Bonfire of chumocracy

Cameron’s cherished aid and migration targets could be ditched in manifesto

THERESA May is considering ditching David Cameron’s foreign aid target – and pouring billions more into the armed forces.

Aid is one of a series of Cameron-era pledges that could either be abandoned or significantly adjusted in the Tory manifesto.

Downing Street is also reviewing the pledges to cut net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’ and to maintain the pensions ‘triple lock’.

Mrs May yesterday refused to endorse the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on aid every year. It was put into law by Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg but has been blamed for leading to hugely wasteful expenditure.

And last night she cancelled an appearance with Microsoft founder Bill Gates – a leading advocate of the 0.7pc target who hours earlier had called for the pledge to be kept.

In the Commons, the Prime Minister was asked explicitly whether she backed both the aid target and the Nato goal of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence.

She endorsed maintaining defence spending but pointedly refused to back the aid target – prompting speculation it will be ditched. With international agreement, money spent on military action to help support fragile states in Africa and elsewhere could also be counted as aid.

Such a move would be resisted by International Development Secretary Priti Patel, who says the pledge is key to the Government’s ‘Global Britain’ brand post-Brexit. The aid pledge could also be adjusted.

Another less radical option would be to allow aid to be ‘smoothed out’ over a parliament, giving ministers more discretion about when to spend the money. But this would mean the budget would carry on rising in line with national income.

There are growing calls among Tory MPs for the aid target to be abandoned. The hugely expensive pledge to increase pensions every year by a set amount – the so-called triple lock – is also likely to be adjusted. It means the state pension must rise by the highest out of earnings, inflation or 2.5 per cent.

Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green has hinted that increasing state pension payments so sharply is unsustainable.

There was also speculation that Mrs May could drop, or amend, the pledge to reduce net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’ in the manifesto. In a BBC interview, the PM was asked to endorse the pledge to bring net annual inflows to under 100,000, which has been Tory policy since 2009.

She instead said she wanted migration to be at ‘sustainable levels’. But she reinforced her determination to cut numbers – stressing she had spent six years as Home Secretary fighting to reduce them.

Leaving the EU will mean the end of free movement, handing government full control over migrant numbers from inside the bloc. Net migration currently stands at 273,000 and has not been below 100,000 since the mid-1990s.

At Prime Minister’s Questions, Tory backbencher Richard Benyon asked Mrs May to commit to both the Nato and aid targets, saying he was proud of the Government’s record on both.

But Mrs May endorsed only the Nato pledge. ‘We have committed to meet our Nato pledge of 2 per cent of GDP being spent on defence every year of this decade,’ she said.

‘We are delivering on that. We have got a £36billion defence budget that will rise to almost £40billion by 202021 – the biggest in Europe and second largest in Nato.’

On aid, she said the ministers ‘are meeting our UN commitment’.

She added: ‘I can assure him that we remain committed, as a Conservative party, to ensuring the defence and security of this country and to working for a stronger world.’

Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘We need to spend the amount we need to spend rather than setting targets. The 0.7 per cent target was always arbitrary. We need an aid budget for emergency support, but the rest should be charity or private investment.

The aid target – and a promise to put it in to law – was included in the 2010 Tory manifesto as part of Mr Cameron’s attempts to ‘ detoxify’ the party. Also a Lib Dem commitment, it became law in March 2015.

‘Working for a stronger world’