PM: I’ll use aid cash to boost trade with Africa

‘Ensure aid benefits us all’

THERESA May will today pledge to use Britain’s aid budget to boost post-Brexit trade with Africa.

She will tell an audience in Cape Town she is ‘unashamed’ of her ambition to ensure the multi-billion-pound pot ‘works for the UK’.

The Prime Minister will say that from now on Britain’s foreign aid budget will not only help combat poverty, but support ‘our own national interest’.

It comes after the bloated budget – now standing at almost £14billion a year – has come under fire as officials struggling to spend the money have donated to a series of increasingly controversial projects.

Mrs May said funds will be specifically used to ‘support the private sector to take root and grow’. This means Britain will employ its aid to help create the conditions for UK businesses to have confidence to invest in Africa.

She will say the funds should also go towards boosting security and tackling terrorism in the continent – a move that she argues will make the UK safer.

The money will also be used to encourage potential migrants to stay in Africa so they are not tempted to make the dangerous journey to Europe.

The commitment comes as Government insiders admit the UK’s huge aid budget is struggling to maintain public support. Critics have long opposed David Cameron’s controversial target to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid.

The target has meant huge increases in aid spending in recent years – and guarantees it will continue to grow.

Anger has grown amid examples of how the money is spent, such as a £5.2million grant to girl band Yegna, nicknamed the ‘Ethiopian Spice Girls’, whose funding was only halted last year.

Downing Street will hope that the announcement of a realignment of spending will help convince voters of its worth.

The Department for International Development gives around £2.6billion a year in bilateral aid to Africa. Mrs May, who flew out on her first official trip to Africa last night, will also announce a new ambition to make Britain the G7’s largest investor in the continent within four years.

At present the US is the largest but the Prime Minister aims to leapfrog it by 2022. She plans to use her three-day trip to bang the drum for British trade in a postBrexit world. After her visit to South Africa today, she will travel on to Nigeria and Kenya.

In Cape Town, she will talk about changing the face of the UK’s aid spending in Africa both to reflect the continent’s rapid growth and to benefit Britain.

‘It is the private sector that is the key to driving that growth – transforming labour markets,’ she will say. ‘And the UK has the companies that can invest in and trade with Africa to do just this.

‘The private sector has not yet managed to deliver the level of job creation and investment that many African nations need.

‘So I want to put our development budget and expertise at the centre of our partnership as part of an ambitious new approach – and use this to support the private sector to take root and grow.’ She will add: ‘I am unashamed about the need to ensure that our aid programme works for the UK.

‘So today I am committing that our development spending will not only combat extreme poverty, but at the same time tackle global challenges and support our own national interest.

‘This will ensure that our investment in aid benefits us all, and is fully aligned with our wider national security priorities.’

The Prime Minister will also set out why working with Africa to deliver jobs, investment and long term stability is in the interests of Britain and the wider world.

She will point out that Africa needs to create millions of new jobs every year to keep pace with its rapidly growing population, adding: ‘The challenges facing Africa are not Africa’s alone.

‘It is in the world’s interest to see that those jobs are created, to tackle the causes and symptoms of extremism and instability, to deal with migration flows and to encourage clean growth. If we fail to do so, the economic and environmental impacts will swiftly reach every corner of our networked, connected world.

‘And the human impacts ... will be similarly global’

Addressing the issue of British trade, she will say: ‘As Prime Minister of a trading nation whose success depends on global markets, I want to see strong African economies that British companies can do business with in a free and fair fashion.

‘Whether through creating new customers for British exporters or opportunities for British investors, our integrated global economy means healthy African economies are good news for British people as well as African people.

‘I can today announce a new ambition: by 2022, I want the UK to be the G7’s number one investor in Africa, with Britain’s private sector companies taking the lead in investing the billions that will see African economies growing by trillions.’

BARELY four weeks ago, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick declared that violent crime in London was ‘beginning to stabilise’. As of yesterday, the number of murder probes in the capital has reached 101, the latest a brutal stabbing which – in a grim irony – took place just yards from a poster campaigning against knife crime. Is this stability?

In truth, and as a timely report from Iain Duncan Smith’s think-tank today makes clear, violence is spiralling out of control, driven by a lethal war between drug gangs. The findings are chilling: A gun is fired illegally every six to nine hours in the capital, and half of Londoners say there are ‘no-go’ areas where they fear for their safety. And where London leads, the rest of the country, all too inevitably, will follow. Listening to the BBC or Labour politicians, you will hear – with crushing predictability – only one reason for this: Cuts to police budgets. But the report pinpoints another potentially crucial factor – the drastic decline in stop and search. Over ten years in the capital, the use of this power has fallen precipitously from 700,000 a year to just over 100,000.

Yes, there were good reasons why, as then-home secretary, Theresa May moved to limit the blanket use of such powers which alienated many minority communities. But the question raised by today’s report – which deserves serious consideration – is have the police gone too far the other way in their obsession with avoiding the accusation of racism?