More daunting challenges to the funding of overseas aid

As one might have expected, the political media headlines were all about Brexit. Much was made of  the failure of Mmes Mordaunt and Truss to mention "Chequers" in speeches this week and naturally that was seen as part of a challenge to Theresa May's leadership. Then there was Dominic Raab's stonewalling statement in the House about the Brexit negotiations which said nothing that we did not know already.

Surely more important were the Urgent Questions which were granted by the Speaker yesterday. Food Labelling and Allergy-Related Deaths brought out government foot-dragging over loopholes in regulations on proper labelling (for which we have to thank the EU anyway), not to mention the shortage of epipens, and Dangerous Waste and Body Parts Disposal: NHS needs no further comment.

But what worried me most was Penny Mordaunt's response to being called to account for her proposals for the Government Overseas Aid Commitment and Private Investment in it. She was clearly nettled at being hauled back to parliament to explain what was to her no more than an administrative decision but what to most observers was a change in direction which should have been brought to parliament. So often her replies to MPs contained the words "read my speech", bordering on contempt for parliament.

Her speech is not easy to find on the Web, by the way. This is the BBC's summary which must be slightly more objective than those in the press. From what I can gather - and her explanations yesterday may have been deliberately confusing - she wants, in two ways, to reduce the amount of money that the government puts into overseas aid while nominally continuing to hit the 0.7% GDP annual legal minimum. First, she wants to attract private money, and she held up the CDC as an example of producing a good return on development loans. Secondly, she wants to include any interest paid on development loans to be ploughed back into overseas aid but to be treated as new money. Both these proposals will mean changing the OECD rules on development assistance (pdf here) . The exclusion of "primarily commercial objectives" is pretty clear. One trusts that the proposed rule changes will be resisted. However, Ms Mordaunt managed to throw enough red meat to satisfy those MPs behind her who see no purpose in foreign aid other than to provide income for British construction companies and financial institutions.