Good riddance to the wasteful Department for Aid
The Prime Minister’s brave decision to merge it with the Foreign Office will bolster British interests
So farewell, then, to the Ministry of Blank Cheques or, to give one of Whitehall’s more profligate departments its proper title, the unloved Department for International Development (Dfid).
It is not just that Dfid, whose origins date back to former Labour foreign secretary Robin Cook’s commitment to an “ethical foreign policy” in 1997, has managed to divert vast sums to countries like China and Iran, which can hardly be described as well-disposed to Britain. In 2018, for example, aid to China, a country that is challenging America to become the world’s wealthiest nation, rose by £11.7 million to reach £55.6 million. Iran, meanwhile, which spent most of last summer harassing British merchant shipping in the Gulf, received £16 million.
The widespread unhappiness in Whitehall over Dfid stems from the requirement, enshrined in law by David Cameron’s Coalition, that officials are legally required to spend the department’s annual budget of around £15 billion, whether or not they have good reason to do so. This is so ministers can boast they have met the United Nations target of spending 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product on aid. This led, in one memorable year, to officials scrambling to spend £3.7 billion in just eight weeks so that the government could claim it had reached this arbitrary requirement.
Boris Johnson’s announcement in the Commons yesterday that Dfid will cease to exist as a separate entity therefore represents a long overdue injection of common sense to the proceedings, as his Government seeks to adopt a more holistic approach to Britain’s dealings overseas.
Mr Johnson knows well the iniquities of Dfid from his spell as foreign secretary. His radical approach is designed to ensure that, so far as Britain’s global outlook is concerned, the Government will speak with one voice. The creation of the new Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in September, effectively a merger between the Foreign Office and Dfid, will hopefully mean that, in future, foreign aid commitments are consistent with our overall national interests, rather than seeking to undermine them.
As the conflicting global response to the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated, we live in an age when rival powers such as China increasingly look to a mixture of soft and hard power options in pursuit of their national goals. So it makes sense that Britain, as it nears the end of the Brexit deadline, seeks to adopt its own more coherent approach.
It is estimated that Britain spends something in the region of £70 billion a year promoting and protecting its interests around the world, whether in the form of soft power areas like diplomacy and foreign aid, or more robust options such as deploying our Armed Forces and intelligence-gathering operations. As Mr Johnson reminded MPS yesterday, Britain has the third largest diplomatic service and aid budget in the world.
And, as the Government seeks to articulate its vision for Global Britain, it is imperative that these important agencies work in unison, instead of constantly pursuing competing agendas.
The Government still insists that, even with the merger, it is committed to maintaining foreign aid at the 0.7 per cent level. But with future aid donations being more intimately linked to Britain’s wider diplomatic goals, together with the fact that regional trade directors are to come under the auspices of the new department, there is an expectation that overseas aid commitments will be more closely aligned with key foreign policy objectives.
No longer, as happened under Dfid, should taxpayers hand over vast sums to global bodies like the UN, which then use the money to fund projects that are openly critical of British government policy, from race relations to human rights.
Instead post-brexit Britain can use its combined resources to help reform struggling international institutions such as the World Health Organisation, which has seen its global authority seriously diminished during the Covid-19 outbreak after kowtowing to China’s communist leadership.
Yesterday’s announcement also needs to be seen within the context of the wider overhaul of Britain’s global approach being undertaken in Whitehall as part of Mr Johnson’s “Integrated Review” of our national security infrastructure, which is due to publish its findings this autumn.
With US President Donald Trump threatening to scale down America’s military presence in Europe, our increasingly fractious relationship with Russia and China, and Islamist militancy on the rise once again, it is paramount that Britain can defend and protect both its own interests, as well as those of our allies in the US, Europe and beyond.
Mr Johnson has admirably shown that he is prepared to take radical measures to improve Britain’s global standing. Let’s hope, then, the Prime Minister shows the same resolve when it comes to making sure the country has the necessary resources in place to safeguard Global Britain.