UKIP Manifesto Foreign Affairs and Overseas Aid
Post Brexit, Britain’s foreign policy no longer needs be linked to the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, which would inevitably involve us in the EU’s planned armed forces and embroil us in its foreign policy ambitions. We should put the needs of our own citizens first. Our foreign aid budget is often wasted on corrupt regimes, or given to countries that can afford their own atomic weapon and space programmes.
• Under former Labour and Conservative governments, we have been engaged in wars that have not brought peace, but instead have made the world a more dangerous place. Britain’s foreign policy should be strictly framed from the view-point of what is in the UK’s national interest. We should not allow ourselves to be swept into war on someone else’s coat tails.
• David Cameron committed the UK to 0.7% (currently £14bn) of GNI (Gross National Income) to Overseas Aid. This is a purely artificial construct and much of this money goes to corrupt governments and is lost in fraud. The Department for International Development (DfID) spends and wastes money, purely to meet its artificial target.
• UKIP will scrap the target of 0.7% GNI for Overseas Aid and return £14 billion to HM Treasury to assist our own citizens in our own country.
• UKIP supports government providing genuine disaster relief and humanitarian aid, as appropriate. UKIP would return to the old system in which DfID was a small directorate of the Foreign Office responsible for disaster relief on an ‘as and when’ basis.
• UKIP supports existing systems whereby citizens can donate to foreign aid charities and receive tax relief.
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