SPENDING on UK aid has been driven by national self-interest, according to a new report which argues that a new, progressive vision is urgently needed.

Global Justice Now argues that aid must be re-focused on principles of social justice and the need to redistribute economic and political power in the world.

Its report “Re-imagining UK aid: What a progressive strategy could look like” argues that “aid spending has been driven by notions of charity, national self-interest, and an ideological belief that free markets and multinational business can solve the world’s problems”. It also lays out eight areas where aid money could be used to achieve long-term, structural, progressive change.

Co-author Aisha Dodwell said UK aid strategy needed a fundamental change.

“The direction of the UK’s current aid strategy seems to be increasingly about using aid money to benefit corporations rather than communities,” she said.

“Promoting free-market reforms and subsidising the private sector not only ignores the fact that development should be about rights, equality and empowerment, it also ignores decades of lived experience about the best economic strategy for a developing economy.

“This report presents a series of concrete examples of positive aid spending to provide the basis of an open discussion on how we could re-imagine UK aid.

“Taxpayers’ money could be used as a tool to achieving long-term structural and progressive change in other countries, building democracy from the bottom up and giving people power over their own lives.”

She said that in the last year the UK aid budget had been subject to a series of controversies. One involved the “free-market” development consultants Adam Smith International, who were exposed as attempting to falsify evidence to a parliamentary enquiry, while a major news exposé cast critical light on projects being financed by the UK Government's private equity outfit, the CDC group.

Senior politicians, backed by a tabloid campaign, have called on the UK’s legal requirement of 0.7 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) spent on aid to be scrapped entirely.

Dodwell said her report attempted to steer a pragmatic path between the right-wing calls for aid spending to be scrapped entirely, and the defensive development sector that paints an uncritical position of the direction that the UK aid strategy is taking.

She said aid should be reimagined as a form of global wealth redistribution, which was more similar to paying taxes than giving to charity, and should be based on principles of solidarity and justice, meaning that local ownership and leadership must become a reality. Dodwell pointed out that there are local movements for economic and social justice, including frontline women’s movements, in many developing countries, which a progressive aid programme can work to support.

Chris Law MP, the SNP’s international development spokesperson, said: “The UK plays a crucial role on the international stage when it comes to tackling challenges in developing countries, however there has been a worrying increase in rhetoric from the Department for International Development about diverting money from the aid budget for other purposes.”

“We echo Global Justice Now’s recommendations for the UK Government to reverse the trend of aid being viewed through the prism of national and commercial interest, rather than one of tackling poverty and inequality."

He added that SNP MPs would continue to press the government to "uphold its commitment to spending 0.7 per cent of GDP on aid, and to ensure that such funding is accountable and transparent.”