Labour is to keep spending billions of pounds of UK taxpayers’ money on green schemes overseas despite slashing the foreign aid budget.
The Foreign Secretary revealed that the UK will hand out £6billion over the next three years for International Climate Finance projects and aim to generate another £6.7bn in ‘UK-backed climate and nature positive investments’.
Yvette Cooper vowed that ‘climate and nature’ would continue to be one of the three priorities of Britain’s foreign aid programme alongside humanitarian crises and global health, as it ‘protects people and prevents future crises’.
It comes despite the Government cutting the overall budget for Official Development Assistance (ODA) by 40 per cent in order to fund increased defence spending.
The Mail has previously told how £99million of British taxpayers’ money is being spent on encouraging families in Africa and Asia to cook with electricity instead of firewood.
Under another £4.5m project intended to help the environment, thousands of villagers in Malawi are being handed the equivalent of £433 in cash.
Senior Reform MP Robert Jenrick said: ‘When money is tight it is insane to waste such large amounts of money on dubious projects thousands of miles away.’
He pledged: ‘A Reform UK Government would slash our aid budget to a bare minimum and put our own people first.’
Under just one UK climate aid project, British taxpayers are spending £99million on encouraging African families to cook with electricity rather than firewood
John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: ‘Taxpayers will be furious to find out that the foreign aid budget is still being wasted on ideological projects, rather than genuine humanitarian emergencies.’
Ms Cooper told MPs on Thursday that cutting foreign aid to pay for increased military spending was ‘not an ideological step’ but a ‘difficult choice in the face of international threats’.
‘We have looked hard at what we prioritise and how we work, using the challenge of a reduced budget to find solutions that increase impact, focusing on what secures best value for money for taxpayers while reflecting UK values and the UK national interest, and what will seize new opportunities to bring real change to people’s lives,’ she said in a Commons statement.
Under the new approach, the UK will commit £1.4bn a year ‘to tackle human suffering’ in countries ravaged by war with funding protected for Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan and Lebanon.
But Ms Cooper admitted this would mean ‘direct bilateral aid funding for other countries will be reduced’, even in the likes of Somalia and Afghanistan.
She also said the UK would ‘phase out’ funding for G20 countries, after years of outrage that taxpayers’ money has been given in aid to China and India.
International Development Committee chairman Sarah Champion told her: ‘Our aid cuts will reduce that. Girls in South Sudan will no longer have education, polio will surge, civil society is being abandoned and the poorest will not be fed.’
And she warned the consequences would also include more migrants coming to the UK, saying: ‘As the former Home Secretary well knows, we will see people come to our shores to seek sanctuary and opportunity.’
Ms Champion said countries not designated as Fragile and Conflict Affected States would face a 60 cut to their aid funding with regional programmes in Africa cut by 50 per cent.
