Jayne Dowle: Britain’s soldiers and children deserve aid close to home

Indeed, I am still scratching my head as to why Andrew Mitchell, the International Development Secretary, should be so publicly earnest over Britain’s pledge to increase spending on foreign aid by 34 per cent to £12bn. Frankly, it’s not the sort of thing you expect from a Tory. Plenty of his party members have been quick to tell him he is talking tosh. I can only conclude that it is because Mr Mitchell is reportedly very rich indeed, and earned his millions as something big in banking.

As we know, bankers live in their own world and therefore have their own set of “values”. Shifting a few billion here and there means nothing to them. They don’t think about money as we do. You can bet your mortgage that Mr Mitchell has never had to weigh up food versus petrol. In fact, he rather ostentatiously rides a bike.

But it is a bit worrying when we have a former banker in charge of spending public money on projects that seem to be at best indulgent, considering the size of our deficit. And then, this carin’, sharin’ minister has the temerity to inform us that we should be “proud” to be able to help prop up places like, say, Somalia, so riven with tribal violence and corruption that it needs a miracle, not money to sort them out. There we are, handing over huge sums of money to countries such as India, busily making millions out of its call centres and creating its own space programme whilst thousands of British workers are redundant and with a space programme… er, have we still got a space programme?

And, if that wasn’t galling enough, Mr Mitchell then points out that all this generosity is giving us a wonderful reputation abroad. Just like our Armed Forces, who soon won’t even have a jump jet between them, the same Armed Forces who have lost almost 400 personnel in Afghanistan alone.

Decimated by spending cuts, left to fight an unwinnable war, I bet those soldiers out there in Helmand are really chuffed to know that their sacrifices amount to about the same as a herd of goats in the minds of the British government.

I am sorry. I know this sounds harsh and uncharitable. But anyone who watched that BBC documentary, Poor Kids, last week, and sat and cried as I did, has to feel cynical about such international posturing.

I know it is heart-breaking that millions of children in the developing world die from preventable diseases such as diarrhoea, but it is even more heart-breaking that where ever you live in Britain, just a few miles from your comfortable home, a child will be going without meals and sleeping in a bed without sheets.

I’m not sure if there is a collective government line on this kind of thing, but it seems wholly hypocritical to me. Why be so generous to those who we will never meet, yet be so downright mean to those who supposedly share the same society? Take away Education Maintenance Allowance from some kid in Doncaster, to give school books to some kid in Delhi? If anyone can explain the logic of that to me, then please do.

I can comprehend the argument that helping countries to pull themselves up through education and health programmes will in the end make for a better and fairer world. And I can also – and I suspect that this is where those contradictory Tory sensibilities kick in – recognise the vestige of Britain’s role as a colonial super-power. Though considering the mess we made of the Empire in the end, you wonder why anyone would want to bother reminding themselves about it.

But as far as I can see, all those billions and billions invested in the developing world over the years have not transformed difficult countries into shiny, happy states with fully-functioning democracies, filled with citizens who love the West and all it stands for in return. If they had, then we wouldn’t have terrorists trying to blow us out of the sky.

For all it rankles, I don’t think we should lose sleep over the thought of all those billions. Paying the gas bill is more of a worry for most of us. And no doubt, if current form is anything to go by, there will be a U-turn soon, and Mr Mitchell will quietly cycle away, back to his office to pore over his maps and dream of Africa.

But we should all give a bit of time to ponder how a man so obviously out of touch, not only with his own party colleagues, but with the country in general, got to be in charge of so much money. If it was happening anywhere else, we’d be over there like a shot with our hand-outs to help save the starving