Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
BELEN VAZQUEZ,
JENNY ROSS,
JUDITH RANDEL
AND TONY
GERMAN
TUESDAY 23 APRIL 2002
Chairman
1. Good morning, welcome. Thank you very much
for coming. What we thought we would do is go through Monterrey,
what follows on from Monterrey and then we should like to look
at the effectiveness and accountability of development aid, both
from the point of view of recipients and donors. Perhaps I could
start us off by referring to the Budget Red Book, which this year,
as in previous years, actually has some extremely useful commentary
on promoting international poverty reduction. There is one of
these boxes and it is highlighted in pink because it is important.
It talks about Monterrey and it says that governments at the conference
pledged significant increases in official development assistance
to the poorest countries. Following the publication of a UK paper
on the case for aid, European Union Member States agreed collectively
to raise their aid budgets by an estimated $7 billion a year by
2006. The US also pledged additional aid volumes of $10 billion
between 2004 and 2006 and an additional $5 billion thereafter.
We then come to what seems to me the crunch sentence. Whilst these
increases represent real progress, they still fall short of the
aid levels necessary to achieve the Millennium Development Goals
which the World Bank estimates will require $40 billion to $60
billion each year. In November 2001 the Chancellor proposed an
international development trust fund to pool contributions and
leverage private sector finance to deliver the level of funding
needed to meet the MDGs. I am slightly confused about all of this
and I have a number of questions which, if I give them all to
you at one go you can answer in the round. Firstly, would you
agree with the Chancellor's assessment that in addition to the
money the United States and the EU have pledged, the developed
world has pledged, we are going to need an extra $40 billion to
$60 billion a year to meet the goal of 2015? How is that going
to be done? What is the point of the new international development
trust fund? Why not simply go for everyone trying to meet their
0.7 per cent target? Why invent something new? What do you see
as the subsequent process for ensuring that this shortfall is
met? Hopefully that is a useful lead-in.
(Ms Vazquez) Before the World Bank the UN released
a report called the Zedillo report and this was the first attempt
at costing the MDGs. The benchmark was an extra $50 billion a
year from now until 2015. The World Bank just validated this amount.
As you can imagine, it is quite difficult for NGOs to get into
the debate on whether this figure is accurate or is too little
or too much. What is important now for us is that the money is
made available as soon as possible. We have a deadline of 2015.
We have spent 18 months negotiating for Monterrey and this means
a year less in the countdown towards 2015. What is worrying is
that Monterrey has not provided the solution to secure the resources
needed. If we combine the US and EU pledges for additional funding,
this gives us an extra $17 billion, which is 20 per cent of what
is required. You know Monterrey has not set time frames for meeting
the 0.7 per cent target. We appreciate what the Chancellor announced,
the new trust fund for international co-operation, and I think
what was behind this proposal, although we do not know the details
of how this will work in practice, was a recognition that the
amount needed is so huge that the only way of raising all this
money was through the global effort of all donors. That is the
advantage of such a proposal to set up an international trust
fund from my point of view.
(Ms Ross) One of the other things to mention is that
the commitments made are very short term and only go half way
towards the 2015 target. A lot of donors are of the opinion that
having made this pledge for this short period of time, over three
years, the debate on aid quantity should now be closed down and
we should be talking more about quality and effectiveness and
means of disbursing aid. It is not that NGOs do not think that
aid needs to be distributed effectively or that quality of aid
is not important, but that the debate would be much healthier
if that $50 billion had been pledged in the first place. The pledges
which have been made are still subject to parliamentary approval
and congressional approval and are obviously conditional, particularly
US aid[12].
2. There is no ambiguity about what the Chancellor
is saying in the Red Book. The Treasury is saying that the amount
pledged at Monterrey falls short of the aid levels necessary to
achieve Millennium Development Goals. There is nothing about quality
of approach or effectiveness of aid. The other thing about the
international development trust fund is that the Chancellor seems
almost to be suggesting with this inclusion of private sector
finance—I am not wishing to caricature it but—a private
finance initiative for international development. Did you gather
any more about this initiative at Monterrey or from Treasury officials
or from others? What do you understand about the international
development trust fund?
(Ms Ross) We have not been involved in intense consultation
with the Treasury or with DFID on this proposal at all. Although
it may be a useful political device for trying to leverage the
additional funds which are necessary, most NGOs would think that
the 0.7 per cent target, although perhaps less catchy, should
be sufficient for countries to meet their commitments made in
1970. We do not have any additional information we can give you
and when the Chancellor comes in we would benefit from any information
you could get.
Chairman: Clearly that is something we
need to discover some more about.
Mr Battle
3. Could you give us your view on the outcomes
of Monterrey? What were the strengths of Monterrey, but more significantly
the weaknesses?
(Ms Ross) May I talk about the consensus and then
Belen can say a few words about the aid commitments which were
made? Most people who followed the Monterrey process from the
beginning to the end were quite disappointed by the final document,
given that the Zedillo report contained a lot of innovative proposals
which would potentially have led to the raising of the $50 billion.
We feel that the Monterrey process helped to put development back
on the agenda and created a political debate, partially due to
the Chancellor taking up some of the ideas in the Zedillo report
and the $50 billion benchmark figure. A lot of G77 and middle
income countries were very disappointed that the debate on debt
relief, reform of the international financial institutions and
also fair trade did not become a core part of the Monterrey discussions.
That was primarily due to a reluctance on the part of donor countries
to get into that debate because there is no consensus there. It
was also felt that a UN conference was not the appropriate venue
to discuss trade when there is the World Trade Organisation and
the reform of the World Bank and IMF should be discussed in those
arenas. There was a general disappointment both on the part of
developing countries and NGOs at the final consensus document
though the process generated a lot of interest and innovative
ideas that might be picked up and taken on elsewhere.
4. May I press you a little further on the downsides
and the weaknesses? We are not at the point of writing it off
as a talking shop. Are there links with other conferences? Could
the document from Monterrey be linked to previous conferences
and taken forward to the sustainable development conference in
Rio perhaps? Do you see it as a series rather than a failure?
(Ms Ross) Obviously we are very disappointed but we
hope that the dialogue will continue. There were no explicit references
in the Monterrey consensus document to sustainable development,
although the Secretary General has made the links from Doha to
Monterrey and through to Johannesburg. The UN is trying to promote
this idea that the dialogue will continue, but it is difficult
to know. Within the implementation section of the WSSD a lot of
the ideas which were discussed at Monterrey are out on the table
again and it will be interesting to see whether any of them survive
the US negotiators this time round. A lot of the ideas will carry
through but Monterrey was supposed to settle some of these discussions.
The discussion around global public goods and innovative sources
of finance in particular will become quite key in the implementation
of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
(Ms Vazquez) On the failures and successes, one of
the merits of FfD has been to reactivate the old debate on aid
levels. It would have been unthinkable just a year ago to have
had the aid volume issue on the UN agenda. That has been a merit
and FfD has created a momentum around the aid volumes debate.
However, the aid pledges fall too short, so we are disappointed.
In addition, what the EU/US bilateral aid announcement has highlighted
is a lack of consensus among major donors on the quantity and
frequency of additional aid funding. In our view, those announcements
should have been built into the consensus if we are really talking
about a consensus. If we look at the documents of the Monterrey
consensus, what we see is a re-affirmation of old commitments.
The UN's 0.7 per cent target is thirty-two years old. The commitment
to the MDGs was made two years ago at the UN Millennium Summit
by all governments. There is nothing new and what the Monterrey
consensus lacks is a plan of action to implement those commitments
which have already been adopted by governments. This is the point
where we feel really disappointed. As far as I know, there is
no indication that at the WSSD summit donor governments will make
available a plan of action to implement them.
(Ms Ross) The other point is that a similar process
is going on in the NEPAD discussions as well. There are discussions
about new plans of action but a reluctance on the part of G8 donors
to commit any financing to that, saying that Financing For Development
covered financing issues. The financing issue is not finished.
The US negotiators throughout the negotiating process objected
to any reference to the 0.7 per cent target, objected to any reference
to the Millennium Development Goals. The text is littered with
strange ways of getting round saying Millennium Development Goals
and ways of trying not to say 0.7 per cent target. This process
is being repeated at the World Summit for Sustainable Development
where US negotiators are making it very difficult for the EU and
G77 countries to make any positive proposals at multi-lateral
fora.
(Mr German) May I expand a little bit on this issue
of whether FfD is part of a process. If you look at all the summits
which took place in the 1990s which were on development related
themes, aid was rather the ghost at the table in the sense that
it was point 46 out of a 50-point document at the end. FfD did
bring into sharp focus the fact that donors had willed the end,
which is the achievement of Millennium Development Goals and even
if we take the $15 billion extra which was pledged over and on
top of existing resources, in 2006 that would still leave us $35
billion short of the $50 billion extra that everybody agrees is
wanted. It brings into very sharp political focus what the gap
is between aspirations and what people are committed to and it
does set part of a firm agenda of making sure that financing which
has been off the agenda at so many summits must be on the agenda
of WSSD. Just as important, it must be built very strongly into
the review process for the social summit. We have the ten-year
anniversary of the social summit coming up in 2005 and it was
at the social summit that world leaders for the first time admitted
that poverty eradication was possible. Before that it had always
been seen as being not possible. It is very helpful to see it
as part of a process.
(Ms Randel) The amounts of money we are talking about
are only the development assistance. The bulk of the funding for
the Millennium Development Goals will come from developing countries.
The assumption is that around 90 per cent, I think, the vast bulk
of the money for meeting the goals comes from developing countries'
own resources and that is not focused on at all.
Tony Worthington
5. What puzzles me about this is that I had
assumed Monterrey was an encyclopaedic conference, it was about
all that was needed, all the resources that were needed in order
to end poverty. I must admit I am a bit disappointed with the
NGO response in that you are being critical of governments of
the world for just focusing on aid and yet in the BOND report
it says "Many heavyweight NGOs and NGO networks decided early
not to invest in the FfD process, assuming their views would have
little chance of influencing the official proceedings"[13].
You are really criticising other people for doing what you did.
(Ms Ross) There is a difference. There
is a different burden of responsibility between governments and
NGOs and we are often criticised by governments for spending huge
amounts of money travelling to conferences and prepcoms. We do
not have huge budgets to spend on investing in processes where
it seems that US negotiators are ruling the show. Because the
agenda of Monterrey was so broad and NGOs often have specific
sectoral interests, it was decided to pool resources and work
through co-ordination mechanisms which is a progressive step and
a useful step, because we are directing our efforts. There was
an NGO presence but it was done through co-ordinating bodies rather
than through individual NGOs. NGOs were present at all of the
prepcoms and were present at the conference. It is just that they
were disappointed with the influence and the process as it developed.
6. Being blunt about it, the impact of that
is that we have three papers which give the impression that if
only we increased the aid to 0.7 per cent it would be all right.
It comes across as "If only you give money to NGOs we'll
solve this problem", because you are lobbying for aid. You
are not arguing in proportion to what is needed for Financing
for Development. Is that too unfair?
(Ms Ross) I think it is. Part of the reason why you
have received responses on 0.7 per cent is because that was one
of the main questions. There were obviously other people who have
concentrated on trade, who have concentrated on debt. There are
NGO networks working on those issues. They have not sent in submissions
perhaps because they were not actively involved directly, they
were involved through these co-ordinating mechanisms. Also, there
was no specific question in your Financing for Development press
release asking about those issues. People could have sent in submissions
but that is not a fair representation of where NGOs are lobbying.
The strongest lobbying at the moment is on trade and debt. I do
not think that is a fair reflection at all. We are working on
aid, but we are also working on trade, debt, reform of international
financial institutions.
7. You do criticise the conference for being
too narrow.
(Ms Vazquez) I followed the process. I was in a number
of prepcoms. I should say that aid only became prominent because
of the lack of progress on other areas. Let us take trade. Developing
countries were not ready to accept a re-opening of the trade agenda
just a few months after Doha. Let us take reform of the international
financial architecture, an issue supported by Latin American countries
especially. Developed countries thought that a UN conference was
not the appropriate forum for discussion of these issues. Let
us take debt relief. The same thing. As we progressed in the process
ODA became the only issue left for progress. This is why it became
prominent, regardless of NGOs' involvement or not. I do not know
whether you know that Latin American countries originated this
conference. They approached the UN Secretary General with the
idea of holding for the first time a UN conference on global economic
governance but in the process the UN Secretary General also added
what I would call UN recurrent topics or issues such as ODA and
the Millennium Development Goals. As a result, the conference
agenda was so broad that it represented a challenge, not only
for NGOs but for governments. The issues ranged from ODA and debt
relief to trade to innovative sources for finance, global economic
governance, etc. If you think about it, within a government there
must be a least three full ministries sharing decisions: Trade,
Foreign Affairs, Development. Governments faced a challenge to
identify the right individuals with sufficient expertise and knowledge
to provide input and have a global consolidated position on these
issues. NGOs faced the same challenge. Very few NGOs have the
expertise to provide input. This is why we worked in coalitions
to try to combine that expertise. The UN Secretary General made
it very clear from the beginning that he wanted Finance Ministers
to attend this conference as opposed to diplomats or senior officials
who are the ones who usually go to UN conferences. He made a special
effort to convince Finance Ministers from the North and from the
South they should attend the conference. What I saw in Monterrey
was that Finance Ministers did attend but especially Finance Ministers
from developing countries. I can say that EU the level of Heads
of State representation from the EU was very low. We had Mr Aznar,
because he held the EU Presidency and Mr Chirac and that was the
highest level of EU representation at the conference. I do not
know whether I have answered your question: a broad agenda, difficult
and complex issues and different interests.
Ann Clwyd
8. You mentioned at the beginning that if the
figure 0.7 per cent appeared in the documents the US protested
about that. What was the big threat they had over you all?
(Ms Randel) The US has never signed up to 0.7 per
cent so if it goes into the documents that starts to create a
commitment that they then have to meet, so they are always very
resistant to 0.7 per cent being included. I do not know whether
that was the specific reason in Monterrey, but that is a barrier.
(Ms Ross) Yes, that was the reason.
9. Could you not put brackets, "(with the
exception of the US)", make the point in that way? I just
wondered what threat they had that caused you, who presumably
were the majority, to leave it out at their request.
(Ms Vazquez) Technically they have never signed up
to 0.7 per cent.
Chairman
10. Maybe you can help us with this; maybe not
today but with a paper. You say that the United States have not
signed up to the Millennium Development Goals, you say they have
not signed up to 0.7 per cent, you say that there is a fairly
convoluted negotiation with the United States now. Some of us
individually are going to Washington fairly shortly to talk to
fellow members of Congress. The Committee as a whole is hoping
to go to the United States, to New York and Washington, later
in the year to talk with colleagues. We would find it very helpful
to have an idiots' guide to the politics of development aid so
far as the United States are concerned because frankly my teenagers
keep telling me that I have lost the plot, but I have completely
lost the plot on this row going on between the replenishment of
ODA and grants and loans and all of that. I understand, a bit
like I understand algebra, for five minutes, but what is the US
approach on all this? What should we be seeking to try to persuade
our colleagues in the US to do? We as a Committee would be very
grateful if BOND and the other NGOs could do a private briefing
note to us on how you see the politics of all this so far as the
US is concerned and where we should be applying or seeking to
apply pressure with our interlocutors. I think you said 0.7 per
cent is 33 years old now, maybe more.
(Ms Ross) Thirty-two years
11. Maybe we ought to have a birthday party
each year and put on another candle. It is not long to 2015; it
is actually very close. Is it worth our continuing to bang on
about 0.7 per cent? If we are not going to bang on about 0.7 per
cent should we not be doing so with a lot more urgency so that
if 0.7 per cent is going to have any meaning in relation to 2015,
it really has to be achieved by 2007 or something of that kind,
otherwise it just becomes a piece of international development
shorthand? What are your thoughts on that?
(Ms Vazquez) I agree with you on the sense of urgency.
This sense of urgency was in the Monterrey document but it was
taken out during the last prepcom. Let me go back a little bit
to the process of the conference. The negotiations started well,
the first document was a very good document, the Zedillo report,
but you must remember that it was unfortunate that at the time
of the third prepcom in the middle of the negotiations we had
the unfortunate incidents on 11 September. The third prepcom took
place within weeks of the attack in New York and we saw a radical
change in the position of the American delegation who made it
clear that this conference was not a priority for them any more.
12. Why?
(Ms Vazquez) Because at that moment in the US Financing
for Development was not going to be a priority any more. This
was when the whole thing started, that they would not accept reference
to the 0.7 per cent in documents, that they would not accept reference
to the Millennium Development Goals in the documents, that they
as a country did not feel ready to have a conference to agree
to all these commitments, it was not right for them at the moment.
Then we saw the EU also changing its strategy. The EU had had
quite a broad position showing openness on the different issues,
but it then became clear that for them the priority was to keep
the US on board. I remember at the third prepcom the US negotiator
left the room several times in protest at issues like the 0.7
per cent, so the EU changed its strategy as they had to keep the
US on board if they wanted this conference to happen. I should
also say that they gave up on certain issues which they were interested
in, such as global public goods for instance. We need this money
urgently but we need a multilateral effort to reach this huge
amount of money. We are talking about doubling current world aid;
we are talking about $50 billion and we are talking about $100
billion if 0.7 per cent were to be met.
13. I do not know whether you have access to
or could share with us in a briefing note copies of US position
papers, public position papers, which would help us with the political
shorthand . I for one am at a complete loss to understand why
after 11 September the Americans would turn their back on Financing
for Development, I should have thought exactly the opposite. Could
we perhaps go back to the question of the 0.7 per cent? Is this
a campaign which is still worth running? If it is, how do we get
a sense of urgency? If we cannot get a sense of urgency, maybe
we ought to be going with the flow and having a go at the International
Development Trust Fund or other things of that kind.
(Mr German) Absolutely it is a question of urgency.
To go back to an earlier question, the question about whether
NGOs could have been more enthusiastic about some aspects of participating
in the FfD buildup, the answer is yes. The answer as to why they
were not is to some extent that expectations of what was politically
possible on aid volume had been so screwed down during the 1990s
by the overriding need to cut budget deficits that every donor
talked about, that NGOs simply lost confidence and that was partly
reflected in what NGOs were asking for before the recent general
election, when they were actually asking for something that in
hindsight was way too low. The political significance of what
the Chancellor said at the Fed in Washington before Christmas
is that a serving G7 Finance Minister is saying "This is
not cloud cuckoo land. This is not naive NGOs talking. This is
possible. I think it is a good idea". It is very important,
with at least a step towards reversing aid in the United States
and some progress within Europe, that the UK takes a role in underlining
the urgency and meeting the 0.7 per cent target.
14. May I ask about NEPAD and "initiativitis"?
Do you think sometimes there may be too many initiatives? If you
are saying in relation to NEPAD that donor countries are simply
saying the money for NEPAD is all wrapped up in the money for
Monterrey, do initiatives like NEPAD build on or can they become
a distraction? How many initiatives can the international community
cope with at any one time?
(Ms Randel) I feel quite optimistic about NEPAD because
I do feel that it is a different sort of initiative. To take up
the points earlier about the broadness of the agenda, it is a
very broad agenda which covers governance and trade and accountability
and a whole set of relationships between developed countries and
Africa. It has lots of potential to deliver stronger poverty reduction
than just aid so I would not necessarily see it as being one of
the series of failed initiatives. It is of course true that developing
countries are littered with failed initiatives; they are often
a distraction and there is a major danger that we will move too
much off the quantity of aid debate into discussing modalities
and initiatives on modalities which will be a distraction. I would
not myself include NEPAD in that category but I do not know whether
colleagues would agree.
(Ms Ross) NEPAD is a step forward in that it is a
partnership between the G8 and African countries and that is to
be welcomed. If the input of the G8 does not include some commitment,
if it contains just more recommendations and no financing to implement
those recommendations, then it is perhaps going to follow the
same pattern.
Hugh Bayley
15. It is clear to me that without substantially
more money the development goals will not be met. Equally, with
Zedillo's amount of money, the development goals may well not
be met because money is not the only component necessary. I should
like to start by asking a general question. What are the responsibilities
of developing countries in relation both to their own spending
and in relation to their co-operation with donors?
(Ms Randel) Do you mean the responsibilities technically
in the context of the Millennium Development Goals, what has been
set out as developing countries' responsibilities, or do you mean
in a more general sense?
16. If you look over the last ten or even 20
years the donor countries used to give more aid than they do now,
yet some countries, not all, have made remarkable progress in
the last 20 years and others, despite large volumes of aid, are
poorer now than they were then. It is not just aid that achieves
progress towards development goals and targets, it is what happens
in the countries themselves. What are the responsibilities of
all parties, business, political elites, NGOs, communities?
(Ms Randel) One of the interesting things which has
happened over the last couple of years is the focus on accountable
governance in developing countries which encompasses a whole range
of things, not only the traditional area of governance to do with
the state, but also to do with how civil society can hold the
state accountable for what it delivers and to do with the regulation
of trade and the regulatory environment for finance. I think donors
are focusing a lot more now on the nub of accountable governance
and developing countries are too. You can see that in the NEPAD
proposals. That is quite an encouraging thing. I also think there
is a lot more confidence about what sort of aid is effective.
We have not really tried long-term, predictable, transparent,
adequate finance for human development given through a relatively
accountable government for very long. You can think of maybe two
or three countries where that is now happening and Uganda would
be the main example that the UK will cite. There are very encouraging
signs about the combination of the focus on accountability and
effective aid in that context. The other thing to say on the aid
effectiveness side is that what we do know fairly conclusively
is that investment in human development is actually effective,
it does deliver. Investment in public health, investment in education,
are extremely effective ways of spending money but we spend a
tiny, tiny amount of the aid budget on that. We spend two per
cent of aid on basic health and 1.5 per cent of aid on basic education
globally. We have not really invested that much in the things
that work in the context we think they are likely to work.
(Mr German) This question of accountability and transparency
is two sides of the same coin. If you look at the review that
the Development Assistance Committee of OECD did in Mali, some
of the public opinion work that was done in Mali about what ordinary
Malians knew about aid, the answer was that they knew nothing
about aid. They did not know where it came from, they did not
know where it went to. That is why the question is of building
in, not a whole plethora of conditions, which in many ways will
only undercut the accountability one is expecting of developing
governments, but building in basic participation and governance
criteria which can mean that aid becomes a much more transparent
process and needs to be a two-way process. In fact we do not publish
exactly what aid is spent on in that much detail, so it is quite
difficult to get information on aid. It is better than it was
but there is still a long way to go at both ends of the aid debate.
The spender and recipient both need to make the process a lot
more transparent so that ordinary people can know how much they
are supposed to be receiving, what it is supposed to be spent
on and whether it is being spent on it.
17. What is the consensus amongst NGOs about
what makes a good donor and what makes a good recipient of aid,
if by good you mean one that produces good cost-effective results
in terms of development progress? What makes for a good donor
and is DFID a good donor relatively or not? What makes a good
recipient?
(Ms Vazquez) May I refer back to the Monterrey consensus
and developing countries? In the Monterrey consensus there is
a wide agreement that developing countries are responsible for
their own development and they have accepted this responsibility.
The consensus says that they are responsible for their own development.
They are also responsible for creating the conditions for high
growth and poverty reduction and they have acknowledged this responsibility,
it is in the consensus. What makes a good donor? A good donor
is a donor that accepts responsibilities in the process. The responsibilities
of the donor are to provide sufficient aid, timely aid and aid
of good quality. It is two-way. If we want to create a new partnership
for development—this is the trendy phrase now in newspapers
and speeches of heads of state—then a partnership is something
where partners have mutual obligations and are accountable to
each other. What I feel the partnership has reflected is that
the partnership is not equal. Donors have tried to ignore their
responsibilities to provide sufficient aid and provide enough
good quality aid.
18. How would you enforce accountability? You
say developing countries must be responsible for their own development
and I do not think anybody would disagree with that, but from
that also comes the ghastly truth that many developing countries
must be responsible for their own under-development and backsliding;
it must be the case. What form of accountability should we require
in a developing country before we create the kind of long-term,
well-funded, transparent development partnership—you mentioned
one country but we could mention a few countries? What should
we require and how should we as donors be accountable and to whom?
To the British people? Should we be accountable to other people?
Some aid projects have been equally responsible for grotesque
wrecking of development potential in countries. How do we build
in that accountability? Given that we know that we are unlikely
to get that transparency and accountability in some areas, would
we not do better to target aid in areas where we are going to
have the outcome we want to see lifting people out of poverty?
Perhaps they would be beacons to other parts for their need for
change in terms of good governance, transparency and so on.
(Ms Randel) There is a queue of people wanting to
engage in the debate without answers but I shall start off. Eveline
Herfkens, the Development Minister for the Netherlands has been
very interesting recently in talking about mutual accountability.
There is a general interest around this idea of mutual accountability
by the partners in the development process, whoever they may be,
but they clearly include the developing country government and
the donors. It goes beyond the idea that people should simply
be accountable for the aid relationship, but to issues like what
is the accountability of Britain in enabling the development of
an African country? Is it to address issues of agricultural subsidy,
is it to address trade relationships, is it to address governance
of the IFIs, all these sorts of things which may be part of our
responsibility, if we are serious about commitments to eradication
of poverty? On the other side there are things about spending
the money transparently and efficiently, but there are also things
about creating accountable governments within the developing country
which can make poverty reduction more likely. That is quite an
encouraging line of debate. Talking to officials within developing
countries, that creates a framework where people can work together
on a shared agenda and fits in with the idea of developing countries
writing the plan; there are all sorts of problems about that too,
but that is the principle. Against that trend, and something which
I think is a dilemma and is also dangerous, is the idea that you
only spend your money in the good policy countries, because what
do you then do if you are serious about eradicating poverty? Do
we say we are going to spend our money in 20 countries where we
think policy is good enough to achieve X level of effectiveness—and
I am sure the Bank has given a very precise definition on that—or
do we have to find ways of working with the uphill countries,
which is the term used? If we are serious about eradication of
poverty then we do and then that is a much more complex set of
relationships to have accountability and a way of making progress
between donor and recipient.
19. Could you draw a distinction between work
on meeting basic human needs on primary health care, on primary
education, clean water, sanitation, which clearly can do some
good if done at local level, even where you have a most inflexible,
incompetent, out of touch government?
(Ms Randel) That would be the prize, would it not?
12 See Ev 26 and Ev 27 for further information. Back
13
Ev 7. Back
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