THE WRONG PRIORITIES

THE DEPARTMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT  (DFID) is a rare beast in today’s economic climate; it is one of only two departments of state (the other being the NHS) whose budget has been ring-fenced. The DFID is responsible for allocating funds to the poorest of the world’s countries. It has a budget ranging between £7 and £9 billion pounds a year, depending upon what you read. Both China and India can be counted among those ‘poorer’ nations that receive British taxpayers money from this department

            The Commonwealth development Corporation (CDC) is, what should one call it, a department of state within a department of state? Whatever, it has access to £2.5 billion and is owned , quite naturally, by the tax payer. However it has become what it was never intended to become when it was set up by the post war Labour government to invest in private sector projects in the poorest countries of the world.

            Since 1995 the CDC has been ‘self-financing’, although it remains a department of a department of state. However no profits have ever been (through its self-financing) returned to the exchequer, but instead have been ‘reinvested’ in the CDC. In other words, this ‘aid’ has been used to make some kind of financial return, all of which is being used to make an ever greater profit for the CDC? If so, this is not what was intended at its inception, but has evolved since.

THE CDC is headed by chief executive, Richard Laing, who has pocketed salary and bonuses totalling  £970,000. Now he and his executives are in the headlines for their claims on expenses. The Daily Mail, under the Freedom of Information Act have discovered that Mr Laing claimed £7,414 in expenses last year, £1,557 of which was spent on London taxis. At the other end of the scale he billed taxpayers for a £3.29 for a note book as well as a £5 taxi tip. These latter two examples (as with the MP’s expenses sandals) say a lot more about the nature and character of the person than does the far larger claims on expenses. But Mr Laing was not the highest expenses claimant; for this dubious honour  goes to Mrs Jemmet-Page who claimed £9,572.

            Shonaid Jemmet-Page, another of the department’s executives claimed £336.54 for a taxi that took her from Brussels to Paris, while another executive, Anubha Shrivastava, claimed £530 for a nights stay at a hotel in Hong Kong, as well as a £661.48 for a two night stay at the five-star Portman Ritz Carlton in Shanghai.

            The one time chairman of the CDC, Sir Malcolm Williamson submitted a bill to the taxpayer for £701.44 for a dinner at L’Autre Pied in Paris.

            The CDC remains a state institution within the DFID whose budget enjoys the luxury being ring-fenced by the Coalition.

WHY SHOULD THE DFID BE exempted at the expense of more important departments of state from the necessary cuts to correct our deficit? This government is about to unleash, in historical terms, the most ruthless, but also the most important cuts to our public services. Yet we exempt oversees aid from the calculation; despite headlines that, if proved correct, will threaten our national defences.

            Today, for instance, the Ministry of Defence (MoD), according to press reports, are about to shave the numbers off our  armed forces even from those serving  in Afghanistan.

            Rumour also has it that the two new aircraft carriers (to be built at a cost of £5 billion) will either not be built at all, or just one will get the go ahead with aircraft loaned from the USA, used to crowd its decks.

            This coalition had better get its cost-cutting priorities right in accordance with the wishes of the British people. The oversees aid budget should never have been ring-fenced to the detriment of our armed services. For our armed services are this nation’s protection in any future conflict; a conflict that no politician today can ever foresee.

            Oversees development aid must take its place within the priorities of any developed nation under strict economical circumstances. In such times any nation looks rightly toward the interests of its own people. When economic recovery occurs, then oversees aid can continue.

            But we turn to our own politicians to look after the interests of the people who elected them. Their interests at the moment do not include the ring-fencing of oversees aid to the detriment of our national defence.

            If this Coalition government had ring-fenced defence instead of oversees aid, I would have supported it. But by ring-fencing oversees aid they have betrayed this country’s defences.

            This Coalition has no means of knowing what this country will have to defend itself against in the future; yet they are prepared to put oversees aid before this country’s defences. Such an act of irresponsibility will no doubt, as in the past, come back to haunt us, and, as always is the case, such perpetrators of such irresponsibility will be never face any kind of comeuppance.