Why be silent about Britain's generosity to the world?

In politics, no good deed ever goes unannounced. That rule was broken yesterday at an event which attracted hardly more notice than a village hall Beetle drive. Far from being a low-key affair, the conference was hosted in Berlin by Angela Merkel and attended by leaders, ministers and philanthropists from across the world. Its purpose was to raise nearly £5 billion to immunise children against fatal diseases.

As far as Westminster was concerned, this very public forum was conducted under a mantle of secrecy better befitting the United Ancient Order of Druids. The code of omerta was all the more curious, given that Britain was the star of the show. Back in November, David Cameron quietly let on that the Government would give up to £1 billion over the next four years to the Global Vaccines Alliance (Gavi).

Yesterday other nations pledged their more limited support to the public and privately-backed initiative, with the US offering $1 billion (£665 million). Back in Britain, with 100 days until polling day, the party leaders setting out their respective stalls made no mention of the UK’s handsome offering.

In the souk of pre-election pledges, Mr Cameron hoped the electorate would buy the promise of a new crackdown on welfare claimants, while Ed Miliband advertised an NHS revolution on a corn-plaster budget. With budgets so squeezed, neither party cares to tout its gilt-edged record on foreign aid.

The resulting silence is ominous. If our leaders do not celebrate helping to save many million young lives through Gavi’s work, it is hard to see how they are going to win public backing for less popular missions. The festering question of whether Britain’s generosity on international development is justified may be about to erupt.

The Tories, should they win in May, are likely to impose £30 billion of spending cuts, while Labour offers scant antidote to austerity. Middle-income households have been left as much as £6,000 a year worse off after tax rises and child benefit cuts, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. A separate evaluation published this week claimed that the poorest 20 per cent have lost, on average, almost 3 per cent of their income.

In this bleak climate, in the dying weeks of a zombie parliament, a Private Member’s Bill committing the UK to spending 0.7 per cent of gross national product (GNP) on aid may become law. Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, has called the move bizarre, in an intervention echoed by Mr Cameron’s father-in-law.

Speaking in a Lords debate, Viscount Astor questioned why the Coalition wanted to put the pledge into law while not protecting the defence budget. That perfectly fair question deserves an answer. It is receiving one neither from the Labour leadership nor from a Prime Minister who once called the £11 billion foreign aid budget “my proudest achievement”.

Bill Gates is among those arguing, rightly, that Britain should celebrate its open-handedness. When I spoke to him in Berlin this week, on the eve of the vaccines conference, he called the UK “fantastic in its support of Gavi”. This country, he added, should be “extremely proud” of its record. “Britain is very generous. It has a strong civil society that cares about these things.”

Mr Gates, whose foundation yesterday donated $1.55 billion to Gavi, puts his money where his mouth is. He may, however, be over-optimistic in thinking that hard-pressed Britons, generous charity-givers though they are, share his zeal. Polling suggests that British voters are among the world’s least enthusiastic public-aid donors and that 17 per cent want the budget abolished. Ukip, adept at exploiting disillusion, has promised to cut it by 85 per cent.

Britain has some excuse for scepticism. Earlier this month, for example, stories based on a National Audit Office report suggested the International Development Department (DfID) conducted a spending bonanza with the billions of pounds left in its budget.

No senior politician bothered properly to explain that hitting a narrow target against a background of uncertainty is bound to be inexact. Hence any residual cash is paid, with strict conditions, to organisations carrying out vital work, including in this instance the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria. The problems of such a system are less worrisome than the uncertainty of having a discretionary aid budget, liable to be whittled down at any cash-strapped government’s whim.

That does not mean Britons should not be asking hard questions. Tony Blair’s old promise to “make poverty history” sounds arcane when British citizens are queuing at soup kitchens. Heart-rending images seared into the minds of MPs on expenses-paid foreign visits mean little to Britons struggling for health care or shelter. While benevolence is not dictated by income, no one supposes that the Good Samaritan was on Jobseeker’s Allowance.

As Douglas Alexander, the shadow foreign secretary, has said, development aid is “not a march towards charity but towards justice”. Faultless as that sentiment remains, it helps if the marchers are well-heeled citizens rather than the barefoot ranks of the dispossessed.

Although Mr Alexander declares himself “proud” of the 0.7 per cent pledge, most politicians are failing to make the hard-headed case for development aid. The first myth to scotch is how much it costs. We spend more every year on soft drinks than on an aid programme whose results in 2015 will include educating 11 million children.

Investment in health, road-building and farming will unleash the economic potential of developing countries, making them self-sufficient more quickly and thus less dependent on the help of the rich world. The charge that aid is siphoned towards corrupt kleptocrats is unsubstantiated, with aid programmes more accountable and transparent than they have ever been.

There is an ongoing argument to be had about how aid should be spent in austere times, but the necessity of preserving lives but also maintaining security and justice has rarely been clearer. Given the rise of jihadism and instability, the world cannot afford the fragile and failed states that incubate extremism.

With the barriers of the old order torn down, Ebola, climate change and terror are all unleashed and coming home. The illusion that the rich West could bomb its way to a safer world has been supplanted by the awareness that the only path ahead is one of common interest.

As party leaders scrabble for election ammunition, leaders are not minded to “weaponise” international aid, or even mention it unless they have to. What should be a matter of national celebration has instead become a grubby secret. As the former Labour development spokesman Jim Murphy used to say, politicians are in danger of losing an argument they are not making.

A more prosperous and equal world will serve everyone’s best interests, not least Britain’s, long after this spasm of austerity has passed. Our commitment to international aid is worth every farthing of the cost. It is an emblem of a Britain that can rise above adversity. In the bitter election campaign to come, any politician who aspires to lead this country should dare to say so.