0.7% (foreign aid)
Alan Cresswell
Admin
in Purgatory
So, the UN in the 1970s suggested that wealthy countries commit to spend 0.7% of their income on development aid to support the poorer nations. The UK is currently one of the few countries which achieves that, and has it enshrined in law. Something for which we can all be proud of. It's a mere £15-20b per year, but every little helps as they say.
Now the UK government is proposing to cut the aid budget, and failing to meet the legal requirement to spend at least 0.7% of income on foreign aid (deliberately aiming to break the law, seemingly a common characteristic of this government). They've already cut almost £3b from the budget to avoid spending more than that as incomes have fallen this year, money that many development projects would rely on and if they need to make cuts in provision it's possible that that will be the end of some projects with a far larger bill in the future to reinstate an alternative - aid workers aren't going to keep going without financial support, they'll go and find something else to do which allows them to pay their own bills, and when (if) projects restart there'll need to be a process of regaining the knowledge and experience lost.
Added to which, the government has previously announced plans to merge departments so that the "aid budget" is moved from being spent to help poorer nations into encouraging poor nations to buy British goods and services.
So, questions for discussion:
1. Should the 0.7% be treated as a "target", or should that be exceeded? Is it right to cut committed spending just because income is less than anticipated? For the record - I think it's wrong to commit to spend a certain amount and then change that later just because that would exceed a 0.7% threshold. The government should maintain spending, not cut £3b at this point just because it can do so within the law.
2. Should the government be allowed to break the law by cutting aid further, below the 0.7% threshold? Or, if they set a budget for next year at the anticipated 0.7% of income and income grows more than expected, should the government then spend more on aid? For the record - the law should not be broken, and if the recovery is faster than expected then aid spending should increase to reflect that.
3. Should the aid budget even be part of the equation in balancing the books? Yes, we know that this year the UK government has spent (or will do so) something like £200b extra on various aspects of the pandemic - purchasing equipment, PPE, vaccines etc; funding furlough and other support packages. And, there'll be a contraction of the economy hitting tax incomes as well. But, when a lot of that money has been squandered and used as hand-outs to pals of the government should the poor (at home as well as overseas) suffer for corruption and incompetence in our government? But, remember, the total aid budget is almost the same amount as was given to Serco to not run a track and trace programme. Also, remember that there's an additional lost £200b over the last few years to fund Brexit, with more costs and lost government income to come after the end of the year. When faced with a shortfall of £400b+ from both coronavirus and Brexit, even cutting the entire aid budget will have no impact at all.
Now the UK government is proposing to cut the aid budget, and failing to meet the legal requirement to spend at least 0.7% of income on foreign aid (deliberately aiming to break the law, seemingly a common characteristic of this government). They've already cut almost £3b from the budget to avoid spending more than that as incomes have fallen this year, money that many development projects would rely on and if they need to make cuts in provision it's possible that that will be the end of some projects with a far larger bill in the future to reinstate an alternative - aid workers aren't going to keep going without financial support, they'll go and find something else to do which allows them to pay their own bills, and when (if) projects restart there'll need to be a process of regaining the knowledge and experience lost.
Added to which, the government has previously announced plans to merge departments so that the "aid budget" is moved from being spent to help poorer nations into encouraging poor nations to buy British goods and services.
So, questions for discussion:
1. Should the 0.7% be treated as a "target", or should that be exceeded? Is it right to cut committed spending just because income is less than anticipated? For the record - I think it's wrong to commit to spend a certain amount and then change that later just because that would exceed a 0.7% threshold. The government should maintain spending, not cut £3b at this point just because it can do so within the law.
2. Should the government be allowed to break the law by cutting aid further, below the 0.7% threshold? Or, if they set a budget for next year at the anticipated 0.7% of income and income grows more than expected, should the government then spend more on aid? For the record - the law should not be broken, and if the recovery is faster than expected then aid spending should increase to reflect that.
3. Should the aid budget even be part of the equation in balancing the books? Yes, we know that this year the UK government has spent (or will do so) something like £200b extra on various aspects of the pandemic - purchasing equipment, PPE, vaccines etc; funding furlough and other support packages. And, there'll be a contraction of the economy hitting tax incomes as well. But, when a lot of that money has been squandered and used as hand-outs to pals of the government should the poor (at home as well as overseas) suffer for corruption and incompetence in our government? But, remember, the total aid budget is almost the same amount as was given to Serco to not run a track and trace programme. Also, remember that there's an additional lost £200b over the last few years to fund Brexit, with more costs and lost government income to come after the end of the year. When faced with a shortfall of £400b+ from both coronavirus and Brexit, even cutting the entire aid budget will have no impact at all.
Comments
-Is it is a gift?
-Is it money given by donor country so that recipient country will buy from donor country's businesses, thereby actually being about supporting donor country's industry?
-Is it money given in a manner of repaying for the colonial past and harm caused over centuries, i.e., a country in the past sailed to another country, traded trinkets for actual human beings who they sold, took control of the country, sort of transferred control politically but kept control of the economy.
I think often it is viewed as a gift and as tied aid to buy from donor country, i.e., the first two on my list. But perhaps I'm too idealistic, that things like history matter.
The majority of that money had been spent through the Department for International Development (DfID) which is focussed on humanitarian aid, poverty reduction, the UN Millenium Goals and all those good things (well, I think they're good things). Yes, that does provide some benefit back to the UK in terms of international standing and reputation, and therefore also someone to do business with. But, at least in the stated aims this was money for poverty reduction, and it was illegal for that to include tied aid (so, no requirement for that aid to include spending on goods and services from the UK).
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) had a much smaller aid budget, and that was tied more directly into UK foreign policy - promoting British businesses, as well as other grants and loans with definite strings attached. A fair bit of this money was spent in countries that wouldn't be immediately classed as needing development aid (I actually worked on a project supported by the FCO Prosperity Fund, in Japan ... though that was a bit of an aberration and mainly seemed to be a convenient way to funnel assistance following the 2011 triple-disaster earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown, using the apparatus of an existing programme rather than create something from scratch for a very limited period of spending).
The Johnson so-called government recently merged these into the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office ... which takes on much more of the FCO focus than the DfID one, ie: much more about UK foreign policy than humanitarian aid.
In the long term, you have to match your spending to your income. If your circumstances change, you have to adjust your commitments.
That said, what we're discussing here is neither long-term, nor a significant amount in budget-balancing territory. I'd say you should honour your commitments, unless to do so would cause significant difficulty (whether "you" are an individual, or the government), and so the government should honour the commitments they have made.
I'm going to disagree with this. Make budgets and stick to them. If your income is less than expected, aid will go above 0.7%; if it's more than expected, aid will go below 0.7%. It will average out, and the organizations you're funding will always get what they're expecting.
My experience of government grants is that while we'll gladly take any money that's on offer, sudden unexpected windfalls are less efficiently spent than planned budgets.
In theory, yes: it's part of the budget. In practice, as you point out, it's a small part of the budget, and in general very much achieves value for money. So although theoretically I think it should be part of the equation, in practice I'd argue that there were unlikely to be any situations where pruning the aid budget was an efficient way of balancing the books.
Well that's kind of what I think. Though, I'd tend to balance it within the complexity of many many years of contact.
European colonialism certainly changed the world, but there is no way of knowing if the world would have been any better or worse if it had never happened, and there is certainly no need to feel we have debts to re-pay.
In my opinion we didn't fight world wars to maintain freedom in the world, only to maintain the culture and traditions the western world enjoyed. That said, my response to the 3 starter questions is that foreign aid should not be cut, laws and agreements should not be broken, and foreign aid should not be part of the budget equation. The problems of climate change, global warming, pollution, and immigration, simply did not exist 70 years ago, and information technology is not only showing the developed nations how difficult life is in the third world, but also showing the third world how effectively the developed world is sucking up the lions share of the worlds resources. These facts are seeding ever growing international unrest. The problems are growing exponentially, and the world is in a state of massive social imbalance, full to the brim with human beings.
It is not simple charity. It is in our own best interests to even the balance between rich and poor, to help developing countries improve their lives and to reduce the urge to raise large families as a means of survival.
0.7% is a ridiculously low figure - It should be 10%, a more Christian level but perhaps I have my head in the clouds. Maybe we should start at 7% and concentrate on getting development aid to where it is truly needed and not shrunk on its way through bureaucracy and corruption.
(We entered the Second World War to maintain national self-determination in Eastern Europe. From that point of view it was not a resounding success. Arguably Hitler's regime was in part our fault for imposing an unjust peace on Germany after the First World War.)
How is this suggestion a legal requirement? Is it enshrined in British law?
As I understand it, UN General Assembly resolutions, while they may be the expression of the majority of nations, they do not have the force of law. This is one aspect even the most liberal United States Politician (Think Bernie Sanders) would object to. The UN is not a one-world government.
... and if heis interested in balancing the books, then he's just undone his 3bn saving with a 4bn increase in funding for the armed forces.
From the OP… (my bold)
That was Sir Humphrey's argument - we saved half of Europe from fascist dictatorship and left half of Europe under a Communist dicatorship.
I am aware that in 1674 a group of London Financiers founded the Bank of England, so that A (The Government) could borrow money from B (The Bank) on the surety of C (The general public), but I question the common sense in using cash to bring humanitarian aid to those in need. Surely aid in the form of services and goods would be far more useful.
Fixed broken quoting code. BroJames, Purgatory Host
No, not really. It's almost always more efficient to buy goods and employ people locally. Part of this is "teach a man to fish..." logic but there's also a Keynesian aspect that buying (say) food locally puts money in the hands of shopkeepers and farmers who recycle that money into the local economy. If you buy ship loads of American long-grain rice or soya you may get more food per pound but the money ends up in the international markets and so not as effective. Even this is a massive over-simplification.
The usual counter to this is that human beings and their societies have always done this. Which is true. People have always invaded and done some degree of exterminated the local populations. Except we don't do that any more and we decided after the 20th century world wars that it wasn't okay, and that we should, as a world , take responsibility to behaviour of nations in other countries, and between countries. So we don't accept such things. It is quite reasonable that if the effects of such behaviour are still being felt- the biblical 3rd and 4th generation isn't a bad time span to consider- that it is appropriate to feel responsible for debts. This takes us to at least most of the 20th century.
It gets more complicated of course, when the colonial country left or was partly kicked out, but retained control of the economy and did things like organized a coup or two to indirectly control the country but pretend they're not. Things like the IMF, GATT, WTO also come to mind.
I disagree - believing you to be confusing criminal behaviour with cultural behaviour, or more simply behaviour either 'in keeping' or 'out of keeping' with the mood of the time.
Cultural genocide, deliberate action by one cultural group to destroy the culture of another, is either criminal or highly undesirable, and compensation may well be appropriate, but that should not be conflated with the historic progress of humanity and the global state of the world today.
Through the second half of the 20th century, the Western world may have decided that invasion and extermination wasn't OK, but it heartedly endorsed a world divided between rich and poor.
I'm sure it is of great comfort to those remaining in the colonised countries, some of which continue to be bombed or expropriated via other means, that you've deemed concepts like the doctrine of discovery and terra nullius to be criminal.
Which helpfully tells you that if the UK contribution drops below 0.7%, the Secretary of State has to explain why to parliament, and lay out a plan to ensure the target is met the next year. It doesn't make cutting the spending to below 0.7% "illegal" - see part 3 (2) of that Act, and it means that the natural response to a faster-than-expected growth meaning that income overtakes aid for the year is to plan to spend a bit more the following year.
IIRC, Gramps comes from one of the Great Plains states - the new Ship does not show the profile detail available on the old one. It's a fair question from him to ask how. I thought it could have been by regulation rather than legislation, and I'm pretty familiar with the system.
How many times have I referenced my home-state in the Pacific Northwest (USA)?
Thank you for the above references. I do note falling below the 0.7% threshold is not necessarily illegal but, rather, calls for remedial action.
I fail to see what on earth the link is between my comments and 'terra nullius" or any doctrine of discovery?
You are also confusing money which we donate to others with money which is spent for the benefit of the UK. The fact that some of the later is spent unwisely is not relevant.
Removed duplicate quote. BroJames, Purgatory Host
Gee, Geographically, I am further west than LA. Only two places further west are Hawaii and Alaska.
As indeed I meant, but perhaps should have said south-west. Not many Lutherans here, save for a couple of areas in Sth Aust and Queensland. Gramps would not be a good fit with them, they're very conservative.
However, such arguments usually fall on deaf ears, I am sad to say, so I like to marshal the Machiavellian argument that if we don't harvest the influence that comes with aiding our neighbors, other countries will. This is obviously what China has been doing for the past 30 years, while conservative and neo-liberal Governments have progressively cut our overseas aid budgets. Only now are they acknowledging that in some of our closest neighbors, our parsimony has allowed China to build substantial and worrying influence.
How much should be spent? I wouldn't link it to GDP. I'd link it to a country's defense budget.
Yes, I forgot about them. The township is well off the beaten path. AFAIK, the college is still going but must surely take in students not Lutheran - Walla Walla would have well under 1,000 residents in town and the surrounding area.
If you use the Machiavellian argument to justify foreign aid, rather than the altruistic argument, then it is really 'soft power'. It achieves influence in recipient nations so that potential enemies do not use their influence to establish infrastructure that could be used against the donor country in wartime, or worse still actual bases.
This might seem strange in a European context, but in the South-east Asian context we are in a battle for influence in many countries. It is absolutely in our national interest to give foreign aid to our neighbors, because as we scaled back our donor programmes over the last 30 years, the slack was taken up by the Chinese Communists.
Linking foreign aid to defence budgets emphasises the connection between it and national defence. My real reason for supporting foreign aid - it is a moral imperative because of our relative wealth - is not one that many people find compelling. Its better to appeal to people's self interest.
Bearing in mind that this is taxpayers' money, how would you set about monitoring how it is spent and assessing the results achieved?
I think this is a false dichotomy. Both defence spending and aid are tools used to support alliances, to influence global affairs, and to (in theory at least) improve the lot of people across the globe. Consider UK military actions over the last 30 years. How many would you say had tangible benefits to the British population? 2 Gulf Wars, various actions in the former Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, probably more I've forgotten.
Those were among the concepts that were in their time used to declare colonial activities (which people continued to profit from long after they had become obsolete) of all kinds completely lawful (and therefore non-criminal), just as other concepts are used these days to continue extraction of wealth from many of the same companies.
I would not be in a position to do any of this work.
You make good points. I guess that the two main benefits would be to provode employment and to provide us with a well trained, experienced, disciplined and flexible armed services who are able to do a job for us home and abread.
Fighting a war might well do those things, but they'd be pretty shitty reasons to go to war.