George Osborne wants to make sure that the UK’s aid budget is spent in Britain’s national interest. Good plan or bad? The British aid programme is in an provocative place right now. Chancellor George Osborne is overseeing a tense spending review in which aid is protected,thanks to the government’s commitment to spending 0.7% of national income on aid, but most other departmental budgets are being slashed. On the Andrew Marr TV expose final month, or Osborne said: “The question is not just how does our aid budget help the rest of the world,but how does it help Britain’s national interest?” And development secretary Justine Greening echoed that sentiment in her speech to this week’s Conservative party conference.
It’s tough to know what to read into this. It may just be a storm in a teacup, but everyone is on tenterhooks because money is so tight in Whitehall, and prompting fears that talk of national interest could be the start of a slippery slope that ends with raids on the UK aid budget. Those fears were heightened when David Cameron,visiting Jamaica on his way back from the sustainable development goals summit in current York, announced £25m in aid to build a prison in Jamaica so that foreign criminals in the UK can be sent domestic to serve sentences in the Caribbean. Officials told reporters the deal could save UK taxpayers £10m a year.
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Source: theguardian.com