Peacekeeping costs should be in aid budget, says Johnson

MILITARY peacekeeping missions overseas should be funded from Britain’s international aid budget to free up money for the Armed Forces, a report backed by Boris Johnson has recommended.

The vision for UK foreign policy, authored by Bob Seely, the Tory MP, and the Henry Jackson Society think tank, said the rules governing the way international development funding was spent should be overhauled.

It argued that if the Department for International Development (Dfid) funded all of Britain’s global peacekeeping efforts the MOD would be left with more money to improve the UK’S military capability.

The report claimed £345million was spent on peacekeeping in 2017-18 but only £76million of that was eligible to be classed as official development assistance (ODA). That left £269million that was spent on peacekeeping but was not classed as aid – money the authors believe would be better spent on bolstering the Armed Forces.

Mr Johnson, the former foreign secretary, wrote the report’s foreword and agreed the UK needed to be “smarter” in the way it spent its aid budget – in 2016 worth more than £13billion.

Mr Johnson insisted he did not want to “despoil” Dfid of its budget but said the money could be spent “more in line with Britain’s political, commercial and diplomatic interests”.

Mr Seely said: “The Ministry of Defence needs that money for hard power. Peacekeeping is the initial stage of development and what we are arguing is that we should extend the criteria of international development to include all peacekeeping.”

The UK has a commitment enshrined in law to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on ODA.

The report’s authors said the UK should place a “hard cap” on the total international development spending, inclusive of ODA, at 0.7 per cent.

A Dfid spokesman said the UK had helped reform international aid spending rules. In 2017, it secured an increase in the proportion that could be contributed to peacekeeping missions from 7 per cent to 15 per cent and is understood to be pushing for further reform.