Foreign aid petition: “Charity should begin at home”
On Saturday, The Daily Mail launched a petition targeting Britain’s foreign aid budget – in a time when our nation is struck by austerity, the government has committed to spending 0.7 percent (around £12 billion) on foreign aid, even enshrining this amount in law.
In less than 24 hours, more than 100,000 people had signed, indicating that they want parliament to discuss the issue. In response to this, I say good! Last year, Britain borrowed £70 billion, of which it transpired that £12 billion was given away in foreign aid.
In less than 24 hours, more than 100,000 people had signed
Charity should begin at home, and to see this money being handed away when it could be better spent on healthcare, education or law in this country is a slap in the face to our citizens. A fantastic example of this can be found in the Budget pledge to cut disability benefits this year – the whole fiasco could’ve been avoided if we could have apportioned just a tenth of that budget to where it would’ve been better spent.
Now, I hear you saying, surely foreign countries need money too? With the level of inequality out there, surely we have a responsibility to help? Perhaps, but if you look at what the money is actually being spent on, you’ll see that nothing of the sort is happening.
With the level of inequality out there, surely we have a responsibility to help?
Amongst other things, foreign aid funds a BBC Somali radio drama with tips on how to become an illegal immigrant in Europe, the sending music teachers around the world to teach songs like Scarborough Fair and setting up a football match between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Most shocking of all, though, a third of the £72 million a year Britain gives to Palestine goes straight to the ruling Palestinian Authority, who then pay aid money to convicted terrorists. One Hamas master bomber has been given more than £100,000 – by contrast, people in our country struggle to eat.
By contrast, people in our country struggle to eat
By setting the amount of aid given, it gives the Department for International Development a licence to spend cash, wasting it on unnecessary projects whether or not they will succeed or make any difference. This culture of waste is not acceptable when money is tighter than ever, and it is the job of the government to look after its own people first and foremost.
As such, it is completely unjustifiable that we continue to insist on throwing this money away. Aid money should not be funding the superfluous and the opulent, and this should be stopped. That so many people have signed this petition shows that this is an issue that matters to the public, and the government must take heed, rather than continuing with this stupid international posturing.
Comments (4)
Terrific writing on random topics. Im currently trying to
accomplish something such as what you have here except for on
a different topic totally. Many thanks for the motivation to
write better content.
Our own people must come first. We have given billions
over the last 20 years and nothing seems to change.
Please listen to us- we have suffering and hardship and
have not complained in the past but now is the time to
look after us. So much of our money is going into worthless
causes- we are being taken for a ride-
Please play fair with the uk taxpayer- after all- it is our money.
Hi Scott,
Thank you for reading my piece – I shall do my best to address some of the points you raise.
I don’t think foreign aid in itself is ‘superfluous and opulent’ – rather, that’s how I described some of the things it is spent on. I’ve listed some examples, but other things that came up in my research include money being sent to poor states which is then siphoned off into the building of palaces – I think my description is an entirely apt one in those kind of cases.
I dealt with foreign aid here because I was discussing the Daily Mail petition to discuss it, and I agree with you that other areas of spending need reviewing too. The culture of waste in the government is simply appalling. Nonetheless, I think this is a different case simply because the aid spending is a set amount enshrined in law – to my mind, it needs more scrutiny because it is not a spending dictated by need.
In your final paragraph, I agree with your conclusions – those are exactly the sorts of things foreign aid should be spent on. However, I fear you may have misunderstood my conclusion a touch. I don’t want to stop foreign aid completely – rather, I don’t think it should automatically be a set amount that then forces money to be spent on anything. I want to automatic commitment to spend 0.7% looked at, as I think that’s a poor way to do it and it encourages more waste.
I think it is astounding that the author of this piece describes foreign aid as “superfluous and opulent.” The author, who has clearly spent a lot of time Googling spending abroad, shows alarming ignorance of domestic spending habits, which should be increasingly obvious and upsetting given recent revelations concerning the Panama Papers and corporate tax breaks. Insisting that money should be spent scrupulously and conscientiously is not objectionable in and of itself, but it seems completely disingenuous to demand that this kind of spending practice happens only in sectors designated “foreign” and therefore in need of scrutiny.
I don’t dispute that foreign aid could be put to better uses, but those uses should include aid and relief to migrants in the Mediterranean and victims of war/injustice. To suggest that money saved from a fully abandoned foreign aid budget would benefit the NHS or disability benefits reveals a naïveté that belies a worldview characterised by semi-blindness and wilful disregard for the state of affairs in British policy.