Regulator denounced as ‘moronic’ for ruling UK aid cannot go to hurricane-hit islands
THE international aid regulator clashed head-on with Downing Street yesterday over calls to allow Britain to use its £13billion foreign aid budget to help hurricane-hit overseas territories.
Theresa May said she was “frustrated” with strict rules that prevent overseas aid money being funnelled to the Caribbean islands flattened by Hurricane Irma.
No 10 insisted it had been in talks for months with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development about changing the rules on how aid money can be spent, while a Tory MP described the OECD as “morons”.
But the OECD retorted that a rule change was “not on the agenda” and pointed out that Britain was on a panel of 30 countries that insisted on tightening the rules only last year.
Britain has so far pledged £57million of taxpayers’ money to help rebuild the British Virgin Islands, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands.
It cannot, however, take the money out of its £13billion international aid budget because the OECD classes the three territories as being too wealthy.
Britain’s commitment to abide by OECD rules and spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on aid was enshrined in UK law by David Cameron.
However, Mrs May is so angry about the rigidity of the rules that she is prepared to change the law if the OECD refuses to change them.
A Downing Street spokesman said: “The Prime Minister is frustrated with the rules as they stand. That is why ministers have been tasked with working to change them.
“In particular the Prime Minister said she does not believe that international definitions of development assistance always help in determining how money should be spent, on whom and
for what purposes and that is what we are working to change.”
The spokesman said the Government started negotiations with the OECD over changing the rules immediately after the election, having made a manifesto pledge to do so.
But the Paris-based OECD told The Daily Telegraph that no conversations had taken place, and that changing the rules was “not on the agenda” because they had been tightened in February 2016 by the 30-member Development Assistance Committee, of which Britain is a member.
The DAC revised the rules to make it more difficult for “military or police activities” to be included in aid spending. The next meeting is at the end of October. The OECD said there was no “emergency trigger” for countries devastated by natural disasters to be put back on the list of those eligible for aid.
Priti Patel, the International Development Secretary, responded by writing to the DAC asking it to “urgently” review the rules relating to countries hit by Hurricane Irma.
She said: “We believe that the international rules should take into account the vulnerabilities of small island states. These rules were first established over 40 years ago. The world has changed dramatically since then, and we will work constructively with international partners to ensure the rules remain relevant and up to date.”
James Duddridge, the Conservative MP, former foreign office minister and current member of Parliament’s international development committee, urged Mrs May to “stop pussyfooting around” and take immediate steps to change UK law.
He said: “The British Government should do the right thing to benefit the world’s poor and give them what they need, not fit in with some economist’s view of what the world should look like.”
Philip Davies, a Tory MP, said: “As we are getting back control from the unelected and unaccountable European Union, can I suggest that we now get back control on our overseas aid spending from the unelected, unaccountable, out-of-touch morons at the OECD so we can spend our overseas aid budget on the things that we want to spend it on rather than the things that they tell us we can spend it on?”