Hurricane farce

AFTER countless stories of waste, mismanagement and corruption, it seemed as if there was nothing about Britain’s bloated foreign aid budget which had the capacity to shock.

Then we learned that not one penny of the £13billion (and rising) which is earmarked for development can be used to help Anguilla, Turks and Caicos and the British Virgin Islands which were devastated by Hurricane Irma.

The reason? When David Cameron put the target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income into law, he signed Britain up to a Byzantine set of rules laid down by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Perversely, the OECD has decided that these British overseas territories do not qualify as recipients for aid because... they are too rich. To the thousands of people left without power or water, whose communities have been decimated by 180mph winds, that will feel like a sick joke.

They might not have been in dire poverty before the storm hit, but surely they are now, after losing everything?

It is bad enough that Britain hurls taxpayers’ money at economic powerhouses such as India and China, at corrupt regimes where money just disappears, while many public services are starved of cash.

But it is immeasurably worse that when a truly deserving cause comes along, ministers are forced to scrabble around to raid cash from other budgets or by further inflating our country’s debts.

Yes, Downing Street is promising to change the mindless rules, but that could take months or years and depends on approval from other countries.

Far better would be for ministers to damn the consequences, tear up the rules and do the right thing: spend the money on our people who are – without doubt – in desperate need. The OECD might not applaud, but the public surely would.