Examination of Witnesses (Questions 10-19)
10 MARCH 2005
RT HON
HILARY BENN
MP AND MR
PETER TROY
Q10 Chairman: Good afternoon, Secretary
of State. If it is convenient for you, we are going to deal with
evidence on the tsunami disaster until half past four, go to vote,
and then come back to deal with Iraq. Secretary of State, the
tsunami: Boxing Day, you suddenly had to jack up, in human terms,
a complete operation from a standing start. It is difficult to
conceive probably of a worse time: a bank holiday, everyone is
away. Quite a lot of NGOs have said to us that maybe what is needed
is for them, like Merlin and others, to have some core funding,
so that they are not immediately having to pass the bucket around
to get money to get moving. Obviously you have a crisis team which
you can mobilise, but it takes a bit of time to mobilise: they
have to come into Palace Street or wherever they operate. Do you
think there is anything that can be done to improve the contingency
arrangements? By definition, we never know when these things are
going to happen, but to put in funding in institutions, so that
DFID, other Departments and NGOs can get motoring more quickly
than you were able to do on Boxing Day?—and we accept that
you got motoring pretty quickly.
Hilary Benn: That was going to
be my first point. I woke up in the morning, came downstairs,
my son said, "Look what's happening." I sat and watched
the television for about 20 minutes and between half-ten and quarter
to eleven I picked up the phone and rang CHAD. The person who
answered the phone had been woken at, I think, around two o'clock
in the morning—and we are talking about Boxing Day—and
the second year in a row, because the Bam earthquake was exactly
the same time, 12 months earlier—and the team were already
in and working. I think they were mobilised within four hours.
I would be amazed if anyone responded any quicker. It is not a
competition, but government civil servants are not always praised
for the speed with which they respond to things. I have to say
that the crisis team in CHAD, on that morning and subsequently,
did a quite outstanding job, and I do not know how anyone could
respond any quicker. So, by the end of the day, the first assessment
team had been dispatched and work was already under way to organise
the first relief flight. As you know, getting hold of a large
transport aircraft on Boxing Day, when organisations are shut,
is not terribly easy, but they found one, and the next day it
left, with the tents and the plastic sheeting brought down from
our suppliers in Marchington. I thought that was pretty quick.
Lots of other things happened subsequently. As far as NGOs and
others are concerned: as you know, I have made a proposal more
generally about the international system, that there should be
a fund of money upon which the UN would be able to call on to
move very quickly. As far as NGOs are concerned, they are always
going to have to put proposals together. I think we are pretty
quick at assessing them and putting proposals together. I think
we are pretty quick at assessing them and giving them fast answers.
Peter, who has a lot of experience of dealing with this on a day-to-day
basis might want to comment. The other thing I would say, however,
is that of course nobody is entirely sure what they are dealing
with to start with, which is why sending assessment teams is so
important. It took, for example, Indonesia a little while just
to wake up to the scale of this absolutely devastating crisis:
they did not ask for international help for, I think, four or
five days. So all of that is stewing around. But I think Boxing
Day is a really good day to see whether the system works, because
of the obvious challenges, and I think the response was pretty
darn swift. But on the specific point of NGOs, since you raise
that—Peter?
Mr Troy: Thank you, and thank
you, Secretary of State, for your comments in appreciation of
the work my team did. I would also want equally to give appreciation
to the NGOs, who also very quickly mobilised. The function of
my team is initially to find out as much information as they can,
and there is a variety of humanitarian organisations, which include
the NGOs, that are immediately available as well to provide us
with that information. We have our own teams through our country
offices that can help to some extent, but it is quite often the
NGOs themselves that are already in-country and have themselves
been getting in touch with their country counterparts. So it is
a collection of information. I think the suggestion that DFID
should be considering supporting, in a contingency function, the
mobilisation of NGOs is a good one and we will certainly discuss
that with NGOs next time we meet. I would have to say it is not
something they have specifically raised with me thus far, but
we will be having a lesson-learning exercise with them.
Q11 Chairman: Perhaps that is a question
you could ask them?
Mr Troy: Yes, that is fine. That
is perfectly acceptable. We have had no problem in the past giving
verbal authority over the telephone. Yes, we do need to have formality
for accountability of proper proposals, but a lot of our approvals
are done verbally and then followed up in writing afterwards,
and the NGOs with which we deal know that, and therefore we have
supported and helped to mobilise NGOs in the past. I guess the
thing that is going through my mind is this: If we are going to
be supporting them in terms of upfront contingency funding, then
which NGOs? We are always in a difficult situation in supporting
some and not supporting others.
Q12 Chairman: You have to make value
judgments all the time. In some ways too—let's be brutal
about it—your job can be made more difficult if too many
come forward. So that if you are giving an advance signal as to
those with whom you are going to work, and the degrees of professionalism
and all that kind of stuff, that actually helps you and helps
them, does it not?
Hilary Benn: I can see that sort
of argument. It depends of course where they have capacity on
the ground—and of course one of the reasons for picking
a particular NGO to work with is if they have people there who
can get on with it now—and it is very hard to predict where
the crises are going to arise. One is having to weigh all those
things up. And there are some NGOs who we know by reputation are
good, efficient, professional, put in good proposals, and we will
turn them around very quickly and then they will go and get on
with it. I think this is one of the lessons that we need to reflect
upon—and there is a whole load of lessons from the tsunami
which in due course we are going to sit down and think about so
that we can try to make the system more effective in the future.
Q13 Mr Battle: I was very impressed by
the response of both yourself on the day and the Department. This
was a tragedy, a catastrophe, which unfolded over days and weeks.
In the first few hours, if I recall rightly, the disaster was
35 people dead—not 300,000. It took weeks for it to unfold,
but the quality of the response, I have to say, I thought was
superb. What was done differently this time that was better than
ever before was the setting up of the Disasters Emergency Committee,
with one pot for everyone to go towards with contributions. I
think that made it much easier. You might confirm for me whether
there was a decision that it would be better if people gave money.
In the past, I can remember, in the seventies, there were pictures
of African families and when people saw them without shoes they
sent shoes—which might not have been the most appropriate
response. Similarly other disasters have evoked responses from
the EU such as sending piles of frozen chickens to places which
had no electricity or refrigeration. This time I thought the response
was an appropriate response and it seemed to work. Having given
you that praise, could you give me a hint of some of the internal
conversations and discussions on what could be done better, what
was not going right, what were the gaps in the system, and the
areas where there could be an improvement in response? Having
said that, I think it is the best response in 50 years, quite
frankly, from a government department.
Hilary Benn: It is very kind of
you to say so. Yes, money is, indeed, the best thing people can
give. The Disasters Emergency Committee came together and pooled
that appeal. I met them on 31 December and, as you will be aware,
one of the practical offers we made was that we would cover the
cost of flying out to the region any supplies that they bought
with the money raised by the public, because we thought that was
a way of ensuring that every penny donated by the public went
on relief supplies and not on the cost of transport, Today it
is 25 flights that we have paid for. They have very much appreciated
the offer and they have gone away and they have made it work.
I think that has been effective. There were still a lot of offers
of goods: people did go round and collect blankets and second-hand
clothing and so on and so forth. One of the lessons for us—and
this is a particular scale of emergency—was: How do you
manage all this instinctive human goodwill?—which is a vast
amount. People who were volunteering their services; people who
had collected things, waiting in warehouses, "What can we
do with this?" So it is partly about trying to get the message
across that money is best because then you can buy the things
that the assessment on the ground tells you are needed, but, at
the same time, you do not want to put off people who want to do
something. People want to do something in these circumstances,
and that is a profoundly positive human emotion. What did not
work? This was a very complex emergency because of the number
of countries affected, so trying to get decent information about
what was happening where so that we could take decisions about
where we were going to concentrate our resources. I think that
is the first thing. Secondly, particularly in Indonesia but also
elsewhere, just getting the basic capacity up and running—transport.
I think that is one of the lessons. Frankly, if it had not been
for the military turning up in the way they did—the RAF
and others, the American military—we would all have been
in much, much bigger trouble. I saw that very clearly for myself
when I flew into Banda Aceh on, I think, 7 January because you
could see the operation at work. I think one of the lessons is
that the UN system has the lead responsibility—and rightly
so—but how do we have a better system for making sure that
we can get access to heavy-lift capacity—which was needed
in this case—and helicopter capacity. Because, on the day
that I was there—so this is a number of days after the tsunami
struck—there were still negotiations taking place within
the UN system, every one of whom I met in Banda Aceh town said,
"We need more information about the west coast"—because
that is where the roads were broken—"We still do not
have access to a helicopter to fly there and find out what is
happening." Now the helicopters were taking the food but
. . . Question: Should there not be a better system for the UN
having that independent capacity? We ended up chartering helicopters
for the UN, but I think one of the lessons is that there ought
to be a better system for the UN—in the same way as we have
search and rescue. With the Bam earthquake, by 10 o'clock that
night, Boxing Day of the previous year, we had organised a plane
from DFID; the search and rescue people from Britain got to Stansted
Airport: "If you get there by 10, you get on the flight and
go". So having capacity which is able to deal with that is
one of the lessons. Secondly, it is always a bit chaotic and it
took a bit of time to get the system up and running in Banda Aceh.
The Humanitarian Information Centre, which is the database that
will hold all the information about what is happening and where
the needs are, I think we could have got that there quicker. Things
happened more quickly in Sri Lanka, which was the other country
I visited. Peter may have comments to make about other lessons,
but these are really important.
Mr Troy: Perhaps two brief ones,
if I may, to put it into some context. To some extent I think
we were a bit lucky as well with this emergency, for two reasons.
One is that there has been no serious disease outbreak. Part of
the credit for that is that we helped to mobilise World Health
Organisation disease inspection and monitoring teams from day
one. But one of the things we will be wanting to discuss with
the World Health Organisation or the UN more generally is why
they had to come to us to get funds to mobilise. Why can they
not do that themselves anyway? The second point relates to the
fact that this was a bit of a unique emergency in many respects.
One is that the number of people injured compared to the number
of deaths was incredibly small. I wonder how we would have responded
and coped were it the other way round; had we been dealing with
serious injuries. I hope we would have coped equally as well,
but I think the challenge would have been significantly different.
Q14 Mr Battle: Could I ask you for a
word on the role of the media. I think the media are vital to
see what happens. Tragically, they do not get to Africa quickly
enough: they are not always there and we find out too late. There
were criticisms of the American media that sometimes they had
booked so many planes to fly into Banda Aceh that they could not
get the aid in because all the planes and airports were blocked
up. What is your view of the role of the media in a crisis like
this?
Hilary Benn: They certainly made
sure the world knew what was going on and of the fantastic response
from the public—partly because of the biblical scale of
this, the time of year it happened, the fact that it involved
British citizens, particularly in Thailand and to a lesser extent
in Sri Lanka. I think nobody seeing the pictures could fail to
be moved and I think it acts as a spur to the world to get on
and do something about it. In that sense, I think it is a positive
role. On the other hand, I would say that one of the things that
did not come across a lot in the reporting was of course the extent
to which the main burden in coping with this is borne by the people,
the emergency services, the local authorities of the countries
affected. That is an untold story because international media
tends to focus very much on what the Brits are doing—the
French—the Americans. It was very evident to me that the
most grisly task of all in Banda Aceh, picking up the bodies,
was being done by young Indonesian men on trucks racing up and
down the town.
Q15 Tony Worthington: One of the issues
which periodically recurs is the use of the military and access
to the military resources, because when you are coming into the
whole business of heavy-lifting facilities and disciplined services
there is no-one else really but NATO that can tackle a task of
this size. How is that done, bringing in the military? Are you
satisfied with the arrangements which exist for immediately getting
access to NATO heavy-lifting resources? I remember in Mozambique
that there was a lot of controversy about helicopters and getting
them there, and you were somehow supposed to get helicopters from
Britain to Mozambique, which is some distance, when there were
other helicopters in the area. Would you like to comment on that
issue?
Hilary Benn: The natural first
response is to say, "The international humanitarian system
ought to be able to cope with this." That is the truth. Then,
gradually—because of the point Mr Battle rightly made that
this is a disaster that unfolded—as each day passed, we
all became more aware of the scale of it. The countries themselves
did not know what the scale was to start with. Indonesians were
very clear about that. As television pictures were then relayed
back, you could begin to see for yourself. There is not a formal
mechanism in place. You get to a point where it is quite clear
that more help is required and then conversation starts with the
MOD. They responded magnificently, precisely because they have
the kind of heavy-lift capacity that we needed in those circumstances.
The Americans put together their core group. It is partly a question
of who has what capacity available in the area that can get there
quickly. These are the practical considerations. There is not
a formalised structure as such, but it came together pretty quickly
Without it, we would have been in real difficulty, because where
else would one have got that capacity?—particularly the
helicopters for Indonesia, and, to a lesser extent, for Sri Lanka.
In relation to other countries, of course, India did not ask for
any international assistance at all, because that is the way that
they do it: they have, sadly, a lot of experience of dealing with
emergencies and they are very proud about responding to them themselves.
That was, of course, easier on the mainland, but with the Andaman
and Nicobar Islands that was a bit more difficult.
Q16 Tony Worthington: On the civilian
side, you know where to go, you go to NGOs, but, on the military
side, or within NATO, is there an officer or a command structure
to say, "It is Boxing Day, something terrible has happened
in the Indian Ocean"? Do they have to wait to be asked, or
are they ready to move?
Hilary Benn: Peter, would you
like to describe what happens.
Mr Troy: Both really. They will
always be ready to move but they do need to be tasked. I tend
to delegate a lot of the responsibilities to our operational team,
but they have links directly into the UK military which would
then have links into NATO forces and systems. Things can happen
very, very quickly if need be, but it is literally, again, a value
judgment one has to take, looking at the range of options as the
situation evolves. UK military and other militaries are one of
the options, as is the commercial option.
Q17 Mr Colman: I was interested in what
you said, Secretary of State, in terms of the local emergency
services taking the brunt of it in the countries affected. I think
a story that has not been told is the work of Rotary Clubs in
the countries concerned. The same day, within 24 hours, I understand,
many of the Rotary Clubs had in fact rushed from their headquarters
in the capital cities of Thailand, Sri Lanka, mainland India,
even in Indonesia. Shelter Boxes by the thousands, emergency aid
boxes, with local Rotary Clubs in those countries having the faith
that the money would come from Rotary Clubs in the North, at is
were from developed countries, to pay for that work. Of course
Rotary in Great Britain responded very rapidly in terms of fundraising:
in virtually every shopping mall in Britain there were lots of
local fundraising events. Is there an example here of having,
if you like, almost a twinning of the aid agencies—and it
maybe could go the other way next time—to have a situation
where the service club network—and in this case it was Rotary
but it could be other service clubs, like Lions, like Soroptimists—local
people in the countries affected in the developing world, who
can actually be the frontline of delivery, not necessitating or
being in addition to, if you like, your aircraft that is standing
by ready for rescue workers coming out of Stansted. There is a
local angle to this which links to the local in the UK, which
is perhaps the story that has not been told. I have talked about
Rotary but I understand that most of the other service organisations
of that nature which operate in mainland India, in Thailand, in
the other countries affected also responded within 24 hours—in
some cases within hours.
Hilary Benn: Indeed, they did.
In fact when I was in Batticaloa in Eastern Sri Lanka, one of
the tasks that the crew from Chatham were undertaking was of putting
up a series of Shelter Box tents from the Rotary Clubs that had
been donated. I talked to some of the families that were in the
process of moving in. They had put these up on the football field,
because most of the people who had lost their homes, their boats,
their nets, everything, had been moved into school buildings and
the authorities were very keen to re-open the schools, for obvious
reasons, to try to get normal life beginning to operate again.
This was going to provide homes for them. That is a really practical
example. Shelter Box is a wonderful organisation. I think this
is another lesson that we can try to learn away from the immediate
crisis and pressures that everybody faces: to understand how organisations
like that, which have the capacity to respond quickly, to raise
money and so on, can fit into the overall system. Because I think
it is very important that we harness all of this effort. It is
not about us saying, "We are the professionals, leave it
to us, go away." That would be entirely the wrong approach,
but the more we can discuss what the particular needs are, how
people can direct their efforts in the most effective way, money
or particular practical forms of support, then we can be more
effective next time at harnessing that individual human desire
to do something.
Q18 Mr Colman: And harness local expertise?
Hilary Benn: Absolutely, alongside
the other people who have formal responsibility through the UN
system and the contribution of bilateral humanitarian organisations
such as DFID.
Q19 John Barrett: The general public
were very generous in their donations to the appeals right from
the start. Did DFID feel that there was a difficult decision to
be made, because, as the public money poured out there, the pressure
was then on DFID to match the amount of money coming from the
public. But then, for the first time probably, we heard later
on that the appeal had so much money there could be a problem
actually spending it. On the one hand you are driven to match
the generosity of the public, but on the other hand you have had
to draw money down from reserves to add to this which would presumably
have been spent on other humanitarian emergencies—because
there are always greater demands on money than there is money
available. How do you deal with this? Did you feel that there
was pressure on, that you must match this because the Government
could be seen to be stingy in the face of this overwhelming flow
of money, or was there a decision to be taken that the money is
having to be drawn down from reserves so we then cannot spend
it on other emergencies.
Hilary Benn: There is no doubt
that there was a process in which the media played a big part
which was looking at the amount that people had pledged from different
countries and internationally. We know from previous humanitarian
emergencies that big numbers can be announced. Question: How much
of that gets spent? What does it turn into? Jan Egeland said when
we met in Geneva in January that one of the things they are doing
is putting up a website which has what was promised down one side
and on the other side what people have actually coughed up, which
is a very important way of calling people to account. The real
challenge is the one to which you drew attention: spending it;
turning the commitment of money into practical help. Of the £75
million—and that consisted of, as you know, £20 million
from our humanitarian contingency which we have for dealing with
humanitarian emergencies, £30 million from DFID's contingency,
which is the obvious next place from which to draw, and a further
£25 million from the Treasury—we have committed now,
either spent directly or given to others to spend, £61 million.
If you went to ask the Disasters Emergency Committee how much
of the £300 million has been committed, I would be very interested
in what the answer is, because it is a real challenge to turn
that into spending on the ground. I said from the very first day,
"We will do what is required," and I believe that is
what we have done. Clearly you are in a bind: on the one hand
you want to commit money in response to an assessment of need
on the ground, and you require information to come back. It was
not clear on the first day just what an emergency this was, so
people said, "You have only announced a million. This means
you are completely stingy." This was nonsense. Then you get
the assessments, and you realise this is a much bigger scale of
emergency, therefore we need to commit to do more. I do not think
it is a terribly helpful process, frankly, to get into sort-of
competitive telephone-number bidding, because the real challenge
is: How quickly can you get help to people who need it? How quickly
can you turn whatever money has been pledged into water purification
tablets and tents and plastic sheeting and medical supplies and
food and water. That is the task in a humanitarian emergency.
Yes, of course there were those pressures. Of course there were
those pressures.
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