International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill |
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Mr. Thomas: I join in encouraging the Committee to support my right hon. Friend’s new clause and to resist clauses 2 and 4 standing part of the Bill. As my right hon. Friend said, and as I made clear on Second Reading, the Government support the intention behind clauses 2 and 4. New clause 6, to which my right hon. Friend spoke, helps to resolve any duplication in those clauses. I should point out that one or two changes that are not included in new clause 6 are dealt with elsewhere in the Bill for the sake of clarity. 9.30 amClause 4 deals with untied aid. I would argue that that is a matter of aid-effectiveness rather than of policy coherence, and new clause 5, which I hope the Committee will support, contains references to untied aid so that the Department can continue to report on it. Clause 4 also seeks a report on progress in fulfilling millennium development goal 8 in respect of various issues specified in clause 7(2). As millennium development goal 8 is specifically mentioned in the clause, a further list of issues to be included would be confusing and unnecessary, which is why they are not in my right hon. Friend’s new clause. The requirements to provide some sectoral breakdown of bilateral aid in clause 4 would be better sited in the proposed new schedule that deals with financial reporting, which we will consider shortly. The hon. Members for Banbury (Tony Baldry) and for Boston and Skegness made the case for more time for DFID questions, as did other hon. Members on Second Reading. As the hon. Member for Banbury knows, I cannot give him the assurance that he craves now, but I will further consider his additional point. I confess that I was slightly shocked that he thinks Members are not listening in the last 10 minutes of DFID questions. I had assumed that the rising noise was acclamation for what Ministers were saying. My hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Ed Balls) rightly drew attention to the many other Departments that have an impact on international development, and in the spirit of a clause about policy coherence it is right to draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that there are opportunities to explore issues relating to millennium development goal 8 across a wide range of Departments. Column Number: 12 The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness referred to the money resolution. I reassure him that simply because the Bill will not require substantial amounts of money to be spent by other Departments does not mean that we will not be reporting on other Departments’ contributions to the cause of international development. He rightly made the case for other requirements in millennium development goal 8, beyond what is in the new clause, to be reported on. For example, in target 14 on small islands we have a series of responsibilities in respect of overseas territories on which we will continue to report. The hon. Gentleman was right to say that we are working on issues relating to unemployment rates and how to encourage private sector growth to facilitate more employment. As he said, I have an interest in the issue of access to essential drugs and we want to report progress on that matter. I reassure the Committee that the other elements of millennium development goal 8 will be reported on as appropriate. I heard loud and clear the requests for more time for debates on development and I will draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to the issue. We have not been shy of having debates and I look forward to more to come; that is an inevitability. I urge the Committee to support new clause 6 and to oppose clauses 2 and 4. I am genuinely not persuaded that the amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness is necessary. The Secretary of State will have to judge which general or specific observations to include in the annual report. It seems sensible to acknowledge that, as we propose to do in the Bill. Question put and negatived. Clause 2 disagreed to. Clause 3 International development assistance and gross national income Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill. The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Government new clause 1—Statistics to be reported. Government new schedule 1—INFORMATION TO BE INCLUDED IN ANNUAL REPORT. Government amendment No. 11. Mark Simmonds: On a point of order, Mr. Hood. I may have misunderstood the mechanics of the Committee, but I wonder what has happened to my proposed amendment (a) which was grouped under clause 2. I did not have the opportunity to withdraw it or press it to a vote. The Chairman: I mentioned earlier that amendment (a) to new clause 6 would be put to a vote when the questions are put on the new clause. Is that clear? Mark Simmonds: Yes. Thank you. Column Number: 13 Mr. Thomas: I rise to encourage support for new clause 1 and new schedule 1 and to urge the Committee to vote against clause 3. The proposed new provisions are a sensible way to clarify the Bill and to avoid it becoming overburdened with detail. My right hon. Friend’s Bill speaks of international development assistance. That might be a term of common parlance, but it is not in general use by development statisticians, and therefore it needs to be adapted. The requirements on financial reporting will be expressed in general, readily understandable terms, with the definitions of such terms set out in the annual reports that are laid before Parliament, rather than in the Bill itself. That enhances the Bill and helps to avoid it becoming too technical. On that basis, most of the requirements in this area of the Bill and elsewhere are related simply to aid of various kinds. That would be interpreted in the annual report in terms of the internationally agreed definitions of aid that are already in common use. Examples are the use of DFID programme aid or gross public expenditure on aid, both of which are reported on a financial year basis. The only exception to that general rule of thumb is when there is a requirement to provide data on official development assistance, which is a particular definition of international development assistance that is used by the development assistance committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Owing to the importance of the UN’s 0.7 per cent. target for overseas development assistance as a percentage of gross national income, that term—overseas development assistance—will continue to appear specifically in the Bill. I should mention that overseas development assistance is reported on a calendar year basis. The proposed schedule subsumes all the requirements for financial reporting that are included in the Bill. It subsumes the series of requirements in clause 3, the overseas development assistance gross national income data from clause 6, the regional breakdown of bilateral aid in clause 1, the breakdown of multilateral aid in clause 5, and the sectoral data from clause 4. Paragraph 2(1)(c) of the new schedule sets out a particular requirement to report bilateral aid by sector. It may be helpful if I confirm that such aid is usually broken down by reference to the following broad sectors: economic, education, health, governance, social, humanitarian assistance, rural livelihood and environment. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood) raised the issue of humanitarian assistance on Second Reading. I draw his attention to the proposed new schedule and the reference that it includes on reporting on humanitarian assistance, which I hope he and other Committee members will regard as a helpful step forward. Mark Simmonds: I join the Minister in accepting and acknowledging the necessity of reworking this part of the Bill. We do not have an issue with the way in which the Bill has been structured, in that the
and replace them with
What does that change mean? The other more generic concern on the content of the report as detailed in the Bill, under the proposed new schedule, is that all the information that is being requested is merely about the inputs, not the outputs and their effectiveness. I suggest that most, if not all, of the information that will be detailed in the report is already in the public domain through other reporting structures used by the Department for International Development. The Bill should be the foundation—a major building block—for the assessment of the effectiveness of the British taxpayers’ money that is rightly spent on alleviating poverty and trying to meet the millennium development goals. However, the way in which the new schedule is structured does not seem to allow sufficient information to be put into the public domain to enable an informed debate to take place, hopefully annually, on the Floor of the House. The argument against doing so is that it may take an enormous amount of work by DFID civil servants. I do not think that that is necessarily an excuse. You will be sorry to have missed a debate yesterday, Mr. Hood, about an additional, replenishment sum of money going into a section of the World Bank that is euphemistically called the International Development Association. IDA 14 has included, for the first time, the analysis of effectiveness in terms of a results-based management system; it also has a full disclosure of countries’ performance ratings. If it is possible to do that in one part of the DFID structure, why is it not possible to do so across the board? Why is it not possible to put that sort of analysis in the Bill? DFID has stated that the IDA is an effective instrument, with a 25 per cent. efficiency gain. Obviously, such analysis is taking place in the Department and, presumably, to come to that conclusion DFID has had to make comparisons with other projects and with the effectiveness of other streams of British taxpayers’ money. I should like to see that sort of analysis in the report. I do not see why such matters should not be added to the new schedule, which is, at the moment, purely about inputs, not outputs and effectiveness. Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP): I have just one question for the Minister on new schedule 1. Will aid that comes from DFID that has been distributed from other sources be included under the schedule and accounted for? I am thinking of where DFID gave money, through USAID, for some spending in Malawi in 2004. Many of us are concerned about how that money has been spent, especially given the priorities of USAID. Column Number: 15 Ann McKechin (Glasgow, North) (Lab): I should like the Minister to clarify whether, in respect of sub-paragraph (f) of new schedule 1, the Government intend to include some indication of their decision making in multilateral organisations, such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, how they vote at meetings and any statements that they make. Perhaps my hon. Friend could clarify another thing. He mentioned how the Government would describe how assistance was provided in respect of child mortality and HIV/AIDS, but will there be any analysis of how aid is spent according to gender and to tackling disability in the developing world? Is it intended that the report will make mention of those matters? 9.45 amMr. Ellwood: I should like also to address the arguments made my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness. However, first I must thank the Minister for adding the concerns of humanitarian assistance; it is welcome to know that when Members make comments in the Chamber those on the Government Benches listen. This is the first time that that has happened— Mr. Thomas: Do not get carried away. Mr. Ellwood: I will take stock of that, but I am very pleased that I have at least had one success. How the money is spent is the important aspect. What yardstick of success will the Minister use to decide whether the money is being spent efficiently? The major concern is whether the money has been hived off or competitive quotes have not been taken. Reporting back on whether these millions of pounds have been spent efficiently is important. Another yardstick of comparison is how much money is put forward by other countries. Does the Minister intend to give us an idea of our spending in relation to that of other developed countries that are helping developing countries around the world? Mr. Thomas: I will take that final point first. The Bill places extensive reporting requirements on DFID about British aid, so we are not about to start also reporting on other countries’ aid in that annual report, except where there is direct relevance to the distribution of our assistance. I will deal with the other issues in the order in which they arose. Government amendment No. 11 will make the language of the title of the Bill accord with the proposed changes in new clause 1 and the new schedule. Its purpose is simply to ensure that the long title correctly reflects the various provisions in the Bill. The hon. Member for Boston and Skegness suggested that the new schedule talks only about inputs. In broad terms, I accept that he is right, but I suggest that he looks at the provisions of the Bill as a package. For example, new clause 5 talks about the Secretary of State having to make an assessment of the “effectiveness” of spend. [Interruption.] If the hon. Gentleman and other Members are successful in
The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) asked whether British aid that is distributed through other organisations will be reported on. Essentially, that is covered by our requirement to report on how we spend our money in particular countries. Obviously, if we are spending it through other organisations, that will still be covered under the Bill’s requirement on us to report. A minimum of 20 countries is proposed, and we will come to that in due course. I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s view of the spend in Malawi, but perhaps that is a debate for another time. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, North (Ann McKechin) asked whether we would be reporting on every decision made by a multilateral organisation. Given how many multilateral organisations we fund, it would cost a huge amount to report on each and every decision they make, so we are not proposing to do so. My hon. Friend also asked about issues around gender, and how British aid is used to promote the empowerment of women. That is reflected in millennium development goal 3. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill has said, he is proposing to include the MDGs in the Bill, so we would have to report on that matter. Mark Simmonds: Will the Minister address the point that I made about analysis of the effectiveness of aid elsewhere in DFID—the country rankings in IDA 14? Is he prepared to consider putting such a provision in the Bill, particularly given that he has accepted the argument to increase the number of countries on which to report from 10 to 20? Will he examine the ranking of those; it is clearly going on elsewhere in his Department? Mr. Thomas: The hon. Gentleman has already asked me to ensure that we do not report on one set of issues separately to those that we are required to report on under the Bill. I am all for such efficiency savings. If there is a way of helpfully combining work that is being done elsewhere by the Department with the work that the House will require us to do as a result of the Bill, we will of course seek to gather the information for Members to digest. Question put and negatived. Clause 3 disagreed to. Clause 4 disagreed to. Clause 5 Multilateral development assistance and Millennium Development Goals 1 to 7 Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill. Column Number: 17 The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: clause 7 stand part. New clause 5—Aid effectiveness and Millennium Development Goals 1 to 7—
And the following amendment thereto: (a), in line 9, leave out
and insert
Mr. Clarke: In new clause 5 I propose to merge clause 5, which deals with the effectiveness of multilateral aid in achieving millennium development goals 1 to 7, with clause 7, which deals with the effectiveness of bilateral aid. Again, I propose that we specifically make reference to the MDGs. The hon. Member for Banbury, in remarks that I otherwise agreed with, said something about this being a Government Bill. I do not want to develop the point too much, but if he were a fly on the wall he would not reach the same conclusion, and that is reflected in what I am proposing to the Committee. New clause 5 also deals with tied aid, which was in clause 4, as I am now convinced that this is a matter of aid effectiveness rather than policy coherence. After consulting hon. Members from all parts of the House, and given that all UK bilateral aid agreed since 2001 has been untied—indeed tied aid has been outlawed—I have chosen to focus instead on the more positive promotion of untied aid, of which the UK is in the vanguard in the EU and the Development Assistance
After consulting my hon. Friend the Minister—I want to acknowledge a positive Government contribution, because I am trying to be as even-handed as I have been from the beginning—I am pleased to propose that, in line with the important points put forward on Second Reading by the hon. Members for Boston and Skegness, for Bournemouth, East and for Kettering (Mr. Hollobone), the cap on the number of countries under scrutiny in the Bill shall be increased to a number not fewer than 20, with room for the Government of the day to focus on even more should they choose to do so. I understand that the Minister will wish to add his comments to what I have just said. By way of explanation, reference to humanitarian assistance has been removed from the new clause and included in the schedule. To say in the new clause that bilateral aid includes humanitarian assistance would imply that elsewhere it does not. Moreover, humanitarian assistance is not primarily aimed at MDGs 1 to 7, which is the principal focus of the new clause, which I commend to the Committee. Mr. Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con): I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his remarks and on listening to many of us who were concerned that the scope of the Bill as it first appeared was too narrow. Reporting on at least 20 countries makes far more sense. However, I have a concern—it is genuine, which might be unusual for this place—about countries such as Zimbabwe, whose regime we despise. We give the Zimbabwe Government no official aid, but non-governmental agencies provide humanitarian assistance. Would that be picked up and reported on under the new clause? Pete Wishart: Having listened to the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill, I am satisfied that there will be clarity. He has given assurances about the tied aid that the UK Government give bilaterally and multilaterally. However, can he assure me that we will have clarity on aid that is given by the World Bank and which is tied to economic policy? I am thinking particularly of Mali, where the railroad was privatised at great expense and at a great cost to jobs and the country’s economic performance. Can we ensure that any reporting makes clear the economic policy conditions to which UK assistance might have been indirectly tied? I am thinking primarily of institutions such as the World Bank. Can we have assurances that any reporting will provide clarity and show whether there are economic ties to DFID’s contributions to the World Bank and other multilateral agencies? Mark Simmonds: I agree with the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill that humanitarian aid is a necessary and important addition to the Bill, but the current provision is not the appropriate place for it. The fact that such aid has been included in the new schedule is a testament to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East, as well as
I am also grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and the Minister for listening to the points that were made on Second Reading about the need to carry out analysis of specific millennium development goals, rather than the sectoral analysis that might have been deemed appropriate at one point. That is a significant step forward, particularly because it will, I hope, allow the effectiveness and delivery of British multilateral and bilateral aid to target countries to be analysed. Amendment (a) to new clause 5 relates to the number of countries on which we shall have to report. The right hon. Gentleman must take enormous credit for corralling and persuading the Department to increase the number from 10 to 20. I very much welcome the commitment that he and the Minister have given to report on more than 20 countries, and the annual report will have to include details on a minimum of 20. However, I am concerned about the wording of the new clause, which my amendment seeks to address. New clause 5 states that the report must deal with
I cannot find where in the Bill those criteria are specified or what they are. I do not know whether they are the Minister’s personal criteria or specifications, based on which countries received him with the most luxurious accommodation or the best wine. The amendment is therefore important. It states that the 20 countries should be
—the countries that receive the greatest amount of British taxpayers’ money. That is not an unreasonable request, and I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s response. I should also like to draw the Committee’s attention to the provisions that were in the original Bill, but which have been amended today and which will not be included in future. Under clause 2, the report must
That provision has now been removed. We believe that there should be an independent analysis of the effectiveness of the UK’s bilateral development assistance in respect of each millennium development goal. Again, I can find that nowhere in the Bill. 10 amI return to the point that I made earlier: in relation to IDA 14, an analysis takes place within DFID on country rankings. We would like to see those rankings included in the report, so that we can analyse and debate the effectiveness of British aid and decide whether those funds need to be reassessed and reallocated to ensure the maximum alleviation of poverty and the maximum progress towards meeting
The Bill makes no mention, either in the original or the amended versions, of direct budgetary support. A significant amount of British taxpayers’ money is clearly going through direct budgetary support—it is going from DFID directly to recipient Governments rather than through NGOs or other mechanisms. Since 2000, £1.5 billion of British taxpayers’ money has gone through direct budgetary support. The Opposition are supportive of direct budgetary support, but there is not necessarily enough analysis of it. Monitoring what happens to that money is important. The Minister will be aware that significant percentages are rumoured not to end up where they are supposed to go, and we should have greater control and monitoring of where the money goes. The entire DIFD budget is predicated on support from the British electorate, which is based on the effectiveness of outputs rather than inputs. As we have recently seen, problems are emerging in Uganda and Ethiopia—countries that we have provided with direct budgetary support—and the Secretary of State and the Minister have quite rightly reduced the funding going to those Governments because of the way in which they are operating. I do not see why the important role of building capacity, both economically and democratically, and of building civil societies, should not be included in the Bill. |
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