Poll reveals doubts about aid

THE Secretary for Overseas Deve­opment, Douglas Alexander, has defended the UK aid budget in the wake of a critical opinion poll.

A Harris Interactive poll for Metro newspaper, published on Monday, found that 50 per cent of those asked thought that the Government’s aid budget of £7.8 billion for 2010-11 was too much. A further 43 per cent thought it was enough; only seven per cent thought it was not enough.

Writing in this week’s Church Times, Mr Alexander says that he wants to reassure readers “that aid works, and that the UK’s aid budget is helping millions of people across the globe to pull themselves out of poverty every year” (Comment, page 11).

Mr Alexander recalls the Make Poverty History rallies five years ago, which prompted the commitment from G8 leaders at Gleneagles to increase aid and cancel debt.

He writes: “Five years later, 28 countries have had all their debts wiped out, and more are in the pipeline.” But he argues that greater effort is needed, as developing countries succumb to the effects of the global financial crisis.

Accountability appeared to be a significant negative factor among those polled. Forty-nine per cent agreed with the statement: “Foreign aid for developing countries is a bad idea because it can be misused or diverted”; 27 per cent disagreed, 26 per cent did not know.

On most of the questions, women were consistently at least five points more compassionate than men. For example, 65 per cent of men agreed that money should be diverted from overseas to relieve poverty at home, compared with 60 per cent of wo­men. Also, 23 per cent of men said they were “not at all” or “not much” concerned about the situation in Haiti, compared with ten per cent of women.

Christian Aid’s chief policy adviser, Alex Cobham, said that the increase in the overseas aid budget was an overdue response to the 1970 United Nations resolution that the developed countries would contrib­ute 0.7 per cent of their Gross National Product to help poorer countries.

Mr Cobham said: “The poll reveals a number of misconceptions about the effectiveness of aid. . . Corruption is a case in point. It is indeed an obstacle to development, but it is far from confined to poorer countries.

“Putting an end to the secrecy offered by the tax-havens where much illicit money ends up will counter corruption far more effectively than simply stopping aid.”

The poll results suggested that it was vital to “ceaselessly raise public awareness about the realities of life in the developing world”.