One of the achievements of the Liberal Democrats in Government is to ensure the UK meets its long standing commitment to help poorest in the world, with 0.7% of the countries income going in aid. This is despite the economic down and opposition to it from both outside and inside Government.
The UK is still one of the richest countries in the world and it only right that we help others in a less fortunate position. Some like UKIP say this budget should be cut by £9 billion. This only serves to remind me why I am in the Lib Dems. When we are looking as a country to save money the poorest people in the world are not the people we should be taking it from.
If you exclude the Aid budget and the net payments to the EU, which also help the poorer regions of Europe, over 98% of Government expenditure is on running UK public services. So we still looking after ourselves too.
The UK is now one step closer to enshrining UK aid in law. Yesterday, Liberal Democrats defeated Conservative opposition to Michael Moore’s private members bill to commit our UK Aid spending target of 0.7% to law.