867 helped expand renewable energy in India – a country with its own space programme, including two Moon missions.
With Britain gripped by a cost of living crisis, critics have accused the Government of prioritising foreign aid over domestic need.
The revelations emerged as Boris Johnson flew to New Delhi for talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The subject of his country’s close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin is likely to be high on the agenda.
Pakistan has also done little to distance itself from Russia. Imran Khan, recently ousted as Pakistan’s PM, was pictured shaking hands with Putin in Moscow on February 24, the day the latter ordered his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance said: “Taxpayers will be rightly asking who in government decided to prioritise condoms for Pakistan and renewable energy for India over tax cuts for working people and investment in public services.
“This will only be more insulting given India and Pakistan’s flip-flopping over the issue of support for Ukraine – a key diplomatic priority for the UK government.”
He added: “As long as India and Pakistan fail to support the UK on the international stage, they shouldn’t see a penny more of taxpayers’ cash.”
But on his flight to India last night, Mr Johnson insisted that he has pressed the Indian government over its stance on the Ukraine war.
He said: ‘I’ve already talked to Narendra Modi about Ukraine and actually the Indians have condemned what happened in Bucha, they have been quite forceful in what they have said.”
He added: “But the UK in particular has to recognise that there is an historic relationship that India has with Russia, I think we have to be alive to that, and point out where Putin, I’m afraid, is letting Russia down so badly.”
The figures underline the fact that large quantities of cash continue to flood out of the UK despite last year’s reduction of the proportion of GDP spent on overseas aid from 0.7 per cent to 0.5 per cent – cutting
the figure from £14.5billion in 2020 to £11.1billion last year. For its analysis, the TaxPayers’ Alliance looked at the “schemes” section of a publicly available Government document entitled Government Grants Statistics 2020 to 2021.
In doing so, it excluded schemes which involved multiple countries, even where this included India and Pakistan, due to difficulties in separating the figures.
This revealed that a little over £112million in taxpayers’ money was spent on 31 projects in India and Pakistan during that period.The equivalent figure for the previous year was just over £130million.
India’s GDP was expected to be almost £2.2trillion by the end of last year, according to the Trading Economics website, representing 2.32 per cent of the global economy. Pakistan’s GDP was expected to be almost £215billion. Both countries possess nuclear weapons.
Andrew Rosindell, the Tory MP for Romford, was unimpressed. He said: “With the soaring cost of living, I think there is zero support for continuing to spend this level of money on international aid, much of which does not seem to go to the places it should be going.
“British people are struggling to heat their homes and buy food – we should not be paying for programmes such as contraception provision in the name of foreign aid.”
He stressed: “We spend more on international aid than most western countries yet we have huge amounts of national debt caused by borrowing for the lockdown.
“We need to balance our books… and it makes even less sense to be spending on some of the aid programmes outlined by the Alliance.”
THE Prime Minister’s arrival in India is a reminder that Britain remains a global power when it comes to foreign aid. We spent more than £112million last year on projects in India and Pakistan.
Britain is a generous country but overseas development is about much more than charity. At its most effective, it is an exercise in “soft power” – bolstering our influence, deepening ties with trading partners and tackling threats to our national security.
Education has a key role to play in countering extremism. Economies will be transformed if women and girls in particular have a chance to thrive in the classroom. Simple steps can address the threats to lives that fuel refugee crises.
The 0.5 per cent of our GDP we spend on foreign aid should be an intelligent and strategic investment in a safer, healthier and more prosperous future.
China is vying for influence with western nations in the developing world and Britain’s rivals would exploit any retreat from the world.
Nevertheless, families throughout the UK face a true cost of living crisis, energy bills are soaring to terrifying heights and our health service and social care system require urgent and massive investment. Cash is short in the Treasury and in families’ budgets.
Questions have been asked about aid projects in India and Pakistan, both of which are nuclear powers, and there is pressure for them to show more support for Ukraine and opposition to the Kremlin. It would be an outrage if even a single pound is squandered at home or overseas.