What Turkey needs

This week’s earthquake in Turkey and northern Syria is a reminder that in spite of civilisation’s advance and human ingenuity, there are natural disasters we can do little to prevent or to protect ourselves from.

Though the death toll from floods, drought and storms has fallen dramatically over the past century, the toll from tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanos has remained the same. We have little defence against shifting tectonic plates.

After an earthquake, what matters is the speed at which aid arrives. Every minute counts in the effort to find people buried under the debris, to distribute food and to rebuild infrastructure. A country’s aid programme, therefore, should be judged not by the amount of money it’s prepared to spend, but by how well it works. In this case, the disaster in Turkey provides an opportunity for the UK government to answer the critics of its international aid policy and demonstrate its efficiency.