Foreign Aid HAS Been Wasted, Says Cameron But Insists Raising Spending To £12bn Is 'Essential'

David Cameron will today admit that millions of pounds of foreign aid has been ‘wasted’, but insist this is not a reason to turn off the tap.

The Prime Minister, on a curtailed tour of Africa, will hit out at those in his own party who criticise his decision to pour billions more into foreign aid at a time of cutbacks at home.

In a speech in Lagos, Nigeria, he will declare: ‘The aid sceptics are wrong. Aid is essential. It can work and we are making it work.’














Trip for trade: David Cameron holds a press conference with South African President Jacob Zuma in Pretoria - he is due to speak in Lagos, Nigeria before returning to the UK.

Mr Cameron will acknowledge that critics of the plan to raise aid spending by 34 per cent to £12billion have ‘powerful arguments’.

He will say: ‘There are some people back at home who don’t like Britain’s aid commitment.

‘They see us make painful cuts to budgets at home and wonder why we are increasing our spending abroad.

And they look at where some of our aid money has gone in recent years – on the wrong priorities and into the wrong hands – and think: this is all being wasted.

They have a point. Some of our money has been wasted. But that’s not an argument to stop aid. It’s an argument to change the way aid is delivered and that’s what we’re doing.’




















Mr Cameron will say that aid should be used to boost infrastructure and trade to ‘move people from dependence to independence’.

He will call on Africa’s politicians to show more leadership in tackling corruption and lifting trade barriers.

He will say ‘this can be Africa’s moment’ if the continent can tackle the challenges of boosting trade and democracy.

Mr Cameron is accompanied by a 30-strong business delegation, including Barclays boss Bob Diamond, representatives of multinationals such as Vodafone and a number of private equity tycoons.

In South Africa yesterday, he said: ‘It is right for the British Prime Minister to be out there with British businesses trying to drum up exports and growth for our economy.

'It is what I have done in India, China and now Africa.’

He paid tribute to Nelson Mandela who celebrated his 93rd birthday yesterday, saying it was ‘a great honour’ to be in the country to toast the former anti-apartheid leader, whom he described as ‘an inspiration to the world’.














Meet and greet: David Cameron offers a gift to Bishop Desmond Tutu during his trip to South Africa - before he returns home early to deal with the phone hacking scandal.

The £650m Apology: Forget Our Ailing Education System, That's What Britain's Giving To Pakistani Schools To Make Amends For Our Imperial Past

David Cameron vowed to hand hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money plus vital military secrets to Pakistan yesterday to make amends for offending the Muslim nation last year.

The Prime Minister pledged to invest £650million in Pakistani schools at a time when the education budget at home is being cut.

Britain is also to give highly sensitive military technology to combat roadside bombs to the Pakistani security services, which are widely blamed for funding and arming the Taliban.




















In a huge gamble with the lives of British troops in Afghanistan, Mr Cameron agreed to spend millions more on a centre of excellence for the country’s soldiers and spies near Peshawar, a hotbed of militancy.

The gesture came after Mr Cameron sparked a diplomatic rift last year when he accused the country of ‘looking both ways’ on terrorism.

The technology deal sparked fears that the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI, would hand details to the Taliban, enabling them to build more effective improvised explosive devices (IEDs).




















The huge cash injection for schools by the Department for International Development will make Pakistan the UK’s biggest recipient of overseas aid.

It is designed to get four million children into the classroom – 17million currently get no schooling. Pakistan spends just 1.5 per cent of its national income on schools but is placing billion-pound orders for six Chinese submarines and 36 fighter aircraft.

The UK will have no control of the curriculum in schools receiving funding, meaning taxpayers could see their money pumped into madrassas peddling extremism.

Mr Cameron defended the payments, saying it was ‘in our interest’ to help Pakistan.

He said: ‘If Pakistan is a success we’ll have a good friend to trade and invest and deal with.

‘If we fail we’ll have all the problems of migration, of extremism, problems that we don’t want to see. So it’s in our interest that Pakistan succeeds.’

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani said he believed a ‘root cause’ of terrorism was illiteracy.

But Tory MP Philip Davies said: ‘Particularly at the moment when we’ve got no money, there’s absolutely no justification for increasing the amounts that we give to other countries.

‘That is especially the case with countries that can afford to spend billions on defence. If they can afford submarines they can afford to educate their own people.

‘We need to concern ourselves with our own schools because countries around the world are overtaking us in educational attainment.’

In a speech to university students, Mr Cameron vowed to get over the ‘tensions’ sparked by his comments last year and create a ‘new start’ in relations with Pakistan.

But he also said Pakistan had to raise taxes and stamp out corruption to justify British generosity. ‘Understandably, the British people want to know every penny we spend is going to the right places.

‘I need to convince them that it is. But my job is made more difficult when people in Britain look at Pakistan, a country that receives millions of pounds of our aid money, and see weaknesses in terms of government capacity and waste.’

Mr Cameron, who was accompanied on his one-day visit by Tory party chairman Baroness Warsi, who is of Pakistani origin, ducked questions about whether he could guarantee that the ISI will not hand the anti-IED technology to the Taliban.

The £650million investment for Pakistan schools will come out of the existing aid budget.

■ The reputation of Britain’s international aid programme is at risk because of lax controls to prevent fraud and corruption, the National Audit Office warned last night.

It said the Department for International Development was doing too little to prevent taxpayers’ money being siphoned off by corrupt officials in deprived countries.

International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell insisted that weaknesses in the systems set up by Labour had been addressed.







PM blames British Empire for 'many of the world's problems'

David Cameron sparked a backlash last night after telling a Pakistani audience that Britain is responsible for ‘many’ of the world’s problems.

The Prime Minister sought to blame the British Empire for the situation in Kashmir which has been a running sore in Pakistan’s relations with India since partition in 1947.

But he laid himself open to the charge of running down Britain on an overseas trip.

At a university in Islamabad, the Prime Minister was asked how Britain could help end the row over Kashmir.
















David Cameron inspecting a guard of honour at the Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani's residence in Islamabad.
















Mr Cameron signing an Enhanced Strategic Dialogue document with Pakistan Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani.

He replied: ‘I don’t want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place.’

His gaffe could lay Britain open to legal action by relatives of those killed in Kashmir or other conflicts sparked by the end of empire.

Mr Cameron’s claim is not even accurate about the fate of Kashmir, which has been the subject of three major wars between India and Pakistan in 1947, 1965 and 1999.

The disputed province, which has a predominantly Muslim population, would probably have joined Pakistan when it broke away from India had it not been for the intervention of the state’s Hindu Maharaja Hari Singh, who insisted on remaining with India.














David Cameron and Baroness Warsi visiting the Faisal Mosque in Islamabad

Sean Gabb, of the Libertarian Alliance, said yesterday: ‘It’s a valid historical point that some problems stem from British foreign policy in the 19th and 20th Centuries, but should we feel guilty about that? I fail to see why we should.

‘Some of these problems came about because these countries decided they did not want to be part of the British empire. They wanted independence, they got it, they should sort out their problems instead of looking to us.’

A No 10 official said: ‘Sometimes a bit of humility goes a long way.’

Cameron: Overseas Aid Is Taxpayers Money Not Yours!

David Cameron is wrong to insist that the £9 billion ‘overseas aid budget’ should be “ring fenced”. At a time when the people of this country are facing great hardship, it is foolhardy to believe that he will have widespread support for delivering UK taxpayers money to countries such as Pakistan and China.

Notwithstanding the huge amount of taxpayers’ money that is being committed in our name, we all know that a good deal of this money is squandered, you only have to look at some of the brand new 4×4 vehicles that are driven my Government officials in some African countries, while their people starve. More often than not, these vehicles are paid with using foreign aid; this is hardly a success story. Furthermore, whilst some of these countries can rely on foreign aid, they are not being encouraged to stand on their own two feet.

Everyone has to tighten their belts at times such as these and our Government should be no different. I full accept that investment in health and education must be maintained, although I would qualify that statement by insisting that there should be a root and branch review to ensure that we are receiving value for money. However, overseas aid is an area that can and should be cut, at least until this country is back on its feet…because like it or not, our finances are in a precarious position.

Cameron keeps telling us how we will all have to accept a period of “austerity”, which will include increased direct and indirect taxes. Okay, I accept that this is inevitable, but how dare he foist new taxes on the British people before he has taken a scalpel to expenditure on items such as overseas aid? Cameron needs to remember that there are many people in this country that live in squalor, often council owned high rise flats that are not maintained or are well past their sell by date. These people are forgotten, whilst huge sums are given away overseas.

How many times have we heard the ‘youths’ of today tell us that the reason there is so much petty crime and a gang culture is because they are “bored” and they have “nowhere to go”? Yet, youth and community centres are routinely closed down due to lack of funds…the result is that youngsters are left roaming the streets. As a consequence, people within the community are scared, they have to suffer petty crime and their quality of life is dramatically reduced. The priorities of this Government and for all intents and purposes, the next Government’s, are completely at odds with what is needed and wanted by the people of this country.

It is high time all politicians started to listen to the people of this country and not simply pay lip service. We are all tired of people at the top telling us what we want and what need, rather than listening to us!