Foreign aid? We should put our own people first
WE are giving away around £ 25 million a day in foreign aid.
Yes, you read it right – that’s £ 25 million a day. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true.
When the Coalition government came to power in 2010, it knew it had to make cuts. The recession was well under way and the country was on its knees financially.
The Labour Treasury Minister Liam Byrne left a note on his desk for his successor David Laws which read ‘ there is no money left’.
A sick joke – but all too true.
Budgets
All departments were braced to make cuts. This was to be expected. But the Coalition ring- fenced two budgets – health and foreign aid.
I think we all agree that the health budget should be protected because we pay our taxes and deserve to be looked after. But foreign aid is a different matter. Last week, it emerged that Britain is spending a larger share of its wealth on foreign aid than the rest of the G8 countries.
Some are actually making cuts due to the hard economic times. Japan, Italy and the United States have slashed their foreign aid budgets to look after their own people.
But not us – we’re heading in the opposite direction.
Britain spends 0.56 per cent of its national income on foreign aid.
This compares to the United States which spends 0.19% while Russia hands over a tiny 0.03%.
Next year Britain’s percentage will actually rise to 0.7%, which is by far the highest in the modern world.
So while the defence budget is being cut and our armed forces are reduced in size, we will continue to hand taxpayer’s money over to our old friend Argentina.
While the austerity measures mean a Bedroom Tax, and people losing their disability living allowance, the government can still afford to hand our money over to India. It’s just plain wrong. India, for example, has more millionaires and billionaires than us, it has its own space programme, its own nuclear weapons and is projected to be the largest economy on the planet by 2050. So they don’t need our money – and they have said they don’t want it – but we still give it.
There are now an estimated 13 million people in Britain living below the poverty line. The number of soup kitchens and food banks has rocketed since the beginning of the recession in 2007.
I visited a food bank myself recently in the Midlands. It was sobering to think people in this country – which is the seventh largest economy in the world – need help with food.
Brazil is the sixth biggest economy in the world and we still give them foreign aid. It really is that loopy.
By 2015 it is reckoned that the number of people needing food aid in Britain will be around half a million. Homelessness is also on the up. It makes me angry that while our own people are out of work and many are looking to food banks to feed their families, we are still giving money away.
What is worse is that some of the countries we dish our money out to are undemocratic and have dodgy human rights records.
Foreign aid to Somalia has gone up by more than 200% and more than 100% to Nigeria.
Butchered
In a strange twist, we now have an Ethiopian man suing our government claiming that the £ 1.3 billion we are giving in foreign aid has ended up in the hands of ‘ Stalinists’ who have butchered people and forced them to flee from their lands. It’s a disgrace.
So why do we do this? Is it because we feel some sort of post- colonial guilt? Is it because we want to look good on the world stage? Or is it because it gives a warm sense of satisfaction to the bleeding- hearted, privately- educated, upper- middle class liberals that run this country?
It’s probably a mixture of all – which is no excuse.
Foreign aid should be a luxury not a necessity. When we have money over, we should help other nations.
But when we have a million of our own kids unemployed, austerity measures, soup kitchens and food banks on the rise and increasing homelessness, is it too much to ask for our taxes to be spent on our own people in our own country? WHILE other major economies have watered down commitments to the developing world since the global financial crisis, Britain is heading in the opposite direction.
Since 2004, the British aid budget has risen by $ 5.13billion (£ 3.27billion).
Only America, which has five times the population, has seen a bigger increase – of $ 5.83billion.
On a per head basis, Britain has therefore seen a far bigger rise.
Over the past year, this country’s aid budget has continued to rise while America, Germany and France have begun to reduce assistance to the third world.
The figures were lauded by the Coalition after David Cameron championed the moral importance of helping the world’s poorest.
However, they are likely to infuriate many Conservative backbenchers who are concerned that international aid spending continues to increase while the Armed Forces, police and other services face another round of cuts.
Here, UKIP Deputy Leader PAUL NUTTALL explains why charity should begin at home…