Foreign aid surges by £500m in just one year

Bustards, salamanders – and a big wage bill

THE foreign aid budget rose by almost £500 million last year to reach a record £14.5 billion.

The huge increase will pile pressure on ministers to end the controversial 0.7 per cent target, which has seen spending on international development double in a decade.

Each UK household now pays an average of £535 a year for overseas aid – more than £10 every week.

News of the increase comes a week after families were told they faced an average rise of £76 a year on their council tax from this month.

The total spent on aid has more than doubled from the £6.4billion spent in 2008. Britain is one of only five countries to meet the 0.7 per cent foreign aid target.

Tory backbenchers said it was indefensible that ministers could find another half a billion pounds for foreign aid but could not properly fund police, schools or the care system. Former pensions minister Baroness Altmann said: ‘It can’t be right that we can afford to help Third World countries while we seem to be unable to offer more than Third World care to our elderly citizens.’

Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said: ‘This remains an extravagance in an era of continuing austerity.

‘When we are facing a real challenge with social care and when everyone is facing increasing tax, it seems a peculiar priority to spend more and more money on overseas aid when the record shows the waste and corruption which forms part of it.’

Provisional figures released yesterday show the Department for International Development and other ministries handed out £14.546billion in foreign aid in 2018.

This is up £487million on the year before, or 3.5 per cent. The increase was so large because, thanks to a law passed by David Cameron, the aid budget is set at 0.7 per cent of Britain’s gross national income. If that rises, so does the amount spent on development.

Gross national income hit almost £2.1trillion last year.

While aid spending is protected, funding for departments providing services in the UK has been slashed.

England’s schools are struggling with huge spending cuts. The creaking social care system requires billions just to prevent services from deteriorating. And the increase in aid spending is almost five times the £100million that the Chancellor has given police to fight knife crime.

Tory MP Pauline Latham, who sits on the Commons international development committee, said: ‘If it’s gone up that much then it must mean the economy is doing better than anticipated. There must now be an equivalent rise in the amount of money spent on health, education and other services.’

A Government spokesman said: ‘Our aid budget only increases when the UK economy grows.

‘Reducing poverty, hunger and providing clean water and sanitation is at the heart of what UK aid does, but it is also tackling disease, terrorism and conflict, and creating a safer, healthier and more prosperous world for us all.’

‘Remains an extravagance’