Revealed: How PM rejected Clegg offer to cut aid spending
NICK Clegg offered to delay the Government’s controversial foreign aid target but was turned down by David Cameron, it emerged yesterday.
The Prime Minister faced pressure in the last parliament over his pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of UK income on aid.
The target – backed by both the Lib Dems and Labour – involved a 30 per cent increase in the foreign aid budget in 2013, costing £2.6billion.
A Whitehall source claimed that Mr Clegg suggested delaying the target in 2012, when the Coalition was under fire over spending cuts and the stalling economy.
‘There was a feeling that it might be easier all round if we pushed back the target,’ the source said.
‘Clegg floated the idea that we could delay the whole thing until a less sensitive
‘Delaying until a less sensitive moment’
moment. It was discussed, but in the end Cameron came down against it.’
Mr Cameron was said to have been anxious about being seen to break a highprofile promise he was personally associated with. He also believed a delay would not end criticism from Tory MPs who said it was impossible to justify the huge increase at a time of austerity.
The Lib Dems declined to comment on the claim last night, but insisted the party had campaigned for – and delivered – the increase in the aid budget.
The target was originally agreed by Tony Blair at the G8 summit in 2005 after pressure from a high-profile lobbying campaign led by Bob Geldof and Bono.
Mr Cameron adopted it in his drive to ‘detoxify’ the Conservative Party. He has said the Government will not ‘ balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world’.
And he has argued it is in Britain’s interest to promote development in poor nations that are exporting migrants and terrorism to the West. Mr Cameron bridles at criticism of the interna- tional aid budget and will defend it again this month when he helps launch a UN pledge to eradicate poverty.
Critics argue injecting billions into the aid budget almost overnight has made it a byword for waste. A Commons report found ministers splurged almost £ 100million a day on aid in December 2013 to hit the target.
The Commons international development committee found the money appeared to have been ‘rushed out at the end of the year’, rather than spent to address needs. Individual projects – such as almost £4million for an Ethiopian version of the Spice Girls – have been criticised too.
As aid spending ballooned under the Coalition, exasperated taxpayers blamed touchy-feely posturing by the lib Dems.
but for once, they were not guilty. For it now seems Nick Clegg suggested delaying efforts to hit the Government’s target – only to be rebuffed by David Cameron.
Apparently, the Prime Minister insisted on spending 0.7 per cent of our output overseas, as he was anxious not to break a high-profile promise with which he was ‘personally associated’.
so while other countries ignored the target, Whitehall embarked on a mad scramble to fritter away the bloated budget as fast as it could.
As yesterday’s startling figures show, the result is that britain is the only major european country to have fulfilled the arbitrary 0.7 per cent pledge. Meanwhile, mighty Germany spends only 0.4 per cent – and France has slashed its budget from 0.5 per cent to just 0.36 per cent.
Wouldn’t it be infinitely preferable if Mr Cameron displayed the same unbending determination to meet other targets with which he is ‘personally associated’?
How about cutting net immigration to less than 100,000 – ‘no ifs, no buts’?