Bercow hosts dinner for Pakistani MP who runs aid scheme hit by fraud (and you pay!)
COMMONS Speaker John Bercow is throwing a taxpayer-funded dinner in Parliament to honour a Pakistani MP in charge of a £420million foreign aid scheme which in the past has been beset by allegations of fraud.
The money, from the UK’s foreign aid budget, is being lavished on controversial cash handouts that have been compared to exporting the dole.
The Mail revealed earlier this year how the costly project has been dogged by accusations of fraud, and a report from Britain’s aid spending watchdog warned that a quarter of recipients are not the country’s poorest.
But now Marvi Memon, the Pakistani politician in charge of the scheme, is to be given an award by Mr Bercow – even though it is British taxpayers’ money footing part of the bill for the giveaways.
A dinner will be held in the State Rooms of Speaker’s House on September 5 where she will be guest of honour.
She will be the inaugural recipient of the Speaker’s Democracy Award ‘to recognise and celebrate individuals who have championed democracy, or brought about social change in an emerging democracy’.
Miss Memon is a member of the country’s ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League. When the party was in opposition it claimed the cash handouts scheme – the Pakistani government’s Benazir Income Support Programme – was riddled with ‘ rampant corruption, nepotism and embezzlement’.
Now, however, she is the chairman of the programme, which is supposed to give families payments to boost their incomes.
Households pocket 4,500 rupees (£34.50) every three months, which they can spend however they want, as part of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP). Most get the money via cash cards that are topped up with money that they can withdraw from cashpoints or use in shops. Some get the cash in envelopes at post offices.
The scheme was set up by Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Pakistan’s former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, in 2008, a year after her assassination, and was seen as an attempt to help him be re-elected as president. The cash cards have Miss Bhutto’s face on them. There is no suggestion that Miss Memon is involved in any of the past allegations of fraud.
British taxpayers fund around 7 per cent of the programme, although in previous years the UK contribution has been nearly 20 per cent. Around 235,000 families are receiving payments funded by Britain.
But a study commissioned by the Department for International Development (DFID) into the project warned that those given cash cards were susceptible to being tricked out of money as they do not know how to use cash machines properly.
It included the example of one place where ‘the village school master collects everyone’s cards’ and takes a 100 rupee (77p) cut from their money for helping them take it out.
Pakistani newspapers reported last August that an investigation was being launched ‘after a growing number of complaints about fake accounts and alleged corruption’ from project staff. Seven employees were suspended on corruption charges and 125,714 suspi- cious accounts were suspended. Last night the Speaker’s office refused to disclose the guest list for the dinner and said a budget for it had not yet been set.
A spokesman for Mr Bercow said: ‘The Speaker has traditionally been expected to host official lunches, dinners and teas for visiting dignitaries. The costs of such occasions are met out of the Speaker’s Office budget, in line with long established practice.’
She said Mr Bercow and a panel of three MPs from the last Parliament – Tory Fiona Bruce, the SNP’s Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh and ex-Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman – had chosen Miss Memon as the inaugural recipient of the award after considering other nominations made by MPs.
Announcing the award, Mr Bercow said: ‘Ms Memon has fronted a substantial and impressive programme of empowerment through her BISP work, by giving over 5.3million of the poorest women a modest stipend for essentials such as food, clothing, healthcare and education. This has done a great deal in terms of combating poverty and child malnutrition.’
A DFID spokesman said: ‘Cash transfers get aid directly to the poorest who need it most and cut out the middle man. Sixty million people have less than £1 a day to live on in Pakistan.’
‘Rampant corruption and embezzlement’