Overseas aid – the alternative

‘We have written to David Cameron to applaud his decision to stick to the UK’s commitment to overseas aid to the developing world, despite the tough economic times,’ begins a letter to the Financial Times from the bosses of major companies from BP to Vodafone, with PR maestro Alan Parker of Brunswick at the top of the list. ‘It is both humanitarian and in the interests of this country.’

But that’s not the view of seven out of ten respondents in a recent ITV ComRes poll. They think too much — £6.7 billion this year — is spent on overseas aid; only 7 per cent of them believe the government should abide by its aspiration to bring the Department for International Development’s budget up to 0.7 per cent of GDP, the target set by the G8 at Gleneagles in 2005. Liam Fox is now leading the call to scrap the ringfencing of aid, while many other Tory backbenchers want to see spending switched from aid to defence — and Tony Blair has waded in with his own dossier of answers to ‘aid sceptics’ (perhaps not the intervention Cameron was praying for), including the glib factoid that ‘Aid from the UK alone has in the past two years helped over five million more children go to primary school.