Although I have not done so for some time now, my work on tax justice in the first decade of that campaign's existence pretty much inevitably involved interaction with DfID, which Boris Johnson has now announced will be merged into the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
As I recall, without exception the interactions were useful and the willingness to listen and to and act on the messages on tax justice that we were there to deliver was high. Staff at DfIID simply got, based on their on the ground experience, the fact that tax havens were unambiguously harming development, promoted corruption and stripped any profits arising from activities that were created straight out of the countries that the UK was trying to support.
They also funded research into these issues (although I never received such support, directly or indirectly) and were very willing to promote findings.
The Foreign Office was not of the same mindset. It retained the view that tax haven activity was a way of getting the cost of the Overseas Territories off its books, for example. There was never a hint that it understood the problems that tax haven activity created.
Do I, therefore, regret Johnson's announcement? Yes, of course. For three reasons.
The first is that this is intended to crush the culture of DfID, and that culture has, overall (and of course there are exceptions) been a force for good.
Second, the replacement culture is pro-defence and business, and strategically focussed for the UK rather than needs focussed for the recipients. That undermines the whole logic of aid.
Third, tax havens will be rubbing their hands with glee. That has to make this bad news.
The corruption that the Johnson government appears to exist to promote continues. The status of the UK continues to decline as a consequence. And people will suffer as a result. This was a bad day's work.
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Nothing to disagree with in your post – I think Johnson’s bit about making our aid ‘work for Britain’ is basically what the American government has been doing since the twentieth century and is the same ramped-up rhetoric we see in Trump (‘America first’).
What makes me laugh though is that has ALWAYS been America first anyway!!
This is all part of the agenda writ large since vote leave.
We will only start waking up when we lose free roaming in Europe and start to have difficulty taking that TV back to the store to be replaced – i.e. when our consumerist habits are challenged.
The Mark Curtis web site has been quite critical of the way DIFID is set up.
He states that its aid concentrates on privatised healthcare and education with the usual “revolving doors” Perhaps not the most effective way to help poor countries.
I said there are issues – and I do not pretend they do not exist
But overall DfID has been a force for good
For a while now, since the Brexit stuff started, there have been a growing opinion amongst certain right of center groups that DIFID should be scrapped and the funds and running costs be transfered to the defence budget. Whilst there have been discussions about a Royal Navy/RFA hospital/disaster relief ship being funded I imagine, as with most cuts, the money will just disappear.
A lesson then that wishing for funding to be cut in one area so that it can be spent in another is a poor policy.
In my commercial experience with the state departments – DfiD were one of better post 97 ones. But no matter how much better and cheaper we were, there were 3 organisations that never accepted our tenders – the Met police, the MoD and the FCO.
Thick as thieves with their old ‘commercial partners’.