{"id":6728,"date":"2016-07-25T05:49:37","date_gmt":"2016-07-25T05:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=6728"},"modified":"2016-07-25T05:49:37","modified_gmt":"2016-07-25T05:49:37","slug":"priti-patels-challenge-to-her-new-self","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2016\/07\/25\/priti-patels-challenge-to-her-new-self\/","title":{"rendered":"Priti Patel's challenge to her new self"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before Priti Patel became the UK's new secretary of state for international development in the latest government changes, she had already set her new self a challenge. \u00a0Three years ago she said her department of state\u00a0should be abolished. \u00a0But now she's in charge, what will she do? \u00a0<em>The Times<\/em>, for one, hopes that she's not changed her mind. \u00a0In a recent editorial, it said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\"The Department for International Development (DfID) should be a champion of state-of-the-art overseas aid and a symbol of British soft power. \u00a0Instead it has become a byword for mismanagement and waste. \u00a0Thanks to the government\u2019s statutory duty to devote 0.7 per cent of GDP to foreign aid, one of the department\u2019s principle duties is spending taxpayers\u2019 money to ensure that the target is met. \u00a0This is a target embraced to alleviate suffering, serve Britain\u2019s strategic interests and in the process give the country a good name. \u00a0In practice it has served to profit corrupt regimes and given aid a bad name. ...\"<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Sadly, it's not difficult to come up with examples of such excess; indeed, you only have to read the Daily Mail, which I occasionally force myself to do. \u00a0But it seems inevitable under present management that a proportion of our \u00a312bn aid budget gets used for nefarious ends, or helping the Swiss banking system cover its costs.<\/p>\n<p>In 2013,\u00a0Patel suggested\u00a0replacing DfID with a 'department for international trade and development' that would see\u00a0trade have a greater emphasis than aid, and such a move would meet with approval from at least\u00a0some expert advice on the economics of development. \u00a0Given that we now actually have a department for international trade, that would seem quite possible. \u00a0But will she do it? \u00a0Saying all this whilst insulated from the Aid movement's influence is easy; to continue to do so whilst immersed within it, may prove quite another.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before Priti Patel became the UK's new secretary of state for international development in the latest government changes, she had already set her new self a challenge. \u00a0Three years ago she said her department of state\u00a0should be abolished. \u00a0But now...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}