I’ve been a little alarmed of late by attacks on Britain’s spending on foreign aid. Aid is good. Opposition to it is merely self-interested.
Admission
I must confess, I very rarely listen to or watch the news now, so I rarely know much of what is going on, but I have noticed a steady stream of abuse in sections of the mainstream media recently about our government’s spending on foreign aid. I find this slightly alarming. Foreign aid is not a bad thing. It is a worthy, even noble cause. Opposition to foreign aid is, to my mind, short-sighted, self-interested and a shirking of our moral responsibility to others.
Resolution
Back in 1970, the United Nations passed the following resolution:
“In recognition of the special importance of the role that can be fulfilled only by official development assistance, a major part of financial resource transfers to the developing countries should be provided in the form of official development assistance. Each economically advanced country will progressively increase its official development assistance to the developing countries and will exert its best efforts to reach a minimum net amount of 0.7 percent of its gross national product at market prices by the middle of the decade.”
Yes, that’s right, more than forty years ago, rich countries committed to spend at least 0.7% of GNP on foreign aid. As of 2009, only five countries actually meet the target: Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark and Luxembourg. Thirty-five years after the target was meant to be reached, still less than half a dozen countries in the world meet the target. For reference, the UK gives about 0.5% of GNP in aid, the USA gives about 0.25%.
I am not here to debate the merits of the 0.7% figure, but since this is the agreed target, this is what I am assuming countries are working towards. I want to deal specifically with the principle of foreign aid and our moral obligation to donate aid to other countries. I believe foreign aid is a worthwhile spending priority, even in times of financial hardship, and as a country we should take pride in aiming to meet our international commitments with respect to aid. I do not propose we seek to extend them, just that we meet our existing targets.
Scepticism
We in the UK have a tendency—despite our internationalist past—to be rather insular and isolationist. We view the EU with suspicion. We viewed the Euro with scepticism. When it comes to military action abroad, public enthusiasm for action is far less enthusiastic than that our our government – and now, it would seem, it is the same with aid.
We see the money that is poured into the EU and we see so much of it go to waste. Perhaps we think the same goes for foreign aid. Perhaps we think that our money will be thrown away. Do we think it will fall into the hands of corrupt, tinpot tyrants? Or perhaps, I wonder, do we think that the money we spend on foreign aid will make no difference, or that governments should spend the money themselves? All those views, to my mind, are misguided and simplistic.
Populism
It is easy to make a good headline out of foreign aid at the moment. Spending is being cut. Wages aren’t rising. People are feeling the squeeze. We don’t want to spend more than we have to. But still, it hurts to see headlines like “foreign aid out of control”, “outrage as MPs back foreign aid” and the most callous, “why do we give all this foreign aid?” Presumably, we should be spending all this money on the National Health Service instead.
Well, let’s take a reality check for a minute. In the last financial year, the health spending in the United Kingdom was about £40 billion. In comparison, we spent about £8 billion on foreign aid last year. Maybe proportionally, the figure for foreign aid seems high to you, but those are the figures. It is not as though there is no money going in to the NHS, and spending on the NHS is, in real terms, higher than it has ever been.
But do not let me be distracted from my point, that foreign aid is a worthwhile investment. We are very lucky to have a universal health service in the UK. For all we complain about it, we are guaranteed the treatment we need, free at the point of need. We don’t have to worry about whether we can afford treatment. We don’t have to worry about whether our hospitals are well-equipped, or whether the doctors are well-trained. Most treatment is prompt, and we even have the legal right to treatment within a certain time frame. We are not hard done by.
Contrasts this with countries around the world, trapped in poverty, destroyed by war, ravaged by disease. In this country, people skip meals to stay thin. In parts of Africa, a meal would be like heaven. Many people have never seen meals. Malaria kills. HIV spreads, still. Polio paralyses. Famine and drought leave people with nothing, left to scavenge for anything they can. They ask not for extravagant benefits. They don’t ask for council houses, passports, for everything to be handed to them on a plate; no, they ask simply for help.
For many in the world, foreign aid is not just about quality of life. It’s about life and death. In Britain, it is easy for us to forget that. There is, of course, a case for philanthropy, but this does not encroach upon the obligation for our government to act.
“Everything from policing to libraries is now being hit yet the overseas aid budget remains sacrosanct.”
Daily Express
On the face of it, such a claim may look justified, but our policing and library budgets, important though they are, do not have the same impact on people’s lives that foreign aid does. But this next quote really takes the biscuit:
“A report showed the UK gives a bigger share of national wealth to the Third World than any other country.
And David Cameron defied public anger this week by pledging an extra £814million for vaccinating the world’s poorest children.”
Daily Express
Where do you start? So the UK gives a larger percentage of national wealth to the Third World than any other country? That’s not a bad thing when it’s going on saving people’s lives – and, just to put the record straight, it’s actually Norway who give the most money to the Third World as a percentage of GNP, something their government takes very seriously. But “Cameron defied public anger” by pledging money to vaccinate otherwise helpless children so they no longer have to worry about being paralysed by diseases like polio?
Like all things, it’s very easy for us to sit, twiddle our thumbs and do nothing. Polio was wiped out in this country decades ago. The reality is, without programmes led by countries and voluntary agencies in the West—and yes, funded by us too—such progress in the Third World is but a distant dream.
But by all means, feel free to claim that aid is a waste of time and achieves nothing. After all, withdrawing aid from others probably has no effect on your life. It’s easy to claim the answer is to do nothing when all that’s at stake for you is your own self-interest.
So, like I said, it’s not about spending more than we’ve agreed on aid that’s the issue here, it’s that we’ve previously recognised the need for aid and our moral responsibility, and it’s about time we met it.