Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60-79)
MR JIM
DRUMMOND, HON
DOMINIC ASQUITH
AND DR
ROGER HUTTON
16 NOVEMBER 2004
Q60 Mr Bercow: I am going to be greedy
and say both.
Mr Drummond: In the current year
what you are getting are improvements to infrastructure in southern
Iraq. You are getting advice to establish the procedures at the
centre of government. In Iraq you are getting advice on economic
policy. There is a substantial amount of money provided through
the UN and World Bank Trust Funds which will be spent in the current
financial year and that will go on a variety of education, health,
electricity supply, water supply programmes.
Q61 Mr Bercow: When you say "advice",
do you mean consultancy costs?
Mr Drummond: Advice is mostly
provided by the consultants, yes. We have to go to the market
to acquire the expertise. So those are some of the things you
would be able to tell your constituents for this year. For next
year we have not made decisions yet and we will be reviewing Country
Assistance Plans over the next couple of months to decide on priorities
for the next financial year.
Q62 Mr Bercow: But £86 million is
very precise. It is not £85 million, it is not £90 million;
it is £86 million. Is it costed? What I am getting at is
has it been chopped on the basis of a percentage calculation of
what ought to be chopped in order to furnish other parts of the
Department with a potential spend? I am sorry if you think I am
being very finickity; I am being very finickity about it but I
believe rightly. Have you made a judgment that £86 million
is what is needed not because you have anything like budget support
in mind, but a very specific set of identifiable projects with
yardsticks for measuring their achievements?
Mr Drummond: The money for next
year is the balance of DFID's contribution to the Madrid pledge.
There will also be money through the Global Pool next year which
will be on top of the £86 million, so I do not expect for
the next financial year that there will be a significant change
in the overall UK contribution on the civilian side. In terms
of what we spend it on next year, as I say we will review over
the next couple of months what we should be doing with it. I would
expect that we would want to make more contributions to health,
education, employment generation in the south and we will want
to carry on with our capacity building programmes at the centre
and see some of these economic reform issues that we are working
on now translated into policies which are then implemented.
Mr Bercow: I trust that will be clearly
itemised and explained in the next annual report.
Q63 Mr Battle: I am still not that much
clearer about the process—immediate relief, reconstruction
and development—and I know it is difficult but I am looking
for a clear plan in my mind of how Iraq is moving through all
the stages. I am under the impression that everyone in Iraq is
still receiving food daily from the World Food Programme, including
the president. Is that right?
Mr Drummond: There is still a
food ration. It is not provided by the World Food Programme; it
is provided from the Iraqis' budget.
Q64 Mr Battle: So everyone gets a daily
food ration.
Mr Drummond: I think about 60%
of the population are dependent on it.
Mr Davies: We heard it was a 100%.
Q65 Mr Battle: I was under the impression
that it was 100% because I think one of us asked the World Food
Programme if even the president gets a ration and we were told
yes, because that is the situation. I just want a clearer impression
in my mind of when people will come off rations in Iraq, including
the president.
Mr Drummond: We would like to
see the public distribution system wound down and one of the pieces
of work we are involved with is how you wind that down sensibly
so that you protect poor people but you do not use Iraqi oil revenues,
tax money to subsidise the wealthy people in Iraq. In the current
political situation with a government that is going to be facing
an election in January and a new government thereafter, I do not
think we are going to see movement on that in the next few months
but this is an opportunity to plan for making that change.
Q66 Mr Battle: Is the difficulty the
distribution because of security or is it production of food and
ability to buy it in?
Mr Drummond: As you move away
from the current system then you need to have a private sector
system which is going to replace it and that takes a bit of building.
We also want to send the right price signals to Iraqi farmers.
At the moment my understanding is that they do not get the right
price incentive.
Mr Asquith: Your question is directed
at why there is still a food distribution system?
Q67 Mr Battle: Yes.
Mr Asquith: Because there are
large sectors of the population who do depend on it for economic
reasons.
Mr Drummond: The 60% that I mentioned
are people who are judged to depend upon this.
Q68 Mr Battle: So if we go through the
stages from immediate relief to reconstruction to development,
if we are looking at places like Malawi that faced drought (the
Southern African drought), providing the rains did not completely
dry up the following year there were seed packages to make sure
people could grow, and therefore became self-sufficient in, food.
There was at least a timeline and a progress report of when people
could come off dependency on hand-outs of food but we have not
got to that stage at all yet in Iraq, have we?
Mr Drummond: They are working
on that at the moment, but they have not got to the stage of a
definite plan for doing it and I do not think they would want
to announce at the moment, for understandable reasons, a definite
plan for doing it.
Q69 Mr Battle: How does DFID view the
balance between strengthening the Iraqi interim government and
strengthening civil society?
Mr Drummond: DFID is trying to
work on strengthening government systems which will be sustainable
after the interim government has moved on and there is a transitional
government in the next phase, and thereafter a general election.
What you have is a situation where Saddam Hussein used a lot of
systems outside the normal government processes and so there was
not a system round the prime minister for running the government
in the way that we would recognise and so what we are trying to
do is to help him generate those systems in a way that will be
sustainable through the various elections. That is an important
part of what we are doing but we have also set up funds for civil
society development and to help poorer people or marginalised
people get involved in the political process. Most of those things
will be through civil society organisations, so we are doing both.
Q70 Mr Battle: Are you helping the reconstruction
of those participatory structures, perhaps at the local level,
small village and town organisations and that kind of thing?
Mr Drummond: The proposals that
we are getting from civil society organisations both in Iraq and
from international and UK organisations that can still work with
Iraqi partners do involve some of that, yes. For example, there
are quite a few proposals for voter education coming through at
the moment.
Mr Asquith: We do a lot of work
with civil society organisations from our missions in Iraq. The
problem is not so much finding them because there is a surprisingly
large number. The problem is determining which are the effective
ones and which are the ones who are actually taking you for a
ride or see an opportunity for remuneration for work which is
not really what we would call NGO work. There is no shortage of
people but it does require a high degree of caution and circumspection
about whom you are dealing with, which does inevitably take a
little bit of time. However, we are working very, very closely
with them, and that includes increasing the capacity of the good
ones to function.
Mr Davies: Before we leave that, Mr Battle's
questions have opened up a very major significant contradiction.
In a testimony we had only last week from the Deputy Director
of the World Food Programme, Monsieur Graisse told us that 100%
of the population of Iraq were receiving food distribution. That
testimony was so surprising that you will recall I asked him specifically
to confirm that and asked if Mr Alawi, for example, was also receiving
or entitled to receive that and I was told yes. Mr Drummond, in
his testimony just now, said that it was 60%. If it is 60% all
sorts of questions arise about how the selection is made. However,
it is an extraordinary matter that there should be such a different
perception between two agencies so intimately involved and so
responsible for the future of Iraq as the World Food Programme
and DFID, that I wonder if I can ask Mr Drummond to let us have
a letter in due course either confirming the testimony he has
given us today or correcting it in the light of Monsieur Graisse's
testimony to us?
Q71 Chairman: What I think we will do,
Quentin, is let Jim have a copy of what WFP said last week and
then he can see whether there has been some misunderstanding or
it can be clarified because it is an important point.
Mr Drummond: I think I can probably
clarify it now, Chairman. I think the entitlement is close to
100%, pretty much everybody.
Q72 Mr Davies: Pretty much everybody
or everybody?
Mr Drummond: In terms of the people
who need and depend on it—which is what I said—that
is around 60% in our judgment.
Q73 Mr Davies: If they are entitled they
probably claim it even if they do not need it.
Mr Asquith: I am pretty confident
they do not. At least I am pretty confident that the President
and the Prime Minister do not. What does happen is that the food
distribution system is based upon a registration process. You
have to go and register and it is done by families. There are
some people in Iraq at the moment who will not be on the register.
Chairman: This is very interesting but
I wonder whether from the Foreign Office or DFID we could have
a note because I think it is very important to have an authoritative
view[7].
I think we are going to have to adjourn for this division and
I think the best way is just to have a note on this one.
The Committee suspended from 3.44 pm until
3.56 pm for a Division in the House
Q74 Chairman: As I understand it, most
of DFID's programmes are being managed remotely from Amman, is
that right?
Mr Drummond: No. The UN manages
quite a lot of its work from Amman because its international staff
are not in Iraq, they are in Amman. I think the Japanese government
has some people in Amman as does the EEC.
Q75 Chairman: Where is the international
reconstruction fund facility for Iraq managed from?
Mr Drummond: That is managed by
the World Bank and the UN and the UN part of that is in Amman.
The World Bank has one or two staff in Amman as well but does
most of the work from Washington.
Q76 Chairman: Where are the DFID team?
Mr Drummond: The DFID team are
in London, Baghdad and Basra and visit Amman for liaison purposes
but we do not have people based there.
Q77 Mr Battle: How many staff are in
the DFID team in Baghdad?
Mr Drummond: DFID core staff,
about half a dozen.
Q78 Mr Battle: Do you have other staff
in other parts of Iraq that are out in the field or are they all
necessarily in Baghdad?
Mr Drummond: They are in Baghdad
and Basra.
Q79 Chairman: You are confident that
there are sufficient DFID feet on the ground to make sure that
the money spent is accountable and it is being spent effectively
and all that kind of stuff?
Mr Drummond: I am satisfied with
that, yes. I would like, for the purposes of broadening the programme,
to be able to post more people to Iraq but in the current circumstances
we have to be quite careful about our numbers.
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