Examination of Witnesses (Questions 403
- 419)
TUESDAY 23 MAY 2006
RT HON
HILARY BENN
MP, MR WILLIAM
KINGSMILL, MR
RICHARD BOULTER
AND MR
TONY VENABLES
Q403 Chairman: Good afternoon, Secretary
of State. Thank you very much for coming in.
Hilary Benn: Could I introduce
my team. On my right, William Kingsmill who is the Head of the
Growth and Investment Group in Policy Division; next to him, Richard
Boulter, Head of Profession, Enterprise Development; and, on my
left, our Chief Economist, Tony Venables.
Q404 Chairman: Thank you very much.
We are getting towards the end of this report. We have not quite
finished. As you know, we started it in the belief that dealing
with poverty required economic growth and economic growth required
a successful developing private sector. That is the essence of
what we are looking into. The OECD Development Assistance Committee
would underpin that by saying, "Instead of regarding private
sector development as just one of a number of tools, it should
be regarded as a major, if not central, part of country assistance
that donors provide." How do you react to the idea that private
sector development is or should be at or very close to the centre
of delivering poverty reduction?
Hilary Benn: I think it is fundamental.
If I may say, that is one of the reasons why I very much welcome
this inquiry. In picking economic growth/private sector development
as the first of the speeches I made in the run-up to the consultation
on the White Paper, I did that quite deliberately because it seemed
to me that we needed to debate and discuss this issue more. In
a lot of the talk about development, I do not think this figures
as prominently as it ought to. As you will know, in the course
of that speech[1]
I used the phrase "Poor people are the private sector"
which seemed to me a way of trying to make the very simple point
that if you are interested in helping the poor you need to be
interested in private sector development. That is the first thing.
The second is: where in the long term is the money to change people's
lives for the better going to come from? and the answer is: From
economic growth and development. You only have to look back over
200 years of British history to know that is how we did it. Therefore
this is going to be the main means by which people are going to
be able to change their lives for the better. The only other point
I would make is, in order to support private sector development—and
no doubt we will come on to this—it involves an incredibly
wide range of activities, from fighting corruption to building
roads. You can find in the range of work that DFID is involved
in a lot of things going on which are helping, in one way or another,
private sector development in developing countries.
Q405 Chairman: I wrote to you on
behalf of the Committee on 28 March relating to the White Paper
and highlighting the key points that we thought were relevant
to private sector development. We were really saying—which
is the reason we picked up on that—yes, it is a White Paper,
but for us private sector development needs to be a part of the
future strategy for DFID. I know it is not published, but are
you going to be able to assure us today that the White Paper will
be putting private sector development at the heart of the strategy
for Department?
Hilary Benn: It will certainly
be part of what is at the heart of the strategy. But, in order
to have good private sector development, for example, you need
to have good governance. If you do not have good governance, you
are not going to get the private sector developed. If your definition,
Mr Bruce, of private sector development being at the heart includes
good governance being at the heart of what it is that needs to
happen in developing countries and the action that we need to
take to support good governance, for example, then the answer
is: yes, it is. But you need a lot of different factors in place,
in order, bluntly, to create a climate in which people with money
in developing countries will be prepared to invest in the future.
Sub-Saharan Africa's tragedy is that just under 50% of the wealth
it generates every year flees the continent to find a home somewhere
else. Therefore, if Africa finds it difficult to hang on to just
under half of the wealth it itself generates—question—how
exactly is it going to encourage other people to come in and invest
their own money?
Q406 Chairman: When we started this
inquiry, one or two people said, "We are glad the Committee
is looking into this because people are beginning to regard it
as"—and I hate to use the term—"fashionable
to see private sector development as a means of dealing with poverty
and solving some of the problems of the poorest countries."
As a sort of newcomer to this Committee, I was somewhat shocked
at the idea that private sector development was something that
could come and go as a fashion, as opposed to being absolutely—as
you yourself have said, Secretary of State—essential, and
yet for many poor countries it is just not happening. Of course
I think your own submission[2]
says the governments or the countries concerned have prime responsibility
for creating that climate, but presumably the international community,
the donor community, has to do two things. One is, wherever possible,
to ensure that its aid does not cut across that and, better than
that, that it helps the private sector to develop. What I am not
entirely clear about is how the DFID strategy really addresses
that.
Hilary Benn: I must admit, I did
not realise it was fashionable, so I share your puzzlement in
that respect. What are we trying to do? We are trying to help
people to increase their income by enabling them to find ways
of earning a better living than they enjoy or do not enjoy currently.
Secondly, it is about working to help partner governments to improve
the climate in which investment can come and business can take
place. Thirdly, it is about improving people's access to finance,
particularly for the very poorest, who, by definition, because
they are poor do not have a lot in the way of assets—to
things like micro-finance and to banking, and property rights,
so that people have collateral, enabling poor people to enforce
their rights. I would give you a very interesting example—which
gives me the chance to make a small advertisement. We have just
published this little booklet Development Works[3]
which is trying to explain how a range of things that we do as
a department has an impact on people's lives. We are funding,
in Tajikistan, third party arbitration courts—just to take
a concrete example of the point I was just making. Those courts
have given 800,000 people (about 12% of the population) access
to legal services and have solved 275 disputes over land. Giving
people title to land could be just a question of certainty: "I
have got this in perpetuity, so it is worth my while investing:
putting fertiliser in and improving the land"—and it
is what we have also done in supporting land certification in
Ethiopia—or it could be, "I have got some title to
the land, that might allow me to put that as collateral to get
access to some finance." That is just a practical example.
I think it is about governance, as I mentioned earlier, and that
ranges from the right economic policies, because—if you
do not have the right economic policies, inflation rips and it
is going to hit poor people. It is about fighting corruption.
The very basic responsibility of governments is not having a war.
Having spent a very interesting day in Somalia last week, a country
devastated by 15 years of conflict, people are eking out an existence
-although some war lords are doing very well out of it—but
is anybody going to come and invest money in Somalia while the
conflict goes on? No, they are not. Finally, the work we are doing
on trade policy matters, because in the end developing countries
want the chance to earn and trade their way out of poverty. Therefore,
world trade rules, as we all know, which get in the way of that,
are bad for economic development, and, even when you have those
changes, countries need to have things to sell. Some countries
are doing better than others for a whole range of complex reasons—to
do with their history, whether they are landlocked, whether they
have natural resources, how small the markets are. In essence,
that is what we are trying to focus on, but it encompasses, as
your inquiry has already shown, an incredibly wide range of activities,
all of which in some way or another help to create a climate in
which there is more chance that economic development is going
to lift people out of poverty.
Chairman: We will come on to some of
those topics as the meeting goes on.
Q407 Mr Singh: When you launched
the White Paper for consultation on 19 January, you said, "Let's
imagine a poor farmer in Malawi. What do you think her chances
are of a better life, and that of her children?" We went
to Malawi in March and found the private sector did not exist
in terms of business and economically, and I had the strong impression
that Malawi is going to be a basket case for ever and ever and
I came back so depressed from that. What can we do in Malawi to
kick-start that economy, to do something to that economy so that
it can grow and so there can be some hope for the people there?
Hilary Benn: One of the immediate
priorities in Malawi—as you will have seen, I am sure, during
your visit—is keeping people alive—because of the
drought, people who live, as you know, on the margins year in
and year out. When it really gets bad and you sell everything
you have ever owned and you are dependent on what others give
you, and that may keep you alive—as I saw also in Somalia
last week—the question is: How do you get back on your feet?
That is the first thing. Secondly, Malawi is a country with very
little in the way of natural resources. It has a small market,
bluntly. I remember from a visit I paid there, meeting the business
community in Blantyre and asking, really, the question that you
have just asked me, "What are the opportunities for economic
development?" that they said, "It is pretty difficult.
There might be potential for some tourism around the lake"—because
that is one thing as far as that sector that Malawi has. "But"—I
remember a man saying to me—and I do not know if it has
changed since—this was three or four years ago—"the
longest lease you can get on a lease of land around the lake is
15 years." Question: Who is going to come and invest in a
hotel and jobs if you are not sure in 15 years time whether you
are still going to have the asset? That taught me an important
lesson: If you want at least to exploit the potential that there
might be an opening for tourism, the thing you needed to deal
with first was the length of land leases. That is the place to
start. Malawi is a very difficult example, I will be absolutely
frank with you. The other thing I would say is that, in part because
it is a small market, I do believe there is the potential within
the developing world—particularly for sub-Saharan Africa—for
greater regional economic intervention. After all, look at what
we have done in Europe. We see some signs of that in Southern
Africa, the East African community, which is now beginning to
get going 20 years after it was first mooted and then fell by
the wayside and is coming back. With countries like that, if we
were to encourage them to link with neighbouring countries, to
create bigger markets, maybe you would get more likelihood that
people would come and invest, because then it connects more and
more easily to what others are doing in other countries with tariffs
and so on and so forth. I think it is a really tough example,
actually.
Q408 Mr Singh: What do we do in Malawi
in terms of looking at land reform and title to land, in terms
of high interest rates in the economy, in terms of business regulations?—which,
across the areas we visited, were incredible really. We have just
passed our Regulatory Reform Act. What are we doing to encourage
them to have something similar?
Hilary Benn: I will give you one
very permanent example of something we have done in Malawi that
was supported by our Business Linkages Challenge Fund (BLCF),
and that was working with the Great Lakes Cotton Company in Malawi.
The Business Linkages Challenge Fund tries to link business in
developing countries with others who have knowledge for improving
products that they might be able to draw on. In this case it was
improved cotton seed and other support. That has helped about
200,000 smallholder cotton farmers and increased production by
about 250% in a year. That is a practical example, but it is one
in a country of . . . Tony Venables has been there recently.
Mr Venables: About 13 million,
is the answer.
Hilary Benn: 13 million is the
answer on population.
Mr Venables: I have just come
back from a visit to Malawi and I think the number is 86% of the
population is based in agriculture. Thinking about Malawi means,
first of all, thinking about agricultural development , in particular
maize. A lot of these farmers are more or less subsistence farmers.
Q409 Mr Singh: They will not grow
anything else. How can we get them to grow things which other
people might want?
Mr Venables: The very interesting
thing, I found during a visit there, was the considerable unexploited
potential in agriculture. Yields on hybrid maize with fertiliser
are three/five/eight times greater than on traditional varieties
without fertilizer, so it is a matter of really developing the
supply networks to get the fertilizer, to get the seed to the
farmers. There is quite a vibrant private sector agri-dealer network
developing, importing fertilizer, getting seed to small farmers,
and that is obviously something DFID is trying to foster.
Q410 Chairman: We went to the Dedza
Pottery and everybody laughed and said, "That's the only
industry there is in Malawi and everybody goes there." There
is virtually nothing else.
Hilary Benn: If you look at what
some other sub-Saharan Africa countries have been able to do where
they have great agricultural potential—and one thinks in
particular of Kenya in floriculture and Zambia and others in vegetables—what
you need there is the right infrastructure. You need to be able
to get them on a plane tonight, to get them here tomorrow, so
that we are prepared to buy them. You need to find a way of bringing
together a lot of smallholder farmers. I met an organisation recently
that has been doing that in Kenya. It enables you to tap that,
but deals with all the stuff, frankly, that you have go to through
if you are going to get a contract with some of the supermarkets,
and helping them to deal with the standards that are set. Because
you have the European regulations, and then you have the regulations
that are set by the industry itself, and then some individual
supermarkets have their own higher standards on top of that. To
be able to deal with all of those requires a lot of effort and
it needs to be worth everybody's while for you to make that investment,
and: "Are you certain that you are going to have a long-term
contract with a supermarket?"—and we know it does not
quite work like that.
Q411 Mr Singh: Would you agree with
me, finally, that Malawi for the long-term, for the foreseeable
future, is going to be dependent on aid from the western world?
Hilary Benn: It is heavily dependent
currently and I think that will remain the case unless some of
the potential that we have touched upon can be exploited—and
regional integration I would highlight especially.
Q412 John Barrett: Where there has
been private sector development and it has been a success is the
large DFID programme in India. We have seen a lot of success there.
Equally, alongside medieval poverty, we see the Californian lifestyles
of the rich and famous. How do you justify to the UK taxpayer
that when we are promoting private sector development we are not
just making the rich richer but we are also helping the poor?
A lot of private sector development will very much miss out on
that group which has just been referred to, which is the rural
poor.
Hilary Benn: First of all, the
evidence is pretty clear to me, and I think to all of us, on economic
development. If you look at India and what is happening there,
and you look at China as the most striking example of all, the
economic growth that those two countries have seen has undoubtedly
lifted a large number of their citizens out of absolute poverty—China
being the most successful country in the world at having done
that in the last 25 years. If we are serious about trying to reduce
the number of people who live in absolute and dire policy, economic
growth is the way to do it. However, within any country, there
is a choice about how you distribute the fruits of economic growth.
You have the great disparities you have referred to in India.
Look at Brazil: a middle income country: enormous disparities.
Look at the distribution of wealth there and compare it with Scandinavia.
What is the difference between the two? Political process over
a long period of time: the society's politics making a choice
about how they are going to distribute that wealth. Countries
have to decide that for themselves, but it is not an argument
for not continuing to try very hard to help economic growth and
development in the countries in which we work, because, in the
end, it is going to have a benefit on the very poorest.
Q413 John Barrett: One of the key
differences, as you have mentioned, is that issue of stability.
Certainly, a lot of African nations are in conflict or post-conflict.
Has DFID looked at a specific strategy of developing the private
sector in post-conflict or conflict countries? There are quite
clear differences from where we have seen successes—and
we have seen the growth in India and China—if we look at
somewhere like Sudan. If the peace agreement holds in Sudan, how
do we move forward there? It is very difficult to mirror with
a country that has been relatively stable and move things forward.
The Congo is another area, and Sierra Leone.
Hilary Benn: When a country is
in the course of a conflict, it is pretty difficult—depending
on the nature of the conflict. But even in those circumstances,
people are very enterprising in trying to keep body and soul together.
I met a woman in Northern Uganda last week, who started by telling
me how she had been kidnapped for a month by the LRA, been beaten
every day and forced to be a porter, but she was queuing outside
this hut where a generator was grinding sorghum and maize—because
the food ration they get is not milled: the man charges, so you
bring your food, he puts it in the hopper and out it comes. I
said, "How are you raising the money to pay?"—because
they have got nothing, all they are getting is the food ration
and the water—and she said, "I brew beer." As
I walked around this camp in Gdbee there were lots of people brewing
this extraordinary concoction which eventually gets fermented
into beer that they sell to people. They are all living in the
camps because of the fear of conflict but she had found a really
creative way at least to raise a little bit of finance in order
to be able to assist. Take another example: Afghanistan: a post-conflict
country. As you know, we have a big programme in Afghanistan,
working both to support the Government in building its capacity
to do the job that people would normally look to government to
do, but focusing in particular on alternative livelihoods. That
is particularly complex and challenging in Afghanistan because
a lot of people grow the poppy—not because they are particularly
keen on the poppy, but if you get a bigger return from growing
the poppy than you do for something else, and it is question of
putting food on the table and looking after your family, then
it is not surprising if people see the incentives in that way.
What we are trying to do there—as the Government try to
enforce the law which says you should not grow poppy—is
to support the Government in improving infrastructure, in irrigation,
giving people access to alternative crops that they might grow
trying to help them make the markets more effective. Because it
is one thing to grow things, but it is another thing if all your
stuff goes off because it takes too long ever to get it to a market—where
you do not know that anybody will want to buy it. I think the
answer is different things in different circumstances, but, in
post-conflict countries—and it goes back to my earlier point
about governance, Mr Barrett—you have to do things in the
right order. You need stability—because if you get relative
stability then you have a better chance of economic development
taking off and investment coming in than if you have a lot of
disorder. From a development point of view, if you look at what
we are doing in individual countries in supporting reconstruction
after conflict has ended, you will find a different focus to our
programme at an earlier stage than you will probably find from
a later stage.
Q414 John Barrett: Does DFID have
anyone in India or China looking at the consequences of success,
so that if success does happen in Sudan or Mozambique or Congo,
you will not have these huge divisions? You will learn from the
lessons, so that they are not repeated again. We are working towards
economic success in the African countries. If that then results
in huge divisions and inequalities, we are back to square one,
I think. I just wonder if you have the resources or whether there
are economists looking at this issue?
Hilary Benn: Tony may well want
to comment. If inequalities and unequal distribution of wealth
and power and opportunity leads to political conflict—that
is, the people feel so strongly about it that they start to do
something about it—then that is a problem in countries.
In the end, as I said earlier, I think the politics of the countries
themselves must sort it out. What is interesting in China, for
example, since you mentioned it, is that recently—I think
at the last People's Congress—for the first time discussion
was heard about the gap between the rich and the not so rich in
China; the gap between the urban areas where this extraordinary
development has taken place, and the great poverty that there
still is in rural China—which, in part, accounts for the
enormous internal migration of people in China.
Mr Venables: As the Secretary
of State has said, there are political choices for the countries
themselves to make about their income distribution. One aspect
of growing inequality is often the regional dimension: urban/rural
within China, coastal/interior. Learning about determinants of
those inequalities, and in particular learning about how to spread
economic development faster from one medium to another, is something
very important that I think we are paying attention to in China
and India and seeking to learn from for the African context as
well.
Q415 John Battle: I would like to
focus a slight moment longer on the specific strategies for post-conflict
countries. If you take Sierra Leone, after the conflict there,
we found in Freetown that young men who had come in from the countryside,
having been involved in militias, were wandering around the capital
city. You could see that, without them having anything to do,
they would slip back into violence. In the Congo, people being
encouraged, instead of being part of the informal militias, to
join the regular Army—but then the Army not getting paid,
so they had no money—but not anywhere near a programme of
public awareness which that group of people could be engaged in.
Again, people who were just poor and had joined the Army, were
no further along, but there was no real business incentive to
try to see what useful economic activity they could be engaged
in to build up their country. I want to put it to you in slightly
tougher terms, if I might, because for a short time when I was
Minister in the DTI there was the conflict in Kosovo. What did
we do? We, in Britain, at the end of the conflict realised that
there were power stations down and water plants down, and we took
teams of experienced business people and engineers to go in and
help reconstruct them as businesses, to get the water and electrics
up and running. We did it within weeks. A team was flown out by
the RAF to do it. I wonder what is the strategy. Is there a specific,
post-conflict business strategy, if you like, for places like
Sierra Leone and the Congo that DFID can lead and really push
the agenda along a bit, to make sure that young men are not left
standing around on street corners, or in camps that we could hardly
describe as camps, without any resources—not even paying
their salaries—trying to keep their families? Because unless
we get in there, and quickly, I cannot see how you root out violence,
frankly.
Hilary Benn: It is a very searching
question. Indeed, the countries that you highlight have different
circumstances. As you talked about water and the electricity infrastructure,
I must confess my mind turned—more controversial in some
quarters—to Iraq, because that is precisely what we have
been seeking to do in Southern Iraq in the situation that we find
there. That is a pretty difficult environment in which to work,
and it has got more difficult, both because of security concerns,
and people actually trying to blow up stuff when we fix it, but
also because of the legacy of 30 years of a lack of investment
and with not being able to get the right fuels to keep the existing
power stations up and running. That is one point, but we have
in the Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit a group of people whose
task it will be, in those circumstances, to come and try to get
some of those basic things going, but I would not pretend that
it would extend to trying to find jobs for all the young men who
are otherwise not employed. In Sierra Leone, I went up to the
diamond mining area and saw a lot of young men up to their chests
in water, six days a week, panning for gold. From memory, they
got a bit of money and a cup of rice every day, but they would
be very lucky if they ever found anything that was worth selling.
We were funding a community organisation there. Part of its work
was giving training courses to those who looked for diamonds in
understanding the value of diamonds. You might wonder what that
has to do with development but it was very interesting because
I asked them, "If you got more knowledgeable about diamonds
and you could then negotiate for a better price with the diamond
dealer, what does the diamond dealer say?" and one woman
put her hand up and she said, "They don't like it."
I thought that was a very creative example of development, because
it was trying, if they were lucky to find one, to put them in
a stronger position to barter with the diamond dealer, to raise
some more money and at least have a bit of an income. In Sierra
Leone, I would say the biggest obstacle to investment, internal
and external, is corruption. Unless Sierra Leone decides it is
going to crack down on corruption really seriously, the potential
it has, both in the diamond mines and for rutile and for other
natural resources is not going to be exploited in the way it might.
In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), two things. One
is that we are going to do some work on roads. As you will have
seen for yourselves, of course, the transport infrastructure and
moving about is incredibly difficult. The second thing we are
looking at currently is things we might do immediately after the
election. Because this great open aspiration, which I am sure
you found, that people have for the elections as the solution
to the problem, will quickly turn to the question, "Okay,
we have had the vote, where is the better life?" Some quick
impact works and projects that we can put in place—and we
need to do it with other donors—are really important, because
we need to show people that engaging with the political process
and voting does produce some benefit. But it is a long haul in
the DRC, as you will know.
Q416 Chairman: The interesting thing
in Bukavu was how much of an economy it was. Having been told
it was a failed state, there was serious trading going on there.
There was substantial building with proper roofs and things. Nothing
in Northern Uganda, but there you are, having been told you are
in the most failed state of all failed states, and yet there is
activity. On the infrastructure point, the roads are horrendous
or non-existent, but cross the border into Rwanda and the interesting
thing, driving across this wonderful road, is that there are dozens
of people working on it, keeping the ditches clear. There is nobody
working on the road even keeping it open the other side of the
border in the DRC. Things just do not connect. Common sense tells
you that if you put the right things together, you have started
to create an economy, and part of it is public and part of it
is enterprise.
Hilary Benn: Clearly, there is
a much more capable scope on the one side of the border, in terms
of Rwanda's capacity to do these things, than on the other side,
and that comes down to governance and the legacy of the terrible
conflict.
Q417 Ann McKechin: Can I go back
to what John Barrett was talking about earlier, rapidly growing
economies and increasing urbanisation, which is particularly happening
in Africa. When I look through your written submission to this
inquiry, there is a great deal of emphasis about the issues of
infrastructure and investment climate and regulation, but there
does not seem to be a particularly close correlation with the
actual creation of jobs. Globally, if you look at the economy,
the percentage of the world's wealth which exists in income has
declined, year on year, for 30-odd years. In many countries, as
is happening in India and China, there is a growing disconnect
between growth on the one hand and poverty reduction on the other.
I think China has got to the point where it has not sizeably reduced
poverty in the last couple of years, whereas it did a huge amount
beforehand. I am trying to find out how we try to address that
in terms of development. That is not to say this Committee will
be against investment plans for infrastructure, but it is how
we try to relate that to the creation of jobs for the very poorest,
and whether we have a very firm connection between the two.
Hilary Benn: I suppose the first
point I would make is how does one define a job. It is not a debating
point, because you have the formal economy and you have the informal
economy. In different countries, in some, the informal economy
can be a lot, lot larger than the formal economy. Therefore, what
it is about—the point I made earlier—is people being
able to increase their incomes and improve their lives by finding
a way of earning a living. If that is your definition of a job,
then it is my definition of a job too. As far as I am aware there
was not a huge amount of debate at the time the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) were saying should we have a jobs target. Some people
have raised that as an idea subsequently. To be honest with you,
I have no idea how you would measure it, and, in a sense, the
income poverty target is a proxy because, if fewer people are
living in absolute poverty, it is because their incomes have improved
and their incomes have improved because they have found a way
of earning a better living. And I think that is a reasonable proxy
for jobs in that sense. If you are asking me if our strategy that
we have set out in a particular place is to try to create x
number of jobs, the answer is: No, it is not. It is to do the
things I have tried to describe: to create a climate in which
it is more likely that economic development is going to take place,
more likely that people will come and invest. Through that, people
will get formal jobs and better chances to earn a living, to improve
their incomes, their lives, to be able to look after their families
better. That is very much the approach that we take.
Q418 Ann McKechin: If people are
being asked to make more changes in their lives, moving from subsistence
farming towards agri-business towards urbanisation, the economic
risks that they have to take along that journey are much more
severe than previous generations. Your own speech has referred
to the issues of social benefit systems and protection systems.
I am trying to see where is the alignment between, on the one
hand, the issues of protection to catch the very poorest, and
the issues of promoting economic growth and to make sure that
these two are coherent?
Hilary Benn: That is an extremely
important point. The movement from the rural areas to the towns
and cities, which is going to be of benefit in defining social
change in developing countries—which is already starting—over
the next 50 years . . . People come to the cities in search of
a better life. It could be because of the drought in the village
where they are living or half the family are going because that
is where job opportunities are—I do not know, to be rickshaw
drivers in Dhaka, leaving their wives and children living a precarious
life back at home, to take a practical example. We are working
on social protection, and the Ethiopian example of the safety
net scheme—which we may have discussed before—which
I saw in operation when I was in Arba Minch in January was really
quite striking because it connected all the things we have just
been discussing. As part of the safety net scheme, people get
food, they get cash, they get cash for work. Part of the cash
for work was to extend the road up the mountainside from Arba
Minch, to make it slightly easier for people who have woven their
mats out of leaves or who have cut bamboo or grown crops to walk
down the hill. I think it is three hours from the village we went
to visit—three hours, down the hill, to get to Arba Minch
and five hours, against gravity, to come back up again. It would
improve the water supply, which is good for health and lots of
other things, but the most important thing was that people have
been able to save a bit of cash. I have talked to some of the
farmers and one said, "We've been able to buy kitchen utensils
and the other one said, "I've been able to buy clothes for
my kids" and the third one said, "I've bought some small
animals this year and, if I can save a bit more, if the scheme
operates next year I might be able to buy some more." It
is a very important project for us and we are talking to a number
of countries about how we might support more social protection
schemes. The bigger question is: How are we going to have a safety
net when things go wrong? And: How are they going to be looked
after in retirement?—particularly if the social support
structures that looked after them when they were living in rural
areas in villages is no longer there and they find themselves
living in slums in towns.
Q419 Chairman: You made the point
before that it is up to countries to sort out their own poverty,
and we were talking about China and India. In India they had an
election two years ago which was fought on a paraphrase of the
slogan "You've never had it so good". Millions of people
obviously did not think so and changed the Government. In India
you can do that. In China you cannot. I suppose the two questions
are: How does that colour our attitude to China as opposed to
India? Given that India has our biggest programme, how is that
programme geared in a way that might assist—if one assumes
I am right about the reason for the change—that demographic
process, and, in other words, give those people who did not feel
they were sharing in it, a share?
Hilary Benn: Of course, you are
absolutely right about the political system as it currently operates
in China. I think all of our hope is that, over time, the opening
up of the economy, the influence of discussion and debate in the
outside world will bring change to the political system within
China. I think that is quite clear. That is the case for involvement.
The Chinese are going to manage that process at their own particular
pace, but I have made the reference to the People's Congress last
autumn because the fact that they are now openly talking about
the gap between rich and poor shows that what is happening on
the ground is beginning to feed through to the debate that is
happening even within the current political system in China. And
I, for one, welcome that. As far as India is concerned, our partners
are the federal government and the states with which we work.
In those circumstances, if the states want to do different things
with us because they have changed political complexion and they
have a different approach then we will work with them. In some
of the states where we have been operating, they have carried
on with some of the programmes that they have inherited. In others
they have decided they want to do it differently. Our job, in
those circumstances, is to respect of course the democratic decision
of the people and the best way to do that is to work with the
elected government in supporting the things they say they want
to do.
1 Growth and poverty reduction-creating more and better
jobs in poor countries, 19 January 2006, 1st White Paper Speech
by Rt Hon Hilary Benn MP , Secretary of State for International
Development http://www.dfid.gov.uk/news/files/Speeches/wp2006-speeches/growth190106.asp Back
2
Ev 127 Back
3
DFID, Development Works 52 weeks a year, http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/development-works.pdf Back
|
