UK will help in Gaza but terrorists will NOT get your money, says foreign aid minister

Britain stands ready to provide aid for a humanitarian crisis in Gaza but will ensure no taxpayers’ money goes to terrorists, the international development minister has told the Mail.

Andrew Mitchell said it would be ‘imprudent’ not to plan for being involved in relief for the unfolding disaster.

But he said the UK would not have any direct contact with Hamas.

Mitchell said: ‘When these awful humanitarian difficulties take place, Britain is always one of the first and most effective to bring relief to those who are suffering.

‘We want to make sure that whatever happens following this appalling tragedy in Israel, we are able to play a part in helping.’

Taxing times: UK foreign aid minister Andrew Mitchell, in Marrakech (pictured), vowed that the UK will help bring relief to Gaza

He was speaking during a visit to Marrakech in Morocco for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank annual meetings, which were overshadowed by the murderous attacks on Israel.

The violence has sparked renewed conflict in which many Palestinians have also died, and further military action looks certain.

Britain is considering moving humanitarian supplies into the region so that it can make ‘the contribution that British people would expect us to be able to make’, Mitchell said. 

It will mean that ‘whatever happens and if the humanitarian situation deteriorates, we are able to play our part in mitigating it’, he said.

The generosity stands in contrast to the carping by the World Bank’s second-in-command in a BBC interview last week about the UK’s reduced contribution to its aid programme.

But helping innocent people in Gaza will be complicated by the fact that the territory is controlled by the terrorists of Hamas –and Mitchell was quick to insist they would not benefit.

‘What your readers will want to know is the same as what we want to know – which is first of all that no money is being taken corruptly or by terrorists,’ he said.

Britain’s work in the region is already heavily circumscribed. Whitehall stopped giving money two years ago to the Palestinian Authority – which controls the West Bank, separate from Hamas-controlled Gaza – and does not even talk to Hamas.

‘We watch like a hawk everything, everywhere, every penny that is being spent,’ Mitchell said.

‘That was true before this tragedy – and we continue to do so.’

Mitchell insists, however, that Britain must stand ready to help. The MP for Sutton Coldfield said: ‘It would be imprudent not to be planning for any eventuality because it is possible that a humanitarian crisis is going to escalate.

‘We have identified funding – money for all eventualities, what Britain can do to help.

‘We have pre-positioned supplies in Dubai. We may need to increase them, we may need to put them somewhere else. These are things we are actively looking at, at the moment.’

Terror state: Helping innocent people in Gaza will be complicated by the fact that the territory is controlled by the terrorists of Hamas 

The aid would be provided via UNOCHA, the United Nations arm which coordinates relief efforts during humanitarian emergencies and is led by Martin Griffiths, a Briton.

Britain’s status as a donor to poor countries has come into focus since it reduced its commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of GDP on aid to 0.5 per cent.

Last week, Axel van Trotsenburg, the World Bank’s number two, said Britain’s reduced funding had caused ‘real pain’.

He was referring to Britain halving its contribution to the International Development Association (IDA) – the arm of the World Bank which provides low interest loans and grants to the world’s poorest countries – to £500million. 

Mitchell said van Trotsenburg’s comments failed to take account of all of the support Britain provided and insisted the view was not shared by his boss, World Bank president Ajay Banga, who Mitchell said would agree that Britain ‘punches above its weight’.

He added: ‘It’s important to recognise that while in Britain following Covid we did rein back some of our spending on the IDA programme, we were previously spending more than the Americans – that doesn’t feel right. 

‘We are the third biggest supporter of IDA and we are behind the Americans and the Japanese.’

As a backbencher, Mitchell led the rebellion against the reduction in the aid budget but came back into government last year.

He said Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had asked him to ‘make sure we got the best possible value for money’ out of spending.

And Mitchell said that other efforts by Britain – from guaranteeing loans to using London’s financial expertise – effectively ‘dwarf the cut in the 0.7 per cent’. He added: ‘We are doing our best. 

Needs must. So faced with this, we have been ingenious in financial engineering, in finding new, and clever ways, to augment the spending and what we do with the spending.’

Mitchell’s comments came before Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s warning last week that ‘difficult decisions’ on spending would be needed at the autumn statement. 

Yet the minister will no doubt continue to make the case for the value of Britain’s aid commitments – and its practical impact on those at home.

‘The argument for a robust aid and development budget is that it is designed to create safer and more prosperous, less conflict-ridden societies over there so that people don’t feel the need to migrate and come to Europe and the prosperous world,’ said the 67-year-old minister.

‘Every penny of the British international development budget is spent in Britain’s national interest.

‘Why?

‘Because if it’s safer and more prosperous over there that tends to come back to us in making us safer and more prosperous too.’

This post first appeared on Dailymail.co.uk