Soft power has had its day; it’s time to slash overseas aid!

 

Some of this paper’s regular letter writers won’t like this. But it has to be said. 

It’s time that this country reduced its overseas aid budget to zero – or almost zero. 

Why? 

Well, for lots of reasons: it doesn’t work, it doesn’t reach the right people and it takes away from those who need help here in the UK. 

In 2020, the United Kingdom spent nearly £15bn on overseas aid. This equated to 0.7% of our GDP and was in accordance with previous commitments made to the United Nations. 

Interestingly, it also equates almost exactly to the sum of money that Rishi Sunak aims to raise from his ‘levy’ on the energy companies to help offset some of the additional energy costs faced by households (excluding businesses). 

Think how much more impactful and sustainable such an intervention might have bene had we had another £15bn to spend on, say, home insulation for all here in the UK? 

This hefty sum is one which this Government has rightly reduced to 0.5% until at least 2024 in order to buffer our own shattered domestic finances. 

But why does this country commit so much money, far in excess as a percentage to that offered by our main European trading competitors, France and Germany?  

It would appear that there are two principal excuses … sorry, I mean reasons. 

Firstly, there’s clearly an element of post-colonial guilt being worked through here: a sort of institutionalised Whitehall wokeness that seeks to achieve forgiveness for alleged crimes committed hundreds of years ago.  

Of course, we could say ‘sorry’ far more effectively and without the attendant levels of bureaucracy if we had in the past not been shackled to the European Union whose very protectionist policies stifled the flow of trade with much of Africa, south America and Asia. 

To its credit, the Government has sought to shift the dial away from aid to trade – although it is still too soon to see if this more mutualised approach is bearing fruit.  

Early last year, it published a vision document called  “Global Britain in a Competitive Age” which provided, for the first time, an integrated approach to the issues of foreign policy, trade policy, security and defence.  

Boris Johnson is not Lord Palmerston, the great nineteenth century prime minister who only intervened abroad as a last resort to protect free trade between Britain and its partners. Yet his administration is beginning to develop the most coherent approach to combining the economic interests of the country with its foreign affairs focus for a very long time. 

In many respects this policy tilt reflects proposals put forward by the Henry Jackson Society which identified three key campaigns for global Britain: free trade, freedom from oppression, and freedom of thought. They argue that these ‘three freedoms’ should comprise the cornerstone of a ’national global strategy‘ to guide the UK’s values and overseas interests with more spending to be channelled through the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence.  

But, the Government’s critics argue, what does that mean for the use of the aid budget to project our ‘soft power’ by which they mean the warm fuzziness and goodwill attached to us dolloping out British citizens’ money on projects overseas. 

Recent experience suggests it’s a waste of money – and nowhere near as effective as diverting some funding to improved military capacity.  

The UK donates about £3bn in annual aid to Africa. How’s that soft power’s return on investment going? A significant 17 out of the 35 countries that abstained on the UN resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were African.  

Efforts to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council were backed by only 11 African countries out of 54. Perhaps, their trading relationship with Putin’s regime was more influential than our and other western countries aid efforts combined? 

Aid is also open to massive inefficiencies (why do we give China £71m a year, for example) and corruption.  

A 2021 World Bank report (Elite Capture of Foreign Aid) suggested that as much one sixth of foreign aid is captured by elites in recipient countries, either diverted into tax havens or through private wealth managers. 

Degan Ali, director of the aid NGO Adeso, believes that “foreign aid ….. perpetuates patterns of inequality and poverty.” 

Instead of aid, we must redouble our efforts on removing the barriers developing countries face to economic development. As one Gilbert Greenall explained in a Spectator article: “Global trade, not development aid, has pulled one million people out of extreme poverty over the past 20 years.” 

We should also adapt a more vigilant approach to countering the protectionist geopolitical intentions behind China’s Belt & Road initiative and its increasingly aggressive stance against Taiwan.

Just because you want to spend more, doesn’t mean that you care more. Aside from direct humanitarian support at times of crises, the UK would be doing the world a favour by slashing its aid budget to near-zero. 

 

First published www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk on Thursday, June 9, 2022