Downing Street is reportedly “unhappy” with the U.K. Department for International Development’s spending priorities.
A senior aide at the prime minister’s office told the Daily Telegraph’s Alex Singleton that Steve Hilton, British Prime Minister David Cameron’s strategy director, had solicited ideas from the biggest aid charities on how to help boost business in poor nations.
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“To Hilton’s annoyance, they came up with nothing useful. They didn’t want to get bogged down discussing capitalism, they told him, because it might make the Tories [Conservative party] think the pledge to spend 0.7 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) on aid was not the best way to end poverty,” Singleton writes.
“[G]iven that even Downing Street is struggling to get any good ideas, DfID’s ballooning budget will continue to deliver plenty of colourful examples of squander,” he argues.
