The aid argument
Sir: ‘The great aid mystery’ (5 January) presents the development sceptics’ case — which in five years in opposition (2005-2010) the Conservative party set out to address head on.
Although the huge changes in British development policy over the last two and half years appear to have eluded Messrs Foreman and Shaw, they are real and fundamental and genuinely provide grounds upon which most people on either side of the debate can camp. I learned in two-and-a-half years as Britain’s Development Secretary that both the extremes in this debate have deaf ears.
The coalition government has reduced the number of aid recipient countries supported by Britain from 43 to 28. We demanded results as the only justification for handing over hard-pressed British taxpayers’ cash. We set up the independent — and often uncomfortable for government — evaluation of British aid. To call this ‘PR flim flam’ reveals an unusual lack of journalistic objectivity. And the coalition reduced by half (half, Mr Foreman) the level of general budget support and massively tightened the rules and regulations affecting its disbursement.
At the centre of British Development Policy is tackling conflict and promoting wealth creation. Ninety per cent of all jobs come not from government but from the private sector. This is a real investment by Britain in our children’s future prosperity and security and it is being accomplished at less than 1 per cent of our GNI.
The sceptics question the results. How about the 11 million children in school who wouldn’t be there but for Britain’s generosity? The clean water secured for as many people as live in the UK thanks to our taxpayers? A child was vaccinated every two seconds throughout this Parliament and a child’s life saved every two minutes from diseases that none of our children die from. Surely we should build on this and improve it, not sneer and belittle it?
Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell MP
London SW1
Sir: I was extremely pleased to read Jonathan Foreman’s piece on the failures of development aid. Even Cameron has admitted that UK aid money is often wasted, saying that people who don’t like Britain’s commitment to aid ‘have a point’.
One country that isn’t mentioned in the piece is Afghanistan — which in the past ten years has received millions of pounds of UK aid. A 2011 report by Crisis Group stated that international aid ‘has largely failed to fulfil the international community’s pledges to rebuild Afghanistan’ and warned of ‘bribes paid to insurgent groups’ out of aid donations. Foreman also mentions Andrew Mitchell’s claim that foreign aid prevents war and illegal immigration. Interestingly, the former development secretary’s last act before handing over to Justine Greening was to sanction a £16 million aid payment to Rwanda, whose President Paul Kagame has been accused of funding M23 rebels in neighbouring DR Congo.
How anyone can conceivably defend the UK’s aid programme is beyond me.
Patrick Crossley
Bexhill, East Sussex
Sir: Your aid special reminded me of what Sir Edward Clay said of his time as High Commissioner to Kenya, from 2001 to 2005. He reported to parliament that corruption ‘infected every institution of the state’. And went on to say that, ‘When I have challenged DFID’s continuing assistance to the Kenyan government, and their association with some suspect individuals, the stock answer was that their investment in education … overrode any serious reservations they might have about the senior Kenyans they worked with.’ Was DFID right? I very much doubt it. As another expert, Michela Wrong, says, ‘This discovery [of Kenyan aid money misspent] a full nine years into the donor-funded programme, raises alarming questions about the level of checking and auditing performed by DFID officials who believe themselves — naively — to be fully on top of their dossiers.’
Bill Manners
Newcastle under Lyme
Make mice friends
Sir: I grew up in the country. We had hornets nesting in the thatch, adders under the patio and mice in the kitchen cupboard. We all co-existed happily. My mother once found a tawny owl perched on the edge of the cot I was sleeping in. As a boy it was my job to look after the mice in the holidays. This chiefly involved sweeping any droppings up and ensuring the rest of the cupboard was kept clean. The family dog would raise a languid eyebrow as a mouse scurried across the floor and no more interest was taken in them by the rest of us.
So I respectfully suggest, in reference to Rod Liddle’s latest article (5 January), that it is not the mice that should be the focus of Mr Liddle’s attention, but his wife. How about a period of rodent familiarisation?
Oh my ears and whiskers…
John Batten
London N6
The last charge
Sir: In Allan Mallinson’s excellent review of Richard Mead’s The Last Great Cavalryman, he suggests that the battle of Megiddo in 1918 was a contender for being regarded as the last cavalry charge.
What must not be forgotten is the cavalry charge that took place in the early morning of 24 August 1942 near the River Don, some 120 miles north of Stalingrad, when the Italian Savoy Regiment, with nearly 600 horses, and part of Mussolini’s Italian Expeditionary Force, sent to assist the Germans on the Russian front, charged a superior Russian force. The Russians lost 150 dead and the Savoy 29. Some 500 Russians were taken prisoner.
Brian Harvey
Dunston Heath, Stafford
Ewe and yow
Sir: Dot Wordsworth may not have heard ‘cy’ used in lieu of ‘cattle’, but I have. My brother-in-law from an Ayrshire farming family still uses it. Pronounce as in sky. He also pronounces ‘ewe’ as yow, as in now.
Duncan Gilchrist
By email
Comments