British government hits back at accusations of aid waste

By Joseph D'Urso LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - The British government dismissed a newspaper report on Friday that said its commitment to spend 0.7 percent of national income on overseas aid meant it had squandered cash on overpaid contractors. Professional staff are paid up to 1,000 pounds a day to work on projects in Africa and Asia, with some consultancy firms enjoying 50 percent profit margins, according to an investigation by the Times newspaper. The Department for International Development (DFID) has seen spending increases at a time when the British government has cut funding for other departments as part of austerity measures. "DFID's obese budget means it has to get the money out of the door as quickly as possible, and the easiest way to achieve this is to have a few large programmes managed by a few suppliers," Garth Glentworth, a former aid official, said in the Times. DFID spent more than a tenth of its budget on external contractors last year, according to internal figures. But the department, described in the Times by former senior aid official Gordon Bridger as a "juggernaut out of control," rejected the claim that it was wasting money. The use of outside agencies can be justified "if they're best placed to deliver a particular aid project," Michael Haig, a DFID spokesman, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Britain spent an unexpected one billion pounds on overseas aid in two months in 2013 to meet a government spending target, raising questions of how effectively the money was spent, a report by the National Audit Office said in January. The Times reported half of Britain's 12 billion pound aid budget is spent through international agencies such as the European Union, United Nations and World Bank, which the paper said have higher administration costs than domestic projects. "We use multilateral organisations where they can deliver the results we need for the best value for money," said Haig. The United Nations first agreed the 0.7 percent target in 1970. In 2005, European Union member states pledged to meet the target by 2015 but Britain set an earlier date of 2013. (Reporting By Joseph D'Urso)