Examination of Witnesses (Questions 50-59)
MR GARETH
THOMAS MP AND
MR DONAL
BROWN
21 JUNE 2007
Q50 Chairman: This Committee is not driven
by media or public attention but by what we consider to be the
issues which need to be addressed. I think the change behind you
is not indicative of anything other than it appears that good
news does not attract as big a crowd as bad news. I do not think
you should take it as anything other than perhaps a positive sign.
Mr Thomas: I recognise the most
important people in the room are those in front of me.
Q51 Chairman: Flattery will get you
somewhere, I suppose! Thank you both for staying on for this session
of evidence. As you know we decided to do a specific investigation
of Vietnam. I think the reason was the programme budget had risen
very sharply and we wanted to know why and what added value DFID
had to bring. Also it was not a country with which the UK had
traditionally had an association, although I think some of us
had the mistaken idea that it was a francophone country, which
was not much in evidence, I have to say, when we were there. I
wonder if I could very directly say at the start, poverty has
dropped from 58% in 1993 to 19.5% in terms of the usual definition.
Why have we expanded our programme so rapidly at a time when it
would appear that most of the donors are scaling down? I do not
say that in a negative sense. What was it that prompted DFID to
believe that we should increase our programme dramatically, as
we have done, from £15 million to £55 million with an
on-going commitment of £50 million a year and what do we
think that DFID had to offer that other donors were not providing?
Mr Thomas: Mr Bruce, can I firstly
put on the record that I am joined by Donal Brown who is head
of our programme in-country. I should also tell the Committee
formally that yesterday at the All-Party Group on Vietnam I launched
the consultation exercise that we are engaging in on the future
of our aid programme to Vietnam. No final decisions on our aid
programme to Vietnam will be taken until the Committee reports
and ministers have had the chance to consider the views of the
Committee. Why are we still in Vietnam? We are still there essentially
because of the scale of the poverty there is in Vietnam. It is
still a low-income country, albeit that considerable economic
progress has been made. There are over 14 million people who are
still poor, 45% of Vietnam's population are still living below
two dollars a day. I suppose my essential point is there are both
still a considerable number of very poor people who need our assistance,
and those people who have been lifted out of the extreme poor
section are still extremely vulnerable and, therefore, need our
on-going support. One of my officials described the progress that
Vietnam has made as being a bit like going from North Korea to
Singapore—in economic terms the pace has been so great—but
I think what is perhaps wrong with that analogy is the scale of
the governance challenge that still remains in Vietnam. There
is a corruption challenge but there is also, for example, a lack
of independent courts in-country, so there is a huge problem.
The capacity of the government to deliver the change it wants
is not as strong as it would like and as we would recognise. What
we bring to the table is very strong technical expertise, both
in governance but also in social inclusion as well. The large
numbers of extreme poor who still remain, do tend to be concentrated
amongst ethnic minorities, for example, and very marginalised
communities and we have an advantage amongst the donor community
in the expertise we can bring there. Because we are willing to
provide aid through budget support, our aid and our support is
particularly appreciated by the Vietnamese authorities as a result.
Q52 Richard Burden: Can I first place
on record my particular thanks to Donal Brown for providing me
with some clothes from his own wardrobe when my suitcase did not
arrive. It is important to get that on the record!
Mr Thomas: I will check afterwards
whether our aid programme was used for that purpose!
Q53 Richard Burden: Can I ask a little
bit about, in a sense, the good news of Vietnam moving very rapidly
towards middle-income status but also the challenges that presents
for us as donors. Most donors appear to be planning to scale back
their programmes very significantly, or to withdraw altogether,
following Vietnam's attainment of that status. DFID has talked
about a "graduation" strategy to deal with that issue.
Could you tell us something about what that means? Is it a euphemism
for withdrawal or does it mean something else? How do you see
that developing? I understand your point, and it is good to know
that you were launching the consultation on that very point yesterday,
but what is your view about how the "graduation" strategy
will work?
Mr Thomas: As Vietnam becomes
a middle-income country, I think there will be less demand from
the Vietnamese authorities for the significant amounts of cash
that we are able to provide and more appreciation of the expertise
that we are able to provide. It is not a middle-income country
yet so our aid is still particularly appreciated, not least because,
as you say, a number of donors are withdrawing and also because
there are still these considerable numbers of people who are poor,
often in a very entrenched way. There are a number of Millennium
Development Goals which are off-track in terms of progress where,
again, we have expertise which the Vietnamese authorities are
appreciating: AIDS for example, sanitation for example. What we
have said is through the Development Partnership Agreement that
we have negotiated, which is a ten-year programme, we have committed
a level of aid for the first five years which Mr Bruce has described.
Half way through that ten year process there will be a review.
If middle-income country status has been achieved at that point
I suspect we will see a reduction in our aid, not an immediate
withdrawal from country but a slight scaling back of our aid.
I think, and it is too early to say for definite, at this point
the Vietnamese authorities, on the basis of what they are saying
at the moment, will still want our presence to provide the technical
expertise that we are able to bring to the table in a number of
areas. There will be no overnight departure from Vietnam unless
the Vietnamese authorities are very clear that is what they want
and they are giving no indication of that. There will start to
be a scaling back of our aid, whilst a continuing engagement from
our staff and the expertise we are able to draw on.
Q54 Richard Burden: I understand
it may be difficult to quantify this in any exact terms, but if
we were to jump in a time machine and get to 2012 or 2015, what
would you anticipate the DFID presence in Vietnam looking like
in terms of resources, staffing and so on? Do you have any picture
of where you think you would like to get to?
Mr Thomas: No is the blunt truth
and we would be wrong to be starting to think at this stage explicitly
about how many staff we would have in-country, what the size of
our aid programme should be. I say that given the fact that we
have three year Comprehensive Spending Review cycles as well.
I am not going to be able to comment on what the wider situation
in terms of the Department's budget would be. What we have a sense
of is that the Vietnamese will still want some aid resources from
us but they will particularly value the expertise of staff. We
have not gone into any conversations with them about numbers,
it is obviously going to depend on what the situation is in other
countries in the region, and other countries generally that the
Department works in. We will make an assessment over time.
Q55 Richard Burden: A slightly different
question: DFID does seem to be placing some emphasis on the role
of the UN as donors increasingly scale down their operations or
pull out altogether. That said, a number of commentators, and
I think DFID itself, would say that as things stand at the moment
the UN is not really in a position to take on that role. Two questions
there really. First of all, how do you see that developing and
what contingency planning is DFID putting in place if the UN does
not scale up in the way it needs to? The second thing is how would
you respond to comments made by others, for example ActionAid
have said to us actually probably going down the UN route may
not be the way of doing it anyway, you really need to be putting
effort into building up civil society institutions inside Vietnam
to take on that role?
Mr Thomas: I think we need to
do both. If it is civil society versus the UN, I think it is a
false choice. We do need to build up the capacity, and the UN
provides important technical expertise in a whole variety of areas.
What we want to see in Vietnam, and I hope Vietnam will be a model
for every other developing country where the UN has a significant
presence, is we want each of the different UN organisations to
work much more effectively together than they are doing at the
moment. We want them to agree a common strategy for their programme
of expertise in-country and to have a common budget, and to have
common leadership in a sense to work behind the leadership of
the Resident Co-coordinator in their engagement with Government.
Frankly, given the scale of UN organisations that there are in
many countries, that is a huge challenge, getting them to work
more effectively together. What makes Vietnam slightly different
is the very clear message that the Vietnamese authorities have
been giving to the UN to say, "Get behind UN reform, get
working much more effectively together, we will come up with the
things which we think are the priorities for the UN to work on
and then we want you to provide leadership in backing our ideas".
What they have said to us, as a donor, and a number of other donors
too, is if, and indeed when, the UN gets that common programme
in place we want you to back our whole programme, not give funding
to one bit of the UN as opposed to another bit of the UN. There
is just too much competition too often amongst UN organisations,
making approaches to individual donors, "Why do you not fund
us to do that? Why do you fund X other UN organisation to do that,
we are better placed to do it?" We are hoping that the process
that is underway in Vietnam to get that much greater co-operation
and collaboration within the UN system will lead to much better
technical expertise being provided with much lower transaction
costs to the Government of Vietnam. We are intending to get behind
that process. I should say as well, on the civil society point,
we are working with the UN to develop the capacity of civil society
in-country to develop the capacity of the media, unions, lawyers
associations, et cetera, so I hope we are answering the ActionAid
concern as well as driving the capacity of the UN to provide greater
leadership forward as well.
Q56 Mr Singh: First of all, could
I echo the words of my colleague, John Bercow, who has now left,
that I was, and I think we all were, most impressed with the work
DFID are doing in Vietnam, very impressed indeed. It appears to
me, and it is in your written evidence, that poverty is particularly
entrenched within the ethnic minorities and there particularly
within ethnic minority women and girls. There are estimates that
indicate that by 2010 ethnic minorities will make up 50% of poor
Vietnamese. The DFID target is to reduce that ethnic minority
poverty to 30%, and you are focusing quite clearly on programmes
to do that. However, the gap seems to be growing. You are putting
in the effort to reduce that gap but the gap seems to be growing.
What is going wrong? Are we not doing enough work? Are we not
being effective?
Mr Thomas: Thank you for the remarks
you made about our staff and the programme more generally in Vietnam.
On your point about the growing inequality, it is partly a reflection
of the economic progress that is taking place across the country
but also the uneven nature of that economic progress. What we
are seeking to do is to use the money that we give to try and
leverage better programmes by government to target those ethnic
minority communities, those other marginalised communities. For
example, we are providing budget support to a Government of Vietnam
programme that is targeting the poorest communes in the country.
That has helped to lift half a million people out of poverty in
those poorest communes. You have a 90% enrolment rate in the primary
schools that have been constructed in those poorest communes.
We have also used our budget support to help some 25% of poor
ethnic minority households get access to forest land as well.
We are able to use our budget support to leverage more resources
being targeted on those ethnic minority communities. As we proceed
we are going to need to continue to do that, and obviously work
with the Government of Vietnam to try and get other donors to
do that too.
Q57 Mr Singh: I was quite pleased
with the attitude of the Government of Vietnam because it is easy
to suspect in those circumstances that there might be governmental
discrimination going on but quite clearly they are very keen to
eradicate poverty amongst ethnic minorities. In terms of DFID
programmes, and targeting ethnic minority people, does DFID see
the problem as geographical in terms of lack of infrastructure
in being able to get programmes to ethnic minority people or is
it more complex than that?
Mr Thomas: Certainly geography
is one of the issues on occasion, some of the people who live
in mountainous areas are very poor. One of the things we can try
and do—and I think we have had some success through the
budget support we provide—is to leverage the resources of
the government to be better directed at the very poorest communities,
some of which are in the mountainous areas and others who are
not. The government has got this programme of using the data that
it has got about where poverty is to target the very poorest areas
and that programme is having success. What we are going to need
to do is to step up the effort with the government to target those
poorest communities.
Q58 Mr Singh: In terms of education,
it struck me when we visited a variety of places that there was
a lack of mother tongue teaching, people were not being taught
in their own mother tongue, which I think would assist their educational
development. I do understand that the problem is lack of trained
people to do that. Is there anything DFID is doing specifically
to address that problem?
Mr Thomas: I will come on to the
specific issue about mother tongue teaching in a second, and bring
Mr Brown in if I may on that. We have a programme of £21
million by way of budget support for primary education that is
focusing on the very poorest areas and is seeking to ensure that
by 2010 every school has got proper classrooms, a package of basic
learning materials and trained teachers plus the sanitation that
it needs as well. I hope that programme of budget support will
help with the wider issue about lack of education for some of
the ethnic minorities and other people who are very poor. Let
me bring Mr Brown in on the mother tongue point.
Mr Brown: We are piloting a scheme
with teaching assistants in ethnic minority areas to help them
with their Vietnamese but also on the mother tongue, and for teaching
mother tongue. It also goes to the wider point where the government
have asked us, and we are currently undertaking a review of the
effectiveness of government's national policy, to promote ethnic
minority education with a specific view to look at these issues
which are hindering uptake of education in ethnic minority areas.
Q59 Sir Robert Smith: Is not the
reality of some of those geography challenges that in those mountainous
areas in the long run there will be limited scope for major economic
development that can pull up the local economy and it will be
the industrialisation and migration and repatriation of earnings
by people who have moved to find where the work is with the greater
pay? Is there a strategy for dealing with the problems of that
and the social problems of internal migration for these communities?
Mr Thomas: I do not think we should
give up on rural areas, Sir Robert. One of the things we have
done, for example, with our co-financing of rural transport projects
is to try and make sure that rural communes have the all-weather
roads that connect them to the major arterial motorways throughout
Vietnam. When I went to Vietnam in 2004 I saw a commune that had
had a road built for it as a result of our resources connecting
it to a major motorway. The increase in people being lifted out
of poverty within that commune had been extremely significant.
As a result, on your wider point about internal migration, and
making sure that we deal with people's vulnerability, one of the
things we are looking at is the whole issue around social protection
and what else we can do to support the Government of Vietnam's
desire to protect its most vulnerable citizens. Through the government's
Programme 135, which is its programme to target the poorest communes,
we are looking at what more we can do through a basic social protection
package to help with that issue around migration. The government
taking from the successes they have had in that Programme 135,
on social protection, are looking to develop a universal system
of social protection and that is something we will work with them
on.
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