The Daily Telegraph has reported that the Enough Food for Everyone 'IF' campaign is not independent, but in fact was orchestrated from the start by the Conservative Party.
The newspaper alleges that the campaign, which lobbied for the UK to commit to spend 0.7 per cent of gross national income on foreign aid – as Chancellor George Osborne confirmed earlier this year that it would be doing – was in fact originally conceived at meetings in Whitehall and at the Conservative Party conference.
The IF campaign was launched in January, but according to the Telegraph plans were discussed back in 2011 between one of the Prime Minister’s aides and the five charities who make up the umbrella group British Overseas Aid Group (BOAG): Oxfam, Save the Children, ActionAid, Cafod and Christian Aid, who annually receive a combined £60m from the Department for International Development (DfID).
Andrew Mitchell, the then-International Development Secretary, apparently discussed the details of the campaign in a series of meetings, which included a Downing Street hunger event at the 2012 Olympics and culmination at the G8 summit last month.
War on Want refused to join IF
In its story, the Telegraph quotes the executive director of anti-poverty charity War on Want John Hilary revealing that his organisation rejected the chance to take part in the IF campaign. He was worried about government interference, and was told War on Want could only join if it refused to criticise government policy.
War on Want used a Freedom of Information request to obtain details of Mitchell’s meetings, and Hilary said: “The internal documents reveal that the government has, for two years, been planning with the aid agencies to use the IF campaign to promote the Prime Minister as a leader on the global stage.
“The thing which concerned us was that there was a requirement that anybody who was joining the campaign would have to be silent about the problems being caused by the British government."
Hilary added that since the government’s policies, both domestic and foreign, are “very regressive”, he found the idea that his charity would have to keep quiet and operate in a campaign that saw these as above criticism “deeply disturbing”.
DfID and IF deny claims
Both the IF Campaign and DfID denied the allegations of collusion.
A spokeswoman for the IF campaign refuted the claim that charities signing up had been gagged, adding that the campaign had been “repeatedly critical” of the government.
She told the Telegraph: “The IF campaign has been campaigning for fundamental reform of the global tax system and for the UK to put its own house in order on tax - hardly comfortable territory for the government.
“You shouldn’t confuse the desire of a campaign to communicate its asks to government as early as possible with any sort of conspiracy.”
And a DfID statement read: “The IF campaign is completely independent from government. We award funding based solely on ability to deliver specific and measurable results.”
More than 45,000 people attended a ‘Big IF’ rally in London’s Hyde park on Saturday 8 June, and celebrity supporters of the movement include David Beckham, David Walliams and Mo Farah.
