Aid for trade: UK’s new deal

BRITAIN will “leverage” its £11billion foreign aid budget to build new trade deals as it leaves the European Union,

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. Priti Patel, the International Development Secretary, and her ministers will use meetings with foreign leaders from countries that receive foreign aid to “open the door” to new deals.

While rules bar Britain from explicitly tying trade deals to foreign aid, Ms Patel plans to use the department’s budget in Britain’s “national interest” to help with the Brexit process.

She has already held meetings with Liam Fox, the International Trade Secretary, to discuss how they can use Britain’s foreign aid budget to bolster trade deals.

“Britain’s international aid commitments mean it gets fantastic access to foreign leaders all round the world,” a Whitehall source said.

“We can leverage existing relationships to strike trade deals. Dfid can be used to improve Britain’s standing in the world. It will be a completely fresh way of looking at Britain’s aid budget.

“If ministers have meetings with countries which we’ve given hundreds of millions of pounds to, why can’t we use that to start a conversation about trade?”

Ms Patel’s approach will help address

the frustrations of many back-bench Conservative MPs’, who have raised repeated concerns about Britain’s “ballooning” foreign aid budget.

David Cameron enshrined Britain’s commitment to spent 0.7 per cent of GDP on foreign aid into law during the Coalition in a move that infuriated some Tory backbenchers. Since then spending on foreign aid has soared despite cutbacks, with the Department for International Development’s [Dfid] budget next year forecast to overtake the amount given to councils to collect bins, install street lights and run local services.

There has been anger in the past at Dfid’s end-of-year scramble to spend enough money to hit their 0.7 per cent GDP pledge, with the target moving depending on the level of growth.

More than 200,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Tories to scrap the target after winning a majority at the general election last year.

Mrs Patel hinted at the new approach when she was appointed, saying she wants to use Britain’s aid budget to help “our trading partners of the future”.

She said: “Successfully leaving the EU will require a more outward-looking Britain than ever before, deepening our international partnerships to secure our place in the world by supporting economic prosperity, stability and security overseas.”

Earlier this month when Ms Patel was handed her new role in the reshuffle it emerged she had proposed scrapping the department three years ago. She told

The Daily Telegraph in 2013 that the government should consider whether to “replace Dfid with a Department for International Trade and Development”.