I, like many others in the UK, was completely shocked by the reports in national newspapers this week regarding the woeful misuse of Britain’s foreign aid.
The UK spends roughly £1 billion per month in foreign aid and of those countries we send money to, we have the President of Uganda blowing £30 million on his private jet, Nigeria has its own space agency and the President of Gabon buying a Paris mansion for £85 million!
Meanwhile, here at home, front line services are cut, the bedroom tax has been introduced, police numbers on the streets are reduced, Crawley Hospital has no A&E service and there is a postcode lottery for cancer drugs. David Cameron should be ashamed for protecting the foreign aid budget when our own problems at home are predicted to result in our nation borrowing £212 billion more than planned by 2015.
Any Crawley resident who has faced a pay cut, a government cut or a reduction in service should look at the soaring, ring-fenced foreign aid budget in disgust.
When times are good and our own problems have been addressed, only then should we send money abroad.
And when that day comes, it should not be billions of pounds; it should be carefully placed funds with well implemented reforms to ensure the money gets through to those that it is intended for and not their dictators to be squandered on luxury items. UKIP would slash the foreign aid budget before a single cut is made to services used by the British people.
The Prime Minister once said that he makes no apologies for giving African children polio vaccines.
While I agree that countries which can afford to aid the international community should do so, it can not be at the expense of the health and livelihood of its own citizens, especially when much of that money is not even getting where it is most needed.
Until it is reformed, Britain’s foreign aid will continue to be money wasted.
Ironic, considering it’s happening under the watch of so-called “conservatives.”