The further calamity of UK Aid

 The last thing I expected  when I wrote the previous post condemning the cutting, indeed abandonment, of USAid by the amoral/immoral President Trump, was that i would have to follow it with a similar article on a similar decision by what I had supposed was a relatively moral and upright British Labour Government.

 A previous post, written five months ago . . .

 https://keynesianliberal.blogspot.com/2024/10/

. . .details the fifty year struggle for the British government to fulfil its promised, made by a Conservative government under Ted heath, to devote 1% of our relatively massive GDP to aid the development of the world's poorest countries.  The goal (now interpreted as 0.7% of GDP for official aid and the rest made up by private aid and charities) was not reached until 2013, again under a Conservative Government, with David Cameron as Prime Minister, probably on the insistence of the Liberal Democrats in the Coalition.

Mr Cameron's words are worth quoting again:

 "The UK will not balance its books on the backs of the poorest.”  (27^th may, 2011)  

And a year  later resolved:

 “The argument of the heart is even when things are difficult at home we should fulfil our moral obligations to the poorest of the world. There are still more than a billion people living on a dollar a day,”

 Sadly his successor, Boris Johnson, was not so high minded, and under him the aid was cut to 0.5%

The previous post referenced above, calls upon the Labour government to demonstrate its moral compass by restoring the 0.7% level. 

I find it incredible that the government has done the reverse, and cut the level further to 0.3%.  Since half of this is now used in the UK to house asylum seekers, the effective amount to aid overseas development is a mere 0.15%.

 And our national income is now about four times what it was when the promise of 0.7% was originally made.

Of course, there is a credible case for the UK and other European counties to increase our defence expenditure now that the US's military commitment has become less reliable.  And in the UK there are few if any, other areas of public expenditure that can be cut - indeed the reverse.

 So why not higher taxes?  

Even died-in-the-wool Tories can hardly object to paying a fair whack for our defence, And given that the government has a manifesto pledge not to further tax current economic activities (incomes, VAT and NICs) there are plenty of taxes (on  inheritance, capital gains, other forms of unearned income, pension contritions,  land, wealth. . .) available which the largely comfortably-off can well afford.

 Rather than ask the worlds poorest to foot the bill.

 Shame on you, Labour. 

Post Script, (added Friday 28th April.)  Three cheers for Anneliese Dodds, whose resignation as Aid Minister was announced today.  At least there's one Labour minister with backbone.  Now it's up[to the back-benchers.

The real calamity of axing USAid

 

 

If their staff have correctly reported him Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy seems more concerned by the likely shift of soft power to China caused by President Trump’s dramatic closure of the US Overseas Aid Programme (USAid) than  the immediate practical consequences on the individuals who are to lose aid supplies and services.

It wold be nice to think that your government’s first thought went to 10 000 or so individuals who still die every day of hunger, the 1 000 daily toll of children under five who die of malaria and the 900 plus who die each day of diarrhoea.  Why are our government and their spokespersons so “tin eared?” 

Even if their support for the world’s poor is  primarily motivated by power politics (and I know from second hand reports that  that isn’t true of most of the officials who administer (or administered)  Britain’s aid programmes, the politicians at the top could at least pretend.

Mr Lammy goes on to pint out the when Britain’s own  Department for International development (DfID) was merged with the Foreign Office by Boris Johnson’s government in 2020 Britain’s “soft power”  received a serious blow, which was even further depleted by the reduction of funding from 0.7% of our GDP to 0.5%.  See previous posthttps://keynesianliberal.blogspot.com/2024/09/oda-test-of-labours-moral-compass.html

 What he does not say is that, so far, the new Labour government was shown no sign of resorting  DfID/s independence, or the level of aid to 0.7%.  (In fact it had risen to a little above 0.5% and they’ve knocked it back - See previous post:

 Frankly, I’m pretty sure that the overwhelming majority of Liberal Democrat and Green voters expected better of Labour, and so do a lot of Labour party members and voters too.  Yes, there have been some glimmers of hope (raising the minimum wage, better working conditions) but on the whole so far it’s been pale imitation Tories.

In a Guardian  article on 7^th February former Labour prime minister Gordon Brown shows a surer touch.  He list the programmes on which USAid had been working and which are now axed:

            Landmine-clearing work in Asia

            Drug deliveries to fight mpox,  and Ebola

            Cervical cancer screening

            Treating malaria, tuberculosis and polio

   Assisting maternal and child health

And, of course , many general  programmes in health and education.

Happily, one programme, to try to prevent 136 000 babies from acquiring HIV has been allowed to continue.

The above gives a picture of the human impact of  President Trump’s tantrum.   

A re-creation of and independent DfID and a meeting 0.7% of GDP target, for  which  a Conservative government  subscribed way back in 1970, would be a response more fitting our best values.  If our soft power also improved, that would be a welcome bonus.