Spend aid money on our peace-keepers

The Conservatives are right to renegotiate the aid rules to fund our military’s vital role in development

Some in the British development community are nervous about the Conservative manifesto pledge to renegotiate international rules on what can be counted as foreign aid spending in order to allow a broader range of activities to be included. But it is the right approach, and indeed is overdue.

We both strongly support Britain’s commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on international development and believe the Conservative Party deserves great credit for standing by its promise to the world’s poorest at a time of austerity in the UK. Such a generous approach chimes well with the values of most British people.

We also recognise the value of what British development money is achieving. Of course we should strive to ensure that it is always well spent. But the significant rise in girls (and boys) attending school in the developing world, the increase in the number of children under five being vaccinated, the reduction in mothers dying in childbirth and children dying from water-borne diseases – these are all direct consequences of Britain’s aid success. So is, importantly, the boost to prosperity and growth in many poor countries where Britain works.

But the truth is that there are aspects of Britain’s work around the world that are not paid for out of the development budget, and they should be. A particular example is the British campaign to bring peace to Sierra Leone. In 2000, Britain intervened to stop a conflict which bore all the hallmarks of Dante’s Inferno: women and children murdered and raped by the drug-fuelled warlords of the Revolutionary United Front; rampaging hordes armed with machetes maiming innocent civilians.

Deploying British troops and naval assets ended the violence and set Sierra Leone on the path towards stability. This intervention was the ultimate development act. Following on from it, children went to school, the health sector developed, order emerged and investment and business returned. Yet virtually none of the cost borne by British taxpayers was met from the development budget.

Britain and France are two of the only countries, apart from the US, with the capability to undertake this sort of expeditionary military action. The French were recently similarly engaged in Mali driving out the terrorists, with some modest help from Britain. But neither country was able to draw financial support from their overseas aid budgets for their efforts.

Both Sierra Leone and Mali were very different from the contentious events in Iraq. But there were clearly elements of Britain’s military activity in Afghanistan that were of a development nature and that should fairly have been funded by the development budget.

There are many causes of the wretched conditions that afflict more than one billion people in the world today. But above all it is conflict that condemns the poorest to a life of misery. Conflict is literally development in reverse. It destroys lives and bears down grievously on girls and women. Preventing conflict from starting, stopping fighting once it has started, and reconciling people once it is over are vital if countries are to develop. With the right safeguards they should, at least partly, be supported by the British aid budget.

On top of moral considerations, it is often in our national interest to assist countries to develop. We now know all too vividly the penalties for ignoring countries that are in a state of collapse. The reality is that putting a country back on the right path can often be achieved only through the use of military force, at least in the early stages. Too often, soldiers are viewed as purveyors of misery. Far from it: used wisely and in a just cause, good soldiers give shattered people the hope of a better life, releasing them from tyranny and poverty.

We believe the Government is right to seek a renegotiation of the terms under which the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development judges aid spending. We are equally confident that this reasonable approach by Britain – a country whose development leadership is lauded around the world – will receive a fair hearing.

Andrew Mitchell is a former secretary of state for international development. General Lord Richards was commander of British Forces in Sierra Leone and Chief of the Defence Staff