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CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 923-vi House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
PEACEBUILDING AND POST-CONFLICT RECONSTRUCTION
Thursday 8 June 2006 RT HON HILARY BENN MP, MR JIM DRUMMOND and MR PHIL EVANS Evidence heard in Public Questions 263 - 344
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the International Development Committee on Thursday 8 June 2006 Members present Malcolm Bruce, in the Chair John Barrett John Battle Hugh Bayley John Bercow Richard Burden Mr Quentin Davies Mr Jeremy Hunt Ann McKechin Mr Marsha Singh ________________
Witnesses: Rt Hon Hilary Benn, a Member of the House, Secretary of State for International Development, Mr Jim Drummond, Director, UN, Conflict and Humanitarian Division and Mr Phil Evans, Head, Africa Conflict and Humanitarian Unit, gave evidence. Q262 Chairman: Secretary of State, good afternoon. It is nice to see you again. Thank you for taking the time and trouble to come to see us towards the end of our report on conflict. As you will know, we are looking at all the instruments of dealing with conflict - how we resolve them, how we prevent them, how we stop them sliding back - and members of the Committee have specifically visited three countries (Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda), but obviously we are interested in conflict wherever it occurs. Perhaps you could just introduce your colleagues. Hilary Benn: On my right is Jim Drummond, who is the Director of the UN, Conflict and Humanitarian Division, and, on my left, Phil Evans, who is head of Africa Conflict and Humanitarian Unit. Q263 Chairman: Thank you. We can perhaps make a start because there are quite a lot of issues that we would like to cover, some specific and some general. Can I start on a specific one, because we think it makes a wider point about Uganda. You reduced budget support to Uganda earlier in the year as the elections were imminent, and at the time (and I think we have had a bit of an exchange on this before) you said it was because you were concerned about the electoral process and the way the opposition were being treated, not because of the concerns about the conflict in the north, although you switched the money to the north. I think this raises the issues about a conflict in governance. If I can put it the way the Committee saw it, we went to northern Uganda, as you have been, we went to the camps and we saw that $200 million of international aid has been put into there at the same time as budget support is going to the Government of Uganda in Kampala. In those camps there is virtually no policing provided, the quality of the education that was available was pretty poor and the medical provision that we saw was actually provided by the international community. Is there not something of a conflict there that we are giving budget support to the Government of Uganda, who is responsible really for providing services to people in the north as well as the south, but they are not doing it and, to some extent, the international community are picking that up? Is there not a certain ironic conflict of interest in that situation? Hilary Benn: I do not think there is a conflict of interest really. As it turns out, we were already doing some work, as you will be aware, in providing support to those in the north before I took the decision about reallocating the £15 million. I think it is a question of balance: because if you look over a period of time at the contribution that budget support has made and the efforts of the Uganda Government to making progress in the fight against poverty in Uganda, I think the evidence is pretty clear that it has. That is not to say that there is not an issue about the support which the Government of Uganda is offering to the people in the camps. One of the issues I remember from my previous visit to northern Uganda was that some of the money that was coming to the local authorities was, for reasons which are still not to me entirely clear, being spent and some was being returned to the Government; but on the fundamental problem, I would not say that the problem in the north is the fault of the Government in Uganda, it is the fault of the LRA[1]. What I did see from my visit a month ago now was that there has been some slight improvement in that some people in the southern and eastern bit of the north are probably going to go home. Q264 Chairman: But has it actually affected the conduct of the Government of Uganda. What effect has the cut in budget had? Hilary Benn: I think it has sent a signal, as far as we are concerned, about the concerns that I had, that the Government had, about what they had been doing, particularly in relation to Mr Besigye following the conversations that I and Lord Triesman had had with President Museveni when we met at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. As it turned out, as far as the conduct of the elections was concerned, the interim report from the EU Observers said it was not a level playing field in the run up, and these were, of course, the first multi-party elections, but the conduct on the day was, again, not perfect but largely okay, I think is how I would describe it. You can never be entirely sure, when you take decisions like that, what impact it is going to have and will people change what they are doing, but it sends a very clear message about the expectations and concerns that we have got in exactly the same way that lay behind the decision I took in relation to Ethiopia. Q265 Chairman: My final point, which I think is shared by members of the Committee, is that it was a comfortable frozen conflict but the Government of Uganda would get budget support, thank you very much, and the conflict in the north there was no real pressure for them to resolve because the international community were providing the necessary support. So, not a happy situation, but stable. What incentive is there, allowing for the difficulties of the LRA nevertheless, to say, "Let us resolve this problem in a more robust way"? In the meantime, when people are living in camps and they cannot get out of that situation, why should not they - they are accessible, it is not as if they cannot be reached - have the same quality of services as the people who are living in the communities in the south? Hilary Benn: In all honesty, I do not think that the Government of Uganda's view, or President Museveni's view is, "Well, we are comfortable with the conflict in the north." I always think that over time the Government have been rather optimistic about the speed with which it was going to be resolved, because I had a number of conversations in which indications were given and we are very close to sorting it out, and we know it is a conflict that has gone on for a long time, but it has changed now. The people that I spoke to when I was there said that there are now relatively few LRA in northern Uganda, but what is very clear, I think, to all of us is, because of the legacy that they have left, a large majority of people are going to stay where they are and not go home until they are absolutely certain that this is over, because they know what the LRA have done. As you have done and I have done, talking to people, particularly children, who have been abducted, you can understand entirely why they would take that view. The change in the conflict in Sudan, of course, had an impact because that diminished the overt support that there had been from the LRA, the permission that the UPDF[2] had to operate in Southern Sudan, and the general view now is that bulk of the LRA are camping in the Garamba National Forest in the eastern DRC, an issue that I discussed with President Museveni when I saw him most recently. So, I think they have been making an effort. What is, I think, perhaps astonishing to all of us is how a relatively small number of people have created this absolute mayhem, havoc and misery for millions of northern Ugandans. The other point I would make is that people in the rest of Uganda look at the north and they associate it with a number of other bad things that have happened in the past - that is where Okello came from, Obote Amin - there may be people in the south who think this is just the north creating trouble, who do not fully understand that this a small group of people terrorising the population. So, the politics of this are quite complicated and it is very clear, you look at who voted for whom in the election, the north had a very different result to the rest of the country, although President Museveni did go and campaign there. Q266 Hugh Bayley: One of the things that struck me very forcibly was that a small number of LRA rebels have ruined the lives of too many people and the humanitarian cost on the donor communities is $220, $230 million a year. It seems to me that there should be a much sharper focus by the donor community, working together with the Government of Uganda, on how you stop 200 people creating all this mayhem. We were pleased that the Government of Uganda got to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to seek arrest warrants for the top leadership of the LRA. We asked their Permanent Secretary of their Interior Ministry what their strategy for carrying out the arrests was, and we really had a very unsatisfactory answer. He said it was extremely difficult, logistically they had problems pinpointing where these people were in the Congo, or wherever they are, and that even when they got a 'clock', say from the use of a satellite phone, they could not get enough troops in quickly enough to effect arrests. I wonder whether there have been conversations with donors about what technical assistance the Ugandan authorities need to arrest these people and ensure that they stand trial? Hilary Benn: Indeed. The fact that the majority of them now appear to be in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) means that the last thing that we want is the Armed Forces of Uganda to go after them, for reasons that I think will be obvious to everybody here. Uganda has, as I think we know, been rather reluctant for the United Nations, and the Security Council in particular, to take an interest in this issue when it was a northern Ugandan issue, and the fact that the LRA have now wandered into a third country has opened up really some space to allow the idea of an envoy to be mooted. I have discussed this with Kofi Annan. My view, since you ask the question, is, since the information appears to indicate the majority of them are in the DRC, that this is now question for MONUC[3] , for the Government of the DRC and the international community working together, because I do think what is now required is for all of those people to put their heads together and say, "What can we now do to lift, in particular, the five individuals?" The dynamics did change when the five were indicted by the ICC, because, as you will know, there had efforts before Betty Bigombe's work trying to make contact with them, and President Museveni had been quite willing to offer amnesties, spaces where the LRA's forces could go and congregate. In the end it just seemed to me, it was not for want of trying on their part, I do not think the LRA was up for this, and the complicating factor at the moment is that MONUC, quite rightly, is concentrating on the elections in the DRC, and no doubt we will come on to that further this afternoon. I think that is right, but there is a concern that if they use the LRA, their presence in the Garamba National Forest to regroup, rearm and then decide to go off and cause mayhem somewhere else, we are going to have a continual problem on our hands. I think that is now the priority, but it is less for the Government of Uganda because the bulk of them no longer appear to be in Uganda. That is my view. Q267 Mr Hunt: Before I ask my question, can I formally thank you for what you achieved at UNGAS[4] last week in New York. I think almost exactly a year ago I asked you on this Committee whether you would consider the idea of interim targets, and you said you would reflect on that. Hilary Benn: I did and it had an impact. Q268 Mr Hunt: Having reflected on it, that was actually included, not least thanks to the efforts of you and you team; so thank you very much indeed for that. I have a confusion which I would be grateful if you could help me with. You have been a great champion of ending conditionality in our approach to overseas development, but in the case of Uganda we did withdraw that £15 million because of something we were not happy about in the political sphere. Is that conditionality coming back again in a different guise? I say that, not making a judgment as to whether that type of conditionality is a good thing or a bad thing. My real question is: if you are prepared to withhold aid because you are not happy with the political situation in a country, would you also be prepared to withhold aid because you were not happy that a country was not doing as much as it could to prevent regional conflict? In particular, I am thinking now partly of Uganda but also of Rwanda and the situation with respect to the DRC. When I went to the Congo with the All Party Parliament Group on the Great Lakes Region of Africa we had lot of feedback that they did not feel that Rwanda was doing as much as it could to facilitate the return of Inter-Hamwe. Is that pressure that you would consider bringing to bear on the Government of Rwanda? Hilary Benn: Firstly, to try and clear any confusion, for me the debate about conditionality has always been about the right to have conditionality, and if you look at the conditionality policy document[5] that came out in March of last year my view was that we should move away, as we had largely done, a point eloquently made by Mr Davies when we discussed this earlier, as he will recollect, from economic policies - conditionality, trade liberalisation, privatisation and so on and so forth - because I do not think that is what we should be doing, but I take a different view in relation to (1) the commitment of our partners to fighting poverty, because if they are not committed to fighting poverty what are we giving them aid for, (2) upholding human rights and international obligations and (3) promoting good governance, fighting corruption and making sure the money is spent where it is intended. I have a different view. I think actually most people would think that was pretty sensible. So, that is where we are very clearly. Secondly, it is within that framework that the decision I took about Ethiopia is to be found, the decision I took about Uganda is to be found, and, since you ask me very directly about Rwanda, I will tell the Committee that in the late autumn 2004, when it was publicly reported that Rwanda was concerned about the incursions coming over the border from the DRC and had said we might think about sending troops in there, I had a couple of very strong conversations with the President in those circumstances and indicated to him that consequences would flow, including in relation to our support, if that was what he chose to do. In that case I was prepared to use that, and we did, in fact, temporarily put a pause on payments of direct budget support precisely because I thought it was the right thing do in the interests of not allowing greater regional insecurity to occur. I hope by that particular example, and it relates to Rwanda, you will see that I do, indeed, take the view that that is a legitimate reason to say to people, "Come on, the DRC has suffered enough incursions from lots of different countries and it will not help if people go back in", and I made the same point to President Museveni in relation to the LRA. It is not to say that Uganda does not have a concern about the LRA; it does. It is not to say that Rwanda does not have a real concern about the Interehamwe, but there are proper ways of dealing with it, and in relation to the DRC the people who deal with it are MONUC and the Government of the DRC, and not by forces coming back in, because that just adds to the problem. Q269 Richard Burden: Can we move on to some consideration of Security Sector Reform. Twenty-four of the world's 40 poorest countries are in the middle of, or are emerging from, conflict and certainly when we were in the DRC just a few weeks ago the issue of Security Sector Reform kept coming back and back, and the need to establish some kind of effective accountable army there, whether that be in terms of its operations, whether it has anywhere for the Army's troops to live, whether it be in terms of how the payment system works. How far do you think that you feel constrained, the international community, either by our own legislation, the International Development Act, or how far do you think the international community is constrained by those provisions of actually being able to contribute to building up an effective and accountable Armed Forces? Hilary Benn: We do a lot of Security Sector Reform, if you look at what we have funded in Sierra Leone, for example, in relation to the Army and the Police there, and, as you will be aware, in the DRC we have provided some support for the integrated brigades as a way of trying to encourage the former parties to the conflict and their unintegrated brigades to feed more of them through the integration process, because it had been going extremely slowly. There were a lot of complications, as you will be aware, surrounding that, one being that the amount of money that was going out every month to pay the salaries did not really square with the number of troops, and that was an issue that I discussed with President Kabila when I saw him in November of last year. There was the EUSEC Report on Army pay reform, which had recommendations about how that should be dealt with to minimise the payment of ghost soldiers and people taking the money corruptly, and, as an incentive, I said that if they were prepared to adopt that approach, then we would make a contribution to providing some support to those who had been through the integrational process when they came out the other end; and I took the view, in the circumstances, that that was a sensible thing to do in the interests of supporting and encouraging a process that is fundamental for the DRC to get away from the separate armies that were fighting each other until the transitional government came into being and to try and encourage a process of forming a single integrated army. The truth in the DRC, as in a lot of things in the DRC, is that it is a long hard slog. Q270 Richard Burden: I certainly recognise some of the complications that you refer to there. I guess what I was getting at really was how far it is legitimate, either in fact or in terms of perception, that development aid should actually go towards building up armies? Hilary Benn: The Conflict Pools are the mechanism by which most of this work is done. There are small bits that we do directly. My view is, I think it is legitimate. We do contribute to the Pools as do the FCO and the MoD. If you take the view, which I do, and I take it even more firmly now than when I started this job, that if you cannot get the basics right, peace and security, some stability, then you can forget a lot of the rest of the development. I am a great believer in doing first things first, and in a country like the DRC, if you do not offer support to the steps that are going to maximise the chances, nothing is certain that the country is going to be able to develop and progress, then I do not think that is terribly sensible. So, we have appropriate mechanisms for dealing with it, and, as I say, the Pools are the most effective that we have got, but I do not feel constrained or embarrassed about doing that because, as we know, a lot of poor people live in countries and are poor because the countries are in chaos, fragile, failing, at war. If we cannot, by playing our part, sort that out, how is the rest of it going to happen? Q271 Richard Burden: I do not necessarily disagree with you, but you also do not feel constrained by legislation or, indeed, any of the rules that there are almost artificial barriers put in that actually get in the way of building up---- Hilary Benn: For the avoidance of doubt, I am always constrained by legislation in that we will uphold it rigorously, but, no, I think we have the means in place, particularly through the Pools, that allow us to us do what is, in my view, extremely sensible things to try and reduce insecurity and promote peace and stability in the interest ultimately, as far as I am concerned, of helping countries to make progress in fighting poverty. Q272 Mr Singh: Secretary of State, I am interested in this concept of 'aid darlings', the countries we favour in terms of development aid, and whether there is a tension between those countries who are doing well with the aid and whether we as donors then turn a blind eye to their transgressions. For example, Uganda has been accused by the UN panel of profiting from the trouble in the DRC. Sierra Leone is thought to have done that. The political leaders on the stage at the moment, some of them are probably guilty of human rights abuses. In Sierra Leone it is said that government soldiers were guilty of human rights abuses. What is the dilemma there? Do we turn a blind eye and is there a tension between upholding human rights and trying to push forward a peace process? What do we do? Hilary Benn: These are, by definition, countries that are troubled, where bad things have gone on, where some bad things may continue to be going on, and if you want to avoid any of those moral dilemmas, do not go there at all. I think that would be a mistake. To take the example of the DRC, we had no substantial programme there at all. This is not Anglophone Africa, a former Belgian colony, and we took a decision, as the transitional peace process came into being, that we ought to get in there, which I think was absolutely the right decision, not (as I think I have said to the Committee before) because certainty in the DRC is guaranteed, it is not, but you look at the murder, mayhem, misery and suffering, not just within the country but regionally, so when you have got a transitional process what is our proper obligation, both as a bilateral donor and others in the international community? The problem is that not enough countries are coming to support the DRC and to get stuck in and help support that process, which, as Mr Burden's previous question indicated, may involve doing things that some people think is not quite development. Then, while we are there, to work as hard as we can to try and highlight and work with the Government to address the kind of concerns that you yourself have raised. By definition, people who have been fighting who then decide to make peace may have done some pretty awful things in the past, but securing the peace is, I think, the proper thing to do, and then we have other means, including the International Criminal Court now and domestic processes. If you look at Rwanda, the Gacaca system or the tribunal system in Sierra Leone, the special court for trying to deal with the consequences of what people have done in the past. Q273 Hugh Bayley: The Commission for Africa highlighted the importance of conflict resources and fuelling conflict in Africa and your Department has the responsibility for pursuing the policies which the Commission recommended. What progress has your Department made and how many staff do you have working in this field? Hilary Benn: I cannot answer the second question. I do not know whether my colleagues can. If not, I will have to give you a note in terms of the number[6]. I would point to, first of all, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), because the EITI is in the process of moving forward in the DRC, for example, and I do think that is a very powerful means of trying to shed light on what is going on. There has clearly been the Kimberley process, which we have been strong supporter of, and I think it is fair to say the Kimberley process has made quite a big difference. That is my view. There is the work that we are doing, for example, on forest law enforcement. That is a particular issue in the DRC currently, because there has been some debate between the World Bank and the NGOs about what is the right approach in those circumstances. Where I think internationally we have difficulty in truth, in my experience, is that I think we have less effective mechanisms for trying to find out what companies and others have been up to and then effective mechanisms for holding them to account. The one other thing I should add is that we did in the DRC fund Global Witness to do a study on the problem of conflict resources, a very, very good organisation, and I think globally we need to be more effective. As you have looked at, for example, the UN Panel Report or the UN Natural Resources Panel Report, there is a lot of stuff in there but there does not appear to be a lot in the way of evidence. There is a lower standard of proof when it comes to issuing sanctions against people. There is obviously a higher standard of proof when it comes to prosecuting people, and I think the problem has been that even those panels have found it difficult to come up with hard evidence. There have been a lot of reports and so on and so forth. Question: how can they more effectively be investigated to find out whether people have breached the law, in which case, if there is evidence, they ought to be prosecuted? That is the weakness, in my view, of what we have got currently. Q274 Hugh Bayley: One of the strengths of the Commission for Africa's report was its proposal that the UN should have a global regulatory role. There was a recommendation in particular that there should be a common definition of conflict resources endorsed by the UN and that the UN should create a permanent expert panel to monitor these matters; and it is between natural resources and conflict which was empowered to recommend enforcement action to the Security Council. What progress has been made in New York? Hilary Benn: Unfortunately not a lot. We would, indeed, like there to be a panel, I think the French also, but there have not been many other takers in the international system. That is the blunt truth as to where we have got to on that. In the absence of that, we have been looking at other ways of trying to achieve some of the things that the CFA was itself recommending, better monitoring of sanctions. I know that Global Witness has come up with a definition. I think there is an issue about how exactly do you define a conflict resource, and it currently appears to be difficult trying to get agreement on progressing those things, but, yes, we would certainly like a panel. Q275 Hugh Bayley: You talk about support from France. Naturally, you would have thought there might be some antipathy from China for whom resource extraction from Africa has become important. Who in particular in the Security Council is resistant to a policing role on natural resources? Hilary Benn: I would be reluctant to answer, simply without going and checking. When I talked to the team about this earlier on today, I knew what we and France had been doing, but other countries are not----. Can I come back to you on that, if that would be helpful. Q276 Ann McKechin: Four years ago people had commented that the UK Government was giving a lot of money to Rwanda and Uganda and very little to the DRC with much larger populations, but now we have a situation where the UK is the largest bilateral donor to the DRC and I think perhaps you could give us some assistance in trying to explain to us why DFID has ended up in this position in a fairly rapid period of time and whether or not you consider you have any comparative advantage, given the fact that we had no historical links with the country in the past, we do not have any shared language, and this is a state which had more or less collapsed. Was it to shore up progress in Uganda or Rwanda, where we already had a very heavy investment in terms of development, or was this more a move towards a greater regional policy in the central part of Africa? Hilary Benn: It was, I think, for the reasons I set out in answer to the earlier question. There was a moment of opportunity. This is the country that has been at the centre of this maelstrom of misery that has affected the whole of the Great Lakes region. A fragile transitional government comes into being. What is the sensible thing to do? The international community ought to come in and do all that it can to sustain that process and help the DRC to move forward, and that was the motivation, very, very simply. I think it is absolutely the right thing to have to done. I wish more countries had come in at that time, and I still wish more countries would come in, because of the scale of the need is enormous. Q277 Ann McKechin: Has there been reluctance by other EU partners to come into the DRC? Why, for example, is France not equal or equivalent in funds? Hilary Benn: You would have to ask them. I cannot answer that question. I have talked to colleagues and said it is really important that we do pile in and support it, because so much rests on it. If this goes wrong again in the DRC, then the knock-on consequence for the whole of the Great Lakes region really does not bear thinking about. Given the scale of the loss of life there has been because of violence and disease, a very good question is why did not more people do more about it earlier? That is the real linking question in relation to the DRC. I remember the first time I went being asked by journalists: "Why is Britain here?", as if there must be some ulterior motive, and I said at the time, "We are here", for the reasons I have just given, "and we are going to make a long-term commitment." Q278 Chairman: I am told the French asked the same question. Hilary Benn: They may well have done so, but of you look at what we are doing, it is as plain as a pike staff what we are up to, which is trying to do sensible things to support this transitional process to maximise the chance that the DRC might recover from the difficulties it has been in. When I was last there earlier this year I reminded the journalists of what they had asked me the first time and said, "I promised that we were going to have a sharp increase in programme, establish an office, and we have gone from three to 33 staff and we have done it, and we are still here for the same reason I told you why we were here the first time when I came." Q279 Ann McKechin: Do you now think we have the right tools to provide that degree of development assistance and that degree of support given that we are now the largest bilateral donor? Hilary Benn: I think we have got a very good team who, by coincidence I was having discussion with this morning about what are the priorities now for our programme in the DRC. I do think, however, we are about to enter a really difficult period, as you will have seen and heard on your visit, because the elections are very important. With them will come this enormous expectation on the part of the people that after they have voted life will begin to change, and yet the electoral process itself will mean that it could be two, three, four months before we know exactly what the shape of the new government is going to be, and we are all going to have to work very hard to make sure that problems do not occur in that vacuum. Q280 John Barrett: Can I expand on the issue of conflict prevention. We have taken evidence about the cost of conflicts and the savings that could be made if those same conflicts could be prevented, and a lot of the discussion is hypothetical because we never know the cost of the conflict until it takes place, but how effective do you think DFID's conflict prevention work has been. Are they not able to quantify the success and say where they believe they have been successful and, if so, exactly which sort of tools in the conflict prevention tool-kit are working best? Hilary Benn: My answer, I suppose, would depend on what stages of the conflict process you were talking about. In the case of Sierra Leone, for example, it depends whether you count the military intervention in the first place that was the foundation for all that has been achieved subsequently. That is nothing to do with DFID, that is down to colleagues in the MoD. In my view, absolutely the right thing to have done, but that was not really conflict prevention. It was the prevention of yet further conflict, but it was about trying to bring to an end the activities of the RUF[7] and the Westside Boys who were causing so much havoc in the country. I think what we have done, working very closely with FCO and MoD subsequently, if you look at Sierra Leone now, has meant that the chances of conflict recurring are less. In that sense it has been successful to date in preventing further conflict and there is some growth and stability in the country currently, but it is a fragile process there, as it is everywhere else. I do think our experience teaches us that it is about trying to understand what exactly is going on in the country, doing things in the right order and, if that means for DFID, as I indicated in answer to the earlier question, doing things that some people might not at first consideration think was development, we need to explain very clearly why that is the right thing to do because otherwise you are never going to get to the subsequent stage. Each conflict is different. We have to learn the lessons, we have to do the right things in the right circumstances, but I think, both in relation to the DRC and Sierra Leone, since we are focusing on them in particular, we have broadened our horizon. Q281 John Barrett: When it is seen post-conflict the amount of human and financial resources that must pour into a country, is there therefore a pressure on DFID now to say, "We must increase these resources to try and avoid potential conflicts coming down the track"? Hilary Benn: I suppose in a sense---- Well, with the DRC, we started from a very low base, but that is exactly what we have been doing. Another example I give is the one I referred to in relation to Rwanda when they announced they were thinking of wandering back over the border. I think that was a use of influence and encouragement that we had to say that would not really be a very good idea in the circumstances and, in the end, Rwanda did not do that, but actually they got the same messages from lots of people in the international community. I would point to that too. Having started make to effort, it would really not be very sensible to then, for want of commitment and money resources, to allow a country to slip back. It is a challenging in Afghanistan too, where I spent Sunday and Monday of this week. Chairman: Just to clarify, colleagues, we have jumped ahead and I am coming back again. I am going to ask John Battle to come in with a question on DFID's capacity. Q282 John Battle: I think it is probably a question for your colleagues from the Department, in a way. It is about the resources of DFID. As you rightly say, if things go wrong in DRC, then there are problem in the whole region. I know you have gone up from three to 33. If I am right the staff is the same number as in Kenya, but it is actually lower than in Rwanda, and the post for the DRC when we were there, it is not a senior servant's post that is heading up DFID, but it is in Kenya. How do you adapt, if there is a real priority in the DRC, to make sure the staffing is up to that? The other thing is, I am reminded of other situations. East Timor in which DFID and the Foreign Office, in my own former life, made a great effort to stop the violence with a separation of the country, the establishment of a new country. The UN has now withdrawn to some extent DFID and other aid agencies, however it is still an incredibly poor country and the violence has kicked off again. I tend to share the view that in difficult conflict and post-conflict fragile states, we need the best, the brightest, most experienced and capable people, not the starters, to be there to manage that situation for the longer term. I think other colleagues have mentioned in the past Sri Lanka, for example, the Tsunami. The conflict subsided during that crisis but now is kicking off again. What can you do to ensure that your staffing adjustments move fast enough to say the best are in the most difficult positions and that they are at the appropriate rank and capability? Hilary Benn: I think you are absolutely right about that. That is an issue which we are grappling with currently, and I think you will see some of that reflected in the White Paper when it comes out. The truth is that those are indeed the countries where you need more of your human resource, more of your people to work, and in a sense the countries that are kind of getting on okay, could we do with fewer staff there, recognising we have got headcount targets that we have to meet, like all government departments? Can we reduce the numbers there in order to provide the space to put the human capacity into those countries? You raise a very interesting point about the grades at which offices are headed, which, in fact, we are currently looking at as we speak. The second example you gave of East Timor, the one thing that I think has been reassuring about the recent events is the speed with which the regional powers who have an interest---- Q283 John Battle: Australia? Hilary Benn: Australia. ----piled in there really quickly, and I think that should encourage us, because I do believe that one of the ways in which we are going to increase our capacity globally to deal with these kind of situations is to encourage regional capacity and regional responsibility. Fundamentally a divvying up of the world, so you have got the African Union beginning to do work like this in Africa. It is sensible that Australia and New Zealand, I think, have sent troops (I think New Zealand have in addition to Australia) should come in very quickly, the UN then getting organised in a sense to bless that, because it is about doing something very practical when conflict breaks out. Q284 John Battle: The first time the conflict was there it was the Ghurkhas, actually, who were there within two days of the conflict the last time round, but what the Australians are saying is that the situation is more difficult, the conflict is internal, not between two countries, and that more work needed to have gone on on the ground tackling questions like jobs, unemployment, as well as making the Army redundant, and that we needed more intensive work by people on ground, and I am now thinking including DFID's staff in those situations in there in a more intense way and for longer. Is that doable within the framework of the Treasury generally, the suggestion that you reduce by ten per cent and all the rest of it? How can we put together strategies to tackle the most difficult circumstances when we are just fire-fighting and moving around here, there and everywhere when there is a crisis, or am I being too pessimistic? Hilary Benn: I do not think we are fire-fighting moving around. In the case of East Timor, somebody else is looking after that, not us. In the case of the DRC, Sudan, Sierra Leone, or Afghanistan we have been there for some time in different forms and we certainly are getting on with doing it, and I accept entirely your point about that is where you need to put more of your people. We cannot overstate the capacity of one donor, however good or otherwise we are, to solve really complex, deep-seated problems. Afghanistan, since it is very fresh in my mind, is a really good example of that; just the sheer lack of capacity in a country which is phenomenally poor. There you are trying to do two things: one is to build the capacity of the state in the end to do it for itself, but, on the other hand, there are things that you need to do in the short-term. That will be the issue in the DRC, and one of the things that we are working on now is programmes that can deliver very quickly after the elections, particularly in the east of the country, because of the reason I gave earlier, the public will have said, "We have cast our vote. Where is the benefit?", and in the DRC it is going to take a lot of time for the Government to build its capacity even to begin to do the kind of things that one would expect the Government to be doing. Q285 John Battle: Especially if the election simply gives a democratic mandate to those already in power? Hilary Benn: I think there is a lot to be said for democratic mandate, but the big fear I have is will all the political parties that are participating in the election have a stake in post-election DRC, and whoever wins the presidential election has a really heavy responsibility, in my view, to reach out to those other parties to, in effect, maintain the transitional coalition, because if somebody thinks that they can win and take all of the power, that will be the most dangerous moment for the DRC. I think Jim Drummond wanted to add a point on staffing resources. Mr Drummond: We keep two kinds of standing capacity, one for humanitarian emergencies, the operations team that you met the other day, and the post-conflict reconstruction unit, which is a cross government unit which can draw in staff in these kinds of emergencies. Within DFID we are establishing a rapid response pool of people who might be deployed for three to six months perhaps to help us get moving more quickly. I think we also have to try and then change the incentives for people, so that we have more people who have the right skills and are keen to go and work in these difficult environments, which is going to be the challenge for the next five or ten years. We are making some early progress on that but not enough yet. Q286 Mr Davies: The same rapid response team who you would deploy either in the disaster emergencies or in the post-conflict reconstruction operation. Is that right? You want to have a pool of people you can deploy at short notice for either of those purposes. Is that right? The same pool. Mr Drummond: We want to supplement that by having a pool of people from DFID's main staff who can be moved out of their existing jobs for a short period to a higher priority activity. Q287 Mr Davies: Into either of those areas? Mr Drummond: To any kind of crisis, yes. Q288 John Bercow: Secretary of State, you said you are grappling with these issues at the moment, as will be reflected in the White Paper, but in a sense it constitutes work in progress and, significantly, you added the rider that one could not or should not overestimate the capacity of any one donor, no matter how well-intentioned or generous spirited to do it all or the bulk of it. Nevertheless, I think that in a sense what we need today is a progress report and, dare I say it with reference to Mr Drummond's last remarks, a form of rapid response if you like. Perhaps I could ask you on the subject of starting commitment in the DRC, what has been the increase in the number of personnel in the DRC this year by comparison with last? Hilary Benn: I cannot tell you the answer to that. I would have to check. Q289 John Bercow: What has been the change in terms of the seniority of the designation or the specification of the skill in the DFID staff commitment for this year by comparison with last? Hilary Benn: I am afraid I do not know the detail on that either. I am sorry. I will happily find out. Q290 John Bercow: I would be very grateful? Hilary Benn: I will, of course[8]. Q291 John Bercow: You did, interestingly, hint to us that consideration was being given at the moment to the question of the seniority of status of the head of DFID/ DRC. Is there a reasonable prospect that within a short period of, say, three months the position of head of DFID/DRC will be on a par with that of the counterpart in Kenya? Hilary Benn: No, I would not say that. What I would say is that we are looking at the senior management structure of the organisation more generally and ask ourselves precisely these questions. Have we got the right people at the right level with the responsibility for the task that we are taking on, and, as we look as if we are going to be moving more of our people into the places that are more difficult to work, how we are going to reflect that in the staffing structure? I can also say in relation to the office in the DRC, we have had some difficulties in recruiting, which I am sure you picked up during the course of your visit. Q292 John Bercow: What has been the change in recent times - let us take the period of the last 12 months or, if you prefer, a slightly longer period, in the level of financial provision or person hours, however it is best or most readily calculated - in language training for the staff designated there? I do at this point look in the direction of Mr Drummond, because I recognise that these are points of detail. Can I just say, Chairman, the Secretary of State knows the great interest that the Committee takes in the work of the Department and very much appreciates the frequency with which he appears as well as the detail in which he seeks to reply to our questions, and so this is simply to try to establish the facts. I do feel that we are now so clear, Chairman, about the Department's overall intentions and commitment and also quite clear about the quality of a lot of its work, but we do often have to probe these rather specific details which, I accept, ministers cannot always be expected to have at their fingertips, but they are rather important. Hilary Benn: I accept that entirely. I take responsibility for everything and I am sorry I cannot help the Committee and you, Mr Bercow, with the answers. Had I known, I would very happily have come with the facts and I will, of course, dig them out and provide them to you as soon as I possibly can. Q293 John Bercow: I have got a feeling that Mr Drummond might be able to help in the meantime. Mr Drummond: I do not think I will be able to help you in the detail that you are looking for, but I think we have probably underprovided for French language training, as you implied, and we have recently agreed that we will increase from about a month to six months or thereabouts. Q294 Chairman: That, if I may so, is a very pertinent point. We were told it was three weeks for DFID staff, six months for Foreign Office staff. It meant that the High Commission very often had to carry---- Mr Evans: It has now gone up to a minimum of two months of French language training. The requirement will depend on the competence of the person at the start, but there has been a change of policy very recently; so all the new staff now going to DRC will get considerably more language training support than they had before. As far as the issue of the office is concerned, over the last eighteen months the head of the office position has gone up by two grades and is now at the level appropriate for a unit or office head. There are two grade levels running offices, which are adjacent to one another, and the DRC is consistent with several other offices in Africa at the moment in the seniority of leadership[9]. Q295 John Bercow: I am very grateful for those answers, and any further details will be appreciated. Can I finally put what might seem a rather prosaic but I hope relevant point. It seems to me that the Department needs, on the one hand, to increase capacity and particularly the types of relevant capacity in the short-term, but also to give some steer as to the extent to which it is committed for the long-term and what in the Department's view constitutes the long-term. What I mean by that is this. When ministers say, "We are looking at this, we are looking at that; we are considering this, we are considering that", we understand that the wheels of government do not move that quickly, but the fact is that people are dying in very substantial numbers and people need help now. So, in a sense, even more so than in respect of domestic policy, there is a premium on these considerations taking place relatively quickly and decisions being made. Secondly, as far as the long-term is concerned, whilst I accept, Secretary of State, that you cannot speak for the Government or even necessarily yourself for a period of many years hence, would I be other-worldly or unrealistic if I were to suppose that you might be envisaging an involvement by your Department in the DRC for a period of at least another ten years. Hilary Benn: The short answer is we are in the DRC for the long-term, and I hope that gives you the reassurance. I think to be a bit fair, which you always are, Mr Bercow, if you look at where we have gone from in relation to the DRC, which is basically not a lot apart from humanitarian relief, to what we are doing now and the programme (at least I have got some figures I can give you) which was in 05/06 about £56 million, this year around £63 million, next year £70 million, around half of which humanitarian, I do not think anyone could look at that from a very low base not all that long ago when there were only three members. The first time I went I think there were only three members of staff. There are now 33. I think that is indication of a pretty strong commitment both to the DRC and to doing more and increasing our effort pretty darn quickly, if I may say so. Q296 Chairman: I may recall that, having cut the turf of the new offices, the first question the press asked me was which Congolese companies were getting the contract for building the DFID offices? I tried to point out that there was a much more ambitious purpose for these offices than just awarding the contract. However, I am glad to say the answer was acceptable. Hilary Benn: I am very relieved to hear that. Q297 Chairman: Actually Simon Arthy, who is a conflict adviser with remit, made a very specific point about language, although we thought he was doing extraordinarily well with the French while we were trying to struggle along with our schoolboy French; but he said that there were occasions when you were negotiating with ministers or with top civil servants where, frankly, a three-week fast training course was not good enough to be able to really deliver what DFID is about. Hilary Benn: An absolutely fair point, and I am glad you did not ask me about my capacity with the French language, otherwise I would have disappointed you once more. Mr Hunt: I was just reflecting whether any questions asked my colleague John Bercow could be described as prosaic, because the words used "other-worldly" are poetically much closer to the mark! John Bercow: The cheque is in the post! Mr Hunt: Could I move the discussion on from DFID staffing and the DRC to ask a more general question about the relative generosity of funding for conflict situations and post-conflict situations. This is not something that is in any way directed at DFID, but one specific example when I visited Panzi Hospital in Bukavu, which I know DFID is funding a building for, they said that ECHO and the US were withdrawing their funding from this month because it was no longer considered a humanitarian situation, even though, just to look around you, it was obvious that the most appalling atrocities were going on and were being treated by Panzi Hospital. To give the other side to that coin, when we as a committee visited the IDP camps in northern Uganda one of the concerns we had was that it might, perversely, be in the incentives of the Ugandan Government to maintain IDP camps because they are very good at attracting international funding (the world food programme, et cetera, et cetera). I wonder whether you think there is a problem where sometimes certain types of donors pull out of situations too soon instead of the adequately making sure that the foundations are put in place properly in a post-conflict situation? Q298 Chairman: Can you give assurances to the Panzi Hospital, because we were all concerned that the money could not stop, we did not think that could happen. Hilary Benn: May I look into it? You tell me that we are funding Panzi Hospital, which I am of course very glad to hear, and I shall look into the issue and, in particular, as you describe, the impact that what other donors are planning to do will have on its capacity to operate. I think from memory about 50 % of our programme is humanitarian, and I foresee that it will continue to be a significant proportion. There will be a rising programme in terms of the money, as I have just described. Exactly what the balance will be, whether it will fall as a proportion slightly or not, frankly remains to be seen, but it will continue to be a very important part of what we do because the emergency needs----. Well, you saw it for yourself. Q299 Chairman: The point that was made clear to us was that the complaint was not about DFID, which was continuing, it was the other donors and particularly the European Community. Hilary Benn: Indeed. Other donors will always have to answer for themselves. We do what we do, we do it by demonstration and we encourage others to do what we think is the right thing and other countries take different decisions. Q300 John Battle: Can we not say, "We will take back some of our multilateral if you do not come in with us on that project"? Hilary Benn: In relation to our contributions for the EC, we do not have that mechanism open to us. The other partner you were describing was the ---- ? Q301 Mr Hunt: US Humanitarian Office. Hilary Benn: We do not make a contribution there. The broader problem, of course, is the appeal for the DRC has not been terribly well-funded, as we know. We are making a significant contribution. On Uganda and the camps, which was the second part of your question, at the moment the Government of Uganda, as I am sure you know, is wanting to move people out of the big camps that they have been in to move them into smaller satellite camps to get them closer to where home was, provide security, increase confidence and show people that it is possible to go back. I do not think there is an incentive there for the Government to go in and say, "No, no, it is all too dangerous. We are going to leave them where they are". There is an issue for the humanitarian community because it will be more difficult to make sure that provision and support is given to those people in a large number of satellite camps than is currently the case in the bigger number of camps where they are to be found, although the conditions, as I saw for myself in Padibe, were pretty difficult, not as bad as Somalia but pretty bad. Q302 John Barrett: Just slightly related to that is the issue of what is happening in one part of the country in relation to another part of the country. We have taken evidence before from you, Secretary of State, of what is happening in Sudan in the sequencing of a peace agreement in the south with the problems that there have been in Darfur and, again, we discussed that before. Have we learned any lessons from what happened in Sudan and Darfur that we take advantage of, what Jeremy Hunt has said there, in other parts of the world as to whether or not we think in one part of the country the peace agreement is signed, the conflict has ended, but elsewhere the real problems are people living in IDP camps? Is that something that we can look at to Darfur and say, "It is applicable, we have learned lessons and they can be applied elsewhere"? Hilary Benn: There has, of course, been, as we know, a very lively debate and you took part in the Westminster Hall debate upstairs and some people said that the balance was not right. I expressed the view in relation to Sudan that I thought the balance was right, but it does show just because you appear to have solved one problem, you have not dealt with another one. In relation to the DRC, since we seem to be focusing on it for absolutely understandable reasons, the east of the country is just really difficult. Now the same is true in Afghanistan: there are parts of the country where things are better and things are much more difficult in the south for reasons that have been fairly widely reported, and it does mean that you may have to act in a different way in different places at different times. I think it all comes back to trying to understand what is going on, what are people's motivation, why is this a problem, what can be done about it, who can we work with and how can we make sure that what we do does not make things worse. It all sounds rather trite and obvious, but it is obvious for a very good reason because they are sensible considerations to take into account in deciding what to do. Q303 Mr Singh: The Commission for Africa recommended that donors "use assessments of how to reduce the risk of violent conflict and improve human security in formulating their country and regional assistance strategies". I know DFID has a Strategic Conflict Assessment. How widely is this used, how committed are you to implementing that recommendation and, if it is used, what happens to the analysis which it produces within the Assessment? Hilary Benn: It is about asking, I think, precisely the questions that I alluded to a moment ago in answering Mr Barrett's question. When Mr Jim Drummond came to give evidence previously, I think you discussed the influence it had had when we used it in relation to what we are doing in Nepal. In relation to Yemen, it had an impact because it has led us to do some work on access to justice that might not otherwise have been the case. In Sri Lanka, the impact on the World Bank was that they realised that they needed to work more widely across the country, because otherwise focusing on one bit might lead people to think that they were not being even-handed in the work that they are doing, so we are committed to using it. In the case of the DRC, I think the Swedes and the States did it and we have drawn on the information contained in their analysis to inform the work that we are doing, so it does not mean that we have to do every one. If someone else is doing it, we can pinch their results. Q304 Mr Singh: I do not mean so much that situation. Within DFID, if nobody else is doing it, is it mandatory to do one? Mr Drummond: It is mandatory that people consider when they do a Country Assistance Plan whether there are conflict issues that this tool would be useful for, so we are not saying for every country we work in, "You have got to do it", but you have to pass a test which says, "Is it relevant to you?" and you can say when you submit the thing whether or not it is relevant. Q305 Mr Singh: Does that mean then we are not accepting the Commission for Africa's recommendation? Mr Drummond: We do not think it is sensible to do it in every single country for which we have an aid programme and so we have done it in about 20 countries so far. It is getting much more ingrained in the organisation. Q306 Mr Singh: Do you have plans for using it more extensively than you are at the present? Mr Drummond: We have made it mandatory that people ask themselves the right questions when they do a Country Assistance Plan and for more countries to use the tool than so far. I expect the number will increase, but I do not think it is sensible to say for absolutely everywhere in the world you have got to do a conflict assessment. Q307 Mr Singh: Is there any scope for a joint tool kit either of different government departments that are involved in the country or between donors to be used in common? Mr Drummond: Yes, we quite often do this exercise with other donors and I think, in the Sri Lanka case that the Secretary of State quoted ---- Q308 Mr Singh: There is not a common, uniform, joint tool kit used across our government departments, is there? Mr Drummond: Across Whitehall, the tool kit is becoming much more commonly used. Across other donors, I am not sure if we have got to the stage where we have got a commonly agreed tool kit for everywhere, but in some countries we have been using the same sort of formulation. Q309 Chairman: Can I ask about that context because in your memorandum to the Committee[10] you talked about economic issues fuelling conflict and you said: "There is a growing international awareness of the links between conflict and economic issues such as trade". Can I ask, at what point if you are going into a country which is in conflict or post-conflict do you involve the DTI? They are not part of the Conflict Unit, which I think is just Defence, the Foreign Office and DFID, yet there are quite a lot of issues it seems to me where the DTI needs to be engaged whether it is conflict commodities or trade rules, and there seems to be a significant omission. Hilary Benn: To be honest, I cannot think of a case where I am aware that we have had that kind of conversation. I do not know whether you know, Jim. Mr Drummond: I do not know. Q310 Chairman: You also say that, and this is in your memorandum about business behaving more responsibly, the Ethical Trading Initiative which I did ask the DTI questions on the last time around, and you have talked about licences being required for conflict-sensitive goods. It says: "The Criteria proved an effective mechanism to deny licences where there is concern that goods might be used for internal repression or international aggression, a risk to regional stability, or other considerations, including the effect on sustainable development." How many licences have been refused? Hilary Benn: Are you talking about arms export licences there? Q311 Chairman: Not necessarily. This is in the memorandum submitted by the Department, paragraph 31, where you are asking the question, how can the UK encourage conflict-sensitive business practices? It says: "As part of its implementation of the Guidelines the OECD Investment Committee is developing a 'Risk Management Tool'. HMG also contributes to conflict sensitive business practice through its export licensing policy." Hilary Benn: My understanding is that is referring to the arms export licensing policy - I am sorry if that was not made clear in the memorandum - because those criteria in the final sentence are the ones that form the consolidating criteria against which arms export licences are assessed. Q312 Chairman: It only applies to arms licences? Hilary Benn: That is my understanding, yes. Q313 Chairman: If it was related to other goods or commodities which might be seen to be fuelling conflict, there is no ---- Hilary Benn: There is no licensing mechanism relating to those, is there? No, it is just arms exports. Chairman: I am not quite clear on the point about arms and sustainable development and the nuclear weapons aspect. John Battle: There is a list by which people have to assess whether ---- Q314 Chairman: Secretary of State, there are clearly issues here where the DTI's involvement is important if you are trying to take out the factors for conflict. The answer you were saying that there is not a mechanism, it seems to me, is an area for more useful earlier co‑operation. Hilary Benn: It depends which way the trade is flowing. The Kimberley Process and the FLEGT[11] process - fisheries do not tend to be involved in conflict - are two examples of where we have got mechanisms that we are pursuing to try and deal with illegal use of natural resources and I think those do provide us with some way of trying to deal with a very practical problem. As far as licensing of stuff coming from the UK going to countries, to be honest, I am struggling to think of what kind of products we would be talking about that would be fuelling conflict, goods that would be exported from the UK apart from arms. Chairman: I think on the issues of trade and other things, we might cover that in our own report. There seems to be a role for DTI which does not appear to be as high on the list as it should be. Q315 Mr Davies: Before I get on to the issue of conflict, I want to take you back to what you were saying earlier on about conditionality because you know this is something that interests me. Hilary Benn: Yes. Q316 Mr Davies: I had supposed that there were four cases in the last six or nine months where conditionality had been applied and sanctions triggered, and they were Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Palestine. You told the Committee this afternoon there is a fifth, which I did not know about, maybe colleagues did, which is Rwanda. I know that the Hamas case, the Palestine case, was a joint EU initiative and proceeded from the decision of the Council of Ministers. In the other three cases, did you make any attempt to get other donors, either our EU partners or indeed the international financial institutions or the United States, to go along with those sanctions, so as to prevent the effect of triggering sanctions being negated by other donors and, if you did make those attempts to get some kind of solidarity and coherence in the message being sent by donors to these governments in the light of their behaviour, how successful was that? To what extent was your initiative backed up by other donors? Hilary Benn: In taking the list, in the case of Rwanda, there were a number of countries that had the same conversation with the Government of Rwanda. At the time, they had announced publicly they were thinking of doing this and a lot of international pressure went on to Rwanda in that case. In the end, Rwanda did not do what it had threatened to do in those circumstances. In the case of Uganda, I can think of at least two other donors who have also withheld some of their payments and are currently considering what to do in the light of the outcome of the elections. In the case of Ethiopia, of course, all of the direct budget support donors acted in concert, so there was a complete unanimity of view, and, of course, in each of these cases, as you will know, Mr Davies, particularly in these circumstances, there is a lot of debate within country amongst all of the country representatives of the different donor organisations. For Kenya, there were not sanctions because, of course, we were not giving direct budget support to Kenya in the first place. Q317 Mr Davies: I thought you withdrew aid and I thought it was budget support, aid money, as a result of the failure of the new Kenyan Government to deal with corruption. Hilary Benn: That is not the case, we do not give ---- Q318 Mr Davies: There were no sanctions? Hilary Benn: We had taken the decision previously that we would not give direct budget support to Kenya precisely because of the concerns about corruption, so we give our support in other ways. In the case of Palestine, there has obviously been a view right across the donors that it would not be possible in current circumstances given the Hamas Government, to provide direct budget support. Q319 Mr Davies: The Hamas situation is very well aired in the press and I think we all know the facts there. The other cases are much less clear which is why I am taking the opportunity to ask you these questions. You had a very high degree of solidarity among donors in the case of Ethiopia. In the case of Uganda, it is not so clear. In fact, some donors have continued to drop out of support; other donors have not made clear on what conditions and what terms they would resume it, so the Government in Uganda is not getting, it seems to me, a coherent message on this occasion, is that right? Hilary Benn: From memory, it was not as universal as was the case with Ethiopia, that is right. Q320 Mr Davies: But you agree it is very desirable there should be joint action in these cases, particularly joint action, one hopes, among the EU, and if you cannot achieve that, the effectiveness of these kinds of sanctions is greatly reduced? Hilary Benn: Clearly, the more donors who take a view and act accordingly the more effect you think it might have, but I have to say, in the case of Ethiopia, I could not say that it has resulted in the Government doing something differently. Even though it has not done something differently, it does mean that the international community has sent a very strong message about what we regard as acceptable conduct, and I think that is worthwhile in itself. Q321 Mr Davies: Yes, certainly. Can you assure the Committee that when you are considering triggering sanctions like this the procedure you always adopt is to try to get some equivalent supporting action from others and, if possible, a common front? Hilary Benn: We certainly will talk to other donors because the conversation clearly goes, "What are you going to do in response to this?" and the donors talk to each other and in the end either there is a collective decision taken or one takes a decision and then others think, "Well, now what are we now going to do?" It works in different ways in different circumstances, but the thing that I am ultimately responsible for is what we are going to do and in the end other governments are responsible for what they are going to do, but we would certainly encourage people to try and march in step. That assumes that they have the same analysis as us about what is going on. Q322 Mr Davies: Have you considered with your EU colleagues establishing some kind of agreed procedure or protocol as to how you might respond in situations like this so as to generate a common response, if possible? Hilary Benn: No. Q323 Mr Davies: Will you consider that? Hilary Benn: Can I reflect on that? Q324 Mr Davies: I would be very pleased if you would. Hilary Benn: Genuinely. Q325 Mr Davies: To move back to conflict, one thing that concerns me slightly about the stories coming through today is - let me use your word - the "separateness" of the response by yourselves and the MoD. I would have thought there was a very high degree of cohesion and co‑ordination now. In relation to Sierra Leone, you said this afternoon - maybe it was just an excessive and very charming modesty on your part - "Oh, the re-establishment of order in Sierra Leone was nothing to do with us. That was my colleagues in the MoD." I would rather have hoped you would have been alongside those colleagues in the MoD right from the beginning and you would have had a plan for introducing the necessary DFID initiatives alongside and simultaneously as far as possible with a common objective. That was not the story that came out this afternoon. Perhaps you would like to correct that? Hilary Benn: You are very generous. I think I was referring to the fighting bit. Q326 Mr Davies: We do not expect you to do the fighting. Hilary Benn: I know you do not. Q327 Mr Davies: In so far as successful stabilisation requires a military contribution and an aid and development contribution, and you supply the latter, simply to say "the whole credit goes to the MoD" was a rather strange thing to say. You did say that, Secretary of State, unless there is something wrong with my ears. Hilary Benn: I am sure, Mr Davies, there is nothing wrong with your ears. If I expressed myself badly, I apologise. I was referring to the fighting. I was talking about the establishment of security and order. Q328 Mr Davies: In fact, you had a joint plan of campaign. The DFID role was established in the beginning and you began to deliver your contribution as soon as you could once the military had established some kind of security, is that right or not? Hilary Benn: I was not around at the time because we are talking, I think, about 2000, but what I can say is that in Sierra Leone I think it would be hard to find a better example of more joined-up activity between the different bits of government. I cannot speak for 2000 because, as I say, I was not in post at the time, but that has been a very strong feature of what we have done in Sierra Leone. Q329 Mr Davies: I was myself very positively impressed by the degree of joined-up action in Iraq between the MoD and DFID when I visited Iraq last year. Let us not take it that necessarily exists everywhere else. On that subject, in the DRC what was quite notable is that you are now the biggest donors, I understand it. You have given the figures of £60 million up to £70 million and I think that is something that there would be widespread support for, but we have not made any military contribution, as far as I know, to MONUC. We do not have any operational troops there, we may have one or two advisers or liaison officers. We are not even, unlike, say, the Germans, supplying a force to help stability temporarily in the elections next month. Why is there that lack of any contribution by the MoD in this case? Are you in favour of that or did you try to urge your colleagues in the MoD to make their own contribution? Hilary Benn: The straight answer
to the question is because British forces, as you know, Q330 Mr Davies: You accepted from the outset there was no point in asking for a military contribution, or you made a case for a military contribution by this country but accepted the arguments against on the grounds of overstretch? Hilary Benn: No, I am realistic enough to recognise that our forces are already heavily committed in a number of places and, therefore, we make a contribution to MONUC through our assessed contribution through the United Nations but not in the form of people on the ground. Mr Davies: You never thought there would be any merit in such a contribution? You never attempted to persuade your colleagues in the MoD to make a contribution? Chairman: I am going to have to contain you, Mr Davies. Mr Davies: I think we must have clear answers, sir. Q331 Chairman: I know, but four members of the Committee went to the DRC and had the opportunity to ask these questions. Hilary Benn: Did I have a conversation with the MoD about "Could you make a contribution to the forces in the MONUC or the European presence to support the elections?" The answer is no, I did not. That is a straight answer to a straight question. Q332 Ann McKechin: Secretary of State, I am always surprised in a way about the different approaches in terms of the timing and sequencing of elections in post-conflict countries. If we look at somewhere like Bosnia, we have taken a great deal of time to try and build up structures in government, particularly justice networks and civil society, before we have tried to approach the issue of elections. In comparison, we have somewhere like the DRC which we all admit has been a very fragile state. It has been a failed state for many years, but yet we are rapidly moving towards full-scale elections later this year. Is there any particular policy which DFID is trying to follow in terms of providing advice about the timing and sequencing of elections, or do you think this reliance on elections as one of the key elements early on in the post-conflict situation, is necessarily always the best option? Hilary Benn: I think the first thing I would say is we do not determine the answer to that question, after all, it is the federal process in the country itself which will ultimately decide when and how elections are going to feature. In the case of the DRC, the transitional government has been in being now for, I think, almost three years. I would not regard that as particularly swift, but the fact is they have allowed time to try and get institutions in place, to get the constitution through and to agree on the framework. The elections are a little bit later than people had thought might otherwise be the case and in the DRC when they first announced that there was going to be a bit of a delay, there was a bit of a public reaction. I would say in the case of the DRC, they probably got it about right. In the case of Afghanistan, I think it has been very important you have an elected government. I would say in the case of Iraq, it is particularly important to have an elected government. If the argument is put that you should wait a bit longer, I do not think that I agree with that, first, and, secondly, it is for the people, hopefully, who are making the peace to determine how, as part of that peace, elections are going to figure in the process. Q333 Ann McKechin: We took a very different approach on Bosnia, where we still do not have full elections and where we do not have a government fully taking control after a very long period of time, and it just strikes me that we as an international community because obviously we make policy and aid commitments conditional on the issue of governance, that is clearly important, but certainly the international community took a much more hands-on approach in Bosnia in terms of moving through to a transitional phrase which we have not done in other areas. I am wondering why; was it a question of resources, was it a question of what would fit or a question of the fact that we could not offer the same level of resources as we did in Bosnia or a level of engagement in other countries? Hilary Benn: To be honest, I do not know a lot about the circumstances in relation to Bosnia. Jim Drummond might want to say something about that. Mr Drummond: I am not a great expert on Bosnia either, but what happened there was the peace agreement froze the country into a number of entities for a while and it imposed an international government on top of those entities. They have had frequent elections in Bosnia in recent years, but it has not been for a full, autonomous government. Some people might think they have had excessive numbers of elections in Bosnia in recent years. Hilary Benn: All I would say is different countries, different circumstances; the Kimberley Process is going to lead. I do not think it is a huge problem. I do not think we have a fixed view about it is has got to be then as opposed to later. Mr Drummond: We certainly do not walk away thinking elections fix the problem. Q334 John Battle: It is a comment really. Sometimes I think we treat elections as the answer to the problem rather than the start of the problem. Another thing that I felt in the DRC - and I am not too worried about the elections being delayed - was all the questions were about how the voters would line up, whether they get the right stand, be in the right place, fill in the paper properly and we were talking about the processes of people voting. I think what we were not talking about was what are elections about, which are also about politicians, their accountability, their transparency and so I think we have turned the elections business into a technical business that organises voters. Perhaps what we need to be doing much more of - and I say this as someone who has not done enough of it - is we, as MPs and parliamentarians, perhaps ought to be working more with our counterparts and not treating it as a separate science, because otherwise we are asking the people to vote right and then missing out on the real bit, the performance of politicians. It may be worth us sitting around the table as politicians, dare I say, and comparing notes about how we fill in our expense forms, how accountable we are here, how we work on select committees and things in Parliament, how we work cross-party occasionally, because some colleagues in other countries have no experience of that at all. It is a big piece of the jigsaw about democracy that we are not passing across. Hilary Benn: I would simply say it is one thing to have the institutions, the mechanism; it is a whole other thing to have the culture that comes with it and that takes a long time, as our experience as a country demonstrates. Q335 Richard Burden: There was no lead donor in the DRC when we were there. Some people said, "Well, just the scale of the country means that it is difficult to have one lead donor", but everybody that we came across that was involved in any capacity with any donor country or any institutional donor country, was saying, "There needs to be more co‑ordination", and lack of co-ordination is a real problem. Interestingly, they were sometimes saying that in forums where they were all there in the same room and we asked them the question, "Why is it not happening? If you are all here and you are all in the same room, why are you not co-ordinating and why are you not deciding who does what?" I do not feel we got a complete answer as to why it is not happening. Do you know why it is not happening? Hilary Benn: I do not think that is unique to the DRC, to be honest. If we had a pound for every time people talk about co-ordination we would have a much bigger aid budget. It is the doing that really counts. I think CIAT[13] has done a pretty good job in trying to stand alongside, nurture and cajole the transitional process forward, and I do think that has been a reasonably co-ordinated effort. When it comes to co-ordinating donor programmes we have a long way to go. One of the things that I now want us to do alongside other donors in the DRC as we come to the period after the elections is where might we be able to pool our effort. I was talking to the team about that this morning and asking that very question, "Where might we be able to have more donor co-ordination in the DRC?" They said, "We are talking with other donors in a number of areas", but it still seems to me like the beginning of a process. If we could agree that we are going to come together and work on education in particular, say something like free primary education, going back to the point about the election dividend, answering the question, "What changed as a result of 23 million of us registering to vote?", it would be great if we could make that happen. I wish I knew. I think because the circumstances have been rather difficult it is not a kind of normal development country. There are relatively few donors, although you might argue that should make it easier for people to come together, and people, as ever, end up doing very different things. I do think it will be a priority after the election is out of the way, particularly with the pressure to demonstrate delivery for donors to get their act together better than they have in the past. Q336 Richard Burden: You say that is an initiative that you are exploring, take the example of the DRC, who do you think should be taking the initiative to try to bring that co-ordination together? Does it fall to us? Should the UN be kicked into doing it? Hilary Benn: In relation to the humanitarian effort, obviously it is the UN's responsibility to lead. Traditionally a country will chair the donor group and will try and bring people together, and in some countries they have greater success in doing it than others. To be honest, at the moment I am not entirely sure who is chairing the donor group in the DRC, and I will have to check, but that is the way it tends to work. Even if you are chairing the group, it does not mean you can drag everybody else along and make them do what you think is the right thing because it depends on where it is people are prepared to go. Mr Evans: If you talked to our colleagues in Kinshasa about this, which I am sure you did, they would have suggested that part of the solution may lie with the EU because of the role the EU is already playing in developing the strategic reform agenda and the political processes. I think we would claim some credit in trying to push forward better donor co-ordination in the DCR, although I recognise there is an awful lot still to be done. We would see a role for the EU in legitimately taking some leadership in trying to do this. Q337 Chairman: That may be a problem where the United States are a little bit of a problem. Mr Evans: Donor co-ordination is a problem everywhere, but even more importantly so in a place as complicated as the DRC. Q338 John Battle: Can I ask about something that we have not done. We have elections and, again, it is a bit like crime and the causes of crime, what about the grievances that cause the problem in the first place? I worry more about this, the carpet theory of history, if you press down the problem here and do not deal with it, it comes up further down the room. Also, I was quite impressed by the way that DFID worked on defence matters with MONUC and we got good stories back on that, but I am worried about addressing the real causes of conflict, the real grievances that people might have and how much you can get into that so we do not end up with situations tipping back into conflict and violence a few years down the road. What strategies are in place? What thought and foresight are given to that in the Department? Hilary Benn: Going back to the conflict analysis, understanding what is going on, why this happened and what incentive people have for it to continue is vital to us doing the right. In the end, I would say it is for the parties to the conflict to try and sort out those grievances and for us to try and support a global process as a way of doing that as opposed to people continuing to fight each other. In the end in the DRC that is what happened when the transitional government came into being. Only they can sort that out. We have to make sure that we back that process and do not do things in the course of that which unintentionally add to those problems. That is why conflict analysis is quite helpful in going through the checklist and making sure that you are doing sensible things and not things which make it worse. Q339 Chairman: We are perhaps getting towards the end of this, but in the context of the DRC the ironic situation is that it is at the same time the richest country in Africa but it is probably theoretically, potentially the poorest country in Africa for most of the people and that is partly because it has been plundered by the neighbours and partly because outside agencies do not trade in the commodities. The UN Panel of Experts' Report in 2003 encouraged donor governments to investigate companies in their own countries who may be involved, and the UK Government has not done that, is that something which may yet be done or is it something you do not intend to do? What is the status of that? Hilary Benn: DRC's GDP per head is currently about $100, so it is pretty poor on that measure. You are right, Chairman, about the scale of the wealth and what has happened to it. We have had very little capacity to do that. Having taken some interest in the Panel Report, I think the point I would make is when one reads it there were a lot of concerns expressed, things said about what people had been doing, but in many cases not much in the way of evidence. I suppose that begs the question if that is what the Panel has been able to come up with, with all the work, time and effort that it has been able to put into the task, in a country as complex as the DRC, where rumour and speculation is rife on a whole range of fronts, how exactly would any individual country be able to have a better chance of getting to the bottom of it? Q340 Chairman: With respect, Secretary of State, was it not the other way around? The Panel are saying, "We have identified and named companies - for example one UK company is Afrimex - we would hope that the host government would investigate to determine whether or not there was a case to answer". In this context that is what the UN was asking the UK Government, amongst others, to do. Hilary Benn: There is the case both in relation to sanctions and in relation to the OECD guidelines, and you may be asking about both. In the case of the sanctions, in the end the FCO advised that none of the three had broken UK law, or there was insufficient evidence to prosecute. In the case of the companies that had been accused of being in breach of OECD guidelines, the final Panel Report identified four unresolved UK-based companies. The contact point has now produced a statement in relation to the first three and there is one which remains under investigation. I understand it is the intention of the DTI to make a statement on the fourth once the final specific instances have been concluded. That is the process we have undertaken to look into those, but I come back to my point about insufficient evidence because it is a difficult place in which to try and establish exactly what has gone on. That is a broader contextual point, but that is what we have done to look into them. Q341 Chairman: One final thing, in your own submission you said there was a cabinet sub-committee for conflict prevention and reconstruction established, and at the time you sent the memorandum it was expected to meet for the first time in March. Can you give us any indication as to whether it has met? Hilary Benn: Yes, it has met once, and I think it has been a sensible step forward. I believe the establishment of the Pools has been a big step forward because, as I think I have said to the Committee before, you bring the three departments together to discuss what you are going to do with the funding and that does tend to encourage a discussion about what it is you are trying to do. On reflection, as far as the cabinet sub-committee was concerned, we thought it made sense to bring it together, overseeing both of the Pools, the Africa and the Global Conflict Pool. Q342 Chairman: Can I perhaps repeat that if you are able to reflect on the earlier involvement of the DTI on some of these other issues, it might be of interest if you are able to give us a reply on that. Hilary Benn: I intend to do that. Q343 Richard Burden: Just on that, and it goes back to the investigation of companies, I certainly take the point about evidence, but I am still a little uncertain that if there did appear to be a prima facie case and something had gone there, what would be likely to happen and who would take the initiative to do it? Hilary Benn: Prima facie evidence of what? Richard Burden: Let us say they were breaching OECD guidelines? Q344 Chairman: Would that be a DTI response? Hilary Benn: As I understand it, the process is that the DTI approaches the company against whom that allegation has been made to ask them, "What have you been up to?" and in the end what I think is called a national Contact Point statement is produced. In the case of the four, that has happened for three of them and one is still being investigated. Chairman: Secretary of State, I think what the Committee is getting at is we are a little concerned that unless the DTI are more focused on this conflict issue they may not quite see the relevance and the importance of the oversee of it. Maybe involving them at an earlier stage might be a desirable extra dimension to deal with the conflict. Thank you very much. [1] Lord's Resistance Army [2] Ugandan Peoples Defence Force [3] United Nations Mission in DR Congo [4] United Nations General Assembly Special Session [5] DFID /FCO/ HM Treasury, Partnerships for Poverty Reduction: Rethinking Conditionality, A UK Policy Paper, March 2005: http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/conditionality.pdf [6] Ev [7] Revolutionary United Front [8] Ev [9] Ev [10] Ev [11] Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade [12] Ev [13] International Committee Accompanying the Transition (CIAT) |