Is Foreign Aid Worth The Money?

Is Foreign Aid Worth The Money?

You will have probably heard about UKIP MEP Godfrey Bloom’s ‘Bongo Bongo land speech’ by now.  However, the speech has only received criticism about how it was put across rather than the actual point of the speech, and Godfrey Bloom has a point should countries such as Pakistan and India who are nuclear powers receive aid from the UK.  Foreign aid spending is ring fenced so will not be cut until after 2015 and it currently costs £11.3 billion per year which is around 0.7% of the UK’s total spending per year.  So in the grand scheme of things it is fairly insignificant the working age benefit bill for just London was £36 billion for 2011/12, nevertheless in an age of austerity we want to be making sure we are getting the most value for our money, so should we be giving money to India? India is set to be spending more on Defence than the UK by 2017 so are we really spending our foreign aid money wisely when we give it to India.

It is worth noting that the government is already doing something about foreign aid as India and South Africa have been targeted for reduced assistance in fact aid to India will have been completely halted by 2015, this does not mean that the foreign aid budget will be reduced because as I mentioned earlier it is ring-fenced.  Nevertheless, does the aid budget even need to be reduced?  It is not the cause of the cuts in fact if we stopped giving foreign aid tomorrow it would probably not alter the Chancellors plans at all Although it would slightly shrink the deficit.  In addition, every time foreign aid is bought up the examples of India, South Africa and Pakistan are always used to illustrate that it  is a waste of money, however we also give money to Ethiopia and Bangladesh which are two of the world’s poorest countries.  Foreign aid is potentially a good thing but the government needs to make sure that only countries in need receive it and that the money is not being wasted.  However foreign aid is an easy target in an age of austerity, when people are suffering from cuts they are very wary when it comes to giving money to other countries when we have very little money at home.  I believe there is a debate to be had about how much we spend on foreign aid and I personally would like to see the amount shrunk to under 0.5% of government spending  because it is a cut albeit a small one that has no adverse effect on the UK.