Sunak is right - charity should begin at home

Glorious Gloucestershire Barry Wild took this view towards Cheltenham from Crippet’s Lane

✒ COULD it be that at last we have a Chancellor who is listening to the silent majority?

Mr Sunak has been vilified by some for reducing the foreign aid from £15 billion to £10 billion (but still the most generous contribution in the western world behind America) in the interest of expediency, in contravention to the Conservative manifesto.

But how many past governments have ever stuck to everything in their manifestos? It’s all very well these MPS with their unlimited expenses and other high-profile, highly paid ‘so called celebrities’ bleating on about lowering the amount of foreign aid we donate but they are cushioned against the realities of the sacrifices many low-income families will have to make for the enormous deficit this country is building up for the future.

Most people I’m sure would not deny help to the many poor of the world but there must be limits, but are we sure the aid actually gets to them or is the majority of it siphoned off by corrupt governments and those organisations which ‘arrange’ these handouts?

It is a painful fact that many charities take up to 90 per cent of donations to cover salaries and ‘running costs’ so there’s not much left over for those recipients in desperate need. Can we be sure an outlandish proportion of our foreign aid contribution isn’t used to grease the palms of middle men (and women for the PC Brigade)? Perhaps Mr Sunak should go further and ensure that the housing of illegal immigrants in hotels and the like should be paid out of the Foreign Aid budget. This would at least release more money from the Social Security budget to help our own homeless, including ex-servicemen who are sleeping rough on the streets, in many cases through no fault of their own. Never was the saying ‘charity begins at home ‘ more poignant . Edward Kynaston, Lydney,