Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps the Government takes to help share UK civil service expertise with developing nations.

The Bilateral Development Review of 2016 and DFID’s Economic Development Strategy of 2017 have set out a strong and ambitious vision for the UK to develop a world-leading partnerships offer to share the best of the UK’s public sector skills and expertise.

Many UK civil service institutions already make their expertise available to developing countries. For example, HMRC has resident advisers working in several African countries, working with their counterparts to build their capacity to manage taxes and auditing. The Government Communications Service has partnerships with Tunisia, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Jordan to improve their government communications across a range of policy areas, with a focus on impartiality. The department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is supporting regulatory reforms in India, Indonesia, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil.

To boost our UK approach to partnerships, DFID’s GREAT for Partnership programme will support a range of peer-to-peer partnerships between UK institutions and their counterparts in developing countries over the next four years. This will aim to provide the technical and professional support that partner governments request, in line with UK priorities and values. The programme is currently at an early stage of implementation as we test the model, before we implement at scale.