WHAT IS SACROSANCT ABOUT OVERSEES AID?

Many unpopular decisions will have to be taken by this duel government of ours in the fight to reduce our nation's economic deficit.

We are in great difficulties and need to show the financial markets that we are willing to go the distance in doing what is required to stabilize our economy by a program of debt reduction; and most public departments have been told to garner a 25 per cent reduction from their expenditure. But one department in particular has escaped the Axe.

The Oversees Development Budget now stands at £9 billion a year and has been ring-fenced while our Defense Budget has to go through yet another review that will ultimately result in further cuts to our armed forces.

If this country needs to make reductions in public expenditure, then first of all external expenditure must take the brunt until our economy recovers, at which time we can resume our tax-payers largess. This is why this government's decision to ring-fence our overseas aid budget is so wrong.

As a nation we must look after our own first and foremost in times of difficulty, where our own elderly, poor and disabled, will have to face various cuts and freezes; and where our armed forces will face yet another revenue driven defence revue.

It now seems to many people that the oversees aid budget has been given priority over the defence of the realm. The ring-fencing off any particular government department's finances should never have been contemplated in the first place, and I cannot understand why this duel-government never refused to stand by the previous government's decision.

As this deficit reduction program begins to hurt the many it has been found necessary to hurt, then they will cast a more critical eye over the ring-fencing of oversees aid; and as a consequence they will resent its very presence on the menu of public expenditure.

The politicians should have told the people that nothing should be considered inviolate when it came to saving our economy. By ring fencing oversees aid, the people could be forgiven for wondering where our duel-government's priorities lay; and when they find out that some of the 'tiger economies' in the Far East are in receipt of tax payer's money as part of the aid budget, will not their simmering resentment turn to outright anger?