Overseas Aid

Mushroom has often questioned the wisdom of distributing, by law, 0.7% of GDP in overseas aid.  For an internationally indebted country like ours, automatically handing over huge chunks of cash to overseas good causes before properly addressing domestic priorities, for example defence, seems silly.  It is the sort of morally superior gesture which goes down well in Islington but, I suspect, cuts little ice in South Shields, Scunthorpe or Sunderland.  Indeed, the shadowy Dominic Cummings appears to have his eye on the Department for International Development, examining how that departments £13.4 billion annual budget might be better spent in furthering British foreign policy objectives.  When, as a country, we are dependent upon the goodwill of international financiers  to lend us the money to underpin our increasingly unrealistic domestic policies, it makes sense to examine how we can get more bang for a buck out of foreign aid.  One suggestion is to subordinate gift aid to foreign policy by rolling up DfID into the FCO.  Predictably, such radical thought has enraged “officials.”  Apparently, they argue, that (surprise) the foreign office are very good a diplomacy but they don’t have the “skill sets” to doll out vast quantities of public moolah.  It makes one wonder just what the job description of a DfID official looks like and to whom they are accountable?