Examination of witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
TUESDAY 28 APRIL 1998
MR J VEREKER,
MR R MANNING
and MR G STEGMANN
Mr Canavan
1. Good morning, welcome to the Committee;
I should say welcome back because this is not the first time you
have been before the International Development Committee to give
formal evidence. May I say at the outset that our normal Chairman,
Bowen Wells, is unfortunately not with us this morning; he is
abroad on Commonwealth Parliamentary Association business and
sends his apologies? I have been asked to take the Chair instead.
May I ask you first of all to be good enough to introduce your
two colleagues?
(Mr Vereker) On my right is Richard Manning, Director-General
for Resources in the Department for International Development.
On my left is Graham Stegman who is Head of our Aid Policy and
Resources Department.
2. We are here to ask questions this morning
on the Departmental Report but I wonder whether you would be good
enough in the first instance to tell us something about the general
situation in Sudan and what in particular the Department for International
Development is doing to try to help out in that desperate situation?
(Mr Vereker) The main point is one which my Secretary
of State made at the weekend, which is that the situation in Sudan
is not one which is susceptible to solution by development assistance
alone. It is a situation which requires a mixture of a political
solution so as to improve the opportunities for access to the
south of Sudan where a large number of people are suffering, together
with a coordinated international effort to provide food to a widely
dispersed population. Clare Short did announce at the weekend
that we were pledging £4 million to the current UN appeal
for Sudan of which £1.9 million will be for the World Food
Programme of food aid, £0.5 million is to NGOs, World Vision
and Save the Children, to provide survival kits for 8,000 families
and £0.25 million to Médecins sans Frontières
to provide emergency health and nutritional support. I would want
to emphasise that whatever we may be able to do bilaterally is
only part of a larger international operation, the constraint
on which is the political environment in which relief agencies
are trying to work.
Ann Clwyd
3. We are in the presidency of the European
Union. How are we coordinating European aid?
(Mr Vereker) The honest answer to that is that
the current focus of attention which derives partly from media
attention in the south of Sudan is a matter of only the last few
days and we have not had much opportunity yet to talk to our Community
partners. All along, there has been international concern, which
we have talked to our Community partners about, about the situation
in the south of Sudan. This is tragically not new. The Sudan civil
war has been going on for a very long time. The international
efforts to bring about a peaceful solution have involved the United
Nations, the Americans, the European Union.
4. You do say in the annual report that
your approach to humanitarian assistance has evolved with new
procedures for needs assessment. How is that actually working
at the moment with reference to the Sudan?
(Mr Vereker) It is extremely difficult to get
people in to make a needs assessment, for two reasons: one is
limited access and the other one is a very widely dispersed population.
This is not a situation where you can go into a refugee camp and
see how many people are hungry. In an ideal situation we would
want to make that kind of needs assessment ourselves and under
present circumstances we must rely on the UN agencies and particularly
the World Food Programme.
5. Do you think we are dealing with this
with the greatest urgency? I am sure we as elected members over
the next few weeks will increasingly be getting letters from our
constituents asking what the Government is doing about it. I do
not detect any urgency in your response. It seems to me quite
relaxed.
(Mr Vereker) I certainly do not want to come across
as relaxed in circumstances where the television cameras are carrying
pictures of severely malnourished children. We are not at all
relaxed about it. The international community has been dealing
periodically with difficulties of this nature in the south of
Sudan for a long time. My Secretary of State is far from relaxed
about it and I understand, when I was talking to her office this
morning, that there is a possibility of a PNQ this afternoon but
I am not sure whether that is actually going to happen.
Mr Grant
6. The Sudanese Government says that the
reason that they are having difficulties in allowing aid is because
the aid is going to the rebels. The rebels say that is not true.
What is the truth of the matter?
(Mr Vereker) I am not an expert on Sudan. I have
never visited the country. I am not at all authorised to speak
about the politics of it. You would have to ask one of my Foreign
Office colleagues. This is a situation in which there has been
a civil war for some time. The concern of my Department is for
conflict resolution and humanitarian assistance but I am not in
a position to make those kinds of judgements.
7. Surely you have to become involved in
the politics if you are going to give aid to the people? It is
in that context that I am asking you whether there are any difficulties
in relation to the handing out of aid.
(Mr Vereker) There are acute difficulties deriving
from the imposition by the government in Khartoum of limitations
on the number of flights into the south.
Mr Rowe
8. It is often argued that although none
of us can look with equanimity at people starving on the television
screen actually international assistance of this kind merely prolongs
these conflicts for the very reason Mr Grant was suggesting, that
actually with the best will in the world, if you have a choice
between a starving mother and child and a starving man with a
rifle the food tends to go to the starving man with a rifle. What
is DFID's view about the effectiveness of these really quite massive
international calamity interventions in war situations? If all
it does is to prolong for another five years fighting which would
otherwise end in exhaustion you could argue, hard though it is
to do so, that we are doing more harm than good.
(Mr Vereker) There are indeed dilemmas here and
the Department and our Secretary of State recognise these. Clare
Short made an address to a conference in London on 7 April, the
conference jointly organised by the European Community's Humanitarian
Office (ECHO) and the Overseas Development Institute, on the principles
which should govern responses in circumstances of humanitarian
emergencies. These principles certainly include sensitivity to
the dilemma, to the fact that a judgement has to be taken in each
case, as it had to be in Bosnia. Whenever you are providing assistance
to vulnerable people affected by conflict you have to ask these
kinds of questions and make these kinds of balances. I do not
think myself that generalisations are going to help us here. There
are some principles which we can set out and which are indeed
set out in the speech which we should be very happy to circulate
to the Committee. The truth is that we and our Ministers have
to take decisions case by case. Many people would recognise that
where it is clear that vulnerable groups are acutely suffering
a response to that situation probably has to come first.
Mr Canavan
9. We should be grateful if you would circulate
the speech to the Committee.[1]
We will move on to the main subject of our investigation this
morning, namely the Departmental Report. The Treasury's core requirements
for Departmental Reports states that they should "provide
future targets, milestones or plans for the main activities of
the Department, against which future performance can be measured".
The DFID Report sets out on page 8 the Department's aims and objectives.
The only targets mentioned are the DAC international targets to
be achieved by the years 2005 and 2015 on things like economic
wellbeing, human development and environmental sustainability
and regeneration. Could you tell us by what targets we should
judge the performance of DFID on a year by year basis?
(Mr Vereker) The broad architecture which I would
want to encourage the Committee to judge us by does derive from
the international development goals set out in the White Paper
which set overarching targets for 2015 which are internationally
agreed, of which much the most important overarching target is
the target of halving the proportion of people living in absolute
poverty. Whatever we may do as a department year on year in the
short term is a great deal less important in our view and in the
view of our Ministers than what the international community as
a whole does in the medium to longer term. What we are going to
offer the Committee, what we propose to offer the Committee, is
an annual report showing progress against the 21 indicators which
have been agreed by the Development Assistance Committee of the
OECD's expert statistical group which are grouped by international
target, which will be measured by each institution, as it might
be UNESCO for education, WHO for health and so on, and which will
be published annually by the World Bank in the World Bank's world
development indicators. That is a process of measuring the aggregate
international effort year on year towards medium to long-term
global targets. We appreciate of course that the Committee will
want to know about our Department's contribution to those targets
and leaving aside some conceptual difficulties about causality
we are proposing, along with the rest of Whitehall, to show our
contribution to these overarching aims in the form of an output
and performance analysis. The Committee will be aware that all
Whitehall departments are now being encouraged to develop output
and performance indicators of this nature and we are discussing
them centrally with the Treasury. We are establishing systems
which will generate broadly speaking intermediate indicators of
our contribution, which will be shown in our output and performance
analysis, and what I would describe as efficiency indicators,
that is to say indicators of how we are going about the process.
These two broad ranges of indicators which we are proposing to
display will be supported by new systems within our Department.
The process indicators will be supported by our move to resource
accounting and budgeting, which will enable us to demonstrate
more clearly our performance in the use of the resources we are
given, and the efficiency indicators, more the inputs to the programme
rather than the impact of it, will be displayed through a more
sophisticated version of our performance information and management
system, PIMS, an acronym with which the Committee is familiar,
which is being developed in ways which are set out in the report
and which I can elaborate if the Committee wishes. That is the
broad architecture, starting from the international targets, showing
internationally the extent to which we are moving towards the
targets, showing departmentally through the OPA, the output and
performance analysis, our contribution to these targets and then
our systems being adapted accordingly. I would say that we do
as a department think it very important that we have a shared
understanding with the Committee about what we ought to be showing
you. This is not something we want to dream up on our own and
bang in to the Committee in an annual report once a year and have
you tick it off. We should be delighted to be sure that what we
are producing is what the Committee would find helpful. If the
Committee would like, either in formal hearing, or less formally
might be appropriate, we should be happy to talk through some
of the technical issues underlying this.
Mr Canavan: That is
something the Committee would perhaps like to consider later.
Mr Rowe
10. All the talk for example about microfinance
confirms the view of many people working in the development field
that actually quite small sums of money which are much less vulnerable
to corrupt misappropriation and so on are pound for pound often
more effective than large programmes. When I raised this before
with the Department, they have quite reasonably said you cannot
expect a government department or any international aid programme
to be interested in very small amounts of money. I am interested
to hear how DFID sees the effective delivery of the kind of small
programmes which are so often applauded by people who work in
this field.
(Mr Vereker) We certainly have an interest in
the effectiveness of small projects. We believe that microenterprises
and support for institutions working to develop microenterprises
are potentially very powerful instruments for enabling growth
in employment, growth in small-scale savings, improvement in household
livelihoods, particularly among the urban poor. We have a lot
of experience of working with voluntary organisations and local
institutions, local microcredit institutions which have this effect.
We certainly encourage this, we support it actively. I would say
that there is a very widespread perception among development assistance
agencies that these are effective routes and partly because of
that there are many people making resources available to the array
of institutions working in this area. The constraint on it lies
in the number of institutions which can be effectively managed
and grown in this area rather than our willingness to go down
that route.
11. I used that as an analogy. I am delighted
to hear what you are saying about microfinance and that is excellent.
However, it is also true, is it not, that relatively small amounts
of money to a school or a relatively small amount of money to
a primary health centre will often have a disproportionately beneficial
effect? I was really saying that the arguments which apply to
microfinance also apply to education and health. I just wondered
whether you had the same interest in extending that kind of tutelage
to those sorts of project.
(Mr Vereker) I am a little bit reserved about
that, partly because if we with a rather large public spending
programme of £2.5 billion or so have too high a proportion
in very small activities it is going to become very labour intensive.
My other constraint is that there is a potential trap in getting
a warm feeling from seeing a small intervention which is undeniably
effective. The last one I remember seeing was a bridge over a
river in Swaziland and the bridge was just a footbridge for school
pupils which connected a school which had been built in the wrong
place to the nearest village so that pupils could save a lot of
time walking round and wading across the river. I thought that
was wonderful. However, when you stop to think about what its
longer term and wider impact is, it is a bit limited, whereas
building up the capacity of the Swazi education ministry so they
do not put schools in the wrong place in the first place might
turn out to be a more powerful intervention and is not necessarily
much more expensive. One has to be a little bit careful in distinguishing
between the effectiveness of interventions you can see and say
are great and the effectiveness of interventions which, particularly
in the institution-building area, are less visible but could be
more powerful.
Dr Tonge
12. I am a simple soul and I found this
report quite difficult. I wanted to see the targets at which you
are aiming and how you are going to report between now and 2015
when we hope to have halved poverty. I wanted to see how we were
going to do that year on year. You have just mentioned DAC's 21
indicators which seems a way to do it. Where are the DAC's 21
indicators in this report? Have I missed them? If you are going
to report back on them, does that mean that each year we are going
to have those indicators listed and a brief paragraph on how we
have progressed towards those indicators? I just want to know
how we are going to progress.
(Mr Vereker) I have every sympathy with this.
First of all, factually, the indicators are not in the report
because the report was drafted before the OECD expert group recommendation
had been agreed in the senior level meeting in February.
13. Can we get a list of these indicators?
(Mr Vereker) Yes; I have them in front of me and
should be happy to circulate them.[2]
As to what we put in the Departmental Report, I should like to
stress again we are very much in the Committee's hands. If you
would find this helpful we will repeat in the report what the
World Bank will be publishing in its report on world development
indicators. It may be that what the Committee will find more helpful
is something a bit more aggregated because these 21, and some
others which relate to other targets, are grouped into economic
wellbeing, social development, environmental sustainability, which
are related very closely to the international development goals.
We can either group them together or aggregate them or cross reference,
whatever the Committee would find helpful. It will get easier
as time goes on and we have a time series. In the first year it
is obviously harder.
Mr Canavan
14. The Committee no doubt will consider
the various suggestions regarding options of the presentation.
The report refers to a study showing "that around two thirds
of DFID projects were expected to achieve their immediate objectives",
which presumably means that about one third were not expected
to achieve their immediate objectives. Is that a satisfactory
state of affairs? Was there any target percentage for these projects?
(Mr Vereker) It would not be a satisfactory state
of affairs but it is not quite like that. Our evaluation of 89
projects which was completed in 1996 showed two thirds expected
to meet objectives fully and a further 30 per cent expected to
meet objectives partially. A rather small proportion was not expected
even partially to meet objectives. As to whether it is satisfactory,
I am bound to say I would not regard as satisfactory a project
which did not fully meet its objectives. Our target is that everything
is fully effective but in the real world we have to recognise
that we are operating in a rather high risk business and it is
not surprising that, particularly in some of these more difficult
social sectors, poor country institutional building areas we do
not hit all our targets. We have tried to benchmark this against
other development agencies. Comparable systems for evaluation
used by other donors such as the World Bank yield rather similar
results to our own so I can say in benchmarking terms we are up
there with the best, and given the difficult institutional context
within which we are working it is fair enough. We do not set ourselves
a particular target of two thirds fully satisfactory and our aspiration
should be nothing but the best.
15. Will future Departmental Reports contain
more information on output, performance and effectiveness? Would
it not be sensible for example for the report to contain a summary
of the previous year's project completion reports on retrospective
impact evaluations?
(Mr Vereker) We would not have any difficulty
doing that.
(Mr Manning) No; indeed. We have a regular reporting
system. Each completed project over £0.5 million has a project
completion report which precisely says how it is achieved. That
necessarily is a rather partial system because you need to come
back and look at how projects have actually achieved sustainable
results somewhat later. We have separately an evaluation system
which works to a three-year cycle and these evaluations are made
public and we will look for ways of aggregating that information
as well as we can in the Departmental Report. It is very difficult.
You can look on the one hand at statistical results and say X
per cent did this or that but in the development business it is
also very important to look in more detail at how certain types
of intervention have performed. We try to do this in a rather
thematic way over a period so that we scrutinise education projects.
This year we are doing what will be a very interesting evaluation
of how the British aid programme has contributed to poverty reduction
in three of our key recipients. We have a team of outside consultants
looking at that at the moment and I am sure that is going to produce
some very interesting results which we shall certainly want to
share with the Committee.[3]
Ann Clwyd
16. May I ask you about these evaluation
reports? I seem to remember under the previous administration
there were two sets: one was an internal report and one was made
public. Is the one which is made public the only one which is
published now or do you still have two sets of reports?
(Mr Manning) I think we have been round this course
before, if I am not wrong.
17. We have indeed.
(Mr Manning) There is a single report which is
published following scrutiny. Obviously there are drafts of reports
at earlier stages but we have been taking steps to reiterate to
those who produce evaluation reports that the evaluation reports
are the responsibility of the person or team producing the evaluation.
Though they can listen to what we as a department may say about
their draft findings it is for them to decide what is to go out
under their name at the end of the day.[4]
18. Are you actually saying to me that there
are no longer two sets of reports? I seem to remember being sent
one with a red cover which I was not meant to get and then one
with a brown cover which I was meant to get. That was the practice
of the previous administration. Are you telling me that there
are no longer two separate sets of reports?
(Mr Manning) There are not two separate sets of
reports.
19. When did that practice cease?
(Mr Manning) I cannot recall an evaluation report
in the last few years where we have had a separate one. There
could be cases—it is not a matter on which we have had to
take a view recently—where an evaluation might turn up some
finding which related to the performance of individuals or something
which it would be inappropriate to put into the public domain
and there we could have a report from the evaluators which was
internal. That is the only circumstance in which that might arise.
1 See Evidence, pp. 21-23. Back
2
See Evidence, pp. 23-24. Back
3
See also Evidence, p. 39. Back
4
This does not include humanitarian assistance to Saharawi refugees
provided through UNHCR and NGOs. Back
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