LIAM FOX HAS found yet another of his correspondence to the PM leaked To the press. This time the Defence Secretary has questioned the target of 0.7% of GDP to be given in Oversees Aid by 2013. In particular he is against such a target being enshrined in law, as the Coalition intends it to be. This he suggests, carries the risk of legal challenges from those countries we support in the aid budget; he writes, ‘Creating a statutory requirement to spend 0.7 per cent ODA (overseas development aid) carries more risk in terms of potential future legal challenges than, as we have had for the covenant, putting into statute recognition of the target and a commitment to an annual report against it.’
If the Coalition sticks to its target of 0.7% of GDP, the tax payer will be paying £4 billion more a year in foreign aid by the time of the next election, as payments grow from £7.5 billion to £11.4 billion per year. This will represent a 34% increase at a time when other ministries (including Dr Foxes own) are having to make cuts of 20% to their budgets.[1]
David Cameron promised to stick with the previous governments target of 0.7% by 2013 in his election manifesto last year - and Harriet Harman has just appeared on our screens to demand that the prime minister keeps to his promise.
The promise was made as a gesture toward renovating his party’s image with the public; in the same way that Blair succeeded in doing in 1997.
Cameron needed to transform the Conservative party from being the ‘nasty party’ of the Thatcherite era, into a more huggable, compassionate, and generally Teletubby kind of outfit. This he began doing by changing the party’s mast head from the brutalist flaming torch into the very bucolic image of a tree in full leaf. This, he hoped, would have its appeal to the young and environmentally conscious, as well as the traditional rural Tory who would have preferred the likes of Mr Fox to lead the party.
But despite such transformations in image and policy, Cameron failed to win the election outright and had to share power with the real cuddly toys.
WHY HE OR HIS advisors felt they had to stick with the previous governments ambition for the overseas aid budget is beyond comprehension, unless Cameron really did believe in such a target. If so, then he is no Tory. For a true Tory would have scrapped such a target and demanded cuts on top of it. A true Tory would have done so because as a Conservative he would put his nation’s interests before all other international concerns in order to rehabilitate a broken economy.
The true Tory would have prioritised Mr Fox’s department over an oversees aid budget for instance. For when the country has to form an economic laager in difficult times and there is a choice to be made between services; those services that have nothing to do with the defence, policing, health and education of the country should be savaged before a start is made on domestic departments.
If there is to be ring fences constructed, then such protection should be given to familial expenditure rather than to other countries such as India, Pakistan, and China.
The people (and here I mean those living outside of the AV yes zones) would have supported Cameron; perhaps to the point of gaining a workable majority.
IF DR FOX had made it clear that he was opposed to ring-fencing the aid budget, then he would have behaved as a Tory. But as he says in his correspondence, he is not averse to the 0.7% target, only to it being a statuary requirement. He is said to have harvested a lot of support from his party’s backbenchers for the contents of his letter. However, the fact of its leaking seems more significant than its contents.
I was led to believe that the Secretary for State had challenged the aid budget’s ring fencing and supported its pruning like every other department. But no, Dr Fox, it appears, is just manoeuvring for position within what was once qualified to be called the Conservative Party.
The overseas aid budget has, by its very title, conjured up images of the dispossessed throughout the third world being helped; and this is what the British public have believed to be the case.
Well it is the case that whenever a natural or human made disaster occurs, then this country is duty bound to help relieve the situation. But it does not require a new government department in order to do so.
If, however, I am wrong, and it does indeed demand such a body to regulate distribution; it still does not deserve being made untouchable in such troubling times for the British people by this Coalition government, via the ring-fencing of the department.
As Dr Fox knows; on top of the already announced defence cutbacks such as depriving the nation of its aircraft carrier capability as well as its air potential, we now know that Cameron is demanding even further cutbacks to this country’s defence budget. If those Conservative backbenchers are serious about their support for the Defence Secretary, then they must persuade Dr Fox to go the last mile and oppose directly what this Coalition is demanding of his department. Only in this way will their support of Dr Fox be justified.
IF DR FOX IS SERIOUS in his intention, then he must come out against any such ring-fencing of expenditure for a department that does not serve the needs of the British people. In hard times, as we are being told we live in, then hard decisions have to be made and the interests of the British people must be given priority.
If the 0.7% increase was abandoned, then £4 billion each year would come to the exchequer and perhaps save both the air craft carriers on order - as well as manning their flight decks with British aircraft. At the moment, while both vessels are under construction, only one will enter service with the Royal Navy, and even then the flight decks will be parked-up with French aircraft.
If ever there was a time when a Secretary of State should stand up for his or her department, then such a moment has arrived for Dr Fox.
Does it not seem at all incongruous to the present occupant of the Ministry of Defence that his party leader and prime minister of his country, that the overseas aid budget should be put before the defence of the country he is supposed to lead? Does not Dr Fox, as a Conservative, realise the absurdity of such a state of affairs?
If the good doctor is serious about protecting his department’s finances, then he should take measures to justify the confidence his backbenchers have shown in him since his latest loss of correspondence to the media.
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