Examination of witnesses (Questions 60
- 79)
TUESDAY 14 MARCH 2000
THE RT
HON CLARE
SHORT, MR
BARRIE IRETON
and MR ROB
HOLDEN
60. How could the media know what the problem
was?
(Clare Short) The media came much later than this.
Mr Robathan
61. I notice that the media seemed to fill up
the hotel rooms, as frequently happens. The BBC must have had
at least or six of their top correspondents out there so I suppose
they needed to find a story to justify that. I would have thought
one person could have covered it just as well and used up less
space in the helicopters flying about. However, that is just a
comment. I would also like to comment that we did attend an OCHA
briefing and I think there was a great weakness in OCHA in sending
people out there for two weeks. I think those attending the OCHA
briefing would agree that the two British people, Greenall and
Howard Williams, was it?
(Mr Holden) Correct.
62. They obviously did not have the authority
of the Government, but they were trying to do a reasonable job
of extracting some light out of chaos, although I think it was
a grave weakness that they returned so early and I think the responsibility
for that should be laid at OCHA's door. Could I come back to helicopters?
At the meeting we attended at OCHA, a South African particularly
said that he would not be able to fly beyond the end of the week
unless funding was available. That was not my point but I just
try to clarify this because there is a little bit of chaos going
on around here too. If there were three commercial medium lift
helicopters available from Mozambique, and I know that Mozambique
have no helicopters in their armed forces, why did the Government
of Mozambique not hire them themselves and then apply for the
money? They had already made an appeal as early as 10 February.
Why did they not hire these helicopters if urgency was such a
matter? I know it is not your responsibility. I would like your
comments.
(Clare Short) We have a very strong relationship with
the Government of Mozambique and we have made it clear they are
a good reforming Government. But you have to imagine being one
of the poorest countries in the world with a Civil Service that
is virtually non-existent with no systems that work, with no roads,
with no communication systems to begin to comprehend what the
Government of Mozambique has to try to do. We cannot imagine it.
We think of ministers being backed up with systems and people.
In Mozambique the whole thing is very frail.
(Mr Ireton) Absolutely right.
(Clare Short) So you have got good individuals but
without systems underneath them doing their best to cope with
something they have never experienced before. Any one of us I
think might have foundered.
63. Whilst we were out there admittedly the
second wave did not occur and was not expected to be as bad. I
do not think anybody expected it to be as bad as it was. Nevertheless,
the responsibility for using these helicopters must reflect on
the Government of the time. I know the Government has a terrible
weakness of capacity, and I do not think it is necessarily up
to the British International Development Department to find these
helicopters and hire them, or was it?
(Clare Short) My Conflict and Humanitarian Department
is one of the fastest that turn around. We can deploy resources
very quickly so we move because we can move. Other parts of the
system are slower. What we would like is an international system
where everything can move more rapidly. It was not our responsibility
but if we could do anything we should do it.
64. You do see what I am saying, Secretary of
State? Here is a need for helicopters and presumably a request
for helicopters from the Government of Mozambique, and sitting
in Mozambique are medium lift helicopters which we then identify.
Have I missed something here? I would have thought that at least
the Mozambique Government know better than we did where helicopters
are in Mozambique.
(Clare Short) Do you know where all the helicopters
are in the United Kingdom?
65. No, but there are an awful lot of them.
(Clare Short) Yes, but you could find someone who
did know. Mozambique is not like that.
(Mr Ireton) The only thing I would add is that the
Secretary of State has already made it pretty clear the lack of
capacity. It is also the case, and one of the things we are finding
in our partnership with the Mozambique Government, that they did
inherit a rather different system from their colonial days?
66. It was 1974.
(Mr Ireton) And it is unfortunately yet to be greatly
modified and it is very procedurally hidebound as we are finding.
The norms that you might expect, that there would be immediate
flexibility, that funds would be shifted from one budget line
to another in view of the tremendous emergency, are not necessarily
in the early days forthcoming.
Ms King
67. On that point, if there is an apparent increase
in these natural disasters, is it part of DFID's audit perhaps
in countries to look at what transportation or other necessary
equipment in the face of an emergency is there so that at the
very least perhaps it would be possible to say five days earlier
to the Mozambique Government, notwithstanding the fact that you
might think they would know, but I take on board your comments,
"You have this available and we need it"? Is that perhaps
the route that DFID might be looking at if we are trying to shift
the emphasis on to regional responses to these disasters?
(Clare Short) We are trying to build an international
system that has a much higher level of disaster preparedness.
Our own Department at the moment cannot do that, we are not operating
in every country in every region of the world, but we are trying
to help strengthen United Nations systems, Red Cross systems,
build up capacity country by country, regionally and so on. Then
in the countries where we work that are subject to natural disasters
we try to support the Governments of those countries to increase
their capacity to respond. That is part of what we do. The whole
thing could be driven forward more rapidly and I think that the
report of this Select Committee, which I hope will not just castigate,
can help to achieve that. Yes, we should say that there were shortcomings
but then we have to say, "Come on; let us make a more effective
United Nations system" rather than simply pointing fingers.
It might help to drive forward that commitment in the international
system. With global warming there are going to be more and more
of these terrible disasters. That is going to bring more suffering
to people. Remember this. They had the worst floods since independence
in Bangladesh, but because of Bangladesh's preparedness there
was a very tiny loss of life. Hurricane Mitch, complete lack of
preparedness, terrible loss of life. So even in the face of natural
disaster, if you have got good, efficient capacity, you can massively
save life and restore and then learn where to put houses and not
to have them on places that are vulnerable to flooding and mud
slides. It is a very urgent matter now and, in the face of global
warming and more instability and therefore more disasters, it
is important that we move this whole thing forward internationally.
Chairman: Secretary of State, you know
this Committee is always slow to criticise but when we do criticise,
like we did the UNHCR in Kosovo, we do it with constructive reasons
in mind. I think we have succeeded, together with your own pressure,
in getting UNHCR to address some of their weaknesses as a result
of that report, and I hope this report will be equally constructive
Mr Jones
68. I was in Mozambique in December monitoring
the elections. I think you were right in your introduction to
say that the country is making progress. They have got to grasp
democracy and it is right and proper that we should help them.
Can I give you the opportunity now to chase one of the media stories
that was running while the crisis was on that you did not chase
at the time? That is the ongoing support for Mozambique. The
Observer reported on 5 March that, in a statement from you,
you said, "We are planning to increase our programme of support
to Mozambique to £70 million over the next two years."
The Observer pointed out that your Department's Annual
Report said that it had already set expenditure over the next
two years at more than that, at £76.5 million. In a later
statement DFID officials explained that the £70 million would
be drawn from a special reconstruction fund for Mozambique, which
would be separate from the Mozambique country programme. In a
speech to the Labour Party Conference in Scotland on 11 March,
you suggested that this was not new money but was a "refocusing"
of the money already allocated to Mozambique. Can you clarify
that for us?
(Clare Short) As the Committee knows, in response
to your request and because it is my wish that the Department
will be as open as possible, as you know we have published all
our planning figures for the first time.
Chairman
69. And you briefed us for our visit there.
(Clare Short) And we have put a health warning on
all of them: these are planning figures and we will vary them.
Sometimes we will not be able to spend, sometimes there will be
a greater need somewhere else, often you cannot disperse rapidly
and so on. As for the difference between the £76 million
and the £70 million, that is the same money. It is planned
commitment. Before this crisis arose there was a growing commitment
to a development programme in Mozambique. In the press statement
I amended it to say "we have already committed" so no-one
could be in any confusion. I do not know what happens then between
anyone talking to anyone, that we were claiming it was new money.
That is that money. You read out some words from someone from
my department. I do not know if anyone from my department said
anything like that. We work very closely as a department. We do
not have any conflicts, but if anyone said, "This is new
money because of the disaster", that is not true. The money
that was new money because of the disaster is the initial aid.
We have got money in the bank we can keep deploying as the days
go by, so it went five million, eight million, ten million. Then
I announced at the weekend another £10 million for the follow-on
phase for the seeds and tools and urgent repairs to roads maybe
and polythene and so on. That is emergency money which will be
deployed by the conflict and humanitarian emergency people who
can move very rapidly. We also have an ongoing programme in Mozambique
with a budget for this year which, as I indicate in the statement
to you, is likely to underspend. People say there are these different
pockets of money but when there is an emergency on it is not notional
money; it is real things on the ground that you can deploy immediately.
These are the world's fastest experts that do that. We put money
behind them so that they can move: hire aeroplanes, send out the
lifeboat people. We have got a lot of fire brigade people out
there and our own lifeboat people who have not had much praise
but have done a stunning job. We have got fire brigades across
the world who are all on emergency call-down and we call them
in for these emergencies. We have got 30 people between the lifeboat
teams and so on. That comes out of that budget. There is just
one other figure—I hope this is clear—out of what
was coming up to be an underspend on this year's development programme,
nothing to do with the emergency. We are re-deploying £10
million to get it into the budgets of the Government of Mozambique
to fund things that they are going to have to fund because of
the emergency. The final complexity on money is that Mozambique
as a government has got a lot of reserves in the bank. Because
it is doing so well a lot of donors are giving it resources, because
it has qualified for debt relief and because it has got weak capacity
to spend. I hope that is helpful. There are all these different
pockets of money and they need to be used and deployed differently.
Finally, around £70 million, and it can be more. If we can
spend more effectively I can increase that, no problem—funds
are already committed to HIV, AIDS, education, and we are doing
a pilot on teacher training and so on, but we will re-focus because
obviously Mozambique needs to recover before it goes back to its
long term development activities.
70. When we were there we met one of your people,
Anna I think her name is, and she was telling us that one of the
programmes that we support in Mozambique is tertiary roads so
that people can get their produce to market. Presumably this disaster
is going to affect the spending on that. Is that where some of
the expenditure is going to come from?
(Clare Short) Rural roads are fantastically important
for poor people, and, of course, the main north/south road in
Mozambique is now damaged and will need repair. Our biggest work
is in Zambezia province, because that is what the Government of
Mozambique asked for us, where we have a rural roads programme.
There has been training of local contractors, because you need
to both build roads and have a capacity to maintain them. So there
are three or four local contractors now managing this work, employing
local labour, including a lot of women because there are a lot
of widows in the areas, working on the roads. Our evaluation—and
I have not seen it recently—showed that not only did that
mean they could grow more crops, get more to market and increase
family income, but more children got to school and more people
got health care. However, that is up in Zambezia province and
Mozambique has virtually no roads. We might be able to deploy
some of that expertise down into this region, but the first job
will be to patch the main north/south road which has been breached.
Then we will refocus in the best way we can to help.
71. The emergency money that you announced increased
this last weekend from £2 million to £20 million. That
is in addition to the hugely generous appeal that the British
public have contributed to, which is phenomenal. Where is that
£20 million coming from? Is it coming from within your own
budget, is it coming partly from the underspend, or have you managed
to get the Chancellor of the Exchequer to open up his coffers?
(Clare Short) It is coming from within our budget.
Barrie Ireton will say exactly where. Let me say, Andrew Smith
spoke to me in the lobby early on and said "If you need extra
resources come to me, Clare", and I said "Thank you,
but I do not need it yet". As you would expect, we have got
to deploy our budget as effectively as possible, and have that
relationship of trust with the Treasury so that when we really
do need extra money and go to them it is a genuine call. That
came from an official level, too; the Treasury contacted us very
early on and said "If you need extra come to us." Do
you want to say where the £20 million—I think some
of it is already in your budget.
(Mr Ireton) Some of it was already in the CHAD budget,
but as we have moved towards the end of the financial year we
have continued to take stock of exactly what our total spend is
expected to be on all our programmes and balance that up against
that cash limit. There have been one or two particular underspends—our
draw-down of EC expenditure has been less than originally expected—so
it has created a certain amount of capacity which is a little
bit greater than we would have anticipated as we were going through
the last quarter of the year. So we have been able to find what
we call "unplanned savings" from elsewhere in the system
to redeploy to emergency assistance, which is something we do
commonly.
(Clare Short) We have this problem with the EEC all
the time. They draw down on our budget, we have to allocate money
to their draw-down; we allocate less than they say they will because
we know they cannot spend it and then they spend even less. This
is a problem for our planning because we get lumps of money towards
the end of the financial year that we could have deployed. So,
as a matter of course, we do move money around to spend it well
and find more money for the Mozambique emergency.
Chairman
72. Secretary of State, when Sir John Vereker
came in front of us, talking about the annual departmental report,
he told us that in view of the emergency money that you had to
spend in Kosovo the Treasury had offered and would meet additional
expenditure on an emergency basis of more than £1 million
or so. What you are saying is that you have not needed to call
on that. Is that right?
(Clare Short) That is absolutely right. We have that
understanding with the Treasury, but, obviously, if we have got
underspend from the EEC we should use our own budget first. They
offered if we needed.
Mr Robathan
73. Secretary of State, much has been made of
this in the media, but I would like to ask one particular question.
In a written answer[1],
and also in your statement to the House back at the end of February[2],
you said there were no military assets available within 3,000
miles of Mozambique. Then, you will recall, there seemed to be
some disagreement from the Minister for the Armed Forces sitting
next to you. Were there military assets, had you been informed
there were no military assets, or were you misinformed?
(Clare Short) Again, Rob Holden and his team in all
these emergencies always ask the MoD—as they ask all the
other suppliers—what they have got. Of course, if you remember
Hurricane Mitch, it just so happened that we had that new ship
full of brand new helicopters steaming past—just a wonderful
coincidence. So we always ask them. The answer on the Saturday
was that they had nothing within 3,000 miles, and we accepted
that. When I said that to the House I think John Spellar was surprised.
However, obviously, as you know, when you speak to departments
you do not necessarily ring up the minister; presumably ministers—even
in our own system, let alone in Mozambique—do not know where
all the equipment in the armed forces is when you ring them at
the weekend, but somebody does.
74. I think the question in particular is RFA
Fort George, which I think is part of HMS Illustrious's Air Group.
(Clare Short) Yes.
75. I understand it was actually in the Gulf
or the Indian Ocean at the time, which, even with my limited knowledge
of geography, is relatively close. So were you misinformed, or
is it just that it was not there at that time?
(Clare Short) You told me the day the ship—was
that—
(Mr Holden) That was in the Gulf.
(Clare Short) Was that Tuesday or Wednesday?
(Mr Holden) That was on the Wednesday, I believe.
(Clare Short) That was the first we heard of the ship.
Then it was in the Gulf, but it was eight days' time to get there,
or something like that.
(Mr Holden) Nine days.
(Clare Short) Of course, it comes with its own fuel,
and if the north had gone we would have massively needed it, but
we could not get it in to get people off trees—even though
it was in the Gulf and could not get there that fast. Also it
had a higher price initially.
76. You were never told there was not anything
there. You were never misinformed?
(Clare Short) We were told the nearest was 3,000 miles
away and we were told on the Wednesday about the ship, but it
took the ship a considerable amount of time to get there.
77. Sticking with the question of the MoD co-ordination,
there are various points I want to clarify. I think we now know
that you approached all departments that might have had any availability
to assist, particularly the MoD. Who else did you approach? You
mentioned commercial people in Mozambique, but who else?
(Mr Holden) As a matter of course I spoke to the MoD
on Saturday night and I also spoke to—
78. Which Saturday?
(Mr Holden) Saturday 26th at about 8 o'clock at night.
I spoke to the duty clerk and asked what military assets they
had in the region should we require them to be able to respond.
The answer came back that the nearest assets of any use were 3,000
miles away, and that was the end of the story. I then put our
own systems into place where we have got call-down arrangements.
We have an emergency route response team that has links into the
UK fire service, air charter organisations and then we speak to
all the agencies you would expect in the UN, Red Cross and the
NGOs. So I speak to a whole range of agencies which are either
operational or co-operational in Mozambique and in the region
at the time.
79. Not with the Ministry of Defence until the
26th.
(Mr Holden) Not until the night of the 26th.
(Clare Short) We had already sent a lot of material
and it was not until then that people were calling for helicopters.
1 H.C. Deb, 7 March 2000, c. 622W. Back
2
H.C. Deb, 28 February 2000, c. 23. Back
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