Either way, as you’re in Ethiopia, you might be forgiven for not realising that the UK’s economy is going down the toilet – so, as a hard-pressed taxpayer, my answer to this plea for even more wasteful spending (half of which goes to dictators – hence your former DFID colleagues hid telegrams to this effect from Clare Short – no point denying it, I was there) is to tell you to get it from Bono…

There is something in it for developing countries too – if our economy is stablised, then the yearly aid budget might still be worth something, rather than going down the Zimbabwe route. Better 0.5% of something than 0.7% of nothing, no?

I agree – once we get to 0.7%, it will be much harder to reverse. But it is going to be tough defending double digit increases in the aid budget when other services are going through hard(er) times. (I worry that this will lead the Treasury to bury increases in ODA in other budgets, particularly the MOD and FCO, breaking the important and valuable tradition that the aid budget is consolidated in one government department).

I’m glad you like the idea of including this in the Fiscal Responsibility Bill. There may be an outside chance that this would be outside the scope, but (though I am not a lawyer) I cannot see how it could be.

warm regards
Owen

The CSR has UK ODA going up to 9.1 billion pounds in 2010/11 after really strong campaigning around budget time in march of this year by a broad coalition of NGOs. there was a push from treasury to stick simply to the 0,51% promised in europe which would have meant a cut given the recession. By our calculations this will put UK ODA at around somewhere between 0.56 and 0.58 for the year 2010/11.

Whether this means they will meet the 0.56% for 2010 stipulated in the EU promise not guaranteed but I would not say altogether out of the question. Also As I understood it the EU promise was for all of the old member states to reach a minimum of 0.51% by 2010, with this meaning that the overall EU average would be 0.56%. The UK has promised separately to be at 0.56 though.

All of this will not happen without a fight that is for certain.

The big question is can we get the tories in their first budget and spending review to specify the two additional increases to get us to 0.7. in 2013, and this will be harder without legislation.

What is really interesting is that once we are at 0.7% the chances of us moving away from it are very slim- not because of political pressure necessarily, but because it means that DFID each year following 2013 will only be asking for an increase to cover inflation at budget time, and as overall dfids budget will still only be just over 1% of government spending, it is not likely to figure much in any calculations. the dangerous time is now when dfid is supposed to be getting double digit increases each year whilst other departments take cuts.

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/d/pbr_csr07_chapter1_207.pdf