Aid target becomes law... but Defence cash still isn’t safe
BRITAIN’S foreign aid budget is to be protected by law f ol l owing a historic vote last night – but ministers still refused to protect funding for the Armed Forces.
The House of Lords voted to commit future governments to spending at least 0.7 per cent of national wealth – currently around £12billion a year – on overseas development.
The new law will come into force within weeks, after it receives Royal Assent. Last night Tories lined up to lambast the move, saying it is wrong for aid spending to be protected when savage cuts to defence are expected.
A defence think tank has warned that up to 30,000 members of the Armed Forces face redundancy over the next Parliament.
David Cameron has repeatedly refused to pledge that funding for the military will be kept above the Nato target of at least 2 per cent of GDP.
The 2013/14 defence budget was £34.3billion – just over this 2 per cent target and down from £35.9billion in 2010/11, when the Coalition took over. By contrast, the aid budget has soared from £8.5billion in 2010 to £11.5billion in 2013 – the year that the 0.7 per cent of gross national income was reached for the first time. When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher left office, only 0.27 per cent of gross national income (GNI) went on aid.
Legislation to set the aid target in stone was passed by the Lords despite opposition from Tory grandees including former Chancellor Lord Lawson, who has described the measure as ‘gesture politics’.
Sir Gerald Howarth, the former Conservative defence minister, said aid spending should be cut to allow an increase in the defence budget – because Russia is increasing spending on arms and the Middle East is in flames. ‘This is a dangerous world,’ he told BBC Radio 4’s World at One. ‘This is not a time to be cutting our defence in any case. If you ask me where you make the savings – you make them in overseas aid.’
More than 300 Tory backbenchers are expected to rebel on Thursday by forcing a Commons vote on enshrining the 2 per cent defence target in law.
Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘If the Government is prepared to accept that a percentage of GNI should go towards a specific priority, it seems crazy that we can do this for oversees aid but not for defence. We
‘Gesture politics’
should be putting the 2 per cent Nato target into law.’
Philip Davies, Conservative MP for Shipley, said: ‘ It is unjustifiable to spend more on overseas aid when we are still borrowing so much and have to make savings at home.’
The pledge to introduce the law was part of the Coalition agreement – but opposition from Conservative backbenchers meant it had to be piloted through parliament by Liberal Democrat MP Michael Moore.
It was approved in the Commons earlier this year and yesterday given an unopposed third reading in the Lords.
IN what must surely go down among the most reckless follies of gesture politics, Peers last night gave the final go-ahead to a law banning future governments from spending less than 0.7 per cent of the UK’s income on overseas aid.
Meanwhile, ministers pointedly ducked any similar commitment to meeting Nato’s requirement that we should devote two per cent of GDP to defence.
Leave aside the long series of reports exposing how our £12billion foreign aid is wasted and fosters corruption. Forget that while budgets are slashed at home, we give cash to the world’s biggest arms buyers, with their own space programmes.
How, at this moment of acute international tension, could politicians even think of neglecting their first duty to defend the nation, while legislating to increase the least essential budget of them all?