Gap-year holidays that reveal the madness of overseas aid But the Mukherjee remarks pointed a broader spotlight on whether DFID is, indeed, good value for money. The massive increase to its budget - amounting to more than £3 billion a year over the course of this parliament - comes from a pledge by the previous Labour government to raise aid spending to 0.7 per cent of Britain's gross national income (GNI) by 2013. As part of their brand decontamination efforts, the Tories promised to match that commitment if elected. Unlike numerous other pre-election promises, this one has survived. The 0.7 per cent figure may be totemic, but like so many totems it suffers from important problems. Firstly, it derives from a World Bank report, the Pearson Commission, published in 1969: a totally different universe. Forty-three years ago, many Chinese were still starving, no Asian nation had become a "tiger" and nobody could have dreamed that India would own large parts of the British car and steel industry. Only a handful of countries, mostly in Scandinavia, have ever in practice consistently applied the 0.7 per cent target. The second, more immediate, problem is the risk that spending becomes an end in itself, simply in order to hit the target. Britain's spend on aid in 2012 amounts to 0.56 per cent of GNI. As the Tory MP and member of the Public Accounts Committee, Jo Johnson, puts it, DFID "has to shovel money out of the door" in order to reach its promised 0.7 by next year. That may help to explain some of the things that DFID has been spending its money on. This year, for example, it has committed almost £9 million to send 1,250 British teenagers and young people overseas for "projects of development value." But from internal DFID evaluations seen by The Sunday Telegraph, the main beneficiaries appear to be the British youngsters themselves, rather than the people of the developing world. The programme, International Citizen Service, was launched with a fanfare by the Prime Minister, David Cameron, who promised that it would give "thousands of our young people, who couldn't otherwise afford it, the chance to see the world and serve others." The participants have been seeing the world. Countries in the pilot phase include Brazil, South Africa, India, Zambia, Nepal, Kenya, Peru and other gap-year favourites. In the full implementation, starting next month, the number of places will rise to 7,000 over three years and the list of countries will expand to include Sri Lanka and Fiji. Flights, visas, accommodation and food are all paid for. Each trip typically lasts from three to six months and the average cost to the taxpayer has been £7,000 per person. Richer travellers have to make a £1,000-£2,000 contribution, but so far 81 per cent have taken part for free. The participants, understandably, are very keen on the scheme and told the evaluators how much they appreciated it. Facebook and blogs are full of the cable TV and swimming pools in their hotels (though not everyone is so comfortably accommodated), their visits to the beach, tourist attractions and "lush forests" on their days off. But when they describe the "development work" they are supposed to be doing, things get a little more self-questioning. "Is there really a point to international volunteering?" asked Cristina, who was assigned to a rural Indian village. What could three young girls do to help in such a foreign environment? Everyone [in the local charity they were supposed to be helping] was really welcoming and nice, but they were stuck in their own jobs and did not know where we should fit in. Also, what skills did we have that could aid in improving people's lives? It seemed like none. On our first field trip, it felt like we were VIP tourists... but that was not what we signed off to do. "I feel, and the other volunteers would agree, that we have been very much pampered and living in luxury," wrote Monju, one participant in the Peru ICS programme. It has been better than most holidays I have been on... We have started to become very critical of what we have done so far and what the orientation has really delivered. There has been a lot of talk about the cost of sending us to Peru, which is £6,000. Is it better to send over a volunteer, potentially someone who has not had any previous volunteering experience, to Peru to teach English, or is it better to just give the £6,000 to the people so they can help themselves? Are we gaining more than the beneficiaries? The participants" own concerns that they are just being given a state-subsidised gap experience were reflected in the official evaluation report for the pilot phase. Evidence of development impact from their work, conceded the report, was "weak," with only "tenuous and insubstantial positive impacts" in many placements. There was "considerable under-utilisation" of the young volunteers, leaving them "frustrated and aimless," with key problems being their "lack of specific skills" and their "lack of grit." Some volunteers ended up on projects which taxpayers might not expect to be funding. One group in Tanzania found itself teaching street children to tap dance. According to another blogger, in El Salvador, some youngsters ended up observing prostitutes in order to "draw up a Gender Positioning System" map of sex workers" movements in San Salvador. The step-change in DFID's finances has caused deep concern in the National Audit Office, the government spending watchdog, which found that it "cannot assess important aspects of value for money of the aid it has delivered," that it "does not yet have robust procedures for tracking results" and that it has no idea how much of its budget is lost to fraud. Even though almost half of DFID's staff are in fact administrators based in the UK, the auditors found that only 23 per cent of the ministry's finance staff had a full financial qualification. In the field, matters were even worse. The entire Africa division, with 16 field offices and the lion's share of the budget, had just one accountant. "Operational staff do not expect to be challenged on costs," the NAO reported. Each field office can spend up to £40 million on a single project without reference to London. That, perhaps, is why DFID spent more than £350,000 in December alone on staff travel and hotels - often rather nice hotels, such as the five-star Yak and Yeti in Kathmandu, where the cheapest room is £175 a night, the colonial Fairview in Nairobi (£120 a night), and numerous Hiltons throughout the developing world. From the students on their gap years to the civil servants at the top of the tree, international development can be a lifestyle choice. DFID said that the second phase of the International Citizen Service programme had been improved in the light of the weaknesses found by the evaluation. "Giving British young people important skills and experience while directly helping the world's poorest people is a good thing," a spokesman said. DFID is sharply cutting administrative staff - though with so much more money coming in to administer, this too could be a recipe for disaster. One leading figure in the development world, extremely pro-DFID, told The Sunday Telegraph of his fears for the department. "The spending rise has put them under a lot of scrutiny which they might not be able to cope with, and aroused real political anger," he said. Getting more money could turn out to be the worst thing that's ever happened to them.