The Telegraph today reports on comments made by DFID’s Permanent Secretary Matthew Rycroft in a recent interview with Civil Service World.
Its headline is “Public mistrust of foreign aid budget is ‘valid criticism’”.
The paper focusses very narrowly on comments Mr Rycroft made in the interview about the UK aid budget and the need for DFID to fully explain its work to the British public.
In the Civil Service World Interview Mr Rycroft said it was “right” the UK spent 0.7% of its gross national income on aid.
At the same time, he acknowledged that “the British people have very varied views” about this target.
He said: “One of the big challenges of this job is to do an even better job of communicating to the British people why it is the right thing to do to be spending all this money on foreign aid.”
Mr Rycroft also talked about a push in the West Midlands to explain DFID’s work to the wider public.
To read the full Civil Service World interview click here.
How DFID helps the world’s poorest can at times be a complex matter to understand.
It is important that we continue to explain to taxpayers that by investing less than one percent of our national income in aid we are saving the lives of millions of vulnerable people suffering from severe drought and starvation and violence, while at the same time making the UK healthier and safer which is firmly in our national interest