The Guardian

London, October 14:

Britain has become the world’s second largest overseas aid donor thanks to a 12 per cent increase in spending in the past year, the government said. Aid spending rose to £808 million in the last financial year to a new record of £7.5 billion, putting Britain second behind the US.
“It’s clear that the UK is keeping its promises and that aid for development is increasing,” said the UK’s international development secretary Douglas Alexander. “Every year our aid helps to lift around three million people permanently out of poverty and empowers poor countries to provide basic services such as health and education that we commonly take for granted.”
In the past 10 years, Alexander claimed that UK aid had helped put 28
million children into primary school — 17 million in Bangladesh alone — and funded 700 more nurses in Malawi and 3,000 health workers in Uganda. It had also helped bring clean water to more than 2.5 million people in India, Pakistan and Iraq.
The figures showed that in the calendar year 2006 Britain provided £6.8 billion in Overseas Development Aid — the official definition which includes debt relief.
The government spends 0.5 per cent of national income on aid, the highest share since 1964, but the Department for International Development (DFID) said Britain was committed to meeting the United Nation’s target of 0.7 per cent by 2013, ahead of the agreed European target date of 2015.
Alexander said, “We are committed to increasing our aid to poor countries, but fighting poverty and promoting development is not just about aid.
The prime minister has signalled a new phase for delivering on our promises built upon new global partnerships, such as the new international health partnership launched in August, and doing more beyond aid.”
Aid campaigners welcomed the news. Patrick Watt, policy coordinator at ActionAid, said, “This is an encouraging set of figures from the DFID. For developing countries to fight killer diseases such as HIV and get more children in to education, rich countries must up their game, so this is a great signal to send.