Nigel Peters was the man on stage. He was then head of a little-known government unit called the Aid-Funded Business Service, which was set up to help UK companies win contracts funded by public money to help the world’s poorest people.
The UN only places business with companies when the budget is already secure
Instead, much of it took a while to get anywhere – passing through sometimes very long chains of contractors and subcontractors. Far from simple transfers of cash, when donors pledge aid money, there was no guarantee it would ever make it to the countries it was supposedly ‘for’.
But, in 2011, the NGO that had led the legal challenge against aid for the Pergau dam sounded the alarm again, after then development secretary Andrew Mitchell reportedly linked aid to India with ambitions to sell BAE Typhoon fighter jets to the country.