Sunday Express, June 21
Brexit provides an opportunity for Britain to overhaul its overseas aid spending, an influential thinktank has claimed.
The Centre of Brexit Policy (CBP) has pointed out at that 10 percent of the £13 billion spent by the UK on foreign aid was handed to the EU for their overseas projects. That money was spent on items which had the EU flag branded on them but gave no credit to the UK taxpayer even though it was the biggest donor to the EU aid budget and previously the only EU member to meet the target of 0.7 percent of GDP spent on aid.
The chairman of the CBP, former cabinet minister Owen Paterson, said that in the week that the Department for International Development and Foreign Office were merged, more can now be done to focus aid spending.
He pointed out that the EU has come under fire for indirectly funding terrorist groups with aid including the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
The EU has also been heavily criticised for its aid spending after last month a senior EU official, Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff, who heads the EU mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip, said that Brussels will not withhold funds from supporters of terrorist groups.
There has been widespread criticism of how the UK aid budget has been spent. In 2018, the UK gave China £55m, which funded projects including a £1.1 million awareness campaign aimed at reducing salt intake in China, a £984,000 study into air pollution, a £43,112 teacher training programme and a £55,392 scheme to reform China’s animal testing laws to bring them into line with international standards.
Click here to read the article in full.