Funding Nemo
EXCLUSIVE: How Foreign Office spends £343m aid
EXCLUSIVE by OLIVER HARVEY, Chief Feature Writer
Updated: 5th April 2016, 3:52 pm
TAXPAYERS' cash has been squandered finding mates for tropical fish off
The project is one of several bizarre examples of how debt-ridden Britain's
Foreign Office frittered away its £343million aid budget.
The Sun is calling on the Government to end this — and commit two per cent of
our income to defence.
Other barmy schemes include teaching Hamlet to Ecuadorians and producing a
game show for Ethiopian TV. Taxpayers' cash has also gone to an
anti-littering campaign in Jordan.
As cuts bite deeper at home, a Sun investigation revealed the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office (FCO) has squandered aid money worldwide.
here to see how your cash is wasted
The department has helped to finance English lessons for young Uruguayan
footballers, a "plaque ceremony" in Panama attended by a UK minister, a
mural in a rain shelter on the Caribbean island of Montserrat and a fashion
event in Paraguay.
Britain's aid coffers are brimming with cash after the UK became one of only
five nations to devote 0.7 per cent or more of national income to overseas
aid.
Yet the Government still refuses to commit to a Nato target of spending two
per cent of income on defence.
Cash from the Foreign Office's overseas aid budget has even poured into
economic superpower China, including funds set aside to boost production of
shale gas.
Money that campaigners say should go to the world's poorest has helped to
"empower" museum professionals in India, a nation which has a space
programme and a nuclear arsenal.
The FCO has also diverted aid cash to projects associated with the EU.
This comes despite UK taxpayers already stumping up hundreds of millions a
year for EU aid handouts.
Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond launched an immediate review of FCO aid
spending when told of our exclusive investigation.
Last night a Foreign Office official said: "Some of those examples are
frivolous to say the least.
"Clearly there are going to have to be some changes to tighten up the
approvals and authorisation process.
"There are some very good aid projects which we spend money on.
"The vast majority are value for money and in people's interest."
The spending comes with Britain over £1.5trillion in the red and the NHS
needing an £8billion injection.
Despite Britain having to borrow billions to meet its spending commitments,
the FCO splashed out £5,000 last year on "Hamlet education workshops" in
Ecuador, South America.
London's Globe Theatre, which visited Ecuador's capital Quito in November, is
touring a production of Shakespeare's tragedy.
The department also gave £2,042-worth of free tickets to children for a Hamlet
production in the earthquake-ravaged Caribbean nation of Haiti.
Officials justified the spend saying it would "promote UK culture through arts
and literature".
In poverty-blighted Ethiopia, where a quarter of children under five are
underweight, the FCO helped fund a TV game show and a 10km run.
It budgeted £13,888 for a "Q & A game show on National
Television" due to be screened later this year.
An FCO report says the show with a UK/Ethiopia theme is to "connect with a
younger generation of Ethiopians" and "engage them on UK values of human
rights and good governance". Another £5,000 was spent on the Great Ethiopian
Run where, according to an FCO document, "development messages" are
"disseminated" and there is a fund raiser for "humanitarian objectives".
In Jordan, which is hosting 650,000 Syrian refugees who have fled fighting
across the border, the FCO spent more than £6,000 to "provide music
education" in two public schools.
And it awarded £6,958.85 for an anti-littering drive.
Meanwhile, Laos in South East Asia is benefitting from £970 for a project
promoting "Safe And Responsible Use of Facebook". The UK's 0.7 per cent
overseas aid benchmark was last year described by Tory MP Philip Davies as
"a handout to make a few middle-class, Guardian-reading, sandal-wearing,
lentil-eating do-gooders with a misguided guilt complex feel better about
themselves".
Last night Mr Davies, who represents Shipley, West Yorks, declared: "Well
done to The Sun for highlighting this travesty.
"Hamlet lessons for Ecuadorians and tracking down a mate for a rare fish would
be funny if it wasn't taxpayers' hard-earned cash being used to fund these
idiotic projects. I'm all for overseas aid when some country has suffered a
terrible natural disaster and there's people had their homes destroyed.
"What hacks off me and many of my constituents is that for the last five years
George Osborne and David Cameron have not unreasonably been saying, 'We've
got to cut spending, we haven't got any money'. Then we discover cash is
being spent overseas on this nonsense."
Another Tory backbencher David Nuttall said: "You couldn't make some of these
projects up.
"My constituents will be appalled to think their hard-earned taxes were being
spent on things which on first sight don't appear to qualify as what most
people would regard as humanitarian aid."
The MP for Bury North added: "The Government have said they want to spend 0.7
per of our income on aid.
"When you set a target you have to find things to spend it on. Spending
should be on need, not targets."
Our findings are a snapshot of FCO aid spending, with all but two examples
taken from the third quarter of the 2014/15 budget,
Jonathan Isaby, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said last night:
"Taxpayers will be outraged at these damning revelations.
"It is totally inappropriate to spend taxpayers' cash on pointless projects
and propaganda.
"Foreign aid is supposed to help the world's poorest, not subsidise game shows
and China's energy industry.
"Until the Foreign Office can prove value for money for these projects, and
they'll struggle, this spending should stop."
Most of the UK's total overseas aid budget — £11.8billion last year — is spent
by the Department for International Development (DFID). However, the Foreign
Office and nine other government departments, plus the Scottish and Welsh
governments — are also given foreign aid cash to distribute.
Last year the Aid Transparency Index, produced by Publish What You Fund,
ranked the FCO 35 out 68 global donors with a "poor" rating. But DFID rated
"very good" and was ranked second best.
oliver.harvey@the-sun.co.uk
Fish called squander
THE Foreign Office used aid cash to help find female mates for "gorgeously
ugly" endangered Madagascan tropical fish.
In 2013 only three Mangarahara cichlid fish were known to exist — two in
London Zoo and one in Berlin Zoo. All were male.
Experts believed they were extinct in the wild.
The FCO spent £3,400 from its 2013/14 budget to aid a hunt for females.
Experts found a colony in Madagascar and moved 18 to a place where thousands
have been bred.
The London males died last year before mates could be brought over.
What ££s could get
HERE is how cash spent by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office could have been
spent here:
£51,564 went on giving Serbians work experience here — could have bought
advanced armour for 50 British troops.
£30,000 spent "empowering Indian museum professionals" — could have paid a
nurse on £21,692 for 15 months.
£99,800 spent "Unlocking China's shale gas with smart regulations" — could
have built five mini-roundabouts.
£3,104 on English training for Uruguayan footballers — could have bought two
lampposts.
What do you think? #ForcesNotFarces
email: features@the-sun.co.uk