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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 1188-viii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
Humanitarian RESPONSE TO NATURAL DISASTERS
MONDAY 24 JULY 2006 RT HON HILARY BENN MP, MR MICHAEL MOSSELMANS and MR PHIL EVANS Evidence heard in Public Questions 357 - 418
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the International Development Committee on Monday 24 July 2006 Members present Malcolm Bruce, in the Chair John Barrett John Battle John Bercow Richard Burden Mr Quentin Davies Ann McKechin Joan Ruddock ________________
Examination of Witnesses
Witness: Rt Hon Hilary Benn, a Member of the House, Secretary of State for International Development, Mr Michael Mosselmans, Head of the Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department (CHASE), and Mr Phil Evans, Head of the Africa Conflict and Humanitarian Unit (ACHU), Department for International Development, gave evidence. Q357 Chairman: Good afternoon again, Secretary of State. Thank you very much indeed for coming in to give us evidence in the dying moments of the parliamentary session. I wonder first of all if you could introduce your team formally to us. Hilary Benn: Sure. On my right is Michael Mosselmans, who heads our Conflict, Humanitarian Affairs and Security Department, and on my left is Phil Evans, who is Head of the Africa Conflict and Humanitarian Unit. Q358 Chairman: As you know, we are just coming to the end of this report on the Humanitarian Response to National Disasters and I am sure the two colleagues you have are very relevant to the issues we have been raising. Can I ask you briefly about the statement you have issued today on the situation in the Lebanon and Gaza? I was in the House on Thursday afternoon for part of the debate on the situation there when the Foreign Secretary indicated that money was going to be voted from your department and your statement has now confirmed £2.2 million in addition to the £770,000 UK share of the Central Emergency Response Fund total of $5 million. I wonder what you feel like as Secretary of State transferring money from your budget to deal with a humanitarian disaster which is being inflicted by an ally of ours, one that we supply arms to and one with whom we have a close engagement. In other words, money is being diverted from other poverty programmes to deal with a situation where infrastructure, schools, hospitals and so forth are being destroyed, and indeed is that where the aid is going to be going? Hilary Benn: There is a very grave crisis, as the written statement that I have laid before the House this afternoon indicates, both in Gaza, which has been unfolding for some time, and in Lebanon over the last couple of weeks. In those circumstances it seems to me that my first responsibility is to make sure that we are playing our part to try and give support to those who have been affected, and that is why, having announced the first allocation of money last Thursday when I returned from Africa, I have this morning decided that we would provide more. I was also able to tell the House, of course, that the CERF, the Central Emergency Response Fund, has made a contribution of $5 million, of which our share is the £770,000 that you referred to. There has also been the UN appeal that has come out today. If people are in need I think it is important that we help; that is my view. Q359 Chairman: I do not think anybody on the Committee would demur from that in itself but Jan Egeland gave us evidence last week and he used a rather chilling phrase, although I think it is similar to one he has used in the past. He said, "In the end we keep people alive until they are massacred really, and that is not the right course overall". I heard him on the Today programme this morning saying they are bombing civilian houses, blocks of flats, infrastructure, and effectively, as he put it, "Whatever we have done today people can be killed again tomorrow", and that is really the point which is causing us concern. If I can put it from a departmental point of view, the money is being transferred from our anti-poverty budget to repair the damage that is being inflicted by one of our allies against a country that we would wish to help. The reality is that this money is coming from other poor people, is it not? Hilary Benn: Indeed it is. It comes out of the budget overall but when people are in need the right thing to do is to offer them assistance until the violence stops because, as I think everybody is aware, violence offers no solution to the problems of the Middle East and what we are seeing is the manifestation of the failure of the political process. Q360 Mr Davies: What is the contingency element you carry in your annual budget which is available for unanticipated and obviously unanticipateable disasters of this kind, whether man-made or natural? Hilary Benn: I do not know if Michael remembers off the top of his head. We have a sum that is available for humanitarian disasters which is held centrally. There will be some allocations within each of the divisions and then if we need to we will call on the contingency. Mr Mosselmans: There is £30 million in this contingency reserve which is specifically earmarked for unanticipated natural disasters and sudden onset emergencies. Q361 Mr Davies: How much of that has been allocated in the current financial year already? Mr Mosselmans: We have not allocated any of that in the current financial year already because we have a starting budget in my department which we exhaust before we turn to the reserve. Q362 Mr Davies: That is very helpful. Thank you. Mr Evans: Can I add that we have a further £35 million available specifically for Africa. Q363 Mr Davies: So it is not necessarily strictly speaking true to say that any money that we now spend on relief in the Middle East will be at the expense of ongoing programmes elsewhere in the world, which was slightly the implication of the Chairman's question a few moments ago? Hilary Benn: In the end it all comes out ----- Q364 Mr Davies: It comes from the taxpayer. Hilary Benn: It all comes from the taxpayer and it all comes out of the DFID budget in one shape or form. In the most extreme humanitarian emergencies, of course, we may have to go to the Treasury to ask for additional support but we do our best, obviously, to manage within the funds that we have got available and, as you will be aware, the provisional figure for 2005/06 is that we spent about £470 million bilaterally. Q365 Mr Davies: So it is not a comparable situation to a couple of years ago when we took money out of Latin American poverty reduction programmes and closed some of them down in order to find money for Iraq? There there was a trade-off and the money which went to Iraq was directly at the expense of potential beneficiaries in Latin America. On this occasion there is not such a direct trade-off or sacrifice. I see Mr Mosselmans is nodding his head so I think I have got that right. Hilary Benn: The circumstances in relation to Iraq were different both because of the needs that there were in Iraq but also because we had a commitment to maintain 100 % of our spending bilaterally on low income countries and Iraq did not fall into that category. Q366 Mr Davies: You say in the last sentence of your statement, Secretary of State, "The UK Government supports efforts to put in place a durable ceasefire". Is it the Government's view that any call for a ceasefire should include a call on Hizbollah and Hammas to release the captured Israeli soldiers whose capture, of course, caused the present crisis? Hilary Benn: That certainly is the Government's position because that is how this particular crisis started. If that could happen and the violence could cease then perhaps we could get back to a political process in the Middle East which, as everybody knows, is the only solution, not what is going on at present. Q367 Richard Burden: The extra assistance is, of course, welcome, but could I just put to you comments that were made to me last week by a Lebanese Member of Parliament who is stuck here in the UK? He had been over here on a parliamentary delegation and was physically not able to go back because Beirut airport had been destroyed by Israeli bombing. What he was saying was that though there was certainly a need for extra resources in terms of humanitarian assistance the real challenge was getting that assistance in. I just wonder what approaches and assurances there have been from the Israeli military, and I am particularly thinking about reports last week in The Independent of a convoy of ambulances being attacked by the Israeli military. This morning we hear of families leaving South Lebanon, having been told to get out, and then when they get out they get attacked by Israeli aircraft. Whilst we can have the money sitting there how can that be put to good use if, frankly, the Israelis attack civilians as soon as they do what they ask them to do? Hilary Benn: That is indeed the great problem at the moment. I spoke to Jan Egeland on Thursday of last week. As the Committee may or may not be aware, the UK helped to facilitate his visit to Beirut in order that he could see it on the ground. He has, of course, asked for safe humanitarian access, as have the International Committee of the Red Cross. It is essential to be able to provide that because otherwise, even with the money, and even assuming that you can find a means of physically getting supplies in, it is going to be very difficult. It is not just in Gaza where there have been problems with electricity supply, water supply, availability of food, the crossings at Karni and elsewhere were closed, then they were opened, now they are closed again, which adds to the problem, but also now we have reports of stocks of fuel being exhausted and the electricity supply having been stopped to most villages and towns in southern Lebanon. These are reports we have got from the United Nations this morning and I waited until I had got those in order to make the statement that I have made. Some mechanism is going to have to be found, and that does require agreement on the part of those who are launching military activities, to allow the space for this material to be distributed, assuming we can get it in, and I support very strongly the course that Jan Egeland is proposing for safe humanitarian access. Q368 Richard Burden: Can I ask you one question in relation to Gaza? Your statement rightly gives a good deal of coverage to and emphasis on that, which has perhaps fallen off the news a bit, but obviously 40 people have died there in the last week as well. Given the fact that all the UN agencies are reporting a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding there, I notice that your statement indicates that the Karni and Rafah crossings have yet again been closed to humanitarian assistance. What approaches are being made to Israel to ensure that essential humanitarian supplies can get in and also to see whether they could start paying to the Palestinians the tax revenues that they have been withholding from them? Hilary Benn: We will, as we have throughout, continue to make representations about those two particular crossings and the circumstances in which people have found themselves waiting at those crossings, unable to move one way or the other, have been extremely distressing. It has been reported that some people have died. For a long time we have been urging the Government of Israel to make available the revenues that it holds but the temporary international mechanism which we originally conceived as an idea, to which, as I have indicated here, we are making up to £12 million available, is all about trying to relieve the humanitarian crisis that there already was in Gaza before the action in Lebanon started and, as you can see from the report that I have made, which is based on assistance that OCHA themselves have made on a continuing basis, the situation is extremely serious. Q369 Richard Burden: It does seem that the closing of the borders into Gaza is done, as far as one can tell, randomly and entirely at the whim of Israel. Have there been any arrangements or protocols that they have agreed about when, how and for how long these things should happen? Hilary Benn: Not that I am aware of but I will check, Mr Burden, and will come back to the Committee if that is helpful and do so speedily. I would simply take the opportunity in this evidence session this afternoon to urge publicly that humanitarian access is allowed not just in Lebanon but also in Gaza because people are in desperate and dire straits because of what is going on. Q370 John Barrett: We have seen images daily on our television screens which have been quite horrendous, and, obviously humanitarian assistance cannot get in there until the violence stops, but if the violence increases the scale of the problem will increase. What measures can you take to assess the increasing scale of the problem before humanitarian access gets in there? Hilary Benn: One of the steps that we are taking, which I have referred to in the statement I have just issued, is that we are sending two people from our humanitarian team to assess the situation on the ground so that we can get better reports, frankly. That is why I spoke to Jan Egeland last week and that is why the UK has facilitated his visit, so that we can get a decent assessment from the ground of what the circumstances are, what the needs are, where it might be possible for humanitarian access to be provided, so that the international effort, of which the UK is part, can be mobilised. I am sure there will be a good response to the flash appeal that has been issued today. The total sum I think is $149 million, the CERF will allocate $5 million and that leaves $144 million to be met, but I think the world will respond very generously to this. Money is one thing. Buying stuff and getting it in is another. Q371 John Battle: I think everyone welcomed the reaction of our Government in providing food, tents or whatever for the displaced people, that immediate emergency aid, but could I just put down a marker for the slightly longer and more medium term because it seems to me that there is constant demolition, whether by violence and force or by bulldozers, of infrastructure. We are repeatedly paying to rebuild power plants and water supplies. I do not just refer to Lebanon but also to the West Bank and in Gaza. When we were last there as this Committee we were looking at water plants in particular, infrastructure that had been destroyed by the Israelis, paid for by the EU. We are a substantial donor through the EU; we are the third largest donor, I think, as you note in the statement, and what we are regularly doing is paying money out to put infrastructure in. Two years later it is demolished again and we pay and rebuild it again. At some point someone ought to point out to the Israelis that this is not a way to carry on. Hilary Benn: I recognise, and I am sure the whole Committee does, that Israel needs and wants to be able to live in security, and when you have got rockets coming over the border, both from Gaza and from Lebanon, the first response of the state is to defend people. I also have to say, since one talks about proportionality of response, that I do not regard destroying power stations in Gaza as a proportionate response and I am on record as having said that previously. People need to be able to defend themselves but in the end this needs a political solution. Everybody knows this needs a political solution and what we are seeing at the moment is the manifestation of the failure to find one. Q372 Chairman: Secretary of State, thank you very much for that. I am sure you understand the Committee's concern. Hilary Benn: Yes, of course I do, and I am glad to be given every opportunity to refer to the statement I made. Q373 Chairman: Moving to the main content of the report that we have been preparing, what we have just discussed demonstrates that as we scale up our overseas development assistance and the commitments we have made the call on humanitarian aid is, if anything, increasing. Do you have a guarantee that the proportion of your budget as it increases will be protected in terms of the contribution to humanitarian relief, and indeed is that your approach? Hilary Benn: The certainty I have is the size of the budget over the three years, and then I want to take decisions about how that is going to be allocated. When you look at the amounts that we have spent, and, as you have just referred to, Mr Bruce, the number has been increasing, last year it was £417 million bilaterally, that is the provisional figure for 2005/06, and the year before it was £344 million bilaterally, so we will make provision in the way that Michael described a moment ago. Ultimately we can call on our contingency. In very serious cases we can approach the Treasury. Britain's approach and my approach have always been that we want to do what is required and we will make our fair share of contribution and we are, of course, a major bilateral donor in response to humanitarian emergencies, but it is by definition very hard to plan your budget on the basis that it is absolutely going to be this amount and no more because it depends what unfolds. What we hope to demonstrate by our actions is our capacity to respond with all of the demands placed upon us, and I think a reasonable assessment of what we do would say we do not do a bad job of that, but it is for others to judge. Q374 John Bercow: I would like cheekily to take this opportunity to thank the Secretary of State very warmly because he earlier met a group of schoolchildren and teachers and parents from my own constituency, from Ickford School, and they were delighted to be able to present him with a paper as part of a pupil/teacher campaign, so, Secretary of State, thank you very much because the teachers, parents and children are very happy and appreciative of the time that you made available. Hilary Benn: It was a pleasure. Q375 John Bercow: It was great fun and very educational. On the subject of the UK's disaster response, can you tell me as of today or at the latest date for which figures are available how much has been contributed in response to the Tsunami by the British public voluntarily through individual donations and contributions on the one hand, and by the Government on behalf of the taxpayer on the other? Hilary Benn: If you are talking about the contribution through the Disasters and Emergency Committee, I know it was a very considerable sum of money. Michael, have you got the figures for the Tsunami response to hand? Mr Mosselmans: The Government pledged £75 million to the Tsunami emergency response. I think the public, including through the DEC, did quite a bit more than the Government. Q376 John Bercow: Ah - this is quite important, Chairman. The reason why I raise the issue, Secretary of State, is that, if memory serves me correctly, at the time of the disaster or in its immediate aftermath the Prime Minister said that the Government would match public contributions to the disaster. My impression, which you may share or wish to counter, is that when the public response proved so huge the issue was over a period allowed, at least in part by the Government, to fade away. There was a huge public response to the humanitarian needs, and I certainly accept that very substantial sums of money were contributed by Government, but whether matching funds were contributed, I do not know. I wonder whether you think, in retrospect, that the Government, however understandably, perhaps allowed itself to be caught up in a bidding war with its own public and, indeed, with other governments in relation to the Tsunami. Hilary Benn: The Tsunami was a very unusual emergency for a whole host of reasons, not least the generosity of the response. A pertinent question also to ask would be, and you may have raised it with the DEC when you saw them, what percentage of the funds that were raised by the public have so far been spent in the Tsunami, because it was an appropriate but extremely generously responded to disaster. I think your question, Mr Bercow, does draw attention to an issue which is the bidding war that does appear to go on because I have learnt from bitter experience that if you start by saying, "This is what we are doing immediately" and people say, "That does not look like a lot of money", but that was only the start, then I can see that pressures are created, in some cases to lead countries to promise very large sums of money, and it is very constructive to go back after the event and see how much was delivered. In fairness to the UK, I think we have a pretty good reputation. What we promise, we deliver. One cannot say the same for all other countries. One of the things that all of us could helpfully do is try and explain to people that in some cases it is not about the numbers that have been committed, it is can you turn commitments of cash into practical help on the ground. A large cash sum glittering in lights is fat use to anybody if you cannot turn it into helicopters with the capacity to lift things up mountainsides, tents to be bought to get to people who have got nowhere to live, and access where circumstances are otherwise difficult. I do think there is a job for all of us, the Government, the DEC, the media, to have a better understanding of how things work in these circumstances, frankly. Q377 John Bercow: I wonder whether you also think that there is scope to generate an informed public debate and, perhaps, even to an extent to educate the public about appropriate responses to disasters of the kind we witnessed in relation to the Tsunami. In other words, there is a tendency to contribute at the time of a disaster but much less of a tendency to contribute on the insurance policy principle in advance and, to an extent, with the expectation of the inevitability of disaster. I suppose that brings in the issue that we were raising with Jan Egeland the other day of the CERF. In that context, I know we are talking there about government funding, but is there not a concern that if Britain cannot show its flag it is going to be reluctant or that other governments, if they cannot pin-point what share they account for, are going to be reluctant to contribute on an ongoing basis? Hilary Benn: I think there are at least three very important points there. The first is, yes, undoubtedly there is a case for having a grown-up conversation with the public about what is the best way to help. At a practical level, cash is good and some of the things that people collect are good, for example second-hand clothes, as I saw for myself when I went to Balacot in Muzaffarabad in the Pakistan earthquake. I shall never forget coming into Balacot and suddenly seeing this sort of ribbon of colour amid the grey dust. I said, "What is that?" and the closer we got as we landed, we saw that this was discarded clothing all along the sides of all of the roads. It was second-hand clothing that people from within Pakistan had donated in a country where people are not going to wear second-hand clothes. That taught me a really important lesson first-hand that what people do which they think will be of assistance, if in practice it is not going to help, offer your support in ways which will make a difference. That is why we published a cracking little booklet - I do not know whether the Committee has seen it - which is for members of the public about what you can do best in these circumstances to assist. We have done that in order to try and have that conversation with people. That is the first thing. The second thing is that the CERF is absolutely about trying to make sure that the international system has the resources to get going straightaway for reasons I think we have discussed in this Committee before. It amounts for a very small percentage of total humanitarian assistance. It is not as if people give to the CERF and say, "Right, we have done our bit for humanitarian emergencies, we are going home", because it is really about getting it going quickly. Because there is a CERF, Jan Egeland can say, "Today we are putting $5 million into the Lebanon", like that, because otherwise he would be waiting for a response to the $149 million appeal that has also been issued today, and it is intended to even out uneven funding for emergencies. The third issue about flying the flag - we might come on to that in other contexts in a moment - is the truth is we will do both. I am very proud of the fact that the UK fought hard to get the CERF up and running, that we have now got 48 donors, which would be $264 million. Having won that battle, in announcing a three year contribution from Britain, in addition to the first year contribution, so we have committed for four years, I am trying to demonstrate to others, "This is not a one-off fund. It was not a one-off payment to salve your conscience to the CERF, we are going to need the money every year. Are you up for doing it?" I hope we can persuade some of the donors who have not yet coughed up to do so. I have got some slightly better figures in answer to your first question, Mr Bercow, I apologise. The DEC raised about £400 million and Britain contributed £75 million for relief and £65 million for reconstruction, so that gives you some order of magnitude. Q378 John Bercow: Chairman, can I very lastly come in on one final point. At the time of the Tsunami there was quite a considerable recognition that there was going to be long-term assistance required and, secondly, perhaps at least in part, there was a degree of anxiety, or possibly even cynicism, about the speed and efficiency with which the national organisations would deliver. There was a sense in many local communities that rather than contributing funds to a large national organisation it was worthwhile linking up with villages, and so on, in one or other of the affected countries. My own local newspaper, the Buckingham and Winslow Advertiser, linked up with a village in Sri Lanka and, as I understand it, is doing so on an ongoing basis. There are going to be very quantifiable and observable results long-term, not of humanitarian aid but of what, in a sense, might be called "voluntary development assistance". I wonder if we regard this as best practice, Secretary of State, and whether the Department might consider publishing a small book which recorded the best examples of effective voluntary practice with a view, perhaps, to such examples being replicated on an ongoing basis in the scenario of the aftermath of future unfortunate but inevitable such disasters? Hilary Benn: That is a very interesting idea and I will happily go away and look at it. Q379 John Bercow: It can be used in citizenship education, for example, in schools. Hilary Benn: As with the cause of development more generally, but particularly in humanitarian disasters, people want to help. It is a natural human emotion and we should welcome that. We should also encourage it to be channelled in a way that would be most effective. I think in different phases there are different things that people can most usefully do. In the immediate phase, I would say giving cash is the best thing because that will enable organisations with the capacity on the ground to get going, and we work with partners who are able to do the business. That is the basis on which we choose. When you get to different and further phases of development, I know from my own community amongst the Kashmiri community in Leeds and Bradford, they are looking to link with particular towns where they can support longer term reconstruction. I absolutely welcome that. There are tips and bits of advice and experience that we can draw on, and I will happily look at the publication of some sort of advice and come back to you. Indeed, it might be a recommendation of the Committee when you produce your report. Q380 Chairman: We will take a look at that, Secretary of State. Hilary Benn: It is possibly something you could anticipate. Q381 John Battle: I think in the last couple of years DFID has taken the lead internationally in responding faster than others, and we met that when we were in Pakistan and elsewhere, and it is to be complimented. Can I ask you about co-ordination with other donors and, indeed, leading other donors. In the DAC Peer Review there was the remark: "DFID enthusiasm for certain initiatives is not always shared by other partners, and British advocacy can be perceived as promoting DFID's own model rather than leading and encouraging complementary donor action". I wonder if I can ask you about the Group for Good Humanitarian Donorship. It is a good idea, but do you think the others that are not in that group regard it as an in-house DFID reform supporters group? Hilary Benn: I am acutely conscious of the fact that if you have ideas about how to reform the system and you go out and argue for them, human nature being what it is, there may be circumstances where it gets up people's noses a bit, frankly, particularly if you have got a number of ideas and you continue to push them. All I would say to those who feel that emotion is put it on one side, try and forget where it came from, and ask yourself, "Is this a good idea or not a good idea?" Having pushed aid for CERF extremely vigorously, which was the first of those, I am really glad we did because it did not exist and we have got a quarter of a billion dollars now which exist and can be used. That is not to say that this process of change is not without tension. Indeed, some of the UN agencies feel pretty uneasy about doing things in a different way. That applies both to the CERF and the fact that money will go there which would otherwise have gone to them directly. It applies to the common humanitarian funds that are being parked within the DRC and Sudan. What the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative is all about is trying to be more effective as donors because we know this is an area where getting your act together is really, really important. If you get your act together, you can be more effective in helping people when they are in need. What I think we have achieved through that is we have got better and more effective financing than was the case in the past. We have now got good humanitarian donorship being part of the DAC Peer Review process, I welcome that because it is one of the ways we can be called to account, and we have got some progress on performance indicators to measure how we are doing. We ought to ask the question, "This is what you were trying to do. Here is a disaster, how did you do? What lessons can be learned? Can we do it more effectively in the future?" We would certainly like to bring others on board. We would like to promote more effective work on disaster risk reduction. We would like to see the performance indicators used more effectively and we are aiming to pilot these new approaches to donor co-ordination, I think I am right in saying, in seven countries. I do not want it to be an exclusive club at all. I want more people to be part of this so that we can work together more effectively. Q382 John Battle: If I may say, within the confidence of this Committee, as it were, if I was to push you on the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative, its focus is on needs-based approaches and independent humanitarian aid provision. Do you think that has been undermined by DFID's association with British military intervention, for example in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo? Do you think it undermines those principles and turns away some donors who might otherwise be with us? Hilary Benn: I do not think so, and I hope not. That is not to say that people do not have very strong views about what we and, in fairness, a lot of other countries in the international community are doing. If you think of the number of countries that are present in Afghanistan, there is a country that was at the heart of the humanitarian disaster and, frankly, if it had not been for the brilliance of the World Food Programme three years ago, six million people were at risk of not having enough food to eat. Even if other countries have got reservations about some of the things that the UK is doing, and people are perfectly entitled to even if we disagree with them, I really hope that would not get in the way of being part of the Good Humanitarian Donorship initiative which is about humanitarian donors getting organised, working together and trying to be more effective at bringing help to people. That is what it is about, it is not about anything else. Q383 John Battle: That is okay in relation to the donors, but even in terms of internally in the Department, do you think Iraq has received more or less than its fair share of DFID's humanitarian aid according to those needs-based principles? Hilary Benn: If you are talking about the strictly humanitarian systems in Iraq, it was relatively small. Provision was made in advance of the military action in 2003. The humanitarian situation that then unfolded was not as people had anticipated. The vast bulk of the money that we have been spending there has been on reconstruction and redevelopment of the central infrastructure in the south of the country and capacity building with the government, which I was discussing with the Iraqi Prime Minister this morning. No, I would not say our humanitarian spend has been distorted in any way by Iraq, not at all. Q384 Chairman: Can I come in behind that point. Do you think there is a case in that context for separating out what is humanitarian aid in an intervention context from, I was going to say pure natural disasters but I appreciate there are other kinds of man-made disasters? Taking Mr Battle's point, if there is a sensitivity of saying, "We would like to help this programme, but if it is going to go into Iraq and you, Secretary of State, say the money goes into infrastructure, but infrastructure in certain situations might be destroyed again", is there a case - this is the point I am trying to make - for suggesting that there should be two separate pots, one which deals with things where there is a military engagement, which are humanitarian and can be defended as such, and those where there is no political cause that is immediately apparent? Hilary Benn: By and large there is a mechanism for doing that already in relation to countries where there is a humanitarian need and the UN issues an appeal. That is a humanitarian appeal and that is the pot into which you can put your money for humanitarian purposes. Then separate from that, in the case of Iraq, is the money that we are putting into development and reconstruction, and other countries are doing. I must confess, I had not thought that those kinds of sensitivities which Mr Battle referred to would in many cases be leading countries to say, "We are not going to give money to humanitarian need because we do not like the politics surrounding it". Q385 Chairman: You have not encountered that? Hilary Benn: I have not encountered that, no. Q386 Joan Ruddock: I am going to turn to the entirely negative matter of civil and military co-operation. Looking at the DAC Peer Review, they made it clear that although they thought your Department had recognised the risks of compromising humanitarian principles, they said: "... the FCO and MoD could further define their respective roles in civil-military operations and develop procedures designed to clarify such operations and protect the principles". You followed that through in your White Paper saying that you would, "develop clear arrangements for using UK military equipment and personnel in humanitarian crises". We would like to hear exactly what you are proposing in that and to what extent you have taken on board the very serious concerns frequently expressed by the NGO community about the confusion between civil and military and the fact that often they feel there are people affected by natural disasters who fear the military and then the military, in many cases I would have defended, being sent in to help with rescues, especially where military type skills are required, but nonetheless, there is that very deep concern. Hilary Benn: I am acutely conscious of that. The humanitarian principles on which the humanitarian community operates, that they give help to all regardless, they are not parties to a conflict, they are not taking sides, and they are going to help everybody affected, are of fundamental importance and if we ever lose that we are stuffed, bluntly. Having said that, the first humanitarian principle is to save life. Having seen with my own eyes when I went to Banda Ache eight or nine days after the Tsunami struck, as we landed in a military plane bringing relief supplies that had come from Brize Norton via Billund in Denmark, where we have some joint supplies with other donors, so that was donor co-ordination in action, we picked them up and flew there, on the patch of ground next to the airfield was this extraordinary operation, helicopters in, pick up supplies, helicopters out and down the coast of Banda Ache to deliver the supplies. It was the only way you could have got there because the road had been completely destroyed by the Tsunami, or, let us take Pakistan, where, if it had not been for, in the main, the military helicopters, how on earth do people think supplies would have gone up and down those precipitous mountainsides to bring relief, including the three Chinooks which did a fantastic job over a month? It would be great if the International Emergency Service, the UN system, had sufficient standby helicopter capacity so that when those kinds of disasters strike they can get to work straightaway. One of the things that DFID has historically done is to help try and find helicopter capacity to charter, and we did that in the case of the Pakistan emergency, but I know, because I talk to the team on a regular basis, "Have we found any helicopters yet?", that we found one Super Puma, I remember, that was in Spain and in the end it was the military that were able to fly it from Spain. This was in the case of the Pakistan disaster. It is about needs must and in those circumstances I do not think we should be sensitive. The Tsunami and the Pakistan earthquake both happened to occur in places that were militarily sensitive, and if you had said in Aceh a year previously that the Indonesians would agree to American forces and helicopters coming in and doing something, people would have said, "You are completely mad. Of course it will not happen". It did happen because the circumstances demanded it and people would have died if it had not happened, and the same is true in Pakistan. I think it is about the right approach in the right circumstances. If you can do it without having to call on the military, great. The second point that I just wanted to make very briefly was this. I understand the concern about confusion of roles but we need to recognise that in some parts of the world there are people who just do not care a jot about the difference between the humanitarian and the military. Afghanistan will be one. After all, the people who have attacked UN workers, Red Cross workers, NGO workers, are doing so for political reasons and I have reached the conclusion - and this is the same conclusion I have reached in those circumstances - that it does not matter what you do; there are some people who are not interested in those distinctions however you try and separate them, and they are going to try and kill anyone who is doing anything in support of a cause that they wish to defeat. I just think we have to understand that as we try and grapple with the task of bringing relief to people who need it. Q387 Joan Ruddock: Secretary of State, I would agree you could be absolutely right and Afghanistan is a case in point, but it does give people more of a stated reason for attack if there is a military involvement, and I think it is quite hard to see the situation that we have in Helmund, for example, where reconstruction is going on and differentiate between those who are doing aid type work and those who are clearly engaged in military action. I think it is extremely difficult to make that distinction. Hilary Benn: My point is that there are some folk who -----
Joan Ruddock: I agree. Hilary Benn: ----- do not care about that distinction and therefore one just has to recognise in those circumstances it does not matter what you do. In the case of Helmand, having been there briefly a month and a half ago and having met Governor Daoud and members of his Provincial Council and the Provincial Development Committee, what they want more than anything else is some peace and stability and security because that is the only way life is going to improve. There he is just as much risk from those who are attacking the British military, NGOs, who have cut off the heads of headteachers, who have killed workers for NGOs who have been operating there for quite some time, long before the British troops arrived, and the blunt truth is they do not want any of that to succeed. I also recognise that different bits of the humanitarian community are going to feel comfortable about doing different things. Some will in really dire circumstances reluctantly accept some military protection for a convoy to get supplies through; others will take a principled decision and decide not. It is for each party to make that choice but in the end it is about getting help to people. That is why we are doing this work. My view is that in the end you have to find a means of doing it one way or another. Q388 Joan Ruddock: Would it be desirable, do you think, if such resource could be held internationally rather than have to call on national armies in different situations? Hilary Benn: Yes, it would be desirable in an ideal world, but if you think of the number of helicopters that came to the rescue in the Tsunami and in Pakistan, I think it would be pushing it some to think that the UN can have all of that capacity on standby for those kinds of disasters. I just do not think it is realistic and in those circumstances we should call on them and accept the offers, but we also have to recognise, both in Indonesia and in Pakistan, that the domestic military did an extraordinary job, particularly in Pakistan, as I understand you saw for yourself, because the fact that this was an area of conflict meant you had a lot of troops and they played a really important part in getting out there with the supplies, tramping up the mountainside to deliver them to people who otherwise might not have been reached. We should pay tribute to them because, as in all these emergencies, the bulk of the work is done by the people, the local authorities, the military, of the country concerned. People tend to look at it and think that we are doing it all. We are not. We are playing a part. We are helping those who are bearing the brunt of it. Chairman: We also found out in Pakistan that the military helicopters were available immediately and there was quite a considerable delay before the UN helicopters were deployed. Q389 John Barrett: If I could turn to the involvement of beneficiaries, men, women and children on the ground who actually received the humanitarian aid, we often see teams in the field doing great work, reporting up to NGOs who report up to donors, who sometimes then come to select committees to say exactly what has been going on, but there has been criticism, and we have heard it in this Committee in both written and oral evidence, that there has not been enough reporting or finding out from those beneficiaries on the ground exactly what is meant and that DFID has been criticised also for needing to look at this in some detail. Would you accept that there are failings there and, if so, what are you going to do about it? Hilary Benn: Yes, I accept that we could do better on that front, frankly. There are different forms of accountability. If someone has lost their home and is out in the freezing cold, there is nothing to eat and nothing to drink, the first accountability is to get tents, food, water, blankets there as quickly as possible. You do not really need to consult about that; you just need to get on and do it and do it extremely quickly. Once you have got those immediate needs catered for then, of course, there are issues that arise about where people want support to be provided. This was a big issue in Pakistan because some people were very reluctant to leave their homes, even though they had collapsed, because that is where their loved ones were dead inside, their animals, their possessions, who is going to look after it, will it get stolen, all of those kinds of things, the camps that were being provided down on the limited amount of flat space on the valley floors. That is partly about how we as donors are accountable but it is also about decisions in which the local authorities and the relief organisations and relief infrastructure of the country itself are concerned. There is a job for all of us to be better at saying, "What do you want us to do now?", and with all of these disasters, once they are over, to reflect and to learn and to understand how we can do it better in the future. I do think we have got things to learn. My colleagues, who have been very close to this, might want to comment. Mr Mosselmans: I think you are right: it is an issue that we need to do more about. What we are trying to do is first of all we are looking at revising our guidelines for agencies that submit projects to DO bodies for funding, but the agency has to make it clear to the body how it is going to maximise the engagement of beneficiaries in that particular project. Secondly, as you know, we fund the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership that you heard from. We support their work and we will continue to fund them so that they can develop for us better methodologies of addressing this. Thirdly, we intend in our relatively new Conflict and Humanitarian Fund for civil society organisations engaged in the conflict and humanitarian aid sector, to make a priority of that fund to support attempts by organisations to work on this issue. Hilary Benn: One other thing I would add is that the proposals that I have made for a kind of annual humanitarian report would also provide a means by which the world collectively could ask itself the question, "How did we do?", including, "How was it for beneficiaries and can we learn from that?". Q390 Ann McKechin: Increasingly DFID is relying on NGOs and civic society organisations to deliver this humanitarian response on the ground and the recent National Audit Office report about your work with civic society organisations found that "DFID assistance to CSOs largely achieves intended benefits but assessments of the effectiveness of its assistance are sometimes limited by its results measurement arrangements". Perhaps, Secretary of State, I could give you one example from the Committee's recent visit to Pakistan, where we visited a project, largely funded by DFID, run by the Norwegian Refugee Council in the North-West Frontier province. We visited a remote village and when we arrived there we had been told by the Norwegian Refugee Council that when they visited any of the villages they generally went with three staff, one of which was a woman, so that they could speak to the female members in the community. When I arrived there with Hannah West and our Clerk the first thing that the women in the village said to us was, "Thanks very much for coming along because you are the first person in nine months to ask us how we feel and what our views are". It is no criticism; they were very complimentary about the work carried out by the Norwegian Refugee Council and the efforts they had made, but clearly there are concerns, as you are giving more money to the civic society organisations, as to how DFID can do more to ensure that its partners are adhering to agreed codes of conduct and issues such as gender awareness. Hilary Benn: On the very specific question of asking beneficiaries, "How was it for you and how can we do it better in future?", one of the reasons we fund the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership that Michael just referred to is that they are developing some proposals as to how those who are working on the ground can better ensure that they respond to precisely the point that you have made. That is the first thing I would say. The second thing is that the NAO report, as I recollect, was looking at our relationship with civil society organisations in general, not just in relation to humanitarian relief. In deciding with whom we are going to work we are interested in their reliability, their speed of response, what the cost of delivery is, what is the quality of the work that they do, and yes, it is true that increasingly the work on the ground in humanitarian response is being done by NGOs. It is a point Jan Egeland no doubt made to you when he appeared before you. I think this does raise a really interesting and difficult question because on the one hand NGOs guard their independence fiercely, as we know, but if an increasing proportion of money for humanitarian relief is going through them on the ground, I think the question is, and I think it is one we are all grappling with, what responsibility and accountability comes with that for NGOs about the way in which they deliver that support on the ground? I think we have only begun, frankly, to scratch the surface on that. Q391 Ann McKechin: This morning you have made calls for more benchmarking in terms of humanitarian relief. Hilary Benn: Yes. The reason I made the benchmarking proposal was that we ought to have a reasonable idea of what it is we are trying to achieve, recognising that circumstances are different in different crises and it will not always be possible to live up to all of those standards but that we should apply that right across the piste, whether it is UN agencies directly who are delivering or whether it is NGOs who are funded either directly by donors or through the UN system, because, of course, a lot of the money that comes through the UN system comes through the UN to NGOs who do the delivery on the ground. Q392 Ann McKechin: On the question of funding, in both written and oral submissions to our inquiry NGOs have claimed that the extent and speed of funding flows from UN agencies or donors generally remain a critical constraint on their response, and some have even asked whether they should be able to access funds directly from the CERF, although I understand that the way the CERF has been set up that is not possible. I also wonder what your own department's view is about how we could better address the question of funding. Hilary Benn: The first thing to say about the CERF is that it is a small proportion, but a very important proportion, and it is still relatively new and it is asking OCHA to take on a completely different role, but that is why I made the proposal in the first place, because it is no good asking a body to co-ordinate when it has not got any levers to pull. That was the problem of the system, no levers to pull whatsoever, so the first lot of levers the CERF has given it in that case is some money. If you have got money then with that comes some clout and some decisions about how you are going to divide it up. Exactly the same principle is operating in the Common Humanitarian Funds in the two pilot countries, DRC and Sudan. In fairness, it is still relatively early days because OCHA in the first case and because the humanitarian co-ordinators in the second case are undertaking jobs they have never had to do before. They have got to build their capacity to look at all of these requests for funding, take decisions about where they are going to do it in exactly the same way as my colleagues here do and the wonderful team that works on this in DFID. If I may I would like to take this opportunity to applaud them because they are an extraordinary group of people that I work with, and insofar as people look at DFID and what we do and say, "You do a good job", it is down to the colleagues with whom I have the privilege to work. They move very fast in taking decisions and OCHA needs the same capacity. Humanitarian co-ordinators need the same skill and capacity to take quick decisions to get the cash out the door to the people who are going to do the work on the ground. The other point to make is that for the UN agencies they too in some cases are a bit reluctant to see this change take place because they have good, established, bilateral relations with lots of donors. A crisis occurs, you go to DFID, you make a bid, you get a quick decision, and it is different if you are having to compete within the UN system. However, I am firmly of the view, provided the mechanism will work fast enough, that it is a better way of doing it because you have got, A crisis, X needs, Y amount of money, someone is going to have to take a decision as to how to deal it out. Q393 Ann McKechin: But would you agree that the cluster system which is currently being developed needs to be sure that it does not make the process overly bureaucratic? Hilary Benn: I do accept that. The cluster system has arisen directly out of the failure of the previous system, which was that while there some needs that were clearly covered, and WFP do a fantastic job in bringing food, WHO healthcare and so on, there were other needs, shelter, water, camp management, that no-one was taking responsibility for. It was crazy, an absolutely crazy system. The clusters are a means of trying to deal with that. How do I think they are doing? It is an improvement on what we had before. I think their effectiveness depends enormously on the quality of the relationships within the cluster. Look at Pakistan. I think the health cluster did a really good job. Shelter, to start with, did not work. I turned up in Muzaffarabad and Balacot ten days after the earthquake. The lead body on shelter, ION, did not have a single person in either place. In the end somebody else took it over, so in that early test in that cluster it was not working. I suppose the second question is, who is the provider of last resort? In the case of shelter, for man-made disasters it is UNHCR. For national disasters it is International Federation of the Red Cross. I think we have to make the cluster system work because if you do not have the cluster system I am not sure what you would replace it with unless you completely change the way in which the system works. Q394 Richard Burden: Perhaps I can press you a little further on the cluster system because there does seem to be a reluctance from a number of agencies to in a sense trace their accountability lines through institutions or people that would be essential for that system to work, a classic example being the UN Co-ordinator. How can agencies be encouraged to do that more, whether that may be other UN agencies or NGOs? Hilary Benn: First, to make it clear, if all the people who are trying to work on a particular area in a disaster, since co-ordination is at a premium and what we lack in the system is enough good co-ordination, there really is a responsibility on everyone to get round the table with the other people who are trying to work in the same area, divide up the work and make sure that all of the bits are going to fit together. There is, if you like, a moral imperative to do that because that is the best way of delivering most effective assistance. That may involve people having to agree to work in areas where, if it was left entirely to their own devices, they would not want to, in other words, submitting themselves to a collective decision-making process, but I think is essential if the cluster system is going to work effectively. That is why I make the point about relationships. If you enter it in the right spirit and you are prepared to work together with others and contribute to it and say, "I can do this, I cannot do that, can you handle it?", then it seems to me that that is the best chance you have of making the cluster system work effectively. For the UN agencies it is slightly different. For the NGOs it goes back to my earlier point in answer to Ms Ruddock: how do you get all of those NGOs to understand that they have to be accountable too for their contribution to dealing with disasters? Q395 Richard Burden: From a lot of the evidence we have had, and it has been mixed on the cluster issue, if there has been a commonality it has been that everybody acknowledges the importance of co-ordination through practical experience and in theory they acknowledge that it makes a lot of sense if you do what you do best and what somebody does best they do and you pool your resources, but there also a warning coming from a number of people saying, "There is a real danger here that we spend so much of our time co-ordinating what we are doing that we will not do the doing or we will not do it in a way that is responsive to what people need on the ground". How would you respond to that? Hilary Benn: Clearly that would be pretty useless if that was the outcome. The fact that we have had mixed experience, we have seen some clusters work awfully well in Pakistan and some not, shows that it is not the cluster model per se that is the problem, it may be to do with the leadership, that we have commitment on the part of the partners to make that cluster work. Secondly, the benchmarks, having some way of assessing how well it is done, will help. I think where it does not work, explaining why and, if necessary, pointing fingers at the things that did not work, would help too, so that in the end it is clear why it has been successful where it has worked, why it has not been successful where it has not worked, and how we can fix it. In the longer term, if you are talking about what encouragement you have got, if we go back to the organisations that we are prepared to fund, reliability, speed at the point of quality, economies of scale and willingness to make the cluster system work are some things that we can take into account in those circumstances because it is really important that the cluster system does work effectively. It is still relatively early days, that is the truth. Q396 Mr Davies: On clusters, Secretary of State, I rather share the impression that Mr Burden has just expressed and, again, I think we are not alone, having been to Pakistan, that the cluster system, whatever its attraction, is not working very well in practice. I think part of the problem is that one agency does not like to be given orders by another agency, particularly where there are histories, as there often are with United Nations systems, of rivalries and turf wars in the past. Another problem is I do not think people brought up in one agency are used to taking responsibility for the actions of other agencies, or used to giving instructions to people from other agencies. I think it is very difficult. Maybe we should pursue it and see whether the next time round it works better. In answer to your question to the Committee just now, if we got rid of clusters what would we do because you do not want to go back to the old sectoral system, my answer would be this, build up OCHA and OCHA would be responsible for taking charge of any of these situations and putting in the people who know the capacity of the whole United Nations system and being familiar with dealing with bilateral donors and also with NGOs, and they would appoint the management structure to take charge in these areas and would have to determine tasks, to allocate tasks and iron out conflicts within the United Nations system at least. If they were doing that, they would have the credibility, I think, to be able to negotiate necessary degrees of co-operation with the host government on the one side and with the NGOs on the other. That would be an alternative structure. We are not going to solve this problem this afternoon, but I put that forward in answer to your question to the Committee. Hilary Benn: It is very helpful. Chairman: The Secretary of State is here to answer our questions. Q397 Mr Davies: I do not know about that, Chairman, I think this is a dialogue between the executive within the executive branch and Parliament. Hilary Benn: I must say, I am an enthusiastic advocate of that approach. I know that is not how select committees always want to operate. I often sit here and want to ask the question, "What do you think?" because that is how we are going to do it better. I am a pragmatist on this, having seen for myself at the famous meeting in Khartoum when it finally dawned on me that there was a whacking great gap in the system - I see I may have told the Committee before - asking up and down the table, "Who is leading on camp management of water and sanitation?", and the issue just bounced back and forth as everyone looked to someone else to say, "It is not us, is it you?" It went like that up and down the table. I drew the conclusion from that, "Blimey, it is not working, we need to do something". That was one of the motivating factors behind the original reform speech that I made. I want clusters to work, but if they do not work, and I still genuinely think it is early days, then I am not at all averse to them looking at what needs to be done to make sure the system does work. Again, that is the test, does it work or does it not work to bring help to people who need it? That is really the only thing we should be concerned about. This process of change is a very difficult one because you are asking the system to move from how it was with all the individual roles and histories of agencies, and so on and so forth, to a very different way of operating. Let us be honest, not everybody likes the change. If we can get it by encouraging people to work together, that is great. If we need a more directive system, then I will not be averse to it if it is required. Q398 Mr Davies: Secretary of State, you have told us this afternoon about DFID's contingency plans for the necessarily unanticipated disaster emergency challenges, and you have done a lot yourself to make sure there is an international provision in it, in particular setting up the CERF. I think you deserve a lot of credit for that one. At the same time, we are providing long-term bilateral aid to many of the countries where these disasters, it so happens, do often tend to arise, and there are many multilateral and bilateral aid programmes in many of these countries, the World Bank, the European Union and so forth. I wonder to what extent DFID is trying to persuade multilateral donors, other bilateral donors and, indeed, the governments who are recipients of these flows of aid, to do a bit more about disaster prevention. That is to say, maybe investing in seismic warning systems, maybe investing in flood defence programmes, whatever, there are many things you can do to provide for some of these disasters, very few of which are done. Some of which are counsels of perfection, like instructing the building industry only to build according to earthquake standards as it would be much too expensive for developing countries. What are you doing to try to ensure that where possible provision is made in advance to defend local people against these natural disasters? Hilary Benn: Because it is a very important issue, the first thing we have done is to say that we will set aside ten per cent of the funding for each major disaster to address precisely that question. I know that is after the event, but it does then open up a conversation with the country in question, "We are prepared to put in some money. Can we ally that with some of the money that you will be putting in?" and they too will be funding the reconstruction process. Q399 Mr Davies: It is not just reconstruction, it is defences against repeat disasters. Hilary Benn: Indeed, but in the case of would it be possible to rebuild schools, for instance, in Pakistan in a way that made them less likely to collapse because a lot of children tragically were killed when the structures just fell on top of them. "You are going to have to rebuild a school. Can we give you some support? Can we have some technical expertise? In what ways can we assist you in taking decisions about how you reconstruct which will minimise the impact?" If it has been a flood, it is building shelters on higher grounds so that people have got somewhere to go. It happens that I have seen for myself some work that we have funded in Bangladesh because there you know it is going to flood every single year when the waters melt and the shorelines are inundated. In other more modest examples, if you are building a new road system, do you build big enough culverts to cope with the run-off of rainwater that might otherwise accumulate and cause problems? I think we have some way to go. As far as the multilateral system is concerned - I do not know whether Michael or Phil would like to comment - I would say all of us need to do more on this front. Q400 Mr Davies: What DFID is doing now, and we have been very precise, is we take ten per cent of our disbursements in relation to a specific natural disaster and say we are prepared to add that to a programme of long-term defence against that particular natural disaster to which that country is vulnerable. The second half of the question you have asked Mr Mosselmans' view on, is what we are doing vis-à-vis multilateral donors, over whom we have some influence because we contribute, and the other ones would be the World Bank and the European system, by which I mean both Europe aid and ECHO. Mr Mosselmans: We have issued this new strategy paper about how DFID is going to step up a gear in disaster risk reduction, so it has become a more important part of DFID policy and thinking. One of the things we are doing with our own country programmes in disaster risk countries is making sure that in our country strategy for those countries the DFID country team articulates whether there is scope for DFID to do more in disaster risk reduction and, if so, what. It becomes a question they have to answer in our country strategy. With regards to the multilateral system, we are stepping up our investment in those agencies, like the UN's international strategy for disaster reduction, which are active in this area, a likely prevention consortium which is housed at the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies. We are also advocating internationally that multilateral donors should give more attention to this area, particularly, for example, with the World Bank encouraging both at a national level and at central level in Washington that disaster risk reduction should form a bigger part of poverty reduction strategies in countries that are prone to disasters. That is something which DFID country teams will advocate when there is consultation around the board. Q401 Mr Davies: Mr Mosselmans, your phrase, "We are advocating internationally ..." is very vague. Have you specifically raised this problem in concrete terms with the World Bank and the two European Union agencies I have referred to? Have you got specific answers from them about their intentions in that area? Mr Mosselmans: Yes. Q402 Mr Davies: The answer to both my questions is yes? Mr Mosselmans: Yes. Q403 Joan Ruddock: On the point of disaster risk reduction and the fact that you were saying that in-country teams are taking account of this, does that include climate change as opposed to just those countries where there have already been disasters which are fairly predictable? Hilary Benn: It will do now since the publication of the White Paper because we want to increase the amount of work, as you know, that we do on this because in some of these humanitarian disasters it is very likely that we are dealing with the consequences of climate change, for example it stops raining in places and people otherwise starve. Yes, you will see that increasingly featuring in the work that we do through our country assistance plans, and that is also a job for the international community. If it would be helpful to provide the Committee with a bit more information in answer to your question how specifically we have --- Q404 Mr Davies: I was thinking, Secretary of State, of putting it down at Parliamentary Questions saying, "On what occasions have you communicated with the World Bank and the European Commission on these subjects and what answers have you received?" but if you would like to take this opportunity to do so, that would be very helpful. Hilary Benn: I would like to offer the Committee a letter if that would be helpful. Q405 Mr Davies: That would be very kind. I am very grateful. If I can move to another matter. I have written to you about this, by the way, so you will have had some warning of this, but I did not mention that I was going to raise it today. Opinions may differ about the wisdom of your predecessor having decided to put no national flags or no DFID labels on any of our interventions, whether they be disaster relief, emergency relief, or whether they be long-term development aid. I do not necessarily want to get into that one today, but I do want to draw your attention to the most extraordinary experience we had when we went to Pakistan the other day. We found that hillside after hillside was covered with excellent shelters of wood and metal, very well conceived in my view, which are being provided, and they are all being paid for by the British taxpayer, every single one of them, 100 % of them, but they are being delivered by an NGO, the Norwegian Refugee Council, which we commissioned for that purpose and their overheads, who are also making a very substantial contribution, by the way. All of these shelters, without a single exception, had in large letters "Norwegian Refugee Council" all over them and not a single mention of the fact that we contributed anything at all. Anybody going to those particular valleys would think, "What wonderful people the Norwegians are. How wonderfully generous their taxpayers are". They are wonderful people. I do not know how generous their taxpayers are, no doubt they are. They would all say, "We have not had anything from the Brits and we thought we had a long-term historical relationship with Great Britain". I put it to you that whether or not it is right to be so modest in our aid programmes in general, it cannot be right to allow other people to take credit for our generosity in the blatant way in which they are doing so in Pakistan at this particular moment. Hilary Benn: I have to say, I have some sympathy for the point you make, Mr Davies, and thank you for your letter. It is precisely because of that that we are changing our approach. This is an issue I had raised with the team in response to earlier disasters. In the end, I think it is about striking a balance. I know this is an issue which divides opinion very, very sharply between those who take the view that it does not matter where it comes from, the fact is it is given and one should not be labelling it. On the other hand, I think it is important for everyone to understand that we are doing our bit. Certainly in Pakistan, people were very conscious of what we had done on search and rescue, all the people I have ever spoken to were aware of that, the contribution that Chinooks have made and the great job of the military who turned up and built the warm shelters. I did have a bit of a go at one of our partner agencies that had incorrectly taken credit for some supplies saying that they had provided them when we had provided them, and I took them to task over that. Therefore, what we are going to do is some appropriate branding. In the end, you have got to strike a balance. You do not want to be crass, you do not want to be undignified and, in certain circumstances, going back to Ms Ruddock's point, you do not want to put people delivering things at risk if there are people in the area who would have a go at aid which came from Britain, so you have to make a judgment in those circumstances. I am in favour of modestly appropriate explanation as to where the support came from, and that is what the new arrangements we are trying to put in place will seek to do. Next time you go on a visit, we would welcome a view as to whether you think we have got it right. Q406 Ann McKechin: I would say that perhaps we should be encouraging our partners and NGOs not to have such relentless branding in the first place. Sometimes it is very insensitive. Hilary Benn: When it is on every sack and every blanket, I would say that is over the top, frankly, but if you have got a group of camps with tents you could have a sign up at the entrance saying, "These tents are being funded or this camp is being provided by whoever". It is about an appropriate balance. Q407 Mr Davies: I am glad our representations to you are not in vain. Hilary Benn: They are never in vain. Q408 Chairman: I have to say, we did finish up with the villagers thanking us warmly as we left. Hilary Benn: Did they think you were Norwegian! Chairman: Absolutely. Mr Davies: They were surprised to hear that we were not. Q409 John Battle: I had the great privilege of travelling along the road with the chief engineer of Muzaffarabad who rightly commented that quite a lot of NGOs, and, indeed, governments, the USA had been noted in particular, had got huge posters and hoardings on the roadside claiming credit for what they were doing. He did note rightly that they were all in English and the people of Kashmir did not read or speak English, so he wondered what the point of it was. I tend to share his view and think that we can go too far in branding and we should make a much more international point. On the other hand, if people claim credit for us, and people do not know that we are giving when we are doing, then we do end up when it comes to appeals where people think their contributions, and indeed their governments' contributions, are not as worthwhile. Hilary Benn: Yes. Q410 Chairman: I think that point has been well made. The other thing which has been raised with us is the transition between humanitarian aid and development aid and the fact that they cross over. We had a number of examples, not only in this inquiry but in previous ones. The one which occurred to me was in Malawi when we were looking at the Food Programme but we were also discussing how Malawi could produce food more efficiently. We had lots of discussions about more appropriate crops and more appropriate irrigation and it was not entirely clear that in dealing with the food crisis we were helping to solve the next one. We had similar situations - we have not been there but people have told us - in the Sahel where desertification was moving but people were adapting and changing and the aid did not always take account of people's lifestyle effects and so on. Also, in the DRC where in the conflict situation, and it was not a criticism of DFID but of other agencies, that humanitarian relief was being withdrawn on the grounds that the conflict was over, it is a debatable point, and development had not started. I want to ask you how you approach that way of synchronising the transition from humanitarian aid in the immediate aftermath to development and ensuring that not only DFID, which I think generally seems to do it rather better, but the other agencies with which we are operating, international agencies, other donors, also take this approach so that you are not just replacing what was there, you are ensuring that what you do next takes account of the changes that have taken place. Hilary Benn: This is an enormous challenge, not least because the circumstances differ in different emergencies. I think it is really important when you get to that second phase that the government of the country leads that process. That is the most important thing. Therefore, the relationship that donors have may be slightly different from the relationship that there was in the immediate humanitarian phase depending on the government's capacity to cope, where others might have to be coming in and doing things. That is the first thing. Secondly, as far as DFID is concerned, this would involve very close co-operation between colleagues here and those in country offices, because they are running the development programme and we need to talk very carefully to ensure that transition works effectively. To take a very practical example, drought and feeding people, because if you think of northern Kenya or Somalia or Malawi, the example which you gave, it is how you break out of the cycle of destitution because you can have a very effective system and that is the first priority, to make sure people do not die, but if you are just entirely dependent on food aid and water and you have got no other means of re-establishing your existence, the rest of your life is going to be like that. That is why our most important pilot project on this front is the Ethiopian Safety Net scheme, which I think we have discussed in the Committee before, and I went to see that in operation for myself in Arba Minch at the start of the year. That is a mixture of food and cash, and I have to say that the beneficiaries, who I spoke to on the mountainside, were very enthusiastic about it because it gave them the option: most of the money was spent on food, some of the money was given in cash for work, they were extending the road and improving the water supply, but they were able to save a bit to start to acquire back the things they had had to sell when everything went wrong, whether it was clothing, household utensils, animals, a plough, an ox or whatever. I have just approved what in the DFID jargon is known as a project concept note for a scheme in Kenya. This is approval to go ahead and plan one, precisely because of the impact of the drought, and that will come back to me at some point later. We are also working on a proposal in Zambia because it is not good enough just to deal with the immediate consequences. The government of the country needs to ask itself the question, "How are we going to deal with this problem in the long term?", particularly in some parts of the world if this is the manifestation of climate change at work, and if it is going to continue not to rain in the north-eastern part of Kenya where are people going to go and live? Q411 Chairman: May I raise the point that you had plans there and, of course, nobody knows whether you have lean years and then it recovers, in other words what the pattern will be. My understanding of one of the examples is that when you can see a drought coming you encourage livestock farmers effectively to dispose of their livestock and make alternative arrangements before the livestock finish up dying. At least they dispose of an asset that can provide them with some kind of cushion, but if they wait until the drought has hit they lose their asset. Is that a problem between the donors and the government of the country having different sets of priorities or is it the community? Why does it not happen? Hilary Benn: If I were a farmer in those circumstances I might be inclined to dispose of the livestock while they were still alive and I could get a price for them, provided I was confident that somebody would come along and help me to restock after the crisis was over. I think you would have to provide people - and I am thinking aloud here - with some certainty of what the deal was, what the package of support was going to be, so that you could then take decisions on a rational basis. In the absence of that farmers are, of course, going to do their level best to try and keep their livestock alive until the point comes when they cannot, they have lost everything. I think of the farmer I met in Wajhid whose animals had died, he had been forced to come to the town and he was surviving by collecting brushwood and selling it to keep his family together and two of his children were in the hospital at the time. He had no basis on which to restart his life. I think these are precisely the issues that countries are going to have to think through, but that is going to be quite a challenge to put in place that kind of system. Q412 Chairman: Is that the problem, the capacity within the government, or is it for international government and agencies to put a programme together? Hilary Benn: In some countries it is going to be a pretty hard task when a drought comes just to make sure that people get fed and have enough water, but if this is going to be a cycle that comes and goes then at least it opens up a discussion about can we find a more effective way of coping with this in the longer term. That is what the safety net scheme in Ethiopia is about, because, by mixing food and cash, the cash which buys food encourages local markets and that is a good thing as opposed to all the food aid being imported, and it gives people just that teeny bit of choice. If you can just save those pennies you have got the means to get your foot back on the ladder. That is what it is about. In the case of Somalia, when I visited the camp in Wajhid 11,000 people had been living there for eight months. The menfolk had all gone because it had just started to rain again; they had gone home desperately to try and plant to see whether it would be possible to raise sufficient of a harvest this year to call the families back. In the meantime the wives and the children were living there, existing on the handouts from the international community. The only bright spot in those circumstances was that there was a school for the kids. For the children who made up a good proportion of the 11,000 it was the first chance they had ever had in their lives to go to school. It shows just how difficult it is for people trying to survive when it is not raining. Q413 Joan Ruddock: I want to turn to staffing, because we have heard quite a lot in the inquiry about the difficulties of retaining staff, the high burn-out rates and staff turnover in the humanitarian field, and also that UNDP, I believe, were specifically going to attempt to train people for this function. I just wondered what contribution you thought DFID might make to solving the staffing problems and how you as a department face those problems, especially when you have a reduction in head count going on. Hilary Benn: On the latter point, we do not have a problem within DFID in getting and retaining really excellent people to do this work. I have dealt with, sadly, a number of disasters and emergencies now and I genuinely cannot speak too highly of the quality of the people who have supported me; it is just astonishing. I think the Committee paid a visit to the emergency room. People get going really fast. Who else could charter a DC10 on Boxing Day to take search and rescue teams to the Bam earthquake? I would not know where to charter a DC10 on Boxing Day. These people did it. It is amazing. As regards humanitarian co-ordinators, Ms Ruddock, you are absolutely right, and one of the proposals that I made in my original speech was that we need more of them, we need better quality and now there are, I think, 20 who are in the process of being selected and trained up, which is going to be quite a significant increase. The truth is that it is a very different set of skills you need to run a humanitarian emergency than you need to be a resident co-ordinator. In parts of the world disaster strikes and the resident co-ordinator is suddenly told, "Right: you are the humanitarian co-ordinator". It is a completely different job. One is running long term development programmes and the other is getting the stuff in and getting organised quickly. You need different folk. DFID cannot solve those problems because partly it is about recognition within the UN system. I think we should celebrate them more. It is an extraordinary job. You meet the most amazing people. Some of them go from disaster to disaster and it is pretty taxing and wearing. It is to do with their pay, it is to do with their career prospects. Those are reforms you need, it seems to me, within the UN system itself, but good humanitarian co-ordinators are like gold dust and when they do a good job, boy, it makes all the difference. I do not know whether there is anything Michael or Phil want to add from their perspective on this. Mr Mosselmans: I think you are right, it is an issue. We hope that if the cluster system that you discussed earlier works then the global cluster leads should, together with the care agencies working in that sector, develop plans as to how they can strengthen capacity in the sector. They have put out a $40 million appeal to donors to try and strengthen capacities in nine sectors and we will make a proportionate contribution to that appeal to help the clusters to start developing capacity. We also invest in developing agency capacity both through our institutional strategy partnerships with key UN agencies and Red Cross agencies and also through our funding through the Conflict and Humanitarian Fund for NGOs, so we are doing a bit of funding to help agencies to strengthen their capacity. In the short term, because it will take a while to develop that capacity, when there is a crisis, like in the Pakistan earthquake that you went to, as you know, we are prepared to inject personnel from our database to help agencies to step up a gear in their efforts, where we can find the right personnel and we can see a gap. Q414 Joan Ruddock: Just as a supplementary, are you able to find women as well as men for this task? Hilary Benn: It is a good question. I am trying to think how many humanitarian colleagues I have met who are women. Mr Mosselmans: There are not enough women humanitarian co-ordinators. Hilary Benn: There you are: there is the answer. Joan Ruddock: But are efforts being made to try to find more women to redress the imbalance? Q415 Chairman: I think, Secretary of State, as I recall it as a visitor to the emergency room, the first person who went out to Pakistan from here was a woman. Hilary Benn: Oh, you are talking about DFID? I was reflecting more generally. Q416 Joan Ruddock: No, I think in the UN system. In the UN system in general there is a poor gender balance. That is my observation. Hilary Benn: Fair point. Joan Ruddock: So perhaps when representations are made you may bear that in mind. Thank you. Q417 Chairman: Secretary of State, I rebuked Quentin Davies earlier on for answering a question from you. I was not really rebuking him other than that he was asked to ask a question, which he duly did subsequently, but you said that you sometimes want to tell the Committee or pose the questions to the Committee, so I am giving you an opportunity to do so at this stage. Are there some specific things in the light of this inquiry on humanitarian response to disasters that you think we have touched on where you feel there are particular areas where the Committee could be helpful? Hilary Benn: I really do welcome the focus that you have put on this because it has been my experience which has got me passionate and exercised about this because I think collectively we can do better. Like a lot of the UN systems, you would not have designed it like this if you were starting, would you? What I am hoping will come out of the inquiry is that you will tell us what you think we have got right, what we have not yet got right, and what more we should be pushing on. If you have got advice and views about the effectiveness of what DFID does as an organisation in responding to disasters, please say so. I know you will, but I am just encouraging you because we can do better by learning. The same is true of the international system. I suppose I am interested in your assessment of whether you think the cluster system is going to work because it is the question I ask the team all the time, "How is it doing?" I do not know if you have had a chance to look at how the Common Humanitarian Funds have been working in the DRC and Sudan because I think that is really important to do at the level of a country, what we have tried to do through the CERF. I do not know whether in the course of your inquiry you have received any comments about how they are working. The third thing would be how you think we might more effectively encourage the bits of the system that feel a bit uneasy about the change to embrace it a bit more. Part of this process is about encouraging people to move in a particular direction. If you were starting absolutely with a blank piece of paper, you would design a very, very different system. My interest in the end is about making sure it is an international emergency response system which works effectively. Q418 Chairman: I think one of the things that has been raised with us is you have got the United Nations which has the capacity and, ultimately, is very, very important and delivers, but does it in its own inimitable style which creates frustrations. You have then got the Red Cross which, again, does its own thing and does it extremely well, although it is uneven. You have then got a whole raft of NGOs, which could literally be anything from one woman and her dog to a massive capacity, and then you have got donor countries. In the context, for example, of the Pakistan earthquake, which is what we looked at, it was clear that in the end the United Nations were very important, but at the beginning it was the response of DFID, some of the NGOs, and the government of Pakistan's capacity, and not every country would have a government with that capacity, which really made the difference. It is unfair to say the UN did not stop people from dying, it did, but in the first few weeks it did not, everybody else did. I find that it feels like the difficulty of getting hold of this is to think through it any way, that you can get all these multi-tiers to operate in all aid which protects their territory but delivers what could be done in the end. If you inhibit the flexibility of any of those organisations, you may finish up being worse off. That is the real irony, or the real difficulty, of too much co-ordination if it inhibits flexibility and rapid response. Hilary Benn: It is a task of juggling. That is what strikes me most forcefully when I have visited these disasters and talked to people. You see some agencies are there and have got there very quickly and others have not got their act together and there are gaps. Therefore, why the cluster system has got to work is that we have got to do that to make sure we do not have gaps because we have got a range of needs. My experience has taught me that we just need more direction in the system, frankly. If you take the analogy of how we respond to a fire - it was a point I made in a speech, but it does not work completely - if you set up a fire brigade on the basis of the way in which the humanitarian system has operated in the past, with different organisations responsible for the petrol, the pump, getting the ladders, making sure there are hoses and appealing for cash to buy the petrol before you can get going and so on, and no-one has overall control, they sort of reach an agreement that they are going to go to that fire and that is a very well funded fire and this fire gets no attention and no money at all. I caricature a bit, but it makes the point that is roughly the system that we have had in the past. It is about a bit more structure and order, clarity about roles and responsibilities, secure funding, equal funding, so that if you lost your home and you have got nothing to eat, you are going to get looked after even if there are no TV cameras and no-one has ever heard of where you live, as opposed to, in the case of the Tsunami, where there was an extraordinary response because it was on everybody's screens, it was Christmas, sadly people from Britain died and it was a disaster of biblical proportions. That is why the Tsunami was the most well-funded humanitarian emergency. Working through the practical steps that need to be taken is what this is about and enabling OCHA to take on the role that we have asked them to do by giving them the job of co-ordination, but if you do not give them the tools, they cannot do the job. That is the point. What we are going to try and do is give them the tools, but, in my view, we have got some way to go and no doubt you will tell us what you think. Chairman: Secretary of State, thank you very much indeed. I think that was helpful. I wish to assure you, Secretary of State, whilst we ask you the questions, we are also happy to listen to your suggestions. I think the constructive relationship the Committee has between ourselves and your Department is trying to add value to a very important area of government. It has enormous cross-party support and public support, but because the task is so large, there is no reason why we cannot all sometimes help find solutions, and that is what we try to do. Thank you very much. |