International Development Policies

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for International Development (Baroness Verma) (Con)]

My Lords, let me begin by thanking the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for securing this debate and all noble Lords for their contributions. They have been wide-ranging, informative and questioning. Many questions have been posed today and I may have to undertake to write to noble Lords given the time constraints.

I also join all noble Lords in welcoming my noble friend Lord Barker to your Lordships’ House; I congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech. Having worked with my noble friend in a previous role at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, I know that he will bring passion and deep knowledge to ensuring that we have a planet that is fit for all its citizens. He will bring to the House the benefit of the knowledge and experience that he gained not just from that department but from the reason why he came into public life. I look forward to working with my noble friend.

I am proud of the role the UK has played in setting a new agenda for development, and ensuring that global goals are universal and leave no one behind. For a sustainable route out of poverty, Her Majesty’s Government will put inclusive economic growth, resilience to crises, empowering women and girls, and tackling climate change at the heart of our approach. DfID is already achieving transformational results and has transformed as an organisation to deliver even smarter programmes.

Under this Government, Great Britain was the first major economy—as is widely recognised not just here in the UK but globally—to meet the UN target of spending 0.7% of gross national income on development. Since 2011, this commitment has placed more than 10 million children into school, immunised nearly 50 million children against fatal diseases and prevented 24.5 million people going hungry. It has supported some 480,000 people to start HIV treatment plans and distributed 47.4 million insecticide-treated bed nets.

As well as saving lives, we have stepped up our focus on economic development and the golden thread. By improving opportunities for communities and their economies, we can catalyse sustainable, long-term benefits for generations to come. With this in mind, DfID is helping people to work their way out of poverty, not least by supporting 69 million people to access financial services.

The way we and our partners deliver and the way we work with civil society and others has changed. The bilateral and multilateral aid reviews will ensure that our strategy is sensitive to this shifting landscape and informed by the latest evidence. Internally they will target our work in the right places and in the right ways. DfID’s operating framework will continue to demand that lessons learned from the past impact evaluations and changes in the global evidence base be considered throughout programme design and implementation.

Since 2012, DfID has transformed how it demonstrates greater accountability and transparency. Every programme in the department now has a named person in charge with clear responsibilities. Financial, audit and risk systems have been strengthened. Programmes are reviewed more frequently, and if seen not to deliver they may be closed down.

We also continue to raise the bar with the key multilaterals we work with. In 2013, the International Development Committee said:

“The multilateral aid review has made a real contribution to the efficiency of the multilateral system”.

So while it is too soon to pre-empt the full results of the reviews, I am confident that they will deliver a flexible approach that ensures that the benefits of aid reach those most in need, even in the most difficult places.

Flexibility means surging our resources to respond to global shocks—as we did last year on Ebola—and focusing on the longer term to help countries to rebuild themselves after crises. That is where smart development comes in. We know that for every £1 spent on disaster preparedness we save up to £7 on disaster response. In Nepal we are building schools to withstand earthquakes; in Africa we help countries insure themselves against extreme weather; and last year we committed £27 million into a cross-government fund for peace, stability and security programmes.

I thank the noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, for highlighting the vital role of UK parliamentarians in scrutinising the effectiveness of UK aid. DfID works directly with Parliaments in 75% of its bilateral country programmes. Earlier this year we committed £9.3 million to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which works in more than 40 countries to support Parliaments and political parties. Our support for transparency in sectors such as construction and forestry—such as the Nepal forestry programme to which the noble Earl referred—empowers civil society with information about revenues and contracts to help citizens scrutinise government decisions.

DfID undertook a comprehensive review of the Nepal multi-stakeholder programme this September. While it was noted that management and governance challenges had delayed progress, results were nevertheless achieved: 8,100 jobs were created and 381 local groups were trained in forest management.

Empowered societies and open Governments are a prerequisite for effective public accountability. This golden thread underpins sustainable long-term growth and stability. DfID is a global leader in publishing timely, comprehensive and open data on its programmes and asks its main suppliers and implementing partners to do the same.

I shall try to respond to a number of the questions that were raised. My noble friends Lady Hodgson and Lord Craigavon, the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, and other noble Lords asked whether, through the reviews, we would be considering supporting smaller organisations. We want to see how best we can reach the people who will benefit, whether it is through the smaller organisations on the ground or through the multilateral agencies. Often, some work is better performed through the multilateral agencies. It is about seeing how these reviews can give us results and help us deliver better to the people who need us the most. The review will help us to develop a more thoughtful, innovative, strategic and fairer relationship with organisations that share our objectives.

There should be simplified programme designs. In the past two years, DfID has stripped back its guidance so that we now have 37 smart rules that operate in the department. I am responsible for procurement within the department and I can tell noble Lords that, from my perspective, we scrutinise very carefully the business case for every single proposal that comes through. We do not simply reject on the basis of size. It really is about how effectively the programme supply will actually deliver.

My noble friend Lord Black rightly raised the important issue of freedom of the media and ensuring that people are able to get information on the ground that rightly empowers them to question local governance and services. The UK Government have been a champion of Goal 16, which encourages greater transparency and accountability, and press freedom globally. In support of that, DfID provides BBC Media Action with a large global grant of £85 million to support citizens gaining better access to information through the media. We support the global work of the London-based organisation, Article 19, which focuses on the defence and promotion of freedom of expression and freedom of information worldwide.

My noble friend is also absolutely right to highlight the importance of tackling LGBT discrimination. The UK is behind the commitment to the principle of “leave no one behind” in the implementation of the global development goals. I welcome the opportunity to chair discussions on the protection of LGBT people during the upcoming CHOGM People’s Forum in Malta over the next few days. The UK continues to urge all states with laws that criminalise homosexuality urgently to review them. DfID remains committed to fighting for equality and against discrimination. We see human rights as universal; they should apply to all people.

My noble friend Lady Hodgson and other noble Lords asked about corruption and fraud. The Government do not and will not tolerate corruption or the misuse of taxpayers’ funds in any form. All allegations of fraud are taken seriously and we follow them up through DfID’s Counter Fraud and Whistleblowing Unit. We have in place robust systems to safeguard aid money. DfID is delivering a new anti-corruption research programme over the next three years to provide relevant operational evidence on how to tackle corruption in priority countries.

My noble friend Lord Barker talked about the Energy Africa campaign. He is absolutely right to say that we focus on ensuring that the two out of three people living in sub-Saharan Africa who do not have access to electricity today are not in that position in the future. We are doing our very best to ensure that we reach out to help them on to the path to economic growth, and I am very pleased to be able to support my honourable friend in the other place, Grant Shapps, who launched this initiative on 22 October. It has been very well received globally and, again, the UK is showing the leadership that encourages others to look at what we are doing in this area, so that they can assist us. Three countries have already signed partnership agreements.

I have too many questions to respond to in the time available because the clock is ticking away rapidly. Perhaps I may conclude by saying that the international community sees DfID as a development leader. We are not complacent, and we will continue partnering across government, parliamentarians, civil society, the British public and others to deliver smarter and more effective programmes which demonstrate that the power of change is on the ground and in the hands of the people.

House adjourned at 7.39 pm.