Boris wants UK Aid fully aligned with British foreign policy
Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, is planning the most radical overhaul of UK overseas aid (UK Aid for short) for more than a generation, and in a manner that is in keeping with his hard right Tory administration’s ethos.
The story was first reported by the Times’ defence correspondent, Lucy Fisher, who tweeted that the budget of the Department for International Development (DFID – the agency that controls UK Aid) is set to become even more focused on satisfying UK foreign policy goals.
EXCL: Boris Johnson set to rewrite international aid rules.
— Lucy Fisher (@LOS_Fisher) January 25, 2020
DfID budget to be used to boost foreign policy goals & 'Global Britain' vision.
Ministers want it to fund initiatives like clean energy research that benefit UK as well as developing nationshttps://t.co/U63UCLEhIv
According to emerging reports, the Overseas Development Assistance budget (ODA - effectively the controlling account for UK aid) is going to be more oriented on projects that simultaneously satisfy UK interests as well as the receiving country.
The ODA budget is currently ring-fenced at 0.7 percent of gross national income, which many Tories believe is too high.
Johnson’s proposals are in part designed to placate Tory hardliners (who want a reduction of ODA to practically zero), by lifting the mask on UK Aid and revealing it for what it really is: financial bribes to promote British interests around the world.
At any rate, the notion that UK Aid reduces poverty in developing countries has been consistently debunked in countless credible reports. Most recently the Guardian reported on February 04, 2019 that “too much” of UK Aid fails the test of poverty reduction in the world’s poorest countries.
More broadly, critics have long suspected that UK Aid is exploited by British intelligence services – notably MI6 – as a cover to either support covert operations or to buy influence in sensitive or hard-to-reach areas of the globe.
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