£1.6bn aid to India is set to be scrapped
BRITAIN’S taxpayer-funded handouts to India are almost certain to cease within three years after a public outcry led by the Daily Express.
The International Development Secretary, Andrew Mitchell, said Britain was “walking the last mile” and added: “We won’t be there for ever”, hinting that the hundreds of millions of pounds a year aid to the former colony will end by 2015.
The move is a victory for the Daily Express, which has been pressing for an end to all foreign aid.
But MPs and tax campaigners last night called for Britain’s £1.6billion total aid to India to end immediately.
Peter Bone, Tory MP for Wellingborough, said: “Aid to India should stop now. I cannot see why the Government is giving money to a country with a space programme, a nuclear bomb and a rapidly expanding economy.”
Philip Davies, Tory MP for Shipley, said: “Andrew Mitchell may be walking the last mile but the Indian government has been running rings around him for years.”
The Indian government has been running rings around Britain for years
Robert Oxley, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Ministers should bring an end to that aid programme today. Aid should be for the world’s poorest.” The Government insists the cash goes to millions of people living in poverty despite India’s strong economic growth.
But critics point out that India’s economy is growing by 10 per cent a year and will overtake Britain in a decade.
A YouGov poll yesterday found 69 per cent want to stop giving aid cash to India. Even India itself is baffled by Britain’s largesse. It emerged recently that Pranab Mukherjee, India’s finance minister at the time, referred to British aid as “a peanut”.
Mr Mitchell said: “I completely understand why people question the aid programme to India.
“That’s why we reviewed every aspect of it...and changed it fundamentally. We won’t be there for ever.”
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He said the Coalition had also ditched Labour’s aid programmes to countries such as China and Russia.
“We have reduced administration costs by 33 per cent, and cut staff,” he said.
“We are saving people from starvation – vaccinating children at a rate of one every two seconds.”
Officials at the Department for International Development insisted no decision had been made about ending the aid by 2015.