Notes
The rows over the cuts proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Nigel Lawson, illustrate how extraordinarily crude political argument can be if polit- icians wish to make it so. It is said, for example, that to cut the budget for over- seas aid during the Ethiopian famine is Political dynamite'. Even Mr Lawson seems to have succumbed to this view, avoiding any direct cut, and merely putting some pressure on the whole of the Foreign Office budget (which includes overseas aid). If so, it is dynamite which one does not need a bomb disposal expert to defuse. The truth is that a tiny — far too tiny — Part of the overseas aid budget goes towards the relief of famine and no cut need fall on it. The largest elements of Spending are British payments to multi- lateral agencies — the work of the World Bank and associated organisations, and the European Development Fund, the Corn- Ton Market's development agency. The tDF is notorious for its slowness, incom- petence and the politicking and bureau- cracy which surround its procedures. Bri- tain could justifiably try to reduce its contribution to this organisation as part of an attempt to reform it. It is also true that the overseas development budget pays more money each year to the corrupt and Pointless Unesco than it found from con- tingency reserves for the present Ethiopian emergency. The Foreign Office is, of course, aware of these things, but the trouble is that when a cut is proposed, no Politician, let alone any department, has any interest in trying to be honest about What could be cut. One of the most important roles of backbench MPs should be to scrutinise spending, and question its Purpose and efficiency, , yet most MPs argue for special interests and pressure groups, and connive at the pretence that any control of spending can only be at the expense of the hungry and the needy.
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