Colin D Gordon

American author James Pickering once declared that he would  “rather help someone who didn’t need it than not help someone who did need it”. This somewhat relaxed, altruistic philosophy doesn’t quite coincide with the views of Britain’s Coalition Government, who appear convinced that the country’s social security system is being abused by many thousands of people pretending to be unfit for work and thus obtaining payments to which they are not entitled. This year, total state welfare expenditure will amount to £147,77 billion – an increase of 7% on 2009. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Liberal Democrat Danny Alexander, have made it clear that they intend to introduce rigorous checks on the “cheats” and so reduce the costs of benefits for incapacity (£6.7 billion pa), disability ( £18.98 billion pa), income support (£8.34 billion pa) and housing (£19.98 billion pa). These measures formed just part of the wide range of cuts (including on Defence, Local Government, Culture & Sport, Transport and Health) that featured in the Government’s “Spending Review” presented to Parliament on October 20^th. This signalled the moment when, according to BBC Business reporter Edwin Lane, the UK’s “age of austerity” began in earnest. As he points out, this is happening due to the poor condition of the public finances: “In the 2009-10, the budget deficit hit a record £155 billion, meaning the Government spent significantly more than it obtained from taxes”. Therefore, they had to borrow money to fill the gap, adding to the nation’s debts, which are expected to reach £900 billion (70% of GDP : Gross Domestic Product) in the next few years. To eradicate the earnings / outgoings disparity, they need to raise at least £86 billion – 77% of which will come from spending reductions and 23% from tax increases.

Exactly where, however, does all this leave Britain’s aid contributions to ‘Third World’ countries? The latest statistics released by the Department for International Development (DFID) confirm that the UK’s GPEX (Gross Public Expenditure On Development) was £7,767 million in 2009/10 , £583 million (8%) more than in the previous twelve months. The report also indicates that “India continued to receive by far the greatest amount of DFID bilateral assistance to an individual country with Ethiopia in second place and Afghanistan third”. Multilateral Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) amounting to £2,277 million was also channelled through organisations such as the European Commission, World Bank and the United Nations. Aid to Sub-Sahara Africa rose by 5% to £1,539 million and remained almost the same as before for Asia (£1,089 million). As regards Latin America, Britain has (in the opinion of the ‘Red Pepper’ website) been “toeing the Washington line” ever since Tony Blair “drastically cut back” aid to the area in order to “bankroll his participation in the invasion of Iraq”. The DFID closed its offices in Peru and Honduras, keeping premises open only in Nicaragua, Bolivia and (“mainly for trade purposes”) Brazil. It considers (says Red Pepper) Latin American nations to be  ‘Middle Income Countries’ (MDC’s) capable of trading their way to prosperity and thus ineligible for programmes for the relief of extreme poverty – which takes “insufficient account of the extreme inequalities” within the region . In the period 2008/9, DFID bilateral aid to Brazil was £860.000, Colombia £219,000, Peru £492,000, Bolivia £1283,000, Mexico 80,000, Honduras £824.000, Nicaragua £3,854,000 and (so it would seem from the official charts) nothing at all to Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Cuba or Venezuela.

At the United Nations summit on the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) in September, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg confirmed that UK aid spending to poorer countries would increase to 0.7% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) from 2013. He urged other wealthy nations to show the same level of commitment. This coincided with a statement to Parliament by Prime Minister David Cameron that Britain would not be cutting its international aid budget and so could “hold its head up high”. The same phrase was used by George Osborne on October 20^th when he announced that international development funding would increase by 37% even though the amounts allocated to most other departments (for example, Defence: minus 7.5%) would be substantially reduced. This policy has infuriated much of the UK’s right-wing media.  “Daily Mail” columnist Stephen Glover declared that “If the PM thinks foreign aid is more important than Britain’s defences, he should hang his head in shame”, adding that (in his view)  “giving aid to the poor and needy in the Third World is a ‘fashionable cause’, that much of it is ineffectual or siphoned off by corrupt rulers”. His newspaper evidently approves of the decision to stop aid to Russia (£190,000 in 2008/9) and China (£40 million from Britain last year) – but not of the continuing donations to India (more than £295 million in 2009), which has “the fourth largest economy in the world”. They quoted the opinion of Conservative MP Philip Davies that “ If there isn’t enough money for domestic priorities, then there isn’t enough to spend abroad”.

The “Daily Express” headline on October 21^st was even blunter: “If Britain is so broke, the foreign aid bill must be cut too”. The prevailing attitude of the British public is slightly more contradictory. An Institute of Development Studies (IDS) survey published in September indicated that 62% of those questioned think that “it is our obligation as human beings to help the world’s poor” – but simultaneously that 64% consider poverty at home (also, by implication, the country’s own transport, education, health and welfare sectors)  should be given precedence and 52% believe that most UK aid to developing countries is wasted. By contrast, there is some scepticism among left-wing commentators as to whether the projected increase in overseas aid from £7 billion to £11.5 billion will really be implemented. The “Guardian” is concerned that reducing DFID administration costs by 50% (from £72 million to £34 million) will simply result in more aid money being handed over to international institutions such as the World Bank, that the British taxpayer will end up paying for these organisations’ much higher staff salaries and thus there will be less cash to spend where it is really needed. The Coalition Government provoked controversy in the summer by specifying that overseas aid must make the “maximum possible contribution” to British national security. The ‘Guardian’ fears that this will mean “the increasing militarisation of development assistance”, with more being poured into Afghanistan and less going to “peaceful but equally impoverished African nations”. For the moment, however, the main criticism of the cuts has been that “The Axe falls on the poor” and that neither the bankers nor the rest of the UK’s rich hierarchy will suffer or “share the pain” about to be inflicted on the majority of the country’s population.      

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