THERE was fresh anger over taxpayer aid to India last night as it emerged the country is spending £1billion on three warships.
Britain is still handing over £280million a year
despite India admitting it doesn’t need the help and regards the amount
as “peanuts”.
As the Royal Navy suffers severe
budget cuts, India has splashed out on Russian-built frigates, including
one said to carry the world’s fastest Cruise missile. The news follows
this month’s announcement that India is planning a £50million unmanned
spacecraft mission to Mars.
Conservative MP
Philip Davies said: “It seems to me that a country that spends billions
on defence is more than capable of looking after its own people without
£280million a year from British taxpayers. They could just spend £280million less on defence.
“Also, the money we give to India we have to borrow, so by the time we have repaid it, it’s a lot more.”
Overseas aid spending has escaped Coalition austerity cuts.
Ministers are committed to increasing it to 0.7 per
cent of national output, up from £7.8billion this year to £11.5billion
by 2015, to reach targets set by the United Nations.
India’s new Cruise missile-carrying frigate, INS Teg, is the first of three Talwar class warships ordered from the Yantar shipyard in Russia.
The
International Development Department insists: “As we have made clear
many times, British aid is not used to fund India’s defence programme.”
But
Joseph Hosier, a retired merchant seaman who revealed the purchase of
the warships, said: “We haven’t got a merchant navy to speak of and,
with what’s happened to the Royal Navy too, it’s disgusting.
“I’d like to know, if we’re so friendly with India, whether we were offered the contract for these ships, and if not, why not?”
Matthew
Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “Just a
couple of weeks after learning how they are effectively subsidising
India’s mission to Mars, British taxpayers will be dismayed to discover
that the Indian government is splashing the cash on these new warships.
“India
can afford to spend billions on ventures and equipment that the British
Government goes without. This only goes to emphasise the absurdity of
British aid going to India.”
Yorkshire
MEP Godfrey Bloom, UK Independence Party defence spokesman, said:
“India now has a far superior navy to ours – new frigates, aircraft carriers with aircraft. And what do we have?”
Despite India’s booming economy, millions of its citizens still live in poverty.
And yet India is said to be the world’s largest importer of arms.
Last year it also came seventh in a world league table of military spending after the US, China, Russia, the UK, France and Japan.
The
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute put India joint fourth
with Britain in terms of spending as a percentage of GDP, at 2.6 per
cent. India spent £30.9billion against the UK’s £39.6billion.
India’s military expansion has been driven by rivalries with neighbours Pakistan and China.
In
January it chose French company Dassault for a £13billion order for 126
fighter aircraft instead of buying Eurofighter Typhoons offered by a
consortium in which BAE Systems has a 33 per cent stake.
Britain has been without an aircraft carrier strike force since Sea Harriers were axed in 2010.
If a country can design, build and deploy nuclear weapons, it does not need foreign aid.
ReplyDeleteWhose the idiot now? Just like the U.S allowing most of their major companies move to china to make them rich, help finance their military expansion to be use against them. What a joke!
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