Category: news

The UK is to stop direct aid to 16 countries, including Russia, China and Iraq, papers seen by the BBC suggest.

A draft copy of the government’s review of its overseas aid budget – due to be published this week – also reveals aid to India will be frozen.

But overall, the international development budget will rise by a third in this Parliament as a new approach focuses on value for money, it says.

The report states that aid spending is good for Britain’s economy and safety.

The draft document outlines plans for greater transparency and accountability, with an emphasis on funding programmes that deliver greater results and which, specifically, help girls and women.

Resources will be focused on the 27 countries that account for three-quarters of the world’s maternal mortality and malaria deaths, such as Ghana and Afghanistan.

By 2014, 30% of UK aid is expected to go to war-torn and unstable countries.

The report confirms that direct aid to countries including Iraq and Kosovo will stop, whilst aid to India will be frozen.

India is currently one of the biggest recipients of UK development aid, and there have been media campaigns in the UK suggesting an economy growing at nearly 10% a year simply does not need British assistance.

But others point out that nearly half a billion people in India are still desperately poor, and efforts to reduce global poverty will not progress without significant aid.

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There have been clashes on the streets of Tunis as protesters call for the resignation of Tunisia’s interim prime minister.

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The story of England and India’s thrilling tied clash

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The wife of former Barnsley Central MP Eric Illsley has said her husband is “coping” in prison after being jailed for a year for expenses fraud.

Illsley was sentenced earlier this month after admitting falsely claiming £14,000 for his second home.

The 55-year-old is the second former MP to be jailed for expenses offences.

His wife Dawn said he was “keeping his head down” at HMP Wandsworth, in south London, and was “paying dearly” for what he had done.

Mrs Illsley said: “The first few phone calls were slightly emotional obviously because it was a shock but he’s keeping his head down and getting on with it.

“He seems chirpier now than the first few days.

“He’ll cope. He’s not always been an MP.

“Eric didn’t come from the playing fields of Eden, he comes from the playing fields of Kendry [in Barnsley]… so he’s quite resilient, he’ll handle it well.”

Illsley pleaded guilty to three charges of false accounting by dishonestly claiming payments for insurance, repairs, utility bills and council tax at his second home between 2005 and 2008.

Southwark Crown Court heard he received £100 more a week on average than he was entitled to over a three-year period.

Mrs Illsley said she had no idea her husband was over-claiming.

“I never saw his claim sheets, I never asked. Eric did that and that was that,” she said.

She said he was now “paying dearly” for what he had done.

“He’s very sorry. As soon as he realised he wasn’t entitled to the money he paid it back.”

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Plans to cut up to 1,000 jobs at an NHS trust in Greater Manchester will have an impact on patients, the British Medical Association (BMA) has said.

The Pennine Acute Trust, which runs hospitals in Oldham, Bury, Rochdale and north Manchester, expects to have to save at least £45m by April 2012.

Its chief executive John Saxby said the savings could mean losing 10% of jobs.

Dr JS Bamrah, of the BMA, said: “You simply cannot provide the same level of service with 10% fewer staff.”

Mr Saxby said he estimated the trust would have to save £45m, as part of the wider NHS having to find efficiency savings of £20bn.

This could rise once the trust knows what services GPs want to commission, Mr Saxby believes.

He said the savings could not be met by cutting waste or reducing non-pay expenditure and all areas of the trust needed to be looked at to “reduce costs and work more efficiently”.

As 70% of the trust’s budget is spent on wages, up to 1,000 jobs from a total of 10,000 may have to be cut, he said.

Dr JS Bamrah, chairman of the BMA’s North West regional council, said: “We don’t yet know the detail of which posts will go, but there will undoubtedly be an impact on patients.

“You simply cannot provide the same level of service with 10% fewer staff, even if they are in non-clinical roles.”

Labour MP Simon Danczuk, whose Rochdale constituency is served by Pennine Acute Trust, said the job cuts would affect both patients and the local economy.

“It is going to have an adverse affect on services people have in hospital, and on the wider community.

“Public sector jobs are very important in Rochdale. These cuts will inevitably have an effect on the local economy.

He added: “The Conservatives said in the run up to the general election they were going to cut the deficit but not the NHS.

“This latest reduction in the number of jobs in the NHS is more proof they are cutting the NHS.”

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “The government promised to reduce NHS bureaucracy and plough this money straight back into patient care, and that is exactly what we are delivering.

“Since May 2010, we have thousands more doctors, nurses and midwives – and 2,000 fewer managers.

“Labour oppose these cuts in bureaucracy, just as they oppose our investment in the NHS and our modernisation plans. They would spend less and do nothing.”

The Pennine Acute Trust, which serves a population of 800,000, said it hoped compulsory redundancies would not be necessary.

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Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, Necmettin Erbakan, has died at the age of 85, one of his aides has said.

Mr Erbakan served only a year as prime minister before he was forced to stand down in 1997 by Turkey’s staunchly secular military.

His Islamist Welfare Party was banned in 1998, while Mr Erbakan was barred from politics for five years for violating the constitution.

The governing AK Party, which has Islamist roots, grew out of Welfare.

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