Undeserving aid

BRAZIL is the world’s ninth biggest economy and in the last three years it has spent billions hosting the Olympic Games and the football World Cup. Not by any reasonable measure is it a poor country.

So it is highly questionable, to say the least, why it should receive £80million from – you guessed it – Britain’s bloated foreign aid budget. Especially as, like many countries where we lavish aid spending, it has an appalling record for corruption.

Ministers continue to hand over tens of millions to economic powerhouses like India and China. They are also – as the Mail revealed last week – pumping nearly £ 2billion a year into countries with appalling human rights records.

Meanwhile, Britain’s military capacity is dangerously depleted, our social care system is collapsing and our overcrowded jails are erupting in violence.