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March 29th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda - Just 10 per cent of DfID budget goes to disaster zones
- Increased spending ‘risks reducing accountability’
- DfID slammed for failing to tackle corruption
By
Jason Groves
18:07 EST, 28 March 2012
|
18:07 EST, 28 March 2012
Under attack: David Cameron’s pledge to hike foreign aid has been opposed by a powerful committee of peers
David Cameron was last night urged to abandon his controversial foreign aid target as a major report warned that it will fuel corruption and waste.
A powerful committee of peers attacked the Prime Minister’s pledge to increase aid spending by 37 per cent to more than £12billion a year in order to meet an ‘arbitrary’ United Nations target.
Peers said they fully supported humanitarian aid for disaster zones. But they pointed out that it accounts for less than 10 per cent of the vast budget of the Department for International Development (DfID).
In a devastating verdict they warned that the rush to increase spending ‘risks reducing the quality, value for money and accountability’ of the aid programme.
The finding is a major embarrassment for Mr Cameron who is said, while in opposition, to have adopted the target of spending 0.7 per cent of Britain’s income on aid, partly to help ‘detoxify’ the Conservatives’ image as ‘the Nasty Party’.
The cross-party economic affairs committee said ministers seemed more interested in the amount of money they were spending on aid than the results they were achieving.
The committee’s chairman, former Tory Cabinet minister Lord MacGregor, said: ‘We were unanimous in our view that legislation for a 0.7 per cent target is inappropriate, and that the Government should reconsider.
‘We believe aid should be judged by the criteria of effectiveness and value for money, not by whether a specific arbitrary target is reached.’
The committee also called on ministers to ‘urgently prepare an early exit strategy’ from Britain’s £1.1billion aid programme for India.
Peers said sending hundreds of millions of pounds to a country that can afford its own space programme provided a ‘perverse incentive’ for the Indian government to shirk its own responsibility for tackling poverty in its vast population.
They also criticised DfID for failing to do enough to tackle corruption. Peers said they were ‘greatly concerned by the paltry and implausibly low levels of fraud identified by DfID’. They said they had heard ‘compelling evidence… that aid can frequently finance corruption’.
Labour peer Baroness Kingsmill said: ‘Almost every witness expressed concerns about corruption. We heard some pretty grim stories. DfID and the Secretary of State need to up their game.’
£1.1billion in aid… India’s maiden lunar mission Chandrayaan-1, or Moon Craft in ancient Sanskrit, takes off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in 2008
Mr Cameron has passionately defended the commitment to the target against angry critics – including many of his own MPs – who say the aid budget should not be spared the axe being taken to public services. He has said the Government will not ‘balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world’.
But Lord Tugendhat, a Tory member of the committee, said: ‘The debate about not balancing the books on the back of the poor sounds very good but that implies that we are maintaining the budget, not that we are aiming to increase it by 37 per cent.
‘It is very difficult, when you look at what’s happening to other programmes, to justify one programme being increased by 37 per cent.’
The Coalition has pledged to enshrine the aid target in law but legislation has been delayed because of fears of a public backlash.
The committee said International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell was unable to ‘put forward any case for legislation other than the Government’s political commitment to it’.
The study found the UK already spends a much higher proportion of its income – about 0.55 per cent – on aid than most other countries. The U.S. spends 0.2 per cent.
The scale of the opposition raises doubts about whether the legislation will get through the Lords.
Mr Mitchell last night hit back, saying that the aid programme was helping to get 11million children into school, vaccinate 55million children and prevent the deaths of 250,000 babies. ‘The Government makes no apologies for sticking to its commitments to the world’s poorest people,’ he said. ‘Going back on this promise would cost lives.’
Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who now runs his own charity tackling disease in the developing world, said: ‘Abandoning the 0.7 per cent target risks undermining the incredible progress that has been achieved over the last several years.
‘Well-targeted UK aid has helped save millions of lives by rolling back the malaria and HIV epidemics and bringing the world closer to eradicating polio once and for all.’
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I smell a rat. Is the drug operation in Afghan coming to an end soon ??? Are the handlers getting too hot to handle ?
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Bill Gates should mind his own damned business.
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This money is being syphoned off for our business men here…arms and overseas set up fees for British profit making CEO’s do they think we are completely brain dead. Its a con simple as.Where are the roads and homes or towns with running water … we have been paying taxpaid money for over 40 years so show us where this money has made a difference!! it hasnt because its a scam……
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No doubt some of this increase was for the plundering of Syria but now that China and Russia have put a hold on their plans the greedy UN cant justify asking for more.
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I don’t give money to charity because I know I’m being forced to give money to charity via my taxes. These days it’s so hard to save money – what with taxes, transport costs, paying off my mortgage, food…
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This country is dying on it’s feet and we are still giving overseas aid. In good times there is no problem and we would have a duty to share the wealth but those times are gone and charity begins at home!
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The U.K gives enough aid to those living there, you don’t have to send it abroad as well. Charity must start at home, many living in the U.K are struggling to cope, including thousands of pensioners!!!
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Like all privileged, spoilt brats, and the cabinet is full of them, Cameron just cannot break the habit of a lifetime, by which I mean, never having had to stand on his own two feet, he has spent his lifetime spending other people’s money, probably his father’s and families.
Now he is spending taxpayers money because he cannot resist playing the big shot before the world, by giving out the same old empire gifts, the arrogant fool. That money is needed here, not around the world to buy himself favours for the future, in true Blair Brown fashion.
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Camoron just wants to be a world statesman politician. he needs to do the job he is paid for by us tax payers, and that is to look after Britain FIRST!
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“Mr Mitchell last night hit back, saying that the aid programme was helping to get 11million children into school, vaccinate 55million children and prevent the deaths of 250,000 babies. ‘The Government makes no apologies for sticking to its commitments to the world’s poorest people,’ he said. ‘Going back on this promise would cost lives.” …….. This is not government’s job. This job belongs to charities and philanthropists. Those of us that wish to target aid at the world’s poor will and those that dont wont. The decision to give to charitable causes is a personal decision not a national governmental decision. As a country we should only give for natural disasters like hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes and the suchlike. It’s about time we did away with the department for international bribery as the number of contracts we have received because of it is at a pathetic level earning the country less overall than the aid paid out.
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