Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
MR MICHAEL
MOSSELMANS, DR
BARBARA HENDRIE,
MR PAUL
SCHULTE, MS
JOAN LINK
AND MR
GAVIN BARLOW
15 MARCH 2005
Q40 Chairman: General Jackson clearly
felt and I think there is sometimes a perception in the army that
they go in on day one and take the ground and on day two DFID
and the tea wagon should come along and start dishing out development
aid. Clare Short, when she was secretary of state, specifically
in relation to Iraq, although I think it might apply to others,
clearly felt this was a mess the Ministry of Defence had got everyone
into and they were the occupying powers under the Geneva Convention
and therefore under the Geneva Convention they should jolly well
get on and repair the electricity, dish out the water and the
food and everything else. There seems to be some sort of opaqueness
as to what government collectively is expecting DFID to do in
the immediate aftermath of conflict. I just wondered whether that
is something which these pools collectively are resolving or whether
that is being resolved by a Cabinet sub-committee somewhere.
Mr Schulte: There are inter-departmental
committees looking at that and they are discussing the role and
funding of the pools or other sources of finance.
Q41 Chairman: This is not so much a funding-the-pools
issue; this is a fundamental issue about what HMG expects. This
Committee's spotlight is primarily on DFID. What does HMG expect
DFID to do and deliver in the immediate aftermath of conflict
and, on this occasion, military action? There clearly was a tension
there which bubbled over, because the then secretary of state
made quite sure that the world knew that she was not happy. I
just wondered whether that was an issue which had yet been resolved.
Mr Schulte: What I can say about
that is that my unit, which is an inter-departmental unit, has
been set up to deal specifically with the aftermath of conflict
situations. That does not necessarily mean that DFID would not
be there and it says nothing about the role that DFID would have
in relation to my unit's role and that would have to be determined
according to the individual circumstance of the event.
Chairman: Right. I am not sure that entirely
answers my question, but I think we will draw it out on another
occasion.
Q42 Mr Bercow: There does seem potential
scope, if you are even mildly sceptical or cynical about the new
initiative, for some concern. I express that as an under-statement,
I should have thought. My understanding is that DFID is hosting
and providing most of the running costs for the PCRU. In administrative
terms, the reporting line is through DFID. In policy-coordination
terms, the reporting line is through the Cabinet Office, which
does not have legendary experience in the field that we are discussing
and in terms of overall political oversight, we are talking about,
as I understand it, a Cabinet committee or sub-committee chaired
by the Foreign Secretary. I do not think you have to be instinctively
a troublemaker to sense that there could be some reasonable modicum
of difficulty from time to time in getting speedy decision making.
Are you confident that is going to be avoided and, if so, why?
Mr Schulte: I am confident that
there is an acceptance within government of the need for early
movement and quick inter-departmental decisions and the working
of the capabilities that we are trying to build up for early impact
on the ground. I see no reason on the horizon why that acceptance
amongst all the departments I work with should not actually lead
to quick decisive reaction.
Q43 Mr Bercow: Let me put it to you in
a different way. If the issue is effectiveness and not box-ticking,
and I am very ready to accept that, so far as you and your colleagues
are concerned, that is indeed the intention, what is the relevance
of the Cabinet Office? If we are talking about policy issues which
are classically Foreign Office and DFID, periodically with a necessary
interface perhaps with the Ministry of Defence, is it really necessary
to have the Cabinet Office, presumably in the name of the co-ordination
of government policy, putting its two pennyworths in?
Mr Schulte: The co-ordination
of government policy up to the overall national objective worked
out by the defence and overseas sub-committees of the Cabinet
is rather important, and an effective Cabinet Office, bringing
together the different departmental interests, seems to me important
and it is logical therefore that we should get strategic direction
from there.
Q44 Mr Bercow: The reason why I am slightly
surprised by that, is that it does seem to me that there is a
difference between an overall government policy which is supposed
to be given a priority or effectively enforced in different ways
by every department, such as, for example, attention to green
issues, or proper respect for considerations of sexual equality
or whatever, in the implementation policy by every government
department which it is then the responsibility of the Cabinet
Office to oversee and co-ordinate on the one hand and this. Here,
what we are talking about is DFID and Foreign Office, the two
working together effectively. I am merely suggesting in my mildly
sceptical way that if you have the Cabinet Office interfering
and there are too many fingers in the pudding, it might make that
pudding less tasty than it otherwise would have been.
Mr Schulte: I do not think it
is just DFID and FCO. The MoD is involved and the Treasury is
very likely to be involved. My department has representatives
of other departments, the Home Office for example, who might also
be putting in personnel and capabilities. Unavoidably and perhaps
very desirably, a number of departments are quite centrally interested
and you need a mechanism to bring them together. This is traditionally
done by the Cabinet Office.
Q45 Mr Bercow: Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Well that is as it appears to be. I must say I greet it with very
much less enthusiasm than you do, but there we are. Are you confident
that DFID's role in this will be commensurate with its financial
contribution? Can you remind me what its financial contribution
will be?
Mr Schulte: For the year we have
ahead, DFID will be providing the money for administration and
core staff of around £2.9 million and programme costs to
set up the deployable capabilities of around £8.9 million.
They are providing the finance to set the unit up and provide
the capabilities.
Q46 Mr Bercow: Did you say the £8.9
million will be for deployable capabilities?
Mr Schulte: It would be for setting
up the enabling conditions of arranging volunteers, registering
them, being able to get them out quickly into the field, getting
the necessary equipment and vehicles, all those tasks required
to set up a programme capability.
Q47 Mr Bercow: That would all amount
to operational costs, would it?
Mr Schulte: I do not know what
you mean by "operational costs". It will all come through
the DFID budget.
Q48 Mr Bercow: Would, conceivably at
least, the PCRU participate in EU, UN and other international
missions?
Mr Schulte: Yes; very conceivably.
Q49 Mr Bercow: In those circumstances,
you will therefore need not only the administrative and day-to-day
running costs of the unit, but proper expertise in the field,
fully funded for whatever period. Are you confident that the £8.9
million is sufficient for what might reasonably be that purpose
in the short to medium term?
Mr Schulte: If we begin to deploy
into the field with any significant capability, then there will
be a requirement for extra funding, which will have to be arranged
at the time.
Q50 Mr Bercow: I was going to say that
I did not think the £8.9 million would last all that long.
Mr Schulte: It is not intended
to.
Q51 Mr Bercow: It is not intended to;
it is an opening gambit, so to speak, on the basis that the unit
is successful and some of these anxieties that I have are very
speedily allayed and it proves to be thoroughly effective and
efficient.
Mr Schulte: It enables the capability
with which the unit can engage.
Q52 Mr Bercow: We would then need more
once it is engaged, or once, perhaps, the number of operations
increases.
Mr Schulte: No; I think there
will need to be a discussion about funding as operations are considered
from the start.
Q53 Mr Bercow: Okay, I understand. So
what we have at the moment is really start-up funding and not
a lot more than that?
Mr Schulte: We have funding which
is buying a national capability we did not have before.
Q54 Mr Bercow: Right, but it is not the
end of the subject by definition.
Mr Schulte: No.
Q55 Mr Bercow: It would have to be considerably
more if it proved to be a worthwhile and effective instrument.
Mr Schulte: Depending on the size
of the engagement, yes.
Q56 Chairman: Just help us. When do you
expect to be actually operational? When are you going to be up
and running?
Mr Schulte: Within the next few
weeks, by the beginning of April, we will have a set of capabilities,
only recently established not practised or very well linked, which
have not existed before. That will give us a kind of limited initial
capability of a sort but that will then rapidly grow in the ensuing
months. We intend to hit full capability by the middle of next
year.
Q57 Chairman: The middle of 2006?
Mr Schulte: Yes.
Q58 Chairman: So you would not yet envisage
any actual deployment. You would not envisage going to south Sudan,
which is clearly a post-conflict peace-building operation, or
would you?
Mr Schulte: At the moment, we
are establishing ourselves and we are not proposing any specific
deployment or involvement. That is the decision which we await.
We are not taking it ourselves and we have no names in the frame.
Q59 Mr Battle: May I ask about the Conflict
Prevention Pools, the Africa one and then the global worldwide
one? May I say, I do not quite share the scepticism in principle
of departments getting round a table? Having campaigned in a former
life before we were in government on behalf of what is now a clich,
joined-up thinking and joined-up government and breaking out of
the silos of separate departments which never spoke to each other,
I think the idea of departments co-operating and co-ordinating
across a range of topics is a good idea; indeed, I have sat in
Cabinet sub-committees on the environment, energy efficiency,
science co-ordination, genetic modified organisms, government
use of IT and telecoms and there was even one on ministerial use
of electronic red boxes to save time and space. The only problem
I have with it all is what happened as a result. We had plaques
around the table for all the different departments, but most of
the time we could never agree which department had the lead in
actually doing anything. That is what I come back to really on
the Conflict Prevention Pools. Which department takes the lead
on specific regional and country strategies within those? Let
us take the global one and I referred to Colombia in an earlier
conversation. Is it the Foreign Office or is it DFID? Particularly,
for the benefit of our Committee, I am anxious to enforce what
other colleagues have said. Has the poverty reduction focus in
conflict resolution got lost? Does it get lost? What is the situation
in reality with regard to action as opposed to just getting round
the table?
Ms Link: You asked about the global
pool, so may I talk about that? I am not so familiar with the
Africa pool, though I do know some things about it. The short
answer is that there is no formal lead department for any of these
conflict prevention strategies and that is actually one of the
most interesting things about the way joined-up government has
worked in this area. Departmental boundaries are one of the strong
things that exist in Whitehall and they have been, to some degree,
successfully broken down in the Conflict Pools. The way that the
global pool works is that we have at the moment 15 strategies.
Some of them are on a regional basis, for example in the Middle
East, which covers the Middle East peace process, but also a variety
of other countries in the Middle East to support conflict prevention
and resolution. Some are specific to countries, the Nepal one;
some are specific to what I would call real conflict prevention,
which is about looking at an area, such as small arms and light
weapons, and trying to support the UK's very prominent position
in the world negotiations, UN negotiations in that area, trying
to promote the destruction of weapons in certain areas, but also
much more importantly, long-term work to improve the countries'
ability to cope with arms smuggling and so on and so forth. These
are different areas of work and the first thing that we have to
do is actually hammer out an agreed government policy as opposed
to a departmental policy. I think that is the real core. You heard
from the earlier witnesses about the importance of conflict analysis
or, in thematic areas, thematic analysis, what role these things
play in particular conflicts and what you are going to try to
do about it. So the first thing is quite a bit of work on analysis.
Obviously that is ongoing across government all the time, but
bringing it together, because there are different perspectives,
is quite important and also, talking to the outside world, which
we have done increasingly as a result of these pools and brought
people together so that they actually start to see the picture
in the same way and then try to see what they can do to support
either conflict prevention, conflict resolution or prevention
of conflict in a post-conflict environment. Once you have a post-conflict
environment, as you have also heard, a country is very vulnerable
to further conflict. The work is done at that level across government
and there is actually agreement in each of these strategies. It
is quite hard work getting that—I will not disguise that—but
it has happened. Underneath that are programmes to support the
objectives which are set by the strategy. Those strategies, by
the way, go up to ministers, because this is an area where ministers
are quite heavily involved; I think you were actually involved
in it yourself, Mr Battle, at one point in the Latin America area
and also Indonesia I believe. Those strategies are actually approved
at Cabinet level by the three Secretaries of State involved and
then underneath it are the programmes that will support the strategies
and the money is only really a part of what is going on. What
is going on is also working together with the countries, working
together internally to make sure that we are trying to do the
best thing across all the different levers you could press to
reduce conflict. You might get a diplomatic intervention in one
area and then you might get a specific development project in
another area but all co-ordinated to achieve the same strategic
objective.
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