THERESA BITES THE BULLET

Tories WILL keep 0.7% aid law — but it may include defence Osborne’s no tax rises gimmick could be dumped ... and PM won’t commit to pension triple lock

THERESA May yesterday made clear she will not shirk difficult decisions about taxes and pensions as she vowed to keep David Cameron’s foreign aid target.

In a move that risks upsetting many Tory supporters, the Prime Minister said the controversial 0.7 per cent aid pledge ‘remains and will remain’.

But she will order a review of how the £13billion budget is spent in a move that could see some of the money go towards defence.

Laying the ground for the Tory election manifesto, Mrs May and Chancellor Philip Hammond yesterday said they would not make promises on taxes or pensions that they could not keep.

On a visit to Washington DC, Mr Hammond strongly hinted that the Tories will not repeat pledges made by former chancellor George Osborne not to increase income tax, National Insurance and VAT.

He warned that blanket promises ‘constrain the ability of the Government to manage the economy flexibly’ as he vowed to ‘be different’.

Meanwhile at a campaigning event in her Maidenhead constituency, Mrs May refused to commit to maintaining the pensions ‘triple lock’, which guarantees the state pension will rise in line with earnings, inflation or 2.5 per cent, whichever is the highest.

However she confirmed that the party would keep its commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid.

But in an attempt to minimise anger from those Tory MPs who want the target scrapped, the Prime Minister stressed the need to ensure the money is spent ‘in the most effective way’.

Party sources last night revealed aid chiefs have already started looking at whether some money currently spent on defence could be counted as aid.

Answering questions from reporters during a visit to a toothpaste factory, Mrs May said: ‘Let’s be clear, the 0.7 per cent commitment remains and will remain.

‘What we need to do though is to look at how that money is spent and make sure that we are able to spend it in the most effective way.

‘I am very proud of the record we have, of the children around the world who are being educated as a result of what the British Government, the British taxpayer is doing in terms of its international aid.

‘The ability we had to be able to help in the ebola crisis, the work we’ve been doing supporting Syrian refugees, that’s one of the things the UK is providing.

‘So I’m very proud of the record that we have, we maintain that commitment but we have to make sure we’re spending that money as effectively as possible.’

Mrs May had been under increasing pressure to scrap the target, which has seen Britain’s aid budget balloon to more than £13billion while services in this country – such as social care – have faced cuts.

Tory backbenchers say much of the budget is wasted, and point to huge salaries earned by some of the bosses of charities that benefit from foreign aid. Save The Children’s chief executive Helle Thorn- ing-Schmidt receives a pay and pension package worth £246,750 a year. The Government gives the charity millions of pounds a year.

Other controversial funding projects exposed by the Daily Mail include how a pop group dubbed Ethiopia’s Spice Girls received £5.2million in British aid. International Development Secretary Priti Patel earlier this year announced she was stopping the funding.

This newspaper also revealed how more than £1billion of the aid budget has been handed out in cash in the past five years despite warnings of fraud.

A group of leading UK aid organisations, including Save The Children, Oxfam and Christian Aid, last night welcomed Mrs May’s com- mitment to the 0.7 per cent target. ‘We are delighted that the Prime Minister has recommitted to spending 0.7 per cent of national income on aid and stated her belief that aid changes lives,’ they said.

George Osborne tweeted: ‘Recommitment to 0.7 per cent aid target very welcome. Morally right, strengthens UK influence and was key to creating modern compassionate Conservatives.’ However Tory MP Andrew Bridgen, who has been one of the leading critics of the aid target, last night said he still hoped the mani- festo could include reforms such as stockpiling money that is not used.

He said: ‘Reform is needed. The budget should be based on the size of the economy in the previous year rather than the current year so it can be planned and we do not end up just shovelling money out the door in the last few months.

‘Also I would like to see a contingency fund where money could be placed for natural disasters.

‘If there is not a natural disaster one year, there might be two the next year and we need to be able to respond to that, so we need to roll money in a budget that is earmarked for aid.’

The TaxPayers’ Alliance pressure group also criticised Mrs May’s support for the ‘totally arbitrary and meaningless’ target. Its chief executive, John O’Connell, said: ‘The worst possible way to deliver value when spending taxpayers’ cash is to define the success of a policy by how much you spend rather than what the money actually achieves.’

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams this week described the foreign aid budget as a ‘badge of honour’ for the UK.

‘Worst way to deliver value’

LET’S face it, millions of hearts sank when Theresa May called for yet another election after the barrage of recent summonses to the ballot box.

Indeed, who could blame the public if they’re weary of politics, or see it as a profoundly dishonest game, played for the benefit of a self-interested elite, in which promises count for nothing? The good news is that Mrs May wonderfully placed to change all that.

By temperament, this vicar’s daughter stands a world apart from the view – exemplified by Tony Blair and the Cameron/ Osborne chumocracy – that politics is a means of helping friends in the City and establishing influential contacts to exploit in later life.

Instinctively, people trust her as a woman with a mission to improve life for everyone, not just a privileged few. Indeed, polls show her scoring higher than any previous leader, Labour or Tory, in categories including patriotism, judgment and understanding of Britain’s problems.

Remarkably, she is as popular in the North as the South, while even Scots now prefer the Tories to Labour.

Mrs May should also benefit in June from the robust health of the economy since the Brexit vote – something that may well not last as the business cycle turns. Meanwhile, her biggest advantage of all is the manifest unfitness to govern of that superannuated Trot Jeremy Corbyn and the ‘coalition of chaos’ he hopes to lead.

But if she is to make the best of everything going for her, it will not be enough merely to trust in her opponents’ unelectability.

For if she finds the right language and policies, she has a magnificent opportunity to redraw the electoral map of Britain – re-establishing the Tories as the party of all regions and classes, speaking for every aspirational family.

This is why it is vital her 2017 manifesto should reject the example of the cynical and dishonest document on which David Cameron went to the country two years ago. In this, he made no fewer than 625 pledges, intending not to keep them but to use them as chips to be bargained away with Nick Clegg in a renewed coalition.

Indeed, Mrs May has made clear she will pledge only what she can deliver – even if this means ditching her predecessor’s most popular but reckless policies, such as his freeze on all the main taxes and the crippling triple-lock on pensions.

Elsewhere, the manifesto gives her the chance to win a mandate for bringing back selective schooling, while enabling her to shore up her plans for Brexit against further sabotage by the Lords.

As for retaining the target to cut net immigration to the tens of thousands, it is true that this won’t be immediately attainable. But by focusing officialdom’s minds on the need to get the numbers down, it can only be welcome.

One grave reservation. This paper is deeply disappointed that, while we’re cutting our defences to insanely low levels, Mrs May intends to retain the law compelling us to spend 0.7 per cent of national output on foreign aid. But at least there is hope she may redefine how the figure is calculated, enabling her to switch aid cash to budgets such as defence.

But Mrs May’s main task will be to make good on the promises she made on her first day as PM, when she vowed to stand up for those who are just managing and narrow the socially corrosive gap between the privileged elites and the have-nots.

Heaven knows, five years will not be enough to tackle the mighty challenges facing us, from putting the NHS on a viable footing to reforming the Lords.

But if Mrs May puts her policies where her heart lies, concentrating on revitalising areas such as the North, she can make the Tories a truly national force once again – and the natural party of government.