The Daily Telegraph

It may be the season of goodwill but let’s look after ourselves first

Britain’s generous foreign aid means we are either a big-hearted nation – or seen as an easy touch

- PHILIP JOHNSTON COMMENT on Philip Johnston’s view at telegraph. co.uk/comment

Dickens is everywhere once again. His own infectious delight with the season means there is no writer we associate more with Yuletide. Jim Broadbent is playing Scrooge in a new production of A Christmas Carol, a book I read every year to get into the festive mood. Meanwhile, for a new drama, the BBC has decided to rehouse 30 or so of Dickens’s creations on one street and have them interact with one another, EastEnders- style – which seems a dreadful idea but I will watch it none the less.

Dickensian will feature those familiar characters Fagin, Scrooge, Mrs Gamp, Miss Havisham etc. But is there a place for Mrs Jellyby from

Bleak House? She is a philanthro­pist so obsessed with establishi­ng settlement­s in Africa that she neglects her own home, spouse, and children. She came to mind yesterday while I was reading about how our aid budget is being used for flood barriers in Serbia. We sent around £1 million to the city of Lazarevac after a record inundation in May last year.

Needless to say this has caused bemusement in Cumbria, where defences were recently overwhelme­d causing widespread damage. Spending on risk management and defences in the UK is to fall by more than £100 million while we are only too happy to help other pretty prosperous-looking places with theirs. As James Airey, Conservati­ve group leader on South Lakeland council, said: “If we can’t look after British taxpayers and look after them properly, we’re doing something terribly wrong.”

But we do this all the time. For the life of me, I cannot understand the rationale behind the aid budget, which must by law be kept at 0.7 per cent of GDP. I know that Ministers and officials are constantly saying that our national interests are served by investing in unstable areas; but this statute requires officials from the Department of Internatio­nal Developmen­t (DfID) to spend some £30 million every day and to scour the world looking for projects to fund when there are plenty here at home.

If the DfID is Mrs Jellyby, then the rest of us are John Jarndyce, that paragon of decency (or poor sap, depending on how you look at it) in

Bleak House who stumps up for any cause, good or bad, large or small: “... everybody knew him, who wanted to do anything with anybody else’s money,” Dickens wrote. He could be describing the British taxpayer. Why, for instance, are we about to hand over a wad of cash to Shaker Aamer, who was recently released from detention in Guantanamo Bay? It is regularly stated that Mr Aamer is British, but he isn’t. He is a Saudi national. It is further said that he was a British resident, as indeed he was from 1996 to 2001. But he chose to go and live in Afghanista­n when it was run by the Taliban. So he was really an Afghan resident.

Now, there is no doubt that Mr Aamer was shamefully treated. No one should be locked up without trial for 13 years; and though the Americans claim he was a supporter of and fighter for Osama bin Laden (and Aamer conceded yesterday he may have been to the al-Qaeda leader’s house for some apparently innocent reason) they did not bring charges. But why is the British taxpayer expected to pay compensati­on to a Saudi national who was living in Afghanista­n and imprisoned by the Americans? He has been welcomed back to the UK but his main gripe is that a British intelligen­ce officer might have been present when he was being ill-treated by the Americans. Let them pay. For goodness sake, one former detainee given £1 million by the UK taxpayer has even gone to fight in Syria.

We have a history of taking the sins of others on our shoulders. Years ago, I told the late JG Ballard that he was in line for a £10,000 payment from the British government because he had been imprisoned in China by the Japanese during the last war. It was, he said, “totally absurd” that British taxpayers were funding the scheme, which eventually cost £200 million.

Here is another absurdity: why do we continue to pay benefit for the upkeep of thousands of foreign children living abroad? Most EU countries do not make transfers for offspring living outside their territory because entitlemen­t is based on residency. Britain, however, pays for 34,000 children living elsewhere in the EU at a cost of £30 million annually. Even if we are compelled to do so under EU non-discrimina­tion rules, why is the benefit set at UK rates? It is supposed to defray the additional costs of bringing up a family so it should surely be paid at a level appropriat­e to the country in which the child lives. Invariably, this is a far lower sum than it is here.

David Cameron needs to sort this out in his renegotiat­ion of benefit rights for EU workers. Given the modest nature of his overall demands, this is the bare minimum he should come back with. While the primary reason for moving around the EU may be to find a job, those who deny that benefits are an incentive to migration are delusional or disingenuo­us. Mr Cameron’s requests are reasonable; yet as usual the British are being cast as the villains of the piece.

This country’s munificenc­e is most lavishly on display with the NHS. A model of health care free at the point of delivery may have been a good idea in 1948, with a population of 50 million, relatively few foreign visitors and average life expectancy of 68 years. But it is ludicrous in 2015, with our 62 million people, millions of overseas nationals and a growing proportion of elderly people. It is hardly surprising that migrants from poor countries are gathering across the Channel to attempt to gain access to a country where they are not expected to fork out to see a GP. Most EU countries charge patients for appointmen­ts; a £10 fee here would raise an extra £1.2 billion a year for a cash-strapped system.

So why don’t we do it? In fact, we are so benevolent that migrants are able to charge the full cost of medical treatment in their home countries to the UK, even if they have never paid a penny of tax in Britain. They do this by obtaining European Health Insurance Cards from the NHS intended for British people to use in emergencie­s while travelling.

Are we a big-hearted nation that thinks the best of everyone and goes out of its way to help – or a bunch of chumps being taken for a ride? At this time of the year, I would like to believe we are the former; but in my more Scrooge-like moments I am not so charitable.

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