FOREIGN AID MADNESS

In setting out the 10 points needed to enable the UK to make the most of leaving the EU, Turbo Brexit (see Turbo Brexit: and the case against Brino), point 5 stated: ‘Overseas Aid should be reduced to a minimum. The aim should be to reduce it by at least £10billion. Those who wish to give donations to overseas bodies and charities are of course free to do so with their own money.’ The budget for foreign aid has continuously increased and is currently more than £15billion.

The announcement of the intention to reduce that budget by around £4billion and, temporarily, to reduce the 0.7 per cent of GDP target to 0.5 per cent has been met with howls of outrage from a number of MPs, including many Tory MPs, as well as no less than five former prime ministers. A change in the law is needed and it may be that the Government will find this a difficulty. The scale of the looming Covid depression has left many of Britain’s ruling Ponzi class completely unmoved. NB, only six MPs voted against the 0.7 per cent target being enshrined into law, with 164 voting in favour. The aid extravaganza is a Tory policy.

In Turbo Brexit, I wrote:

“Overseas aid is an important issue for the Tories. It was the Tory David Cameron who established the 0.7 per cent target for overseas aid spending. Tories have often subsequently stated that they regard Britain as a ‘development superpower’ (first coined by the then development minister, Andrew Mitchell, see The Ponzi Class, page 320). This should be contrasted with the position of Britain as a genuine superpower a century and more ago. Then, the Liberal leader, and former prime minister, Lord Rosebery, made a speech in which he stated: ‘This country has two supreme assets, to a degree which no other country in the world possesses; therefore I venture to use the word “supreme”. They are our Navy and our capital (Cheers) – weapons of enormous importance in time of war and instruments of enormous weight in time of peace.’ For Rosebery, Britain’s ‘prestige’ was dependent upon the Navy and capital.

In the 21^st century, for the Tories, Britain’s prestige is no longer dependent upon the Royal Navy – what little of it is left – although their commitment to the City is unswerving. Instead of the Royal Navy, the Tories regard the size of the overseas aid budget as being the measure of Britain’s prestige: the sheer extravagance of it, the size of the salaries and bonuses, the multitude of recipients and scale of the handouts are the bedrock of Britain’s superpower status. Combined with the commitment to political correctness and the policy of globalization (in particular the membership of global institutions), these constitute the four pillars of Britain’s position in the world – as the Tories see it, as well as the Ponzi class in general. The Brexit vote cut the foundations from under that vacuity.”

And:

“Regarding governance, a good example of the May Government’s determination to subordinate the British to a globalist rule is overseas aid, about which the May Government claimed a major victory. They asked for and won permission from the OECD that, in future, they could spend British taxpayer’s monies from Britain’s overseas aid budget on British islands when they were affected by natural disasters.

Previously, only those countries that were on an OECD list were deemed to be worthy of OECD of aid. When three British territories (Turks and Caicos, Anguilla, and the British Virgin Islands) were hit by Hurricane Irma in 2017, the OECD deemed the assistance given to them did not count towards Britain’s 0.7 per cent aid target. Consequently, the May Government was distressed to find that they did not have OECD permission to spend the British overseas aid budget to aid its own citizens.

Undaunted, the May Government proceeded to alter the OECD criteria and were ecstatic to succeed. Priti Patel, the then aid minister, said: ‘UK leadership has secured significant and important changes to the international aid rules, as we committed to in our manifesto … As a result of our influence, we’ve made huge progress on ensuring official development assistance can be used when vulnerable nations are struck by crises or natural disasters.’”

The British overseas aid budget reached £12.6billion per annum in 2014 – 60 per cent of this aid was given to agencies such as the World Bank, the UN and the EU. In order to meet its spending target, in December 2013 the government was spending almost £60million per day (one report put the figure as high as £100million per day) on something or other, with the Department for International Development spending a quarter of its annual budget in one month. The Permanent Secretary for the department received a £20,000 bonus in addition to his salary of £165,000. Andrew Mitchell, the Tory overseas development minister, even boasted that Britain was ‘a development superpower’. The Commons International Development Committee warned that the government had no checks on how money was spent. Despite a supposed crackdown, the amount spent on foreign aid consultants leapt by 45% in October 2012 to £45.9million. The ‘poverty barons’ in receipt of monies included PriceWaterhouseCoopers, £4million in October 2012, and Adam Smith International, £5.8million, as well as foreign consultants such as ABT Associates which received £2.1million. The Big Six accountancy firms were major recipients of foreign aid for Eastern Europe, and they drafted laws, with little if any input from local people, to impose Western standards on the recipient countries to enable them to qualify for Western aid. The imposition failed. Likewise the attempts to impose Western standards failed in Africa. One lesson being that England’s development of common law, where the law develops in response to precedents, rather than civil law where theoretical solutions are imposed from above is a more successful route as it responds to local culture and is derived from practical issues.

Transparency International has repeatedly highlighted that Britain sends overseas aid to virtually all those countries with serious corruption. In 2012. Somalia, branded by Transparency International as the most corrupt country in the world and described by the World Bank as the worst governed, received £86.8million; North Korea received £756,000; Afghanistan received £200.4million; Sudan received £50.5million; South Sudan £107.6million; Libya, despite its oil reserves, £6.7million; Iraq £5million; Uzbekistan £1.6million; Turkmenistan £416,000; Syria £38.5million; Zimbabwe £139million; and the Democratic Republic of Congo also £139million. Britain gives more than £2million to Argentina, a hostile country with designs on the Falklands Islands and a member of G20, in overseas aid and a further £7million via the EU. In 2013, Britain spent in excess of £1billion on the most corrupt regimes, according to Transparency International, with spending increasing by almost a quarter in 2013 compared to 2012. All but one of the 20 most corrupt regimes received aid from Britain. In Somalia aid monies were reportedly being used to fund Al Qaeda-backed terrorists.

Ethiopia received the most aid of £261.5million in 2012, followed by Pakistan £203million and India £197million. Commons International Development Committee complained that Pakistani corruption is rife and that wealthy Pakistanis pay little tax (less than 1 per cent of Pakistanis pay tax), while Pakistan was set to become the largest recipient of British aid, reaching £446million in 2014/2015. A report from the Indian government, in May 2011, found that £70million from the DfED’s £388million budget for the Education for All programme was either lost or stolen. Much of the money was allocated to schools that did not even exist, and amounts were spent on private cars for officials. School attendances by both children and teachers was found to be dismally low. Britain suspended £11million in aid to Uganda due to fraud. Only aid that was funded through non-governmental agencies would continue following allegations of Ugandan government theft of aid monies. In Uganda, the road network funded by aid is so extensive that the country is unable to afford the maintenance costs. Auditors have discovered that more than half of the £1.6billion funding in aid to the Congo has been wasted, failing to deliver any results – £240million of which was from Britain. In one example, 1,000 police officers trained in 2005 have ‘vanished without trace’. British taxpayers funded the Congolese police even after reports of their involvement in summary executions. Congo’s MP’s salaries were increased tenfold.

India has its own overseas aid programme, amounting to £328million per annum. In 2010, India was the largest recipient of British overseas aid at £421million in that year. India has spent £600million on its space programme and has even put a spacecraft into orbit around Mars. It has a large defence budget, including nuclear weapons, and in February 2015 announced a £10billion expansion of its navy with orders for new frigates and nuclear-powered submarines. Andrew Mitchell granted another £1.1billion in aid in 2010. Aid was due to end in 2015, but it continues.

Nigeria is one of the MINT economies (Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey) and is expected to become a major power. All of Britain’s aid to Nigeria is funnelled through agencies, such as UNICEF, and private contractors. Nigeria is spending millions in a space programme. Nigeria, has satellites in orbit and expects to construct its own spacecraft by 2028. Professor Seidu Onailo Mohammed announced: ‘By our road map we are supposed to have astronauts prepared by 2015. Before the end of the year, the recruitment of astronauts will begin so that we have them handy and as soon as we get the nod we can pick from that number.’ Despite its poverty, Nigeria has oil revenues of £40billion per annum and spends £31million per annum on champagne. Nigeria’s population is 170million. Nigeria has oil reserves amounting to 35billion barrels – enough to supply the entire planet for one year – and also 100trillion cubic feet of natural gas. It produces more crude oil than Texas. Its legislators are paid £122,000 – more than double the salary of a British MP. 70 per cent of Nigerians live below £1.29 per day.

Since independence in 1960, Nigeria has received £257billion in aid – six times more than the USA spent on the Marshall Plan for Europe after WWII. 136million barrels, worth $11billion, were skimmed off in corruption in 2009 to 2011. Millions in subsidies were paid for petrol that was never supplied. It is estimated that roughly £245billion of government money has been stolen since 1960. Almost 100,000 barrels of oil are being stolen in Nigeria every day, from pipelines, ports and storage tanks with the connivance of officials, politicians and the military. This amounts to £2billion every year. A Chatham House report stated: ‘Nigerian crude oil is being stolen on an industrial scale. Proceeds are laundered through world financial centres. In Nigeria, politicians, military officers, militants, oil industry personnel, oil traders and communities profit, as do organised criminal groups.’ Justine Greening, the then International Development Secretary, said on Radio 4: ‘I believe it [the aid to Nigeria] is well spent … We do expect them to invest in their country as well. The so-called space programme was in fact investment in satellites, weather satellites and for communication. So actually this investment that they’re making in the so-called “space programme” which is actually satellite technology, some of which actually has been provided by UK companies based in Surrey, is a sensible investment and actually one that we would be expecting them to be making alongside the investment that we make.’

Britain even granted £4million in aid to an Ethiopian equivalent of the Spice Girls, with further aid to follow under a Girl Hub project supposedly to ’empower’ African girls.

In Brexit Means Brexit: How the British Ponzi Class Survived the EU Referendum, I wrote:

“So enamoured with giving other people’s money away was David Cameron that on his final day in office, he was reportedly urging May not to reduce the overseas aid budget, which he regarded as one of his greatest legacies. The May Government’s incoming secretary of state for international development, Priti Patel, someone who was reputedly a critic, wrote in the Daily Mail in September 2016: ‘The aid budget isn’t my money, or the Government’s money. It’s taxpayers’ money – your money. We politicians have a duty to spend it well, in ways that not only help the world’s poorest, but also help us here at home. When people see aid being used properly they support it.’ She added:

‘But we need to face facts. Too much aid doesn’t find its way through to those who really need it. And too often, money is spent without a proper focus on results and outcomes that allow the poorest to stand on their own two feet. Some participants in the aid debate are resistant to criticism and sometimes unwilling to understand or even acknowledge genuine concerns.’

It should be noted that Priti Patel did not question the size of the budget, only how it was spent. In any event, the money continued to flow out, and abuses continued to be reported.

In June 2017, Priti Patel told The Guardian during a trip to Somalia: ‘Newspapers could twist up a story every day about UK aid, but to date there hasn’t been one that’s been 100% accurate. Part of my job has to be to demonstrate the value of UK aid.’

The largesse grew. New EU rules, which included adding prostitution and drug dealing to the GDP statistics, meant that the amount to be given away in foreign aid had likewise to be increased. The foreign aid budget rocketed to £13.3billion in 2016, more than double the amount spent in 2008. Of the increase, £685million was due to the EU rule change.

A sign of coming attractions was the so-called Ethiopian Spice Girls. Ethiopia has had an almost 10% growth rate per year for the past decade, a fact one might have thought to be more important than gimmicks and stunts from the British overseas aid lobby. However, Priti Patel described the donation to the Ethiopian Spice Girls (known as Yegna) as ‘good value for money’ that stopped teenage girls from getting pregnant. All five members of Yegna became mothers after joining the group. They earned £5,000 each for every radio series of eight episodes in a country where the average annual income is less than £500. The charity responsible for the formation of Yegna, Girl Effect, headed by a former senior civil servant, Howard Taylor, issued a statement:

‘As the world becomes ever more connected, we leverage the power of insight, media and disruptive technology to enable change at scale. Our approach is to invest in girls as the world’s biggest untapped resource. As girls rise, change becomes self-sustaining. Traditionally, development solutions that address poverty focus on supply side services – like schools or health clinics – things that we can see and touch. But all too often we treat the symptoms of poverty and overlook the cause. Our unique approach fills the gap of what is often unseen, to unlock a New Normal for girls. When the New Normal takes hold, girls become visible, vocal, connected and valued and are given the tools they need to become assets of change, not just recipients of aid.’

This babble is telling in how it reveals the wafer-thin rationale and the waste. But then, those involved are doing very well out of it. Even a communications ‘expert’ at Girl Effect got a salary of £40,000 and perks. Eventually, as the furore steadily increased, Priti Patel announced that funding for the project was to end…

Sometimes the waste was tinged with political correctness. For example, in December 2016, it was reported that Britain had given India £185million in the last year and was due to dole out another £54million. India was the world’s fastest growing economy, with more billionaires than Britain and with an overseas aid budget of its own. The spending included a project to increase the political participation of tribal women, increasing awareness of sexual harassment for students, and a housebuilding project to help first-time homeowners. India has the ninth-largest economy and is expected to overtake Britain by 2050.

The waste could also be more extensive and more pointless. For example, In January 2017, Britain committed to increasing foreign aid to Pakistan by £100million despite Pakistan having its own space programme and nuclear weapons; it increased defence spending (excluding nuclear weapons) by 11% in 2016 to £6.7billion. Pakistan was already the largest recipient of Britain’s overseas aid…

In December 2016, a report from the Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) stated that a £238million programme that was supposed to educate girls in fact mostly funded boys and, in some cases, had ‘abandoned targets for supporting girls altogether’. The programme in Pakistan involved the distribution of vouchers, only 43% of which were actually given to girls.

In January 2017, it was reported that the budget for cash handouts had escalated from £53million in 2005 to as much as £300million in 2016. Roughly 235,000 Pakistani families get wads of cash every three months in the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP) to boost their incomes. The plan is to expand the scheme to 441,000 families by 2020. In August, the Pakistani press reported on a ‘growing number of complaints about fake accounts and alleged corruption’. In September, Abdul Malik Baloch, the chief minister of one of Pakistan’s four regions (Balochistan), complained of ‘massive corruption’ in the programme and that most of the money was being misappropriated: ‘Undocumented people registered with the BISP do not know how to use the ATMS to draw the money. They are also deprived of the money at the post offices and the BISP offices by the staff.’ There were reports of bribes being paid to get the Benazir bank cards…

In January 2017, the ICAI produced a report which highlighted that the cash handouts in Bangladesh were ‘well known’ to be going to the wrong people and that the Department for International Development (DfID) had not ‘engaged directly with the problems’. In Rwanda the selection process for the handouts ‘correlates only weakly with poverty levels’. In Nigeria, fake urine samples were used to get payments for pregnant women, and in Zimbabwe, 17 per cent in a ‘child-focused programme’ did not have any children; the Zimbabwe government refused to remove the childless from the aid scheme…

Time and again, so desperate were the officials to reach the expenditure target that examples could be found of the aid budget being spent on any old thing. It was reported that Britain had ‘dumped’ £9billion of its aid budget in the World Bank over the previous five years. The World Bank had even charged £241million in administration charges to receive the money. In November 2016, it was reported that in 2015, Britain paid the EU £1.3billion to be spent on development in the Third World. More than half of the £12billion overseas aid budget was paid into international organizations such as the EU rather than being donated directly to poor countries. The EU had been recently criticized for spending much of its development budget in wealthy countries such as Russia, China and Brazil. In Brazil, the EU had spent £660,000 on the ‘social integration of women living in fishing communities’ and £120,000 on the ‘integration of indigenous city dwellers’. In Georgia, the EU had spent £400,000 on the organization of ‘sustainable energy days’. EU auditors had reported that large sums could not be accounted for.

In February 2017, it was reported that the British embassy in Beijing was promoting a new project for ‘improving care in the community for elderly people in China’. British diplomats had held workshops to encourage applications for grants from a £1.3billion overseas aid fund. A government spokesman said:

‘In a post-Brexit world, a more outward looking, global Britain investing and trading with the fastest growing markets is good for the UK and good for the world. Helping to build well-regulated, competitive markets is the right thing to do to deliver global prosperity, stability and security and help the poorest – 60 per cent of whom live in middle income countries – to stand on their own two feet and become our trading partners of the future. As ICAI acknowledges, the fund has made significant progress in a short time.’

It should be noted that the spokesman assumed that the May Government was motivated by its globalization agenda and the interests of China – not the interests of Britain – and was even prepared to cite Brexit to justify this agenda.

In December 2016, figures showed Britain donated £58million to reform foreign jails at a time when the British prison system was struggling to cope with major cuts in the number of prison officers. Recipient countries included China and Somalia.

In February 2017, it was revealed that more than £100million of overseas aid was spent on shopping malls and retail chains in a variety of Third World countries. The recipients included China’s largest bra retailer, a Nigerian cinema chain, Vietnamese restaurants, wine merchants in Thailand, retail malls in Cameroon, Zambia, Nigeria and Mozambique, and a Costa Rican bookseller. The spending had been done via the Commonwealth Development Corporation. Even Caribbean hotels expected to receive funds…

In a new effort to find something to spend the overseas aid budget on, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport became involved in spending decisions. A range of ‘cultural projects’ in the Middle East were funded. Turkey, the world’s 16^th largest economy, was awarded £923,660 for a nationwide survey ‘to map public perceptions’ on their heritage. More than £1.2million was spent on two historical sites in Turkey, and a further £100,000 was given to the University of Liverpool to help preserve historical Turkish rock carvings.

And that was not all: £460,000 was spent on converting a former Saddam Hussein palace into a museum; £1.7million was given to up to 100 archaeologists in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Tunisia and the Palestinian Territories to attend training courses on how to use aerial images databases; £95,486 was spent on young nomadic Bedouin people in the Palestinian Territories for them to learn about their cultural heritage; and £99,713 was spent to compile a database of ancient pulpits in Cairo.

A culture department spokesman said: ‘The Cultural Protection Fund is providing essential support to countries where heritage is threatened by conflict, including Syria, Egypt and Iraq. These projects are a first step to helping restore and preserve heritage of global significance.’

In March 2017, the ICAI found that £9million of British foreign aid was being used in Libya to fund migrant detention camps which had mostly fallen under the control of people smugglers…

The gravy train mentality is endemic. In December 2016, the latest figures showed the DfID had the highest salaries in Whitehall, with an average annual salary of £53,000. The department had also increased its staffing by 27 per cent since 2010. Staffing costs increased from £95million to £133million between 2010 and 2016. The number of staff increased from 1,822 to 2,208. Half of the increase took place after Priti Patel took over. It was revealed that the payments to private contractors had increased to £1billion per year, with some consultants earning as much as £1,000 per day. At the Adam Smith International, which has been involved in the distribution of hundreds of billions of pounds of aid monies, four executives netted £43million in share payments and bonuses in the four years to 2016. In December 2016, one of those awarded a knighthood in the New Year’s honours list was Mark Lowcock, who headed the DfID.

In April 2017, a report by MPs on the international development committee warned that private firms were overcharging for providing foreign aid services. It urged ministers to take action to stop contractors from ‘getting rich’ out of foreign aid. Adam Smith International, one of the largest contractors, had made multimillion-pound profits. Another contractor had charged double the true staffing cost of a project. DfID officials blamed the EU for not allowing them to take into account previous failures of contractors bidding for new contracts.”

Now, in 2020, we are treated to the spectacle of a variety of politicians and vested interests wailing about how little children in Africa and Asia will be left bereft if the UK’s foreign aid is reduced. Such people are a disgrace. The £4billion reduction is a fudge and the aid budget should have been slashed to a minimum.