Causes and effects

When spending money is declared to be a good in itself, it is certain that much of it will be wasted. If that was not obvious already, it was proven by experiment when Gordon Brown announced 13 years ago that he wished to increase healthcare spending in Britain to the European average without much of a plan as to what he wanted to achieve with the money.

There followed years of plenty for NHS staff, whose pay packets bulged. Patients found it harder to discern an improvement. Indeed, Brown’s great NHS spending splurge coincided with the Mid Staffs scandal.

It should come as little surprise, then, that the same is happening in the charitable sector. The government’s target of pumping 0.7 per cent of our national income into international aid has enriched charities, but much of the money seems to be boosting the living standards of charity chiefs rather than those of the world’s poor. The chairman of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross, complains this week that the number of staff at foreign aid charities in receipt of salaries greater than £100,000 a year has leapt from 19 to 30 since 2010.

Criticism of salaries should never be motivated by envy. Had a charity succeeded in eliminating HIV, no amount of compensation for its staff would seem too great. Yet no charity can claim any such achievement during the past 12 months. In fact, Syria aside, the past year has mercifully been a rather quiet time for earthquakes, famines, wars and the other events for which the charities associated with the Disasters Emergency Committee were set up to address.

Even if disasters slowed to a trickle, it is certain that aid charities would carry on growing and that their chief executives would continue to award themselves ever more extravagant salaries.