tv BBC News BBC News April 20, 2017 7:45pm-8:01pm BST
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and there are those who argue that it's too much. 0.7% figure was written into law in 2015. theresa may has refused to say whether she intends to keep it. prominent campaigners insist that she should. if you have less aid, you pick the things you're going to spend less money on, like girls education, less one tools of contraception that empower women and bring down the population growth. less on malaria bed nets, where we bought children's deaths from a million a year to a half million a year. how did our aid budget of 0.7% compare with other countries around the world? scandinavia's pretty much at the top the list. in 2016 sweden spent 0.937% of its gross national income on aid. but other big countries are significantly below us. the us spent 0.18%, and russia only not 0.08. and russia only 0.08. british development assistance is focused on places where the need is greatest,
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like the horn of africa or syria. but there is now some pressure in westminster to include uk aid spending in a larger budget that would also cover defence and trade. giving the government greater flexibility on how money is spent. we also recognise, and one of the ways we justify our overseas aid spending, is part of our diplomatic effort. part of our soft power. it's also part of our defence because if we help poor and developing nations to grow and prosper economically, then we can trade with them. in both parliament and the press there have been campaigned against wasteful spending abroad at a time of cuts at home. plans to spend millions to continue funding this group known as ethiopian‘s spice girls were abandoned by the government earlier this year. there is also significant political backing for development aid. supporters see it as a crucial, life—saving policy area in which global britain should still aspire to lead. 0wen barder advises on the political economy of development policies
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and aid and joins me now. thank you forjoining us. what sort ofaid thank you forjoining us. what sort of aid target should britain have? i'm pretty sympathetic to the argument against having any sort of is ending target. it encourages people to focus too much on how much we spend and too little on what we achieved by that. it makes some people believe that at the end of the year as we come up to the target that we turn on the tap with wasteful expenditure to hit the target. there is a case against having a target because it encourages the development community to think they can get away without the scrutiny that public expenditure deserves. there is a case at least having any sort of target. but against that, foreign aid to demonstrably has a huge impact on
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people's lives, on saving lives and improving people's well—being. it is the right thing to do. our aid programme is widely admired and respected around the world, it is pa rt respected around the world, it is part of britain's reputation and soft power. there is a bit of a conundrum. 0n the one hand you want to be spending as much as, at least as much as we are, it is good value for money. 0n the other hand and if we didn't have a target with robbery wouldn't do that. so i come to the view that we probably should keep the targets because we would not spend as much otherwise. forget the altruism and soft power, how else do we benefit by having an aid programme? it is definitely in our long—term interests to have a more peaceful, more stable, more prosperous world. to have a few outbreaks of pandemic diseases, fewer humanitarian disasters into which we have to go and help people
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who are suffering unimaginable disasters will stop so we benefit from the prosperity and the peace and the stability that our aid programme helps to build. do you know how much is wasted and how can we go about stopping that waste? regrettably, i think there is some waste, both in the sense of spending money on things that are not as good as other things we could do, and sometimes there is theft people making and a lot of money out of the aid programme. we should do everything we can to stop that, and we do everything we can to stop that, and wedoa everything we can to stop that, and we do a pretty good job of keeping that to a minimum. when you think of the health service, for example, sometimes we give patients treatments that do not work. they seemed like the right treatment at the time, but not everything works all the time and you have to take
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chances. sometimes, rhetoric, there is poor at ministration health service, sometimes wicked and evil people steal money or do harm to patients deliberately. and we do everything we can as we should to stop those things from happening, but no one suggests we should shut down the health service because sometimes there is waste or corruption or bad things happen. we've wasted a lot of money in the health service to trying to put in an it system, that was always risk worth taking and it would've been good if it had worked, but no one suggests we should shut down because it failed. how could we improve our focus for aid? would it make sense to have agencies pitch for money rather than just expecting to get hand—outs? rather than just expecting to get hand-outs? i think there should be more transparency about where aid money goes. in the uk is in fact a leader in age transparency but there are still a long way to go before
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you can really track the money from the taxpayer through the system to the taxpayer through the system to the impact it has on the ground. i think we need to do a betterjob than we are of evaluating the impact of ouraid than we are of evaluating the impact of our aid programmes. than we are of evaluating the impact of ouraid programmes. we than we are of evaluating the impact of our aid programmes. we still spend money sometimes on poor elite as evidenced interventions, things that seem like a good idea, and we should certainly test those but until we have real evidence on what works, we should focus our aid programme more tightly on the things that demonstrably work. but there are things a lot of things that must rework. the money spent on vaccines is great value and has been proven time and again. the money should follow the evidence more tightly thanit follow the evidence more tightly than it does. and by doing that we can get even more value from it. but in saying that i don't want to imply we are not getting good value for most of the aid we spend. thank you very much. police in hampshire are investigating the horrific killing of a cat in southsea over the easter weekend. they're linking it with two other similar attacks on cats in hampshire
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and the isle of wight and with many more attacks nationally believed to be the work of one individual known as the uk cat killer. earlier i spoke to our correspondent jo kent in southsea. i'm standing outside the shop where the cat was killed. she was beheaded, her body was left on the opposite side of the road for passers—by to find. we are just yards from her home here. it is believed this happened overnight between easter sunday into easter monday, between 10:30 at night and 1:30 in the morning. her owners are devastated but more so because of the horrific way that she was killed. police initially told the passer—by who found the body that it was not a police matter, but it soon emerged that because of the involvement of other animal agencies this probably because of the involvement of other animal agencies this probably was not an isolated case and could be linked to a string of similar
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killings largely centred in the south london area. there is an active police investigation headed up by the metropolitan police. hampshire police have looked into this now and they say they are now linking it with two other cases in this area, another one in portsmouth at the start of this month, and one in the isle of wight which happened last summer. these cat killings were first picked up back in 2015. as i said, largely in the croydon area and the south london area. there have been some 200 cases now and they have gone to other parts of the country as well. there is a £10,000 reward being offered for information to catch this killer. is this the best way to live for longer?
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laura certainly hopes so. she cycles five miles to work in bristol every morning, and then five miles back home again. how do you feel cycling to work helps you? it wakes me up in the morning, gets me geared up for the day, puts me in a good mood. it's a good way to manage stress and things as well, because when we live in the city, busy lifestyles, getting on your bike in the morning is great. it gets rid of all that stress and adrenaline that can build up. some people say it's very stressful riding a bike, and that's one of the reasons they don't do it. i think, if i had to cycle on main roads for the whole journey, i would find it quite stressful. luckily, i can use the cycle track. scientists from the university of glasgow looked at the health of a quarter of a million commuters over five years to examine the benefits of cycling. they found that those
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using pedal power had... that's compared with people who are driving or using public transport. we need to make it easier for people to cycle, so we need to increase cycle lanes, we need to have cycle and city hire schemes, subsidised bike schemes, have people have showers at work, so they don't feel sweaty when they get to work. there's a whole host of things just to make it easier for the average person to cycle. if we can do that, we'll get more people on their bikes, and we'll improve public health, just like places like amsterdam and copenhagen have done. cycling groups say if we follow the lead of those european cities, we could save money on health care, because fewer of us would become seriously ill. although, of course, cycling can also lead to more accidents and injuries. researchers say walking to work also has some benefits, but not as many. they say for commuters like laura, cycling is especially good, because it fits into the daily routine. jon kay, bbc news, bristol.
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it wasn't buried in the ground or marked on a map, but the largest hoard of gold coins everfound has now been declared treasure — after it was discovered hidden inside an old piano. the sovereigns are thought to be worth more than a quarter of a million pounds, as sima kotecha reports. a piano which was donated to a college in shropshire, butjust before christmas, this man discovered hundreds of coins in dusty hand—stitched packages underneath its keyboard. i'd been called in to tune and repair this piano, so i took out a couple of the keys and up in the top here, and hey presto, there were some interesting packages. so i quickly got my penknife and quickly undid one of the ends. then i thought, that's gold! experts say it's the largest gold sovereign hoard everfound in the uk.
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it consists of more than 900 coins, most of which were made during queen victoria's reign. out of all these coins, this one is the oldest. it dates back to 18117. this one, however, was made in 1915 and that suggests the coins were hidden around that time. we know there's 930 gold coins there, and that's more than six we know there's 913 gold coins there, and that's more than six kilos' worth of gold, that's worth a lot of money. back in the day when it was hid, in 1915, you could have bought a four—bed town house with that, which is the equivalent of around £350,000 today. an inquest ruled it was unclear who the treasure really belonged to. now any reward will go to the college and the tuner. yes, it was like that! yes, it was! it was great. i was actually dancing up and down so i do have emotions sometimes! sima kotecha, bbc news, shropshire. let's ta ke
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let's take a look at the weather forecast. there was more cloud across the country today but we've managed some sunshine across the north east of england east of scotland. here there were temperatures up to 19. the cloud as it pushes southwards earlier today, has brought some showers but it was predominantly dry and will stay that way overnight. temperatures fall, not too cold except in the country. a little misty and foggy. in the north we have the next letter weather front and it won't just bring rain but also strong to gayle for twins. behind that weather front hides the colder air, so it will be significantly cooler across the far north of scotland and the northern isles tomorrow. for most of us it is dry, fairly cloudy, fairly bright.
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the cold air is lurking across northern scotland and through the weekend it will make its way southwards. there will still be a lot of dry weather around with some sunshine as well. this is bbc news. and martine croxall. the headlines at eight. jeremy corbyn has pledged to challenge what he called a "rigged system" and said the final result was not a ‘foregone conclusion'. but of course they do not want us to win, because when we win it is the people, not the powerful, who win. the prime minister reiterates her commitment for net migration falling to the tens of thousands following britain leaving the eu. this follows speculation that goal might be scrapped. i believe sustainable net migration is in the tens of thousands, for people coming from the eu as well as people coming from the eu as well as
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