Our wasteful aid betrays the needy Today, we publish more evidence that a portion of Britain's aid budget is not being spent on providing life-enhancing services to the poorest people on the planet. Large sums, amounting to millions of pounds, are instead going to countries that are far from being among the world's neediest - countries such as Iceland, Morocco, Russia and Barbados. Approximately a sixth of our aid budget, about £1.4 billion, is given to the EU, which decides where to spend it. The EU aid agencies fund many projects that our own Department for International Development (DfID) certainly would not support. That is why Morocco, for example, receives over £120 million in aid from the EU every year - about £18 million of which comes from DfID. We agree that a rich country such as Britain has an obligation to help people in the world's poorest countries. What we oppose is the use of British taxpayers" money to fund projects that will do nothing whatever to help those who are poverty-stricken. The Prime Minister's decision to ring-fence spending on foreign aid - making it the only budget, other than that of the NHS, that will not be cut - would be understandable if the money did what he has claimed it does: help the world's poorest. But it does not. It is impossible to justify British public funds being channelled, via Brussels, to tourism schemes in Morocco, for instance, or nature protection in Iceland. Foreign aid, even when it is sent to people in need, does not always have the beneficial results intended. The history of aid projects in Africa, for example, has rarely been one of unambiguous success, not least because so much money has disappeared into the hands of corrupt officials. Economists are far from unanimous that the best way to boost a poor country's prosperity is to provide it with generous donations from abroad. Indeed, some economists believe that aid, rather than helping development, actually retards it. Whatever view is taken on that issue, the fact is that, as things stand, much of the money we give is not reaching its intended recipients: the poor of the world. To remedy this, DfID should immediately carry out a rigorous analysis of how its budget is spent, and stop pouring money into inappropriate projects. Not to do so would be a betrayal of the very people we most want to help.