THE GOVERNMENT has handed multinationals £400 million in taxpayer’s cash meant for the world’s poorest countries to promote private involvement in health and education, a Global Justice Now report alleged yesterday.

British officials are gifting money to firms such as Coca-Cola and FTSE100 education giant Pearson, which is being used to fund private schools and hospitals in 60 countries, researchers found.

The coalition is sinking £355m on its Girls Education Challenge plan, which is led by financial firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and spans countries including Pakistan, Nigeria, Kenya and Burma.

The campaigning NGO warned yesterday that many cash-strapped citizens are not able to easily afford the schemes, which effectively use money meant for aid to help commercial firms, undermining underfunded public services.

Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden said: “It’s shocking that the Department for International Development (DfID) is dogmatically promoting private health and education when it’s been shown that this approach actually entrenches inequality and endangers access.

“Aid is being used as a tool to convince, cajole and compel the majority of the world to undertake policies which help big corporations like Pearson, but which detract from the real need to promote publicly funded services that are universally accessible.”

Campaigners also called for the government to sort out conflicts of interest, pointing out that DfID’s nominally voluntary chief education representative in Pakistan, Sir Michael Barber, earns his crust as Pearson’s Chief Education Adviser.

Not wanting to miss out on the bonanza, Coca-Cola has happily joined in on a linked £7m DfID scheme intended to “improve the lives of 10,000 young women in Nigeria.”

Those who complete the firm’s training would be set up to sell syrupy drinks to their communities as “micro-retailers.”

In healthcare, at least £35m has been paid out to Harnessing Non-State Actors for Better Health for the Poor (Hanshep) since 2010, helping push impoverished countries into public-private partnership deals with healthcare firms.

Hanshep is managed by British legal firm MDY Legal, which has previously written to the European Commission touting the alleged benefits of “self-regulation” in the health sector, according to campaigners.

The two-year Kenya Essential Education Programme meanwhile, another money-making education scheme funded by taxpayers, costs £25m and is managed by private-sector development consultants Adam Smith International.

The programme aims to educate 50,000 Kenyan children with 75 per cent of the poorest placed in “low cost” Omega schools, for which parents have to pay roughly 43p per day per child — around 25-40 per cent of family income.