Rip up ‘immoral’ aid rules to help hurricane victims
Ministers’ fury at restrictions on cash for islands deemed ‘too rich’
A HURRICANE FORCE FARCE Yesterday’std’ Dailyil Mail il
Ministers were last night frantically trying to change rules that prevent Britain from spending its aid budget to help UK territories hit by Hurricane irma.
international Development secretary Priti Patel fired off a letter to the global body which ruled that the UK cannot use its aid cash because the three overseas territories are too wealthy.
she wrote to the Organisation for economic Cooperation and Development to demand reforms to end the farce.
But other ministers said she should go ahead anyway and use the aid budget to help the victims of irma even if that means breaking the law.
A senior tory source said: ‘it’s a waste of time asking the OeCD to change its mind. We’ve been asking them to change this stupid definition for years and they are not interested. We should just get on and do it ourselves.’
He added: ‘Our law says we have got to spend 0.7 per cent on aid, which is good, but it also says we have to spend it according to a ridiculous definition, which is bad. the rules do not allow development spending on these islands because they are not considered poor enough. it is immoral and a lot of people are saying we should just ignore the rules and spend the money.’
Charlotte Petri Gornitzka, who chairs the OeCD’s development assistance committee (DAC), suggested the door was open to change. ‘the DAC is always open to discussing issues of concern with its member countries,’ she said.
Downing street made clear yesterday that theresa May is ‘frustrated’ with the OeCD rules which exclude British overseas territories like Anguilla, the turks and Caicos islands and the British Virgin islands from receiving money from the aid pot.
Foreign secretary Boris Johnson said Whitehall was working furiously to get the rules changed.
As MPs’ anger grew, one branded the OeCD ‘out-of-touch morons’ while a tory backbencher pledged to introduce a bill to change the law, whether or not the OeCD gives the green light.
Miss Patel’s letter to the DAC yesterday called for the current rules to be torn up. she said she had asked the committee ‘ as a matter of urgency to develop options to ensure the aid rules reflect the needs of those impacted by natural disasters’.
she added: ‘We believe that the international rules should take into account the vulnerabilities of small island states.
‘these rules were first established over 40 years ago. the world has changed dramatically since then, and we will work constructively with international partners to ensure the rules remain relevant and up to date.’
the UK has pledged £57million towards disaster relief and the has helped to raise £1.3million. But an unnamed minister told the BBC the figure would have been significantly higher without the strict international rules governing the allocation of the £13billion aid budget – a claim disputed by Downing street.
Mrs May’s official spokesman insisted the UK’s aid effort had not been hampered by the OeCD rules. He added: ‘the Prime Min- ister is frustrated with the rules as they stand. We began detailed work after the election to change the rules to prevent precisely these kind of scenarios.’
He indicated the UK could be prepared to act alone if there was no agreement on changing the international rules.
Mr Johnson said the hurricane was ‘absolutely catastrophic’ and that anybody with an ‘ounce of compassion’ would want to see government spending to ‘get these people on their feet’.
‘ We are looking now across Whitehall at ways we can make sure that our aid budget is used in that way,’ he said. ‘Priti Patel, all my colleagues are looking at how we can do that.’
James Duddridge, a former Foreign Office minister and now member of the Commons internapublic tional development committee, said he would introduce a tenminute rule bill to rewrite the law on the 0.7 per cent target.
‘the Government should change development assistance rules, and if they don’t, they bring forward legislation to change the international Development Act,’ he said.
‘if they don’t, i will bring a bill to Parliament to redefine what our excellent 0.7 per cent commitment should cover.’
His colleague Philip Davies, who called the OeCD ‘out- of-touch morons’, told the Commons: ‘it’s bad enough that we have a bloated and wasteful and unaffordable overseas aid budget but it’s even more ridiculous that we now learn that we cannot spend it on our overseas territories.’
Fellow tory nigel evans said: ‘these rules are grotesque if they prevent us from giving the right amount of money that is needed. if we can’t bend the rules then we have to go outside those rules.’