26 February 2007

The British public strongly supports increases in international aid, according to an ICM* poll published by ActionAid today (26 February), 100 days before the start of this year’s G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany. 

Jesse Griffiths of ActionAid’s aid policy team said: "Two years ago the G8 promised to double aid to Africa by 2010. Britain's contribution to that increase has strong public support.  But with just 100 days to this year’s summit, several G8 countries still have not said how they plan to increase their aid to the promised level."

Last week (22 February) an OECD report confirmed that the world total of aid is growing far too slowly to achieve the required increase by 2010. 

When told how much the UK government spends on aid, almost three out of four people (72%) said it was 'about right' or 'too little'. Two-thirds (65%) of those polled said they tended to support or strongly supported the planned increase in government aid.  

But before they knew the true figure, ActionAid asked how much they thought the government spends on aid. Of those prepared to offer a guess – and one in three (32%) would not even do that – the majority seriously overestimated aid’s share of the national budget. 

Their average (mean) answer was 18.5%, or nearly a fifth of all government spending. In fact aid accounted for just 1.3% (£4.4bn) of UK government spending in the year 2005-2006. 

Those who opposed the government's plans to increase aid – the 'aid sceptics' – were asked why they did so. The most frequent answer was that 'we should spend the money in this country, not overseas'. However, a majority of aid sceptics (57%) were open to persuasion, and said they would support the increases 'if the aid provided by the UK could be fully accounted for and guaranteed to help the poorest.

Jesse Griffiths said: "Public support for more and better aid is strong and not easily shaken. It is encouraging to learn that even aid sceptics could be won over by improvements in aid quality.

"People told us they want more public debate about aid. They might discover that aid is a much smaller item in the government’s budget than they imagine."

* ICM is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules. Further information at www.icmresearch.co.uk.