Next stop’s Downing Street as 100,000 sign our crusade to end foreign aid madness
THE crusading Daily Express will hand over a petition on behalf of more than 100,000 readers next week demanding the Government Stops The Foreign Aid Madness.
We will take our campaign to Downing Street, urging the Prime Minister to end the policy that sees billions of pounds disappear abroad every year.
Launched in October, the crusade has attracted support from MPs, pressure groups, charities and ordinary, hard-working Britons.
Each agrees Britain has a moral responsibility to help lift countries less fortunate out of poverty. But setting a legally binding spending target is preposterous, at a time when the NHS is suffering a funding crisis.
Our analysis shows that if a 10th of Britain’s annual spend on foreign aid went to the NHS, it would fund three million stays in a hospital bed or 11 million visits to A&E. The UK is obliged to spend at least 0.7 per cent of national income a year on foreign aid. Last year the figure was £13.4billion.
More than 75,000 readers have filled out a coupon, like the one printed on this page, while another 26,000 have put their names to an online petition.
Daily Express reader Robert Barnes, 52, from Oldham, who set up a petition demanding the cash is diverted to public services in Britain, said: “The excellent campaign by the Daily Express has highlighted the folly of the arbitrary target for foreign aid spending.
“The people have spoken and would like to see the aid target abolished and our money spent at home.”
International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said: “I’ll never forget whose money I am spending. We have a moral obligation to spend it in the smartest way.” In 2016 Britain gave £1.5billion to “middle-income countries”. Pakistan received £463million, despite its space and nuclear weapons programmes.
Britain also gave £100million to India and £46million to China, which wants to become the world’s biggest economy.
To back our crusade fill out the coupon or sign online at petition. parliament.uk/petitions/200292