Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-29)
MR GARETH
THOMAS MP, MR
ROB RUDY
AND MS
LAURA KELLY
7 MARCH 2007
Q20 Mr Clappison: Minister, you accepted
at the beginning that this had not been the Community's finest
hour and we have heard the catalogue of problems which have taken
place. Your defence to this question seems to be, if I can summarise
it, "We did our best. Things are getting a bit better now,
albeit late in the day, but all along we were a lone voice"?
That is an expression which you have used on a number of occasions
to the Committee and the impression which it creates is that there
was, if not obstruction then indifference on the part of the Commission
and other Member States, and that this was a problem for the UK
all along. Taxpayers and people who are concerned about developing
countries, African and Caribbean countries with whom we have a
link, will be concerned to hear this. Do you think you have overcome
this problem of indifference now on the part of other Members,
because the way you have presented this to us today is that this
money has been spent, the UK has been interested but we have not
been able to get the result that we wanted?
Mr Thomas: As I have said, Mr
Clappison, I think we have seen a substantial improvement in the
way the EC allocates its aid, both in general terms and in the
case specifically of the SFA, and there is no doubt in my mind
that if there had been a larger number of countries sharing our
concerns and agitating in the way that we were, some of the changes
which did take place might have happened quicker. Certainly I
think countries have shared with us an effort to make sure that
the sugar transitional assistance which is being offered does
not have the same problems at the outset as the banana assistance
did, and in fact the Caribbean countries, albeit they would like
more assistance from the Commission, nevertheless are not complaining
about the way that assistance is likely to be provided. They welcome
the fact that in many cases it is likely to be provided as budget
support, and that does suggest that the lessons have been learned
and we have succeeded in getting more engagement on this question
from other Member States.
Q21 Mr Clappison: Can you be confident
that these problems which you describe, which to me seem to derive
from a flawed system, are not going to occur again?
Mr Thomas: I think there was a
flawed system in the way the EC was allocating aid. It was a very
centralised system. There has been a whole series of reforms.
We welcomed those reforms and they contributed to the improvement
in the way the SFA is operating. There are still changes we want
to see in the way the EC operates, but the next key example on
which this Committee and taxpayers more generally will be able
to judge the improvement or not in the way the EC operates is
the package of assistance for the sugar protocol countries, and
I am confident that we are seeing significant improvements in
the way that is being offered.
Q22 Jim Dobbin: It is one thing to
encourage countries to form a plan, but it is an underestimation
really not to accept that they may not have the capacity to fulfil
the necessary criteria to know how to do this. Do you think that
is something really which should have been thought of beforehand,
and is that not one of the real lessons in this whole process?
Mr Thomas: Yes, I think it is.
We have argued, not only in the context of the SFA but in the
context of how the EC provides aid more generally, that it needed
to strengthen the capacity of its own delegations in-country so
that they could provide support to countries more effectively.
That is certainly one of the lessons. In recent times we have
seen, as I said in response to Ms Clark, a significant improvement
in the willingness of the Commission to prioritise improving the
capacity of delegations, and that is a very welcome thing. I think
if it had been in place earlier we might not have had to provide
the technical assistance which we did through our own Caribbean
programme to help both EC delegations and the countries concerned
to get access to the resources, to design their countries' strategies
and start to deal with the issues.
Q23 Richard Younger-Ross: Can I just
follow on from that? I am slightly puzzled by the response you
made to Mr Dobbin, but also comments you made earlier regarding
the fact that the Caribbean do not seem to be speaking about this
subject. I visited the Caribbean 15 months ago, Jamaica, and it
was made very clear to us the problems they were facing at the
time, and I cannot think of any Member of this House who has not
been to a reception and spoken to someone from the Caribbean who
has not heard of the difficulties they face over the sugar regime
or over bananas, so to hear that this is not being raised in Brussels
and that Brussels does not appear to be aware of this I find quite
staggering, to be honest, Minister. There is an EU delegation
out there. Do they go out there with the view that they see these
adverts for holidays in Jamaica and it is a great Caribbean idyll,
or do they actually go out there and talk to the real farmers
and find out what the difficulties are?
Mr Thomas: Well, I do not think
that is a fair characterisation of EC staff, or indeed of any
donor staff who operate in the Caribbean. I think the staff who
have been there have sought to do the best job that they could
do. I think they faced a number of constraints. Those are constraints
that Member States had imposed upon the Commission, such as the
financial regulations which required, each year, expenditure to
be approved for the following year and required multi-signatures
on each new aid project. We have managed to achieve reforms to
the financial regulation which have helped to speed up disbursement
and make progress, and it is certainly true that the capacity
of delegations is improving, as I said in answer to Mr Dobbin
and Ms Clark, and we have sought to help the delegations where
it was needed and to help countries have their voices heard. I
think you are right on sugar. Precisely because of the concerns
about the way the SFA had operated, the Caribbean and a number
of other countries have been very clear in their comments to the
Commission to make sure that the lessons have been learnt and,
as I say, I think lessons have been learnt for the delivery of
sugar transitional systems.
Q24 Richard Younger-Ross: You say
lessons have been learnt, but we still do not have the report
published. How can we know lessons have been learnt if the document
is not there which shows us that they actually understand what
they are doing? But we have covered that before. Moving on, this
sorry saga seems to be symptomatic of the European Commission's
overall capacity to manage what is a very large development fund
effectively. Much of the development spending, doubling of aid,
is to be spent through the EU. What assurances can you give us
that that is going to be well-placed by being put through the
SFA?
Mr Thomas: I think there is a
significant number of projects which are supported by the EC which
have delivered on their results. Let me give you one example.
It is not from the Caribbean, it is from India, where a programme
which the EC is helping to finance with us and with the government
of India has helped to make sure an extra 15 million children
are in primary school. It is a very effective programme, it is
well-regarded both by the government of India and by those who
monitor these things. So I do not think it is fair to say that
EC assistance has continued to be poor. There have been very substantial
reforms and the evidence, if you like, of the improvement in the
EC's performance is captured both in terms of the House of Lords'
EU Committees' detailed investigation of the performance of EC
aid and also by the OECD's Development Assistance Committee, which
looks at the performance of a whole variety of donors, including
the EC, and they have commented positively on the improved quality
of EC aid.
Chairman: Thank you, Minister. On that
subject, I am conscious of the fact that this is the 200th anniversary
of the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, which in fact deposited
many of the people in the Caribbean Islands against their will
and they are, in a sense, suffering from that and have suffered
from that for many, many years. So I think there is a heightened
interest in how we repay our debt to many of the people who are
in these communities. It is clear, from the media attention and
the reports and television programmes about the banana regime,
that we have a very, very long way to go to make people believe
that we are actually treating them fairly, and that the EU is
helping us to treat, the people who rely on these products, or
helping them reach a different economic situation. Let us move
on from that topic and turn to a sad topic upon which we should
have to call your Department to this Committee, because at one
time we were writing letters of commendation to DFID about its
adherence to proper scrutiny processes. So we are going to move
on to look at the question of the Department's scrutiny performance,
which I think I did tell you is statistically the worst department.
Although it is not necessarily comparable with other departments
which deal with much more business, statistically its percentage
failures are higher than any other department of government at
this moment.
Q25 Mr Heathcoat-Amory: Minister,
if I could ask you about a particular scrutiny episode which worries
us, this Committee has taken an interest in the EU Africa strategy,
and indeed the Government has given a lot of emphasis to its relations
with Africa, and we made it clear that we wanted to scrutinise
the review of that strategy at the December 2006 European Council
but we received nothing, instead of which we received a letter
in January 2007 not even from your Department but from the Minister
for Europe containing a brief description about what had gone
on. This is a major scrutiny breakdown. We do not scrutinise these
things for our own amusement, we do it because we are asked to
do it by the House of Commons on behalf of the public. How can
your Department overlook this important procedure, particularly
when we had made it clear that we wanted an explanatory memorandum
and a sight of the documents before the European Council, rather
than a brief letter from another department after it was all over?
Mr Thomas: Perhaps, Mr Heathcoat-Amory,
before I reply to your specific question I could comment very
generally on a more overarching point. I acknowledge that there
has been a dip in performance by the Department and I apologise
to the Committee for that. I welcome the fact that there has been
significantly more interest from the Committee in the work of
the Department and I recognise we need to raise our game on this
issue. I have asked, as an urgent priority, the new recently appointed
head of our European Union Department to look at this as a matter
of some urgency, to make sure that we do improve our performance
to you. I also asked for a thorough check on whether or not we
owed the Committee any further information at this stage, and
there is one further letter which we do owe the Committee and
which we will issue shortly as a result. On the specifics, Mr
Heathcoat-Amory, of your question, in terms of the EU Africa document
I am very happy to provide further information to the Committee,
given the Committee's interest. The EU Africa document is a document
which does not just refer to development assistance, it refers
to a whole variety of political engagement with the African Continent,
and therefore it is appropriate, on occasion, for the Foreign
Office to respond to the Committee on those issues, but I will
very happily provide, through the Chairman, the Committee with
more information about our view of that document.
Q26 Chairman: Can I be quite clear,
what you are saying as an excuse is that though we expected a
response and assessment from your Department, really it should
have been the Foreign Office all along? That is what you seem
to be inferring.
Mr Thomas: Well, I will check
on that issue. My understanding is that if Mr Hoon replied—and
there is a clear expectation that the Foreign Office would reply,
but I am very happy to, as I say, respond to the Committee on
the development dimension of the EU Africa report separately.
Q27 Chairman: I think that is what
we did expect, and we made that plain at the time. I do not know
where the misinterpretation of our communication came from.
Mr Thomas: If we are at fault,
Chairman, then I apologise and I will put that right.
Q28 Chairman: I want to raise a further
breach. It did seem at the end of last year that your processes
did collapse. The Department certainly seemed to take its eye
off the ball, as we said. There might be an internal explanation
for that, and we would certainly like to hear it. There were two
simultaneous scrutiny overrides caused by what you described as
internal administrative errors, and the word used was "oversight",
and then an important letter to us of late December, which we
received only in February, and only then after we had enquired
as to its whereabouts. Was all this the fault of your private
office or of the scrutiny processes within your Department at
a lower level? If you could maybe explain to us what caused it,
and then what action have you taken to ensure that these administrative
failings do not reoccur?
Mr Thomas: Chairman, ultimately
it is my responsibility, regardless of where the particular problem
lies. I take that responsibility extremely seriously and that
is why I would be very willing to offer an apology to the Committee
for the drop in our performance to you. I have asked, as I say,
the recently appointed head of our European Union Department to
look at this issue as a matter of some urgency to make sure that
we do get back to where we were before, which I think was very
good in the way in which we responded to your Committee.
Q29 Chairman: Are you indicating,
because it does seem that if there is a new head of section that
there was a post missing, or a member of staff missing, or the
structures were never there?
Mr Thomas: I am admitting to you
that the structures clearly were not operating effectively enough,
and that is my responsibility and I have taken action to try and
make sure that it does not happen again.
Chairman: Some people might comment that
it is a refreshing matter to hear a minister take ministerial
responsibility. It is not offered on the floor of the House as
often as people would like to see it offered, so I thank you for
that and I am sure our Committee thank you for it. Hopefully it
will lead to us sending future letters, as we used to do, saying
that your Department was to be commended for its adherence to
proper scrutiny processes. Thank you for attending and for your
frankness.
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