Redefining aid

In this week’s Queen’s Speech, the government promised as usual to cut red tape for businesses. But David Cameron is remarkable in his enthusiasm for simultaneously wrapping his own government in red tape. He has proposed a law to prevent the Chancellor raising rates of income tax, and in one of the last acts of the coalition he pushed through a law which commits British governments for ever after to spent at least 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) on international aid.

There is little chance of the Prime Minister failing to meet his self-imposed spending target. Civil servants at the Department for International Development (DfiD) have proved themselves to be more than equal to the task of shovelling money in the direction of developing nations. The National Audit Office raised concerns about an apparent spending spree by DfiD of £1 billion in the last weeks of 2013 — at a time when the Treasury announced that economic growth was likely to exceed its forecast for the year, therefore requiring extra aid spending in order to hit the 0.7 per cent target.

At 0.71 per cent of GNI, Britain now has by far the highest aid budget of any major developed nation. France spends 0.41 per cent of GNI on international aid, Germany 0.38 per cent, Japan 0.23 per cent and the US 0.18 per cent. Whether the budget — £11.7 billion last year — is achieving anything useful is another matter. If David Cameron hoped that his self-imposed target would bring Britain prestige and influence, it is becoming clearer by the week that a more realistic outcome may be national embarrassment, as evidence grows of misspending.