Andrew Rosindell M.P., Vice-Chair of the separate All-Party Parliamentary Groups on Taiwan and Hong Kong, has written to the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab to urge him to end aid money to China.
Andrew's letter was sent following the Spending Review last week, during which the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a reduction in Britain's overseas aid spending from 0.7% of GDP to 0.5% of GDP.
Writing in the letter, Andrew welcomed the reduction in aid spending which the UK could not "Justify sticking rigidly to" when "we're seeing the highest peacetime levels of borrowing on record."
However, Andrew goes on in the letter to express his dismay as to why "China, a totalitarian community state, continues to receive a portion of the British taxpayers' money."
The letter continues: "China is tramping on human rights by persecuting their Uighur population; encoraching on Hong Kong's democracy... and testing the resolve of Britain and her allies, including Taiwan, in the South Pacific." He adds: "most significantly, China allowed the coronavirus to spread beyond her borders across the entire world, which has caused irreversible health and economic damage to the international communinity."
Andrew ends by urging the Foreign Secretary to "immediately review the situation... whereby the world's second-largest economy, China, receives funding from the world's fifth largest economy, Britain."
Following the merger of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office with the Department of International Development, the international aid budget is now the remit of the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab.
