Here we go AGAIN! Now UK overseas aid is being wasted on paying for studies of jazz & long-dead Roman politicians

The chaos of British help to alleviate poverty abroad has been exposed afresh in a new report which calls on the government to stop spending out until it proves aid is not being wasted. Why, oh why, are we STILL in this situation?

Let’s face it. Times are tough, money is tight and things are going to get a lot worse. We’ve just witnessed a whopping 20 percent of GDP wiped off the UK economy and now we learn that one of the flagship beneficiaries of our international aid largesse has been told its funding tap will be turned off until it can show it has stopped wasting millions by funding rubbish like studies of jazz in the Western Cape.

The Newton Fund – the body doling out hundreds of millions in cash – has also funded a student in Rio to the tune of £98,000 to look at the work of Roman orator Cicero (106BC–43BC) and squandered more than £100,000 on a student fellowship that included a biography of the South African Boer leader Paul Kruger.

Both interesting chaps, but also long dead. In Cicero’s case it’s been more than two millennia since he suffered the indignity of having his head and hands cut off and put on public display in the Forum.

He may have proclaimed, “If you have a garden and a library you have everything you need,” but in retrospect he would probably have added a head and hands to that list.

The big question is not about Cicero however, it is about this flagrant waste of taxpayer money that has been earmarked for overseas aid and how, in the good Lord’s name, it is achieving what the Newton Fund declares is its prime aim, which is to develop “science and innovation partnerships that promote the economic development and welfare of collaborating countries.”

It is hardly surprising that a parliamentary international development select committee looking into the Newton Fund’s spending has just raised a red flag in its report out today and in which the chairman, MP Theo Clarke, demands that “before any more funding is potentially given to the Fund, value for money and governance concerns” must be dealt with.

After all, for the financial period from 2014-2021, the British taxpayer is handing the Fund £735 million to fight world poverty and it would be nice to have some guarantees about how that is being spent.

Yet according to the aid watchdog, the Independent Commision for Aid Impact  (ICAI), ending poverty is not that high on the Newton Fund to-do list. In fact, 90 percent of the money it is allocated never leaves Britain.

While this in itself is a scandal and needs to stop immediately, unfortunately it is simply typical of the entire shambles that is the UK’s international aid programme.

No one of any calibre ever wants to stick with this government portfolio for long. In the recent past both Rory Stewart and Priti Patel have held the top job, and you can only imagine the relief they felt when they moved on: both resigned. Stewart flounced out in protest at Boris Johnson becoming PM and Patel when she was found to have been meeting Israeli officials while apparently “on holiday.” Either could have hung on to the job if they had really wanted, but why would you? It’s a poisoned chalice.

On the one hand, you have the faction that wants to scrap British aid altogether, pull up the drawbridge and say a firm “No” to all handouts. On the other, you have the “Feed The World” brigade who believe the soft power returns of funding developing countries are what Britain is all about and cements the nation’s place as one of the good guys in global politics. Trying to reconcile both positions is futile.

So while indecision reigns, the status quo, which is a joke, remains in place and organisations like the Newton Fund take taxpayers’ money and spend it on whatever they like, free from any meaningful oversight.

The ICAI report last year into the fund was chock-full of red-light phrases: “blurred accountability,” “lack of transparency,” “weak coordination,” “poorly designed to deliver development goals.” Enough to make any auditor’s head explode.If that bad news was a first, at least the thinking would be that we had caught it in time before any more money was wasted. But it’s not.

The UK has plenty of form for poorly thought-out international aid, long before Stewart or Patel had been and gone.

Back when David Cameron led the country, the ICAI found Britain was guilty of lying about its claims to have ended poverty for tens of millions of people in developing countries after being somewhat loose about its definition about what “poor” actually meant.

Again, “lack of transparency and accountability” were raised, this time about the Department for International Development. Not what you want to see on the front page of a report into effective and economic spending of taxpayer money.

Now is as good a time as any to put a moratorium on all UK international aid. There will be huge support for putting the national interest first and counting the pennies in these ravaged economic times as we struggle to recover from the coronavirus pandemic.

We can sort the good from the bad, the no-ways from the maybes and the definitelys in the aftermath of both the pandemic and Brexit, which conveniently frees us from many EU-driven aid schemes.

The timing couldn’t be better. All we need is the will. Over to you, Boris.

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