Give foreign aid cash to Forces, says ex-Army chief

Crazy aid rules leave military with hurricane relief bill of £50m

FOREIGN aid cash should be handed to the Armed Forces to compensate them for the Hurricane Irma relief effort, a former head of the Army said yesterday.

Lord Dannatt argued that officials at the Department for International Development struggle to spend foreign development money ‘wisely’ and questioned the Government’s aid spending target.

The Royal Navy launched an unprecedented relief effort after Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands and the Turks and Caicos islands were devastated by Hurricane Irma last month.

As thousands of homes were left without roofs, electricity and water, more than 2,000 military personnel were deployed to the Caribbean alongside the Navy flagship HMS Ocean.

But under international rules the £50million bill cannot be met from the foreign aid pot.

Lord Dannatt, who was Chief of the General Staff from 2006 to 2009 and an adviser to David Cameron, told the Cheltenham Literature Festival that ministers should simply reduce the DFID budget and ‘transfer that money across to the defence budget’.

He also raised the issue of the Government’s commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid. ‘If we can’t afford in this period of the ninth or tenth year of austerity to spend more than 2 per cent GDP on defence, I would question whether we can afford to spend 0.7 per cent on our international aid budget,’ Lord Dannatt said.

‘It’s a wonderful thing to be generous, but spending £12billion – and DFID [Department for International Devel-

From the Mail, October 7 opment] struggles to spend it wisely – I’m not sure that’s right. We’ve seen the British Armed Forces’ response to hurricanes in the Caribbean, but will DFID reimburse the Ministry of Defence for the cost of ships, marines and people who were there?’

The former general recalled asking the House of Lords how the Army would be reimbursed for the assistance it gave in the Caribbean. ‘ The answer was, we have to be very careful to stay in the international rules,’ he said. ‘That’s a pretty limp answer in my view, but the way I’d like to change that is not to fight those rules. ‘I would reduce – by 0.5, 0.6 per cent – the DFID budget and transfer that money to the defence budget.’

The British Overseas Territories are deemed too wealthy to receive aid funding under criteria set by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

It means spending in the region must be taken from other budgets.

Britain sent two ships to help victims of Irma in the Caribbean. The Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Mounts Bay, which carried 40 Royal Marines, was already in the area and was soon joined by HMS Ocean.

Lord Dannatt also called for the defence budget to rise to 2.25 or 2.5 per cent of GDP, which would increase it by £3billion to £5billion.

He added that such an increase would help to cement Britain’s role in Nato. ‘I think it would send a very strong message to our partners, friends and allies in Europe that although we’re leaving the European Union, we’re not abandoning our role in European collective security’, he said. ‘We’re prepared to do our bit and more.’

Britain’s foreign aid budget now accounts for £1 in every £7 given by rich countries. This is second only to the US.