Episode 19 The Big Questions

White working class boys - Are they discriminated against?

And overseas aid - Should we stay committed to 0.7%?

Today we're live from Brunel University London in Uxbridge.

Welcome, everybody, to The Big Questions.

Only a tenth of working class white boys go on to university compared

to a fifth of boys from a black Caribbean heritage, half of boys

from an Indian background, and three out of five Chinese boys.

Even the poorest working class girls, those on free school meals,

are doing much better than their brothers - they're 50%

And although males are now a minority amongst

undergraduate and post-graduate students, those from the richest

backgrounds are five times more likely to go onto higher education

Are white working class boys being discriminated against?

Martin, you think this is a scandal, why so? I do. We live in a world

where to be born white and male is deemed to be winning at life's

lottery. We hear about white privilege or the time. Evidence

surrounds us, white men run the country. Their arm or men called

John on the FTSE 100 than women. Proof that men are in control. The

Erik Pieters is irrefutable among the working class in particular. --

the evidence is irrefutable. A damning indictment which prove white

boys are the bottom of the heap. Not only that, there is no intervention

to help. When I asked the Department for Education, are there any plans

to address this? It is the evidence is clear. Thereon no plans. Why not?

The head of the University admissions Council has been crying

out for years, this is an inequality. Why can we not be gender

blind and race blind and merely sought the neediest? White boys are

the neediest. Yet they have no friends, they have no allies in the

corridors of power. There is an equalities minister recently changed

to the women's and equalities minister. The mere mention of

raising boys or men's issues in the Houses of Parliament is met with

outright ridicule and contempt. International men's Day last

November, Jess Phillips laughed at the idea and tried to block the

debate and failed. On that list was the poor education of these boys who

are not going to university. We do not know why. There are attitudinal

differences. White boys feel school is not for them. They are not being

helped. We need more male primary school teachers. You are saying a

lot here, laying it all out. I'm sure you've got more. Basically you

are saying young, working class white boys are being discriminated

against. Nicola, is that the case? Martin makes a very emotional start

off, with one or two fact sprinkled in. But look, there are issues

concerning social mobility in this country and indeed the attainment of

white working-class boys. To say the government is not looking at these

issues is a fallacy. How do we know this? Just a couple of years ago the

education select committee called for evidence looking at this very

issue. At the moment we have something called the pupil premium,

which is looking to support the need for pupils from disadvantaged

backgrounds. Under the previous government we also had a wider

participation agenda. To say we are not looking at this as a society is

completely untrue. Where I would agree with you is that actually

there is an issue around social mobility in this country. And that

issue affects different groups in different ways. Not just the white

working class, but also young people from different racial and faith

backgrounds. But there is a big difference... Let me finish my

point. Between different racial and faith minorities. That is something

we are abysmal at recognising and discussing. I agree with you that

this is being looked at, great. Let's look at the evidence. We have

the evidence for at least eight years. Where are the outreach

projects? Where is the affirmative action to recruit more male primary

school teachers? What do you mean by the phrase white privilege? Well you

must be an expert on that, tell us about that. There is an automatic

assumption that if you are born white you are born into privilege

and have a better start in life, this proves otherwise. It does!

Comeback on that, Nicola, then I will spread it around. I'm not even

going to talk about my own research here, let me not to do that. Let me

site instead some research carried out by the commission for social

mobility and child poverty published just a couple of years ago. This is

chaired by Adam Milburn and what their report is, they carried out a

survey of all of the businesses, media, law, these are professions

which are seen to have the most influence on society, and what they

found in that survey of over 4000 leaders was that they are being led

by white privileged men. Men who have been to independent schools,

studied at Oxbridge. We are not talking about those, they are

completely different men. We might not be but we should be. Why?

Because those people are in positions of power and determine

what happens in our society. To talk about disadvantage without also

recognising advantage, and how people get to those positions, and

protect those positions, is to have a false debate. James Bloodworth?

This sums up what we are really talking about here, class, it is not

necessarily about the colour of your skin or your sexuality or your

gender. What about the notion of white privilege? Class has dropped

off the political agenda. David Cameron is a self professed liberal

conservative, the Telegraph talks about his woman problem. At the same

time class has dropped off the political agenda. What about this

notion of white privilege? There are many in our society, as was just

mentioned, most in my profession, journalism, politics, most of the

power pool people are white men. But the white man selling the big issue

down in Oxford Circus is not privileged. Y, disproportionately,

if we look at young working-class boys who are white, working-class

boys who are black, do more young black boys end up with mental health

issues, on the wrong end of stop and search come in prison? Again, it is

black working-class boys, working-class women. Again in recent

years we have seen the expansion of university, more women going to

university than men. But they do better than working-class boys. You

have a slightly different issue around the feeling that men have

lost their place in the economy. Hang on. We get into the kernel of

this, how this is coming accommodation? How come we are

having this discussion now? And which white class working boys are

we talking about? Disabled white class working-class boys? I'm

concerned that the suggestion is we are focusing on white working-class

boys because the aim is to help them. My suspicion is the aim is to

disadvantage other groups. There has been too much attention paid to

black boys, two young women, two Muslim boys, we must change that,

redressed the balance. I'm suggesting that at the heart of this

there is a much broader political agenda, which is a grim one, which

is about dividing and ruling. For this group we are talking about, is

it helped, or is it to attack other groups? It saddens me that so much

of the political currency of our society is about citizens versus

immigrants, people on benefits versus others, and I feel what we

should be looking at here is the fact that more and more people, more

and more groups, including young white working-class boys, are being

disadvantaged as inequality increases, as poverty increases, and

as insecurity. This is a false debate. Martin, something you have

written about, we were previously talking about one privileged group

coming young white working-class boys, the traditional industries,

ideas of masculinity, the world has changed, the world is changing,

you've spoken about this idea about the feminisation of society, what do

you mean and is that relevant? That came from Mary Cooke who pointed out

that a lot of these working-class boys... I'm the son of a coal miner,

OK? He was underground for 47 years. I'm the first boy from my family to

go to university. The nurturing and the help I believe was there 30

years ago when I was at school, which we are seeing, isn't there

now. I want to return to your point about some sort of political point

scoring against Muslim people or black people, it absolutely is not.

I support every outreach project to get more girls into stem science.

I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about our politicians. To

suggest that we cannot or should not reach out to help white

working-class boys because that in some way is point-scoring against

other minorities is grotesque. And it's also not helping those who are

demonstrably and provably the most needy right now. They need help. Why

can't we look beyond their skin colour? I want to just explore this.

I will come back to you. To contextualise it, this issue of

feminisation of society, in what way is that relevant? Soap Mary Cooke

said and lots of other academic research is saying that when boys go

to particularly primary School, a situation now where 85% of the

teachers are women. It is a caring profession where there has been no

corresponding drive to get men into there. There is an excellent scheme

in New York, because New York has the same problem but with black boys

being the bottom of the heap. There is a scheme to get more black men

into primary school teaching. Amazing. Can we please have

something like that here? All the experts are telling us that these

boys respond to male role models in school, particularly if they come

from broken homes come which is an affliction of the working class.

Jane, do you buy this? Well, no, I don't. Martin, why aren't you down a

coal mine? Because they are all closed. Yes. And people like me

would have nowhere to work. There was a point to asking that. They are

all closed. So Martin, you have escaped from that. And if you hadn't

escaped from that, what were you going to do? How will today's boys

cope? I'm very concerned that what is going on here is, yes there is an

issue, yes there is a problem, but it's being used to clamp down on

others. It is there is privilege. There is privileged to be in mail

whether you are at the bottom of the heap or not. -- a privilege to be in

male. Men at the top of society enjoy that privilege and they are

doing very, very little for those further down. The problem is that

young boys socialise in ways that are anti-social. There is an awful

lot about, you at the crime figures, something like one in four young men

by the time they reached the age 20 have a criminal record. 30, 40 years

ago, you could have got away from that. Now that means by the time

they reach 20, one in four young men are unable to go forward in work,

and that is not because we are against them, it is because they

aren't in the home at the very most basic level explaining that what

used to be praiseworthy behaviours are no longer praiseworthy. Such as?

Well, vigilantism, sorting things out for yourself. You'll probably

kill me, my son Rafe is in the audience, it is an ongoing debate I

have with him. If you have an issue, don't go and sort it out yourself,

go and talk to somebody, involve somebody. The people who get on in

society and to a degree that is women, have learned very early on

that you go and involve, you have a social response to a social problem.

And what is going on right now is that young, working-class boys are

being betrayed by society. Is this gender stereotyping? I'm listening

to a world that doesn't really exist. Most parents go in, you want

good teachers in your school who teach your children. I don't go into

my school and go, there's a white child or a black child or a Chinese

child. I think you just want good teaching, you want education to be

invested in, teachers paid properly, bad teachers to be fired. I think we

are barking up the wrong tree, trying to divide ourselves into

black, white, Muslim. But our society does, and that's the awful

thing. Everything you said I think I would

I would agree with, but this desire to take going to University as a key

criterion. We are not talking about getting into Oxbridge, but going to

university. Can we mind ourselves that for many people, particularly

people who do not have a lot of family relations, cultural capital,

histories of that sort, going to university can mean little more than

accruing massive debt. Leaving university, as I've seen our

children do, and their friends, and not having a job. It is another

debate, but this notion of, it seems to be saying, Jane, and it is

fascinating, traditional, historical, self definition one of

ot it is to be a man, what it is to be masculine, to be macho. Are you

saying those have changed and need to change? Yes, we live in a

different world from 30 years ago. 30 years ago you could get a

criminal record and still walk into a job. Nowadays you get a criminal

record for something at 19. That means that your first job or your

second job is not going to happen. I was reading on the way in about

somebody who got a criminal record, got a job in a hospital. It was

fine. And then the hospital CRB checked and they were out. Can I go

back to this, elite men letting down working class men? Let us look at

high jinks in university, a club that some of our politicians use,

the Bullingdon Club, George Osborne and Boris Johnson and David Cameron,

bits of animal, which was strange and probably illegal. That's a cheap

shot, and it is not what we are talking about. But it is part of it.

You are talking about 0.1% who've that ridiculously elite lifestyle.

We are talking about something separate. Whether we are talking

about white boys or black boys or girls, black and white. White. Where

I used to live, there were youth services, places to go, less

difficulty getting jobs for unskilled workers. It's changed, and

these are divisive changes. Let Jane finish her point. The point is that

at the top we are fascinated by the bad boy image. Maybe George Osborne

as a bad boy is not a very good image. But Johnny Depp, the stuff

that's going on right now... He isn't here to defend himself and

there is a solicitor! There's a certain sashay to being a bad boy,

which you can be if you are up at the top of the scale. But at the

bottom you cannot. That's interesting. What would you like to

say? I think we need to move away at looking at this as solely a teaching

problem. I think it comes from things like upbringing as well. I

can certainly share my personal story. Anything other than going to

university was not an option. I was brought up, told, go to school, get

good grades, work hard. That's something that's so ingrained in my

own culture that it made me go to university, made me work hard and

get good grades. That's something I focused on throughout my childhood.

It is different in some families. Some families it would be that

University isn't the only option. It is not the be all and Ed all of

education, you can go and do other things. We are seeing an increase in

skills-based learning rather than just solely education. Do you

perceive this as a problem, young, white, working class boys being

discriminated against? Against?. No, I don't. Society is changing. Things

are shifting. I think we are seeing a rise in things like emphasis being

placed on going to construction or working in construction. Going to

new industries and new industries flourishing, especially with the

rise of climate change issues. We are seeing lots of new industries

coming up. OK. Anyone else? Gentleman at the back in the blue...

Back row, sorry. Firstly, the issue is poverty affects everyone

regardless of their colour. As a head teacher in the West Midlands we

accept those children which other schools reject. So we accept a lot

of white students who really do not feel part of the system. Where we

try and encourage them to learn is to get them involved in something

that they are interested in. You can explain the girl-boy divide here,

why girls are achieving more? Obviously the prospects for them in

the work base is back in the coal days, where the man had to be the

main bread winner. Now there is more independence, so there is going to

be less of a reliance on your husband as the main earner. We have

to look at how we retrain as a unique school, as a black head

teacher brought up in a poor white area. We can see that poverty

affects them all. It's about engaging them and pushing everyone

forward. We are part of the UK and we need to work together.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. I agree with quite a lot of the points, but I

want to pick up on something you said earlier. The fact that white

working class boys are disproportionately not get the same

opportunities, and saying that's not a problem, I think you can't say

it's not a problem. It is a problem. Problem. Problem. That shouldn't

eclipse the fact that girls, people from minority groups, they are still

struggling as well. It shouldn't eclipse the fact that they are the

same as you. APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. Poverty does

affect everyone. This current Government isn't allowing students

from low income backgrounds to access universities. The way you pay

it back is more difficult. They are, even if it is not in a material

sense, that barrier for people from low income backgrounds, it is

terrible. APPLAUSE. There's a cultural issue

here. If you laid out those statistics, they are pretty stock.

Black Caribbean boys, Asian boys, also have a macho culture. All that

stuff applies to them as well. There is clearly a problem with white

working class boys. That's comfortable for some people to deal

with, for political or idealogical reasons. Why is that? It is not

something we have wanted to look at. But it is an issue and it exists.

Maybe it exists because in our culture to be a white working class

boy isn't to be part of an admired group any more. That's one of the

things that's changed. These boys go out into the world and they are the

one group everyone can make fun of. The one group everyone is assume

they have something wrong with them. Them. They are chavs, all the words

people use. Particularly white working class boys, they are the

bottom of the pile. No-one cares about them or thinks they are

valuable. APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. Nicola, bottom of

the pile? There is an issue in terms of achievement of disadvantaged

groups. When you look at the reporting of this, we often talk

about pupils on free school meals. Free school meals doesn't correlate

with being working class. It is not the same thing. We know there's

differences in the update of free schools meals. It is imprecise, so

we blur the definitions. It is important to acknowledge that. What

I would say, picking up on a point made earlier, yes we need a

conversation about the experience of white working class boys. However,

we also need the think about our understanding of discrimination. So

let me say this. Are white working class discriminated in the sense of

disproportionalty of stop and search, in the figures from being

excluded from school, in mental health figures? And rand Domly

looking at the group 16-24, we know black boys, young black men are

two-and-a-half times more likely to be un-I unemployed than their white

counterpart. So the question is are white working class boys

discriminated in a structural way? No. Are there issues to be discussed

in relation to their social mobility? Yes.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. No structural discrimination. What we are doing

here is playing a game I call the Oppression Olympics. The problems of

white boys are discounted because they are not as bad as the

problems... I wish we could get out of this mind-set where it is tit for

tat. These boys need help, quickly, or they'll be doomed to a life of

servitude, to a life of... Servitude? Serving is, low-paid

jobs, low-paid contracts. Competing with minimum wage. 20% of these boys

leave school with five GCSEs, the lowest in Britain of any

demographic. You are shaking your head so much, I'm worried about his

neck. Alex, I will be with you. What's up? Again they are pandering

to the tactic of making ethnic minorities not the subject of this.

This. They are trying to bring white minorities into the while excluding

ethnic minorities. We should help everyone I believe. It negates all

the statistics that show that ethnic minority with worse off. But these

stats clearly don't. If you drive most people down it will affect

people in different ways but it will damage more and more people.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. Alex, you are a writer and bon we have our. U are a

writer and bon we have our. -- a bon viveur. You run nightclubs. When it

comes to employment, what is your view? You are an extremely

intelligent person. I'm listening to you and you are talking about

problems that exist in the real world. But the reality is I don't

see white kids in my world and feeling discriminated against. That

doesn't really exist. Whilst I do have issues with other minorities in

the Camden area of North London, where we are discriminated quite

clearly by the police and other parts of society. I think what

upsets me is you see everyone speaking here and we all share the

same thing: Children should be educated to the best of our ability

by great teachers in great schools. This is nonsense. This entire

conversation annoys the hell out of me, because I think it's rubbish. It

is mitting the point. We need teachers who are respected in

society and are paid the same level as lawyers and bankers, who lost us

millions of pounds. And nurses are losing their bursaries to train. We

have various schemes in my nightclub, because nightclubs are

quite a good way of bringing people into a community. Is there a work

ethic? Is it a myth that young working class boys don't have the

same work ethic in No, it is nonsense. It is nothing to do with

race or religion. It is rubbish. We have good teachers, good schools.

What I would say, picking up on your point, Alex, is what we haven't

thought about is the way that constant changes to education policy

place pressures on teachers and schools such that they don't have

the space and creativity to speech in the way that they want. So that

in turn does impact irrespective of the colour of the child.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. I think I owe you a plug here for your book. Author of

The Myth of Meritocracy. We absolutely shouldn't separate and

try to pit white working class boys against other groups. This idea that

white working class boys don't suffer structural disadvantage, it

is not because they are white and working class. Can a white working

class boy do an earn ternship in politics in no, absolutely not. They

are not discriminated against because they are white, but they are

generally looked down on in society. They don't have the financial

resources. Why are the girls doing better than the boys, James? It is

partly to do with this idea of there's a loss of man's place in the

modern economy, with the loss of industry. There are issues

especially around schooling as well in terms of it's cool to mess about.

I remember when I was at school it was cool to mess about. There aren't

the jobs when you leave school that you naturally go into. We have to

recognise that class is as much a disadvantage as things like

ethnicity and gender and sexuality. We mustn't forget that.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. Karl Marx said it is a matter of conscienceness. You

are not political bedfellows with the current administration but they

did something interesting this week, David Cameron and his colleague,

they said you have to ask what school you went to? You've got to

put it on the form. But as a signal development, is it one that you

welcome? Eton discriminates but you have the ability to pay, so there's

a good argument to be made for leverling the playing field in terms

of employment. Politics is a good example where class has dropped off

the agenda. Last year there were more female MPs and ethnic minority

MPs. But there are more public school boys in Parliament. We've

gone backwards. If we were to look back at the

previous Cabinet, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, we would probably have

to go to search human to find a cabinet so full of public school

members. We have to go back to 1976 to find the high point of social

mobility. What Alex said was important about teachers. 76? Yes,

76. Dogs like teachers and social workers, which can be laid out for

all youngsters who might face disadvantage, those jobs are being

made more and more difficult for people to do, more and more

challenging. The turnover and withdrawal is increasing and that's

a real worry and a problem. We mustn't isolate this issue. It's a

much bigger issue than we want to talk about on this debate. That's

why I have a similar frustration to Alex. You mention your son is here,

Rafe? You have had your hand up. I will give you the last word on this.

I may sound a bit stupid, but at my school there is a boy who gets in

trouble quite a lot and he's working-class, and on one side I

think he does it kind of for popularity but on the other side I

think he thinks he can get away with it because he has the excuse of

being working class, in a way. An interesting point to ponder on, and

an excellent one, too. Stereotypes. Thank you very much indeed, Rafe.

We'll be back with you for the foreign aid debate, Rafe.

You too can join in this morning's debates by logging

on to bbc.co.uk/thebigquestions, then following the link to

Or you can tweet using the hashtag bbctbq.

Tell us what you think about our last Big Question too:

Should the UK commitment to foreign aid be scrapped?

Next Sunday we're back from Brunel University London

for the last edition of this series, when we we'll be asking just one

And, if you'd like to be in the audience in our next series,

starting in January 2017, email [email protected].

A year ago the UK Parliament voted to pledge all future governments

to spend 0.7% of gross national income on foreign aid.

Britain was the first country in the G7 to commit to this UN

Only five other countries spent a higher percentage than we did,

with Sweden topping the list at 1.4%.

Last year the UK's spend of ?11.7 billion

was second only to the USA, which spent ?20.1 billion

in total, but only 0.17% of its national income.

Now a petition has been raised against Britain's commitment to 0.7%

which will be debated in the House of Commons next Monday.

Should the UK's commitment to foreign aid be scrapped?

Alex, you spent a lot of time in Africa, author of The Rift: the

future of Africa. You told me something interesting about your

time in Kenya and a Kenyan sitcom, which crystallises the issue? I was

posted to Africa in 2006, and I was trying to understand where I was and

I thought I would watch the Kenyan national sitcom. The character who

was the ladies man with the flashy car and all the girlfriends, the

rogue, his back story was that he was an aid worker. And that was sort

of the beginning of scales falling from my high in how aid is viewed

from where it is received. Which is, it's a great gig. This is the

ultimate aspiration for a young graduate in Africa, is to work for

an international NGO. Because the benefits are fantastic and the pay

is extraordinary. Bit of a gravy train? Absolutely. Look, the UN is

great because it publishes its salary details online. If you look

at the guy who is a middle manager in eastern Congo, say someone in

charge of logistics for the UN organisation, you add up his housing

allowance, his $75,000 car, his business class flights, his three

kids education, his lack of tax, he's only half $1 million a year.

That's more than the US president. You can't tell me that a middle

manager in eastern Congo has bigger responsibilities. It is saving

lives, and it's a great... Is it? South Sudan is a new country created

in Africa by the humanitarian community, that was a humanitarian

Project run by a group of activists essentially. And it ate itself.

Hundreds of thousands of people are dead, and many million are up for

starvation. In Somalia in 2011, aid workers, at the behest of US

political pressure, created a famine in which a quarter of a million

people died. They put the food aid blockade on the south of the

country, and a quarter of a million people died. Famine relief workers

created the famine. Katie Wright, external affairs, Oxfam, that's

pretty thought-provoking stuff from Alex. If we were to lessen that

commitment, would people die? Yeah, of course people would die. People

are being saved every day by aid spent by the UK Government or by

organisations like Oxfam. I think if you are going to break this question

down and tackle whether foreign aid should be scrapped, cherry picking

some dramatic stories is not the way to do this. I think there are some

fundamental questions we want to ask here today. The first is, do the

British people want to live in a world with extreme poverty and

hunger? Time and time again we see that the answer is no. When they

respond to comic relief, when they respond to disasters, when they

support organisations like Oxfam for the last nearly 50 years. This is a

pretty clear statement they are making. But taxpayers income is

different from comic relief. That's right. So the second important

question is what's essentially the function of government? And I think

it's to solve some of the big questions that the British people

want solved. They've demonstrated poverty is one of those questions

and so it's right that the UK Government takes an international

developer and. And then do we need this target? I think yes we do

because we need something robust to stand up to. The likes of the Daily

Mail and whatever political campaign or sort of strongman comes along. A

lot of people signed the Daily Mail petition, you cannot dismiss the

concerns of an awful lot. We don't need to dismiss concerns, but what

we are demonstrating time and time again is that this is not just about

numbers or money, this is about lives. Why 0.37% like France, or

America gives 0.17, Spain gives no .14%. None of those numbers are

commensurate with the need. Right now in the world today there are 60

million people experiencing drought and hunger because of the El Nino

weather effects, nothing to do with man-made disasters, this is what's

going on. And we don't have enough money. And we are leading the way.

Alex, are you not proud of the fact that of the G-7 we are giving the

largest percentage of aid, is that not a great symbol for our new role

in the world? Of course that's great. And I'd think anybody would

say being a mean person is a good idea. Of course we all want to be

generous and we want to help those that can't help themselves. What I'm

hearing, though, is what really frustrates people in Africa, is no

mention of Africans. Where are the Africans or the Bengali 's or the

Nepalese in this debate? What we are talking about when we talk about aid

is the size of our generosity, how wonderful we might be, the size of

our concern. I'm sorry, that's a real stereotyping of the aid

industry. Where is the recipient in this? The chorus in Africa now, as

Africa grows pretty fast, it's the second fastest growing region in the

world, the average African is now learning about $2000 a year, which

is $200 more than the Indian to whom we no longer give aid. The chorus is

furious self-determination, and part of that is no 28. If the very people

to whom you a helping our same please don't. Do they feel

patronised? Yes. Aid can be crushing, it takes away your ability

to direct your own life. You said there were a lot of cliches. There

are a lot of cliches and it is an old-fashioned understanding. Aid

agencies like Oxfam and colleagues are at the forefront of working out

how to give aid in the way which is empowering to the communities we are

working with. Every single aid programme thinks of the most

creative ways possible to have feedback mechanisms to spread

accountability. Is it transparent enough? Give us an example of that,

something that has really worked. And also something that has worked

in the terms of soft power that has increased the way they feel about

us? While I can only talk from Oxfam's point of view. All

humanitarian delivery of aid has easy ways like using text messages,

SMS messaging, to report back, is the water getting to you, is this

right? How is this toilet block that we've built working? We hear from

women's groups, there is not enough lighting so we don't feel safe, so

we put them in. The whole thing is a collaborative conversation with

communities. Oxfam doesn't go into a community and say, you know what, we

think you need a borehole. We talk to them about what they need. Often

times we don't give them stuff, we work with them to demand from their

own government who should be supplying the services. I will be

with you shortly. Jonathan. The difficult thing in aid is delivery

and there is a huge problem between intention and what actually gets

done. Spending large amounts of money on aid doesn't mean more

people necessarily get help. We have this enormous aid industry that

employs half a million people worldwide. Organisations like Oxfam

benefit not just from the public giving them money but also from the

taxpayers money. When you argue for a greater aid budget, you are

arguing for more money for your organisation, for the salaries of

aid workers, for the thousands and thousands of mostly middle-class

young people who go out to places like Africa, who would never dream

of going to places that are poor in this country. Do you think that is

the case? Well we have a UK poverty programme so that's really an true.

I've been covering Africa for years, you see them everywhere, very

colonial and patronising, chunk of people going up to tell Africans

what to do. If you listen to African leaders, they say, no, you are doing

this to make yourself feel good and look good. And you are making money

doing it. This is an industry arguing for money. This is a fantasy

projection. I've worked all over Africa, I do not recognise that will

stop most aid at the governmental level is completely in partnership,

it is supporting national programmes, it is supporting

training of teachers. It is supporting agricultural extension

workers and so on. It is just not true, and these fantasies about

people paid half ?1 million. Let me just put this in. And then you can

carry on. Just react to this. Paying for airstrips in Saint Helena where

it is too windy to get on a plane, teaching stilt-walking in Venezuela,

making art with plastic with street children in Nigeria. Nigeria has

started a space programme, by the way. We hear about things like that,

and it reminds me of Brewster 's millions where he gets $30 million

and he's got to spend it in a month, doesn't that 0.7% rather bind people

to that? You've got to spend it? No because it is well-planned and well

managed. In any big programme anywhere there are things where

things go wrong, there is mismanagement. When we see in

hospital that things are going wrong, do we say close down the NHS?

No, we say keep funding the NHS and fix that problem. I have campaigned

for 30 years for better aid, not just more aid, and I think you can

do both. These things are put out by those who basically don't say aid

and say, here's an example of waste and what have you. It is not the

fundamental thing, which works and delivers. It doesn't. Among

industries is the least self-critical industry you can

possibly imagine because it's marketing needs, we are saving

lives, we are saving lives. It has nothing to do with saving lives.

Katie told us it is absolutely saving lives. Most aid is

development aid, over 90%, not humanitarian aid, it is not feeding

the starving. It is things like the gems programme in Nigeria, growth in

employment and markets. Teaching Nigerians how to be entrepreneurial?

If you spent any time in Nigeria you know they don't have to be taught

how to be entrepreneurial by a bunch of British foreign language

graduates. Hands up? Lady in the striped shirt? Being from a Nigerian

background I understand about foreign aid. I believe that the

problem with foreign aid is that sustainability, you can have as much

money as you want but if something is not sustainable then there's no

point having it. That's the main problem with foreign aid I see when

I am in Nigeria. That's one of the things I think we need to look at.

What kind of things are you seeing? In terms of sustainability, you can

have all the programmes and those things, but if they don't blast on

and actually stay within the culture of the people then it's never going

to work. It's just going to go there, make your country look good

and that is it. Hang on, James. Go on? Yes, I think the UK's commitment

to foreign aid is very good, I appreciate how the government is

actually giving more to other countries. I want to mention one

thing, why in certain countries do you need aid? Just in general terms?

If somebody is injured, we give that person aid. Just compensate, yes,

there is an injury, yes, do something. I would like to say one

thing. There was a great point made regarding, for example, developing

countries like India or others, we don't actually need developmental

aid. Obviously the economies are becoming big, we are emerging

economies, but the thing here is the foreign aid should just in a way of

Britain to say, OK, there was a colonial empire, these things

happen, for example we got the whole of the Commonwealth, just to say

that's it guys, this is our paid. A moral obligation? Our moral debt.

For maybe what has gone on in the past? Yes. We did a British empire

debate a few weeks ago and those points did come up. I suppose you

could say with climate change, we led the world with fossil fuels in

the 18th and 19th century, we kicked that one off. Not that we were to

know at the time, to be fair. Foreign aid is not infinite. It is

not going to last forever. In answer to the first person's point, where

are the Bengalis, I am from Bangladesh. It did receive foreign

it, including from DFID. It can stand on its own two feet and reduce

its dependency on foreign aid. We gave aid to India, and that will

stop, because it is a growing economy. It is investing in us. The

third point I would like to make, I think there's a link between foreign

policy and global security, with the advent of terrorism. The question I

would like to ask the critics of foreign aid is, do you not believe

that America should have given aid to Britain during the Second World

War? Harry, do you want to come in on this, not necessarily that

particular point. From the TaxPayers' Alliance. What's been

said a few times, this 0. 0.% of input will be given in purpose ought

toy. To me that implies we won't finish the job. And because it is

0.7%, it seems if we spend a certain amount of money we'll achieve

various aims. We'll be giving it for the rest of time, but doesn't that

show that we won't achieve what we need, to bring these people out of

poverty? The better way, greater value for taxpayers money, than

throwing money at it. Which are? You can get rid of escalating trade

tariffs, which do a huge amount of damage. That's absolutely not the

case. Nobody wants there to be aid while we still need an aid budget it

means that people are living in extreme poverty, 900 million people.

We need to fix immediate problem, responding to disasters, building

hospitals. We also need to have sustainability. That means working

with the African Government. It is not true everyone in Africa is

against aid. I work for an organisation, 2 million of whom are

in Africa. They fight for the same targets that we are fighting for. UK

aid is incredibly effective. It is subject to a rigorous review, and it

is among the most transparent in the world. Are you proud of where we

are? Very proud. And if we want an end to aid, we need other

governments lifting themselves up to 0.7%, not us cutting our aid budget.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. What I find disingenuous about this, living in

Africa and India, most of my friend were aid workers, to be honest.

These guys know that legitimacy is the live debate inside the aid

world. Or precisely the lack of legitimacy, should we be doing this?

Do we have a right to impose what our priorities are on foreign

countries, around essentially displace them? These guys... This is

a very live debate. It doesn't happen in public, because for aid

groups business model, image, is all. You have to think of them as

saving lives, otherwise they don't get any donations. But if we would

have a bit more realism from the aid world I think it would help the

debate move forward. I run an organisation that brings together

over 500 organisations from Oxfam through to tiny organisations that

are kitchen table organisations in this country. They represent all our

faiths and different types of people. British people care about

these issues and express it in different ways. We run a conference

every year where all of these issues are there. Do come along, debate the

issues. We do. It is not true there is no scrutiny. I think aid in

Britain is probably the most scrutinised department of any. For

every ?1 spent it is logged. Every time one of my members gets a grant

it is logged. It has been shown that the Government getting taxpayers

money to organisations crowds out private donations. That's been

proven. Where is the incentive if you're to give to a charity, if you

know the Government is already giving this money already? I will

tell you what, we've got some hands up in the audience, if you will

allow me defer to the audience. Good morning. I think we need to take a

step back and remember why there's so much poverty in the world. Back

to your point about climate change, we are a developed nation. We've

done all of our developing, and we have the nerve to come up with this

sustainable development goals and tell these developing nations they

can't develop in the same way that we developed. They are seeing the

aftermath of our Industrial Revolution. It is totally infair for

us to tell them that you can develop in a Greenway, in a clean way. But

we've contributed to so many greenhouse gases. It is moral duty

and mea culpa. The gentleman in the grey T-shirt. I work for a charity

in Britain. We develop young leaders here, but if we want to think about

helping the world that we have in part impoverished we need to help

them develop their own leaders, by sharing good practice.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. Do you really think that if we were not to spend

this ?12-odd billion elsewhere we would be spending it on the NHS in

this country, on flood defences, that we would be spending it on

pensions. Do you think that would be the case? The reason why so many

people sign these petitions is it not the elephant in the room that

lots of people think perhaps charity should begin at home. If we donated

a fraction of 0.7% to, say, working class boys who are failing at

school... It is not one or the other. Do you think there's a

calibration there? There is certainly a moral problem between

the Government spending ever increasing numbers in a time of

austerity on foreign aid that often doesn't work, is often ineffective

and in some cases makes things much worse, and at the same time not

being able to spend money on cancer medicine for people, not being able

to afford operations on the NHS. NHS. Yes it might be spent

efficiently or effectively at home, but would it be released (Inaudible)

The reason people are doubtful is because of the Hister cal campaigns

of some newspapers. You poll people and they think we give 20 times the

amount of aid we do. When they hear how much we actually give they are

in favour and want to give more. We talk about this historic moral

obligation but we forget when we are talking about climate change, it is

not something that's happened, done, dusted, it is going on now. For the

last 20 years the climate change people have talked about adaptation

and mitigation, because the people who've enjoyed the fruits of our

destroying the climate is us in the developed world, but people whose

livelihoods are being wrecked, destroyed, are in the developing

world. If you want to make the link, the big issue of this century will

be water. Millions will be migrating because of water. If you think

you've seen a problem of a few hundred thousands refugees crossing

the Mediterranean, wait until the water starts running out.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. Alex, go on. Climate change is actually a great

example of a change in Africa, a phenomenal change that's happened

with no aid. There's a man in Mali called Jacoub, a farmer, who turned

25 acres of desert into a forest over 20 years. He so amazed his

neighbours that everybody copied. Now there are so many trees in the

middle of the Sahara you can only see it from space. It is 200 million

trees. And that was accomplished without 1 cent of aid. Down the road

from where he lives is an Italian aid group that's tried to do the s

tried to do the same and spent $100 million and has failed. The point

is, if you try and impose, if you try and tell people what to do, if

you don't have them invested in their own destiny, it will fail.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. Raef wants to make another point. I think it is

great that we help out charity and everything. Would like everything

inside Britain, like the NHS, the Army and, like, our aid, do you

think we can keep it up? Do you think we can keep all these things

going? It is not a never-ending flow, and the taxpayer wants full

accountability. It It sounds like the taxpayer is not doing too bad on

accountability opposed to other policies. We have a 0.7% aid budget

that's fighting against the effects of economic policies, including

those pursued by this policy, globalising economic policies which

are causing exactly the problems of rising temperatures and damage the

planet we've been talking about. Not only that but we've seen this

Government and its predecessor using aid policy to pursue those kinds of

neoliberal economic policies, which is really, really damaging.

(Inaudible) aid work ended a lot of the starvation issues in

immediately. Corruption, another thing we haven't discussed, you talk

about the aid budget. If you got rid of corruption in western companies

in Africa, corruption from oil companies and big mobile phone

companies in the Congo taking out the minerals. It is disgusting.

Corruption is a far bigger issue than free aid and we don't want to

talk about it because we have shares in these companies. It is a really

important point. Nobody is saying aid on its own will solve the

world's problems. It does include tackling corruption. We had an

anticorruption policy in London, world leaders coming to talk about

the important, systemic problems. Are they going to stop it? Aid feeds

corruption all over Africa. It golfs to the most powerful, most corrupt

people in these countries. You see it in Africa, in Pakistan. Hang on,

you say it goes to the most corrupt people in those countries. Katy told

us that it saves lives. Absolutely. Simon is right. Aid, let's be clear,

is bun one tool in trying to end poverty. Getting trade right is an

important tool. Tackling corruption, tackling inequality in the policies

that fuel that, they are vital. What's so special about aid versus

foreign investment versus trade is it is targeted at the poorest and on

poverty relief. We've got a lot of countries growing in Africa, as Alex

points out, but he makes the slightly confusing statistical thing

of saying per capita growth. It is not the case. We've got vast

inequalities in Africa which means the benefits of trade and in growth

and of foreign direct investment are going to those in the top, who

unfortunately are taking advantage of British tax havens. Aid is so

special because it is directed at poverty reduction and at the

poorest. That's why it will remain as a vital tool for many years to

come. The last word, Jonathan. It is not that aid is a bad thing but aid

over 60 years has been not been evidence based. It has handed money

to corrupt dictators who handed it to their families and not the people

who needed it. It is wrong for the taxpayer and the beneficiaries of

aid if it is not done really well. And it hasn't been done that way.

That's an argument for transparency. Give yourselves a round of applause.

APPLAUSE APPLAUSE. Well done. As always, the debates will continue

online and on Twitter. We're back from Uxbridge next Sunday

for that special, asking: Mr Reginald Keys?

We're from Army notification.