Our £1billion aid handouts are exploited by fraudsters
Report confirms Mail’s revelations
BRITAIN’S foreign aid cash handouts are routinely falling into the wrong hands because politically correct officials are failing to tackle fraud and bad practice, a Government watchdog warns today.
More than £1billion has been given away since 2011 in countries such as Pakistan, Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
But a report today exposes ‘ recurrent’ abuse of the schemes, including women in Nigeria who faked urine samples to get payments meant for those who are pregnant.
The Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), which scrutinises aid spending, said in some cases British officials were reluctant to tackle problems ‘head-on’ because of fears of upsetting the governments receiving aid money.
In Pakistan £300million is being poured into a scheme giving families cash or cards loaded with UK funds to spend how they want, but the report said a quarter of recipients are not the country’s poorest.
Tory MPs last night renewed their calls for the Government to reconsider its pledge to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid. Nigel Evans, a Tory MP who sits on the Commons international development committee, said: ‘Alarm bells should be ringing.’
Britain now gives out more foreign aid in cash handouts than any other country, with an average of £201million a year doled out in the past five years, the report found.
The watchdog said ministers should consider expanding the schemes, which in general provided ‘ helped to tackle pov-
‘Far too much is wasted’
erty’. But it said the Department for International Development (Dfid) has failed to ensure cash always goes to the poorest.
‘We found recurrent problems in the core areas of targeting, transfer size and timeliness of payments that are not being consistently addressed,’ the report said.
It warned ‘political sensitivities’ meant Dfid officials had ‘tolerated weaknesses’ in programmes in the short term, ‘ generally choosing not to challenge partner countries on strongly held positions’.
In Bangladesh, where households can get £8 a month, the watchdog said it was ‘well known’ the wrong people were getting money, but that Dfid had not ‘engaged directly with the problems’.
In Rwanda, where families of four can get £15.60 a month in cash, the selection process ‘correlates only weakly with poverty levels’.
Dfid has to introduce random pregnancy testing in Nigeria after fake urine samples led to women who were not pregnant getting £14 a month. And 17 per cent of those receiving up to £19 a month in a ‘child-focused programme in Zimbabwe’ did not have any children.
‘A Dfid request to remove households without children from the programme was denied by the government of Zimbabwe,’ the report said. Last week the Mail reported
From the Daily Mail, January 3 how families were queuing up at cashpoints in Pakistan to withdraw UK aid money from cards. Some 235,000 families get payments of around £33 every three months. The scheme is meant to reach the poorest 25 per cent but the report said ‘a quarter of recipients fell well above that threshold’.
Tory MP Philip Davies said it was ‘unacceptable’ so much was being wasted while elderly care in the UK is in crisis. He said ‘far too much of the Dfid budget goes on fraud and waste’ and that having a set budget encourages waste because officials must spend it ‘even if there are no worthwhile programmes’.
Mr Evans said the money is ‘clearly being abused’ and said ‘rigorous’ systems must be put in place to tackle this. Dr Alison Evans, ICAI’s chief commissioner, said: ‘Dfid’s use of cash transfers have helped to tackle poverty and vulnerability for some of the poorest people in the world, providing strong value for money... But there is no room for complacency.’
Dfid said: ‘Cash transfers get aid to those who need it, when they need it, and achieve value for taxpayers’ money – and this independent report recognises that. Small cash transfers ...cut out the middle man and reduce waste.’
Comment – Page 16
QUEUE HERE FOR UK’S £1BN FOREIGN AID CASHPOINT