International Development Policies

Earl of Sandwich Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[The Earl of Sandwich]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to make their international development policies more effective.

[The Earl of Sandwich (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted to introduce this new debate and to welcome friends old and new, especially the noble Lord, Lord Barker of Battle, from whom we will hear soon.

Today, I offer a survey of aid scrutiny, and will expect others to provide the academic analysis. My background is with aid NGOs, namely Christian Aid, Save the Children and CARE, all organisations with long experience in this field that have engendered in me a strong sense of aid effectiveness and public accountability.

As we all know, the UK has a good track record, and our Prime Minister took a lead in launching the sustainable development goals in New York over a year ago. But for us to be sure of meeting these goals, we also need to lead the world in aid effectiveness. I know that impact is the flavour of the month and that every organisation these days is concerned with outcomes, but with the Treasury coming down heavily on other departments, it is even more urgent that we in the UK sign up to an open and fully accountable aid programme. In the past year, this House has debated at length the amount of aid that we can afford, which is now ring-fenced under the Act. We now need to move on to proper methods of scrutiny and of streamlining our aid programme.

Our key watchdog, although not the only one, has the snappy title of ICAI, the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. It was a creation of the coalition Government and it has already been tested over the last Parliament. It reports to a sub-committee of the Commons International Development Committee. With 46 substantial reports behind it already and new commissioners in place, I know that ICAI intends to look at the longer-term impact of ODA. This is critical: how can one measure an aid programme year by year and report to the public on its impact only in annual reviews? There have to be appraisals over a much longer term. Three to five years is the average length of a DfID programme, and even this is hardly sufficient to measure its impact on health, education or other needs of society.

Nepal’s multi-stakeholder forestry programme provides an example. This impressive programme is a model of forestry, ticking two SDG boxes. It is already helping half a million poor people through community groups to adapt to climate change over the next 30 years, preventing landslides, flooding and erosion and improving livelihoods. DfID has a five-year investment of £20 million which ends next year, but this programme is not new; it has a long history. I well remember visiting it several years ago with an IPU delegation—the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, will remember it—and the same optimistic things were said about it then. I then heard that the programme was suspended, beset with political hold-ups, management problems and land disputes. The Swiss intervened, and then the Finns came in. Such setbacks occur all the time in developing countries. ICAI now says that the programme is back on track, but you cannot always believe either our own or Nepalese propaganda. We may not learn the truth for another 10 years.

There have been failures. Two years ago, ICAI uncovered a waste of aid money on a substantial scale in Africa. TradeMark Southern Africa failed to meet its targets and was closed down by DfID. Perhaps the Minister could say whether there are similar concerns in relation to its sister programmes, MRGP, which links north-south trade to ports in Mozambique, and the TMEA programme in east Africa.

The largest aid programme in the EU, EULEX in Kosovo, has done excellent work, but it has been criticised and drastically scaled down. I am not biased against large programmes if they work. The overhaul of customs and excise by DfID in Mozambique, for example, was very successful. One reason that we have invested heavily in Mozambique, against a difficult political background—as the noble Lord, Lord Judd, will testify from his visit—is that an active civil society there has acted as aid watchdogs. Good practice can often be scaled up from smaller enterprise and local initiatives.

I believe that there is a genuine desire in DfID to shift its emphasis towards human rights and poverty reduction. It is just a case of how you do it. We are reassured that even the CDC private sector is now being adapted to that end, and I genuinely hope that it will succeed.

I commend DfID on its parliamentary work abroad, because ICAI is right that other organisations should deal with elections. Strengthening national parliaments and equipping them to serve their nations should be a priority for us here in this country. I remember visiting the Kenya Parliament with the CPA some years ago and finding that, even in such an advanced environment with hundreds of MPs, there were only a handful of staff. The situation has now changed there, but not in many other developing countries.

There are other Select Committees that have to follow DfID: the environment committee, the Public Accounts Committee, the Health Committee, the Education Committee, the arts committee and any department that has an interest in international development. The NAO, the National Audit Office, also keeps an eye on DfID and occasionally criticises its financial performance.

I also include our own committees, remembering in particular our expert Economic Affairs Committee report on aid three years ago. Two years ago our EU External Affairs sub-committee, to which I belong, was critical of the EU’s water, sanitation and hygiene—or WASH—programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. The European Court of Auditors reported that half of 21 WASH projects in Africa were defective and had wasted EU money. The Development Commissioner subsequently denied this and said that the projects selected were random and that DfID had done another survey of 24 successful projects, but none of us was convinced. The scale of EU aid, whether through the EDF or ECHO, is such that our own committees and watchdogs will never be able to catch up with fraud, corruption, waste and all the other afflictions of aid.

However, it is not only the EU. DfID often has to operate in dangerous or remote environments, and humanitarian or conflict prevention programmes in countries such as South Sudan are dangerous. Aid and, indeed, aid workers may be hijacked or have to stop at short notice, with little chance of recovery. This is why ICAI gave the justice and security sector an amber rating last March.

At this point I commend our Liaison Committee for deciding to appoint an International Relations Committee next year after many years of lobbying. No fewer than 25 all-party groups look at DfID’s performance from time to time, including several country and regional all-party groups that occasionally report in some detail. DfID has a multiplicity of internal checks and balances. The acronyms and organograms are bewildering. Much of it is designed by the ARIES management system and database. There is the log frame, the business case, the risk rating, the calculation sheet to give the overall output score, and so on. I sympathise with the staff of DfID who have to cope with all this scrutiny, but what is the result and what are the prospects of a more effective aid programme? In general, I say that they are good and that ICAI is going to be a valuable ally for all concerned, including the general public.

One critical issue is always the capacity of local partners, whether government or civil society. DfID would like to work through more CSOs, organisations which are seen as effective when government is inefficient, corrupt or clearly not working to plan. However, CSOs are also expected to complete forms and are subject to regular scrutiny. I know DfID is currently conducting a civil society partnership review that includes so-called southern CSOs, but I expect there will be more emphasis on the international NGOs and that southern NGOs will get left out. I hope the noble Baroness will put us right on that.

There is always a tension between aid effectiveness and the confrontation of real poverty. Where infrastructure and services are most lacking, aid agencies inevitably fear to tread—yet that is where they are needed most.

Another topical question concerns the poaching of ODA by other departments, notably the FCO and the MoD. We in the aid business should defend our department, but soldiers build refugee camps and DfID is even resettling refugees. There will always be foreign policy issues common to two or three departments and hence some overlap in funding.

Finally, what of quality? Having looked at the private sector and value for money, the latest theme music from the Government is results and the importance of DfID’s results framework. I here only repeat ICAI’s word of warning in June, which brings me back to the beginning:

“Some of DFID’s tools … have had the unintended effect of focussing … on quantity … over quality … on short-term … achievements rather than long-term, sustainable impact”.

I am grateful to all noble Lords who are taking part in this debate.