In this column on 9th May ( 200,000…and counting ) I observed that migrants who arrive unlawfully in UK and claim asylum are accommodated at the expense of our overseas development budget, consuming very substantial funds which would otherwise be deployed helping many thousands more people in desperate need elsewhere.
As a former minister who once had responsibility for that budget, I can vouch for the fact that the money goes very much further in the regions from which the migrants are coming. Resettlement in the UK is the least cost-effective way of deploying our resources when it comes to helping large numbers of people in greatest need.
In 1970 a UN agreement was reached for wealthy countries to commit to spending 0.7% of their national income on foreign aid to the world’s poorest countries.
The UK was the first, and only G7 nation to deliver that commitment, but it took us until 2013 to do so. The cost that year was some £14 Billion.
Such a large sum, spent abroad, was always bound to be controversial when there were constraints on government spending priorities at home.
In 2021 the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, reduced the amount to 0.5% of national income, and last year the Labour Government announced plans to cut it to 0.3% with the intention that savings of £6 billion would be transferred to expenditure on Defence.
Now, however, ex-defence chiefs have co-signed a letter to the Prime Minister warning that a choice should not be made between Defence and Foreign aid, and that such a policy is a false economy. The signatories are led by Field Marshal Lord Richards, a former Chief of the Defence Staff.
I first came across the Field Marshal in 2023 when he was a general, and I a mere major. He commissioned me to give a lecture to the Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Michael Jackson’s, Army Board, in which I was to draw lessons from my deployment in Iraq. He told me that what I said would be a matter entirely for me, but that it would be helpful if….I took the hint!
The current letter is more than a hint. On the contrary, it states explicitly that “well-targeted international aid prevents extremism and displacement that military force subsequently has to confront, and at much greater cost.”
I would go further. I believe that our International aid budget at 0.7% made us the World’s second largest donor, giving us a soft power and influence well beyond the fact that we have the World’s fourth largest Defence budget.
I accept that much of our aid effort was not as well targeted as it could have been. My prejudice was that, aside from the importance of exceptional disaster emergency relief, our main effort should have always focussed on economic development, with the objective of opening up markets and creating jobs. I believed that political stability, healthcare, and education would all follow on naturally as consequence of the greater prosperity generated by our investment. And that success would leverage-in much greater private sector investment.
Furthermore, that our investment would generate a return, so overcoming the public prejudice that our money was wasted and would be better spent at home.
If we do not invest in creating livelihoods in poor and conflicted parts of the world, we know where the waves of migration created by the lack of jobs and stability will be heading.
If all the rich countries had honoured their commitment to 0.7 % back in the 1970, and stuck with it. We might be facing a very different and more stable world now.
Cutting aid is definitely a false economy!