UK’S £12BN FOREIGN AID MADNESS
6-PAGE SPECIAL REPORT How IS it possible? After yet more Budget cuts, another £12billion of your taxes are being splurged on foreign aid. Now (if your blood pressure can take it) read how it’s spent... starting with the killers whose wages YOU are paying
THE scandal of how Britain fritters away billions in foreign aid – including paying salaries to convicted terrorists who have murdered hundreds of innocent people – is exposed today by a major MoS investigation.
The shocking revelation that thousands of Palestinian terrorists, including men who have masterminded suicide bombings and murdered children, are given cash handouts from aid money will cause anger and disbelief, particularly in the wake of the Brussels massacres.
Our probe exposed how huge amounts of taxpayers’ cash, that critics say should be spent in Britain, is being ‘squandered’ on wasteful schemes elsewhere by the Department For International Development (DFID) and Foreign Office. Despite claims of astonishing waste, the Government maintains a dogged adherence to the commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of the nation’s income on foreign aid – the highest proportion of any of the world’s major economies – even though last year it had to borrow £70billion.
In a two-month global investigation we have also exposed how:
As Europe and Britain’s migrant crisis has spiralled out of control, a BBC Somali radio drama funded by the British taxpayer heard characters trading tips on how to become an illegal immigrant into Europe
More than £5 million of UK money went to a US think-tank that spent £12 million on a new HQ in Washington
Officials from pariah state North Korea were flown to Britain for English lessons.
Music teachers were sent around the world to teach children in 17 countries songs such as Scarborough Fair
Our dossier, painstakingly compiled over two months by correspondents worldwide, lifts the lid on a ‘culture of waste’ at bloated DFID. It is driven by the ‘mantra’ that 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) must be spent on foreign aid. Britain is the first G7 country to enshrine the aim in law.
The revelations will raise serious questions about the Government’s slavish determination to stick to that commitment, which critics say inevitably results in a frantic race to spend cash – even on projects with only a slim chance of achieving their goal.
Today The Mail on Sunday launches a major campaign to end the aid madness, along with an online petition on the Downing Street website aimed at securing a Commons debate on the 0.7 per cent pledge.
Tory MP for Shipley, Philip Davies, said he hoped the MoS petition would ‘knock some sense into the Government’. He said: ‘At a time when we are making cutbacks at home it is completely unjustifiable to keep increasing year on year the amount we are spending on overseas aid. We can’t look after everybody in the whole world when we are struggling to look after some people in our own country.’
Fellow Tory MP Jacob ReesMogg said throwing cash at ‘silly’ projects left less money available for emergency aid such as assistance for Syrian refugees.
‘This is a bad way of spending public money. So much of this money is going on deeply silly and unnecessary things.’
The hefty burden of the overseas aid
commitment was underlined in Chancellor George Osborne’s shambolic Budget pledge to cut £1.3 billion from disability benefits earlier this month – since reversed. The proposed cut, which led to the resignation of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, amounted to just over a tenth of the £12 billion spent on foreign aid.
We dug beneath the headline figures on DFID’s websites to reveal waste and misguided largesse which seemed to extend to virtually every corner of the globe and which will shock readers. In the West Bank and Gaza, despite promises by the ruling Palestinian Authority (PA) to end the practice of paying aid money to convicted terrorists, our investigation revealed that they had simply duped the West by allowing the Palestine Liberation Organisation to hand out the cash instead.
Britain gives £72 million a year to Palestine, more than one-third of which goes straight to the PA.
It openly admits supporting terrorists whom it hails as heroes for fighting illegal occupation, awarding lifetime payments that rise depending on time spent in jail and the seriousness of crimes.
One Hamas master bomber has reportedly been given more than £100,000. Other ‘salaries’ go to the families of suicide bombers and even
teenagers involved in the latest upsurge of deadly attacks on Israel.
DFID and the European Union are still effectively supporting these payments to thousands of terrorists – despite claims to have ended such links two years ago. This was confirmed to the MoS by former prisoners and families receiving the cash, and in official statements by the PA.
We also visited a lavish £8 million palace that Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas is having built on the West Bank.
Other highlights of the bizarre catalogue of aid include £8,000 spent to send Tony Blair’s former spin doctor to lecture in Armenia, and £36,000 to set up a ‘friendly’ football match between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Last night a Government spokesman said: ‘UK aid is spent where it is most needed and is subject to rigorous internal and external checks and scrutiny at all stages. The Government has realigned the UK’s aid strategy, cutting wasteful programmes and making sure spending is firmly in the UK’s national interest. Alongside an increased defence budget and the UK’s world class diplomatic service, our aid programme is helping to create a more prosperous and stable world in which the UK can stand tall and flourish.’