FOREIGN AID BUDGET

The foreign aid budget soared by £1.2billion last year – because EU rules added prostitution and drugs to national statistics.

Under targets brought in by the former prime minister David Cameron, ministers are committed to sending 0.7 per cent of our national income overseas every year.

With the Brussels-led accounting change raising estimates of the size of the UK economy, the foreign aid bill has gone up.

Figures recently released showed spending jumped by 10 per cent to a record £13.3billion last year. The surge will raise pressure on the Government to scrap the aid promise at a time when vital services at home are being so tightly controlled.

Conservative MP Andrew Rosindell insists the 0.7 per cent target must go. He has said that the UK should play its part in global development when there is a genuine need, but we should not be tied to this arbitrary figure, which increases year by year – while at the same time we reduce funding for essential services in Britain.

‘There is little public support for this policy now and it’s time to ditch it.’ Other MPs have also criticised the way officials have included illegal activity such as prostitution when working out the size of the economy, meaning the aid spending also had to rise. As we should realise, the black economy does not pay tax.

The Department for International Development is the only government department that is judged by how much money it shovels out the door. Conservatives judge the effectiveness of government policies on outcomes, not on how much is spent. The foreign aid budget clearly runs contrary to this.

The ultimate irony is that this giant leap in aid spending is partly due to illicit activities such as drug dealing. Such a huge jump in the already bloated budget will cause outrage among many British taxpayers. We should not have targets that are measured purely on spending money.

Britain was last year one of only six major donors that met or exceeded the UN’s target for international aid spending. Our aid budget has more than doubled from the £6.4billion spent in 2008.

Foreign aid is calculated according to gross national income (GNI), which reached £1.9trillion last year after the economy grew and officials tweaked the way it was estimated, to follow EU accounting rules. The new calculations have given more weight to financial services and activities such as research and development – which the UK does well. They also include the value of the black-market economy such as drugs and prostitution.

Around £525million of the rise was because of economic growth and about £685million was because of the change in the accounting method. The £1.2billion boost to the aid budget is the biggest annual increase since 2013, when ministers raised spending by £2.6billion to meet the legal 0.7 per cent target.

As the GNI figure rose by 10 per cent compared with 2015, spending on aid had to rise by the same proportion.

A Government spokesman said: ‘Our international development budget only increases when the UK economy grows, a sign of our economic success. This money is an investment in Britain’s own security – ensuring the world is more prosperous, developed and stable.

‘Whether it’s stepping up our support for Syrian refugees, tackling the legacy of landmines or giving life-saving aid to stop people dying of hunger in East Africa, UK aid is keeping Britain safe while helping the world’s poorest.’

OPINION

With no end in sight to austerity and budgets cuts at home, the country’s ever-increasing overseas aid budget was always an affront to common sense. But the recent revelation that it grew last year by a staggering 10 per cent – outstripping economic growth five times over – takes it far beyond parody, and into the realms of the morally offensive.

We face huge financial pressures at home, while the wider world looks ever more dangerous. Yet drowning in debt, we’ve cut defences to the bone – and now there is even speculation that the strength of the Royal Marines will be slashed from a strength of 7,000 to a mere 5,000.

Yet aid spending keeps growing inexorably, pegged at 0.7 per cent of the country’s output by a law introduced by the coalition government of David Cameron and Nick Clegg to make them feel good about themselves.

Piling on the absurdity, the latest massive increase – to £13.35billion – is due to a nonsensical change in the way we calculate Britain’s output. Ordered by the EU, the new formula insists prostitution and drug-dealing must be taken into account – trades not noted for their contributions to income tax.

Yet even before this change, aid ministers had more money than they knew how to spend, splashing out £1.34billion to private contractors, filling the pockets of Third World dictators and even doling out ATM cards to citizens of Third World countries in their desperation to meet the target.

The British are a law-abiding people. But if this kind of insanity persists, whereby the elderly of this country suffers while our taxes are squandered so indiscriminately abroad, many should begin to question why they pay those taxes in the first place.