Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
MR DOUGLAS
ALEXANDER MP,
MR GILE
LEVER AND
MS BARBARA
HENDRIE
31 JANUARY 2008
Q20 Chairman: There were two points
made to us in informal evidence about the health service. One,
which I think your answers have to some extent borne out, is the
difficulty of actually knowing what is going on on the ground
and whether there is scope perhaps for getting that information,
because if you do not actually know, you are not going to be able
to respond. Related to that, which is more contentious, is the
suggestion that health was being rationed by price; in other words,
it was substantially privatised, charged for, which meant, of
course, those who have access to money get the treatment but the
poor and under-privileged are even worse off because it is either
physically not there or it is totally beyond their reach. On the
first point, information, is there anything that we, DFID, could
be doing to improve that situation? Secondly, is there substance
to the charge that what is available is actually being distributed
in a very non-egalitarian way?
Mr Alexander: Firstly, I would
not want to over-estimate the capacity of my Department in terms
of being able to access this information independently. We are
in a somewhat chicken and egg situation in a range of these sectors
whereby, until the capacity of the Government of Iraq is strengthened,
the capacity to have objective statistical information is reduced.
In that sense, again, it seems to us the logical place is to say
what steps we can take but not to seek to work across every sector
and, candidly, health has not been one of the identified priority
sectors for British effort given the engagement of not just the
Americans but the United Nations and international bodies. So
in response to your question of how we get to the objective information,
I think the limit of our effective contribution has to be in terms
of building the capacity of the Government of Iraq and, on the
second question of rationing by price, again, of course, the risk
is that in any health situation it is subject to laws of supply
and demand and, as the number of doctors has reduced, then there
is a vulnerability that those least able to both afford it or
who are most vulnerable are those who suffer most. That is why
in part, as I say, our colleagues in the Department of Health
have looked at ways that we can supplement the flow of doctors
in in terms of medical training but I do not think any of us on
this side of the table would diminish the scale of the challenge
facing the health system in Iraq at the moment. It does seem to
me a big part of the solution, however, is to create a context
in which medical education and the sustainability of professional
engagement in Iraq can be achieved and that relies on again, or
returns to the core proposition, which is that Iraq is not a poor
country. It should have the ability both to train and to support
many more doctors than are being supported and trained at the
moment. Our challenge is twofold: one, to support the efforts
that are being made by the Government of Iraq and the security
forces and, indeed, the multinational forces to create a security
context in which those actions can be taken but, just as critically
and perhaps far less prominently, to build the capacity of the
Government of Iraq to spend its own money. It literally has billions
of dollars sitting in bank accounts at the moment which would
be better spent on exactly the kind of services I have been describing.
Q21 Chairman: On that point, and
I do not want to overstress it, if we are training or contributing
to the training of Iraqi doctors to return to Iraq, I hope there
is some kind of encouragement to the idea that they would be going
back to provide health care for the general populace rather than
going back as private practitioners in a private sector health
service.
Mr Alexander: Barbara has just
given me one other figure which, helpfully, bears out what I have
just told you. In terms of the amount that the Government of Iraq
has been able to spend in expenditures on health, it has actually
only spent 32.08% of its budget, of the allocated, approved expenditures
for 2007, so in that sense, it is not that the money is not there;
it is the capacity of the system to spend it.
Q22 Richard Burden: Could we go back
to the 2 million internally displaced people and the nearly 2.5
million refugees? I have a couple of more general questions on
that but specifically in relation to health, we received a report
that, as far as the UNHCR is concerned, the UK does contribute
a substantial amount to the UNHCR's work: £3.15 million in
2007. However, we were told that there were no UK funds forthcoming
specifically for the health and education programmes which have
been implemented jointly with WHO[9]
and UNICEF. Could you let us know if that is the case?
Mr Alexander: These are for refugees
outside of the borders of Iraq?
Q23 Richard Burden: It is the UNHCR's
Iraq programme, so it is the region.
Mr Alexander: In terms of the
regional figures that I have—and I will ask Barbara to elucidate
on them—in terms of humanitarian agencies, we have spent
about £132 million since 2003, including £15 million
in 2007, which has supported internally displaced people and external
refugees but, in particular, helping to fund international agencies
in Syria that have helped health care services cope with the influx
of Iraqi population, upgrading hospitals, training staff, buying
medical equipment and supporting education. In terms of the specific
figure that you cite, that is the general level I have. Barbara?
Ms Hendrie: I think this may be
an issue of multiple appeals actually, because what we did is
respond to UNHCR's $126 million appeal from 2007, and I believe
that UNHCR together with other agencies issued a separate appeal
focused on health, and that may be what it is that is being referred
to. This has been an issue that we have been taking up with the
UN system about subsequent and sometimes overlapping appeals,
and it has been a problem. There has been a certain amount of
duplication of effort. We are looking forward now to a consolidated
appeal from the UN system coming in the middle of next month.
It probably is the case that we have not contributed specifically
to that. However, the general UNHCR appeal to which we have contributed
does include elements of provision of health facilities as well
as education, as well as cash for particularly food-poor, women-headed
families. It is not a question of—at a certain point you
have to decide which is the central appeal you will go for and
whether that is covering the right range of activities, but it
has been a chronic problem of trying to decide where to put the
emphasis when you have this kind of multiple appeal dynamism happening.
Q24 Richard Burden: This was a point
that has been put to us. I wonder if we could perhaps ask if you
could maybe let us have a note on how those figures break down.
It may well be that multiple appeals ...
Mr Alexander: Yes.[10]
Q25 Richard Burden: On the specific question
of internally displaced people, perhaps you could tell us a little
bit more about how we are contributing to improving living conditions
for the IDPs.
Ms Hendrie: For internally displaced,
it is primarily working through the ICRC, and there it has been
£10 million in the past year. We have put the bulk of our
effort on looking at the internally displaced inside Iraq. The
ICRC, working through the Iraqi Red Crescent, have a variety of
activities. There are medical facilities, there is emergency assistance,
and there are, more recently, livelihood projects which they have
started. In addition, we are also looking at supporting International
Medical Corps, which is one of the few international NGOs[11]
that actually blankets the country. There are very few such organisations,
from an NGO perspective, that can actually cover quite a lot of
the country. It is in 11 out of 18 provinces, and they have a
variety of different medically oriented programmes geared towards
internally displaced people. We are also in a policy dialogue
with the Ministry of Displacement and Migration, which has a very
limited capacity and quite a tiny budget, and with the Ministry
of Finance to try to break out more money from the Government.
There still is not a formally designated point of contact and
leadership within the Iraqi Government for policy on internally
displaced, and actually that is the crux, from our point of view,
of the issue in terms of actually addressing the vulnerability.
Q26 Richard Burden: Turning to refugees,
there are the beginnings of a return of refugees back to Iraq
from Syria, Jordan and elsewhere. Firstly, in relation to the
needs of those refugees as opposed to IDPs, how are their needs
being met?
Mr Alexander: I think the first
thing to say is that terminology can be somewhat confusing in
this, in the sense that our judgement—and it is a judgement
informed by some of the work that Barbara has described that international
agencies are doing—is that although there are very large
estimates of the number of displaced outside of Iraq, many of
them have greater coping mechanisms than other similar refugees
in other conflicts and in other countries, in the sense that a
number of them have savings or are being provided services by
host countries. For example, there is little evidence that Iraqi
children are not being able to access educational services within
Syria, for example. The sense is that the number of acutely vulnerable
within that category of refugees from Iraq is actually significantly
lower than the number of people who have left the country, the
2 million figure that I quoted earlier, and also, it has to be
said, neither Iraq nor the neighbouring countries are themselves
acutely poor in a way that in many conflict-affected areas is
the case. So the scale of donor support is qualitatively different
from other circumstances where refugees have crossed borders in
the scale of numbers that we have seen within Iraq. That being
said, there is political sensitivity, which I will ask Giles to
speak to, both within Jordan and within Syria in terms of the
capacity to provide services either discretely to the Iraqi population
or for Iraqis to be able to access those domestic services, and
that is why, while there is evidence, for example, on the education
of Iraqi children within Syria that there are not significant
barriers, it has often been a sensitive issue at a diplomatic
level for these discussions to be engaged in.
Mr Lever: I think it is precisely
because of the sensitivities, Secretary of State, that I would
not want to go into too much detail but, broadly speaking, as
I am sure the Committee is well aware, there is clearly great
sensitivity on the part of the Governments of both Jordan and
Syria that they should not be landed with a long-term, permanent
refugee problem population which puts down roots and which creates
a great burden on their own social services. Therefore, they are
acutely concerned about activities which might seem to act as
pull factors or which might institutionalise that population there.
They are encouraging returns as and when, including through the
use of immigration measures. Neither country is a signatory to
the 1951 Convention. That said, UNHCR is operating in these countries
and is registering Iraqi refugees. The question of liaison between
the Government of Iraq and its neighbours on the degree of support
given by the Government of Iraq to those countries is bound up,
again, with the wider political relationship between the Government
of Iraq and its neighbours. What I can say there is that again
we are seeing encouraging signs of progress, with now a ministerial
level neighbours process taking root and developing support mechanisms,
and the Government of Iraq having recently made good on quite
a longstanding pledge to give $25 million—I think the breakdown
is $16 million to Syria, $7 million to Jordan and $2 million to
Lebanon—to support services for the displaced Iraqi population.
Mr Alexander: There are just a
couple of other points that I would add. One is, given their status
as refugees, there are two other barriers that affect the lives
of these refugees. One is the inability to work legally and to
be part of the formal economy and secondly, increasingly people's
visas run out, so people may come in on a temporary visa but that
helps account for the invisibility of this population relative
to the kind of refugee camps that I am sure all of us around the
table, in different circumstances, have visited. The second point
is, notwithstanding the political sensitivities, the desire on
the part of the Government of Iraq not to be seen to create push
factors, the desire on the part of host governments not to be
seen to create pull factors and understandable national pride
at stake, UNHCR are providing a range of assistance, both within
Syria and within Jordan, in terms of both the education and the
health sectors. UNHCR gave more than $11 million late last year
to help the Government of Jordan in particular provide improved
medical services and facilities. In Syria, the Syrian Arab Red
Crescent and the Government are also providing services. In Syria
more than 147,000 Iraqis have been interviewed and have been assisted
in terms of the formal process of registration, and in terms of
food assistance also in Syria there is provision by UNHCR and
by the World Food Programme. So there are certain steps being
taken by the international system, there is some action being
taken by the Government of Iraq itself, and there have been certain
actions taken by the Government of Syria and the Government of
Jordan.
Q27 Richard Burden: At the risk of
perhaps exposing too much about one of those political sensitivities,
could I ask you if there are any particular issues in relation
to the question of double refugees? Some of those that have been
displaced from Iraq would themselves be refugees in Iraq; in other
words, Palestinians living in Iraq who are then displaced from
Iraq, and other Palestinians living in Syria, Jordan and elsewhere.
In terms of the push and pull factors, are there any particular
angles on that that are different to other Iraqi refugees or are
they much the same?
Mr Alexander: That was certainly
not something I picked up when I was in either Amman or in Iraq
itself, and I have not seen figures with any kind of breakdown
suggesting there was a particular Palestinian cohort within the
Iraqi population. Giles, have you seen ...
Mr Lever: No, I am not aware of
it, Secretary of State.
Q28 Richard Burden: Do you expect,
given the sensitivities that you are talking about, the rate or
the flow of returnees to Iraq to be growing significantly over
the next few months or not?
Mr Alexander: I am reminded of
the American politician who, when asked a similar question, said,
"I don't make predictions, least of all about the future."
Clearly, we would all wish to see a situation in which the security
situation improves. All of us recognise the real but fragile progress
that has been made in recent months and I think all of us would
recognise that probably the biggest single determinant of the
environment in which the population has left has been one of security
and violence, and in that sense all of us would wish to see an
accelerated rate of return reflecting improved circumstances on
the ground but I do not think one can predict with confidence
at this stage what will in turn be the security situation, the
progress on political and economic development and, indeed, the
process of political reconciliation within Iraq to the extent
that could allow you to put any kind of numbers on that. Giles,
from the Foreign Office point of view, is there anything you would
add?
Mr Lever: No. I similarly would
not want to venture a prediction. I would just add that I feel
perhaps we have slightly underplayed the degree to which Jordan
and Syria are to be commended for hosting and taking in such very
large numbers of people. As a percentage of the overall Jordanian
population in particular, we are talking very high—I cannot
remember off the top of my head—maybe 15-20% or something
like that. It is a huge burden for any society to absorb and what
those Governments have done needs to be recognised and commended.
Q29 Chairman: UNHCR said to us that
the degree of displacement was comparable to Sudan, and yet there
is a lot more attention given to Sudan than this region.
Ms Hendrie: One thing I would
add is that we know that for the people who have been coming back
from Syria it is partly a pull factor given the security situation
but also people are starting to run out of savings, so there are
push factors to worry about as well. The coping mechanisms are
being stretched thin. It is running in both directions.
Q30 Richard Burden: Is there anything
that we can be doing or that needs doing, whether or not we are
the best placed to provide that, to build capacity amongst the
Iraqi Government to encourage or to help them cope with any substantial
increase in the flow of returnees?
Mr Alexander: I think the more
immediate challenge which the international system has been endeavouring
to deal with is this issue of invisibility of the refugees themselves
in the sense that in some ways this is a function of progress
if you are dealing with the consequences of significant returns.
One of the more immediate challenges that the international system
has been thinking about is how you identify this population presently
hosted within Jordan and Syria. In Syria there are more than 147,000
Iraqis who have been interviewed and received registration papers,
while more than 50,000 have been registered in Jordan. What in
practical terms that means is they have received papers documenting
their claims and needs for medical care, psychosocial counselling,
food and other aid that can be addressed, and in terms of identifying
relative vulnerability I think it is a fair judgment to say the
greatest point of vulnerability is where, either for reasons of
visas having run out or simply an inability to access the formal
economy or formal services, the need is greatest. Clearly, as
the security situation improves, if we see the improvement we
would want to see, there is a complementarity between an improvement
in the processes of delivering security and delivering the Government
capacity necessary to provide an equivalent service for those
returning to Iraq, but our immediate focus has been on saying
how do you deal with those most vulnerable outside the borders
of Iraq.
Q31 Chairman: Related to what Richard
Burden has been exploring and which I think you touched on when
you dealt with the World Food Programme, Secretary of State, is
what people call the internally stuck rather than displaced. In
other words, they are in their own homes but with no income, no
employment, no access to services or food, and they do not have
visibility either. The suggestion is that, and I guess this is
where your 12 million figure came from, 4 million are food insecure
and 8.3 million are at risk of food insecurity without the PDS.
That is absolutely huge, and the point which seems to be absolutely
critical there is if you cannot create a functioning service then
that is about as dysfunctional as a state can get, I would suggest.
Mr Alexander: You are rapidly
heading towards 50% of the population in those circumstances and
in that sense I think that perhaps accounts for the—not
hesitation in the face of the challenge in the PDS, but at least
our recognition for the moment as to quite how vital that service
is in ensuring delivery of food supplies. But you are right to
recognise the challenges are very real and multiple in character,
whether it be the need for access to the funds that are still
being generated even amidst the security challenges and the poor
infrastructure of the oil economy, the significant overwhelming
bulk of the economic growth generated last year in Iraq is accounted
for by oil exports but that money is available to be spent, and
the challenge is to be able to provide the services through increased
government capacity, deliver the security that allows people to
function and, in turn, use the space created to have a functioning
economy.
The Committee suspended from 3.33 pm to 3.43 pm
for a division in the House.
Q32 John Battle: If I could return to
DFID's funding, or DFID's spending in particular, because DFID
has spent, I think, over £500 million now since 2003, and
that includes the EC[12]
contributions, have any evaluations been made of that spending?
Has there been any tracking of what it was targeted on, and to
what extent the targets were met? How has it been spent?
Mr Alexander: In total we, the
United Kingdom, pledged about £744 million for reconstruction
in Iraq.
Q33 John Battle: That was the allocation,
was it not?
Mr Alexander: Yes, since 2003.
We have disbursed over £680 million of that. That includes
just over half a billion pounds, £503 million, spent by DFID,
but that includes the EC contribution and our budget for 2007-08
is £30 million, of which £15 million broadly is humanitarian.
The programme is currently focused on the humanitarian needs that
we have been discussing, meeting the needs of internally displaced
people and the refugees' humanitarian needs, and then critically
enhancing the capacity of provincial and central government, about
which we have spoken, to manage and spend funds reflecting the
insight that Iraq is not a poor country but we need to facilitate
the means by which we can spend money, and the third priority
area, along with humanitarian and the capacity of Government to
spend its own money, is economic development in the south reflecting
the particular emphasis we have had in Basra. That in turn accounts
for some of the expenditure which in very physical terms is accounted
for in terms of these water towers and the other projects that
have been taken forward. We have spent over £100 million
since 2003 to improve the power and the water supplies in southern
Iraq. That means more than a million people having had access
to clean water as a result of the steps we have taken, and also
more than a million people having access to electricity and power
supplies in the southern part of Iraq. By the time all the power
and water projects are complete we will have achieved that outcome.
In terms of the other work we have been taking forward, there
are standard mechanisms by which the ICRC and others account for
the expenditure that has been committed through those mechanisms,
and of course we have procedures in place in terms of ensuring
that the money that is committed to support the Government of
Iraq, which is the third piece, is also accounted for.
Ms Hendrie: In terms of our support
to international organisations such as ICRC, UNHCR, et cetera,
we ask for regular reports including financial reports about how
they are spending money and monitoring information. That has proved
more challenging on the IRFFI expenditure and we hope that the
review that has been put in place now starting this month will
give us a much better idea of impact. In terms of the big multi-year
programmes that we have running for our core capacity-building,
there we have standard DFID reporting and review and evaluation
processes which happen on a regular cycle. Every six months there
is a review.
Q34 John Battle: I would imagine—I
do not mean the question to be hostile and I am not suggesting
we have lost money --
Mr Alexander: What a way to start
a question!
Q35 John Battle: No—I have
been in a situation where we have spent the money and other people
have blown up the facilities, health and education that we have
contributed to building, and Palestine is a case in point, and
in a sense it is easy to measure the infrastructure of those projects.
Where I think you are breaking new ground in development is spending
on capacity-building and on good governance and new structures,
and I imagine that is new ground to measure or to target and to
evaluate. The evaluation systems there are very leading edge in
a way, and I would like you to share them with us a bit more,
and then I am going to ask you whether they will apply in places
like Sierra Leone and elsewhere, because it is easy for people
to say, "Build wells and schools and pipes and everyone will
put their hands up and applaud you for it", but that more
difficult capacity-building, tracking it, evaluating it and nudging
it along and setting it up as a template, to me would seem to
be much more difficult. How are you getting on with it?
Mr Alexander: One example immediately
came to mind as you described it which was the work we are doing
in support of what the Prime Minister challenged us to do in terms
of economic development in the south. One of the core areas in
terms of facilitating economic development in Basra is ensuring
that the Provincial Council is able not only in political terms
to prioritise but then deliver against its identified priorities.
Essentially, returning to the question the Chairman asked me,
if you see a relatively more stable Basra, how does the community
judge that that is in turn resulting in improvements in their
lives in terms of physical infrastructure or changes? Perhaps
the most graphic illustration is the scale of spend of the Provincial
Council in the sense we have been working very closely through
the PRT[13]
and with our colleagues in the Foreign Office to build the capacity
of the Provincial Council to place contracts, to make sure reconstruction
and development work is undertaken within Basra, and from a standing
start there has been real progress in terms of funds allocated,
as I recollect more than 200 projects out of 212 this year. That
in some ways is the best example of where capacity-building is
too often a description for something where people struggle to
find any kind of metrics at all, and I asked the same question.
Ms Hendrie: It is challenging
to find the metrics. With the Basra Provincial Council, metrics
have been around, as the Secretary of State said, the ability
of the provincial government to produce a costed prioritised budget
plan and, indeed, a multi-year budget plan and then to spend against
that plan in a reasonably effective way, and the evidence that
that is happening is the plan and the published budget and then
evidence of budget execution, which is measured in a variety of
different ways, so you have a stage of budget execution when the
contract is let, then when actual work starts, et cetera. It is
quite challenging to measure these, partly because in the Iraqi
Government budget system money can be carried over from the previous
year, so what is happening at the moment is the Provincial Council
is spending, and spending quite well at quite a rapid rate, but
they are also spending from 2006 as well as 2007. At the moment
we are looking at about a 23-40% execution as we come up to the
early bit of the budget year. Last year for 2006, and again it
depends how you count it, we had a lag in spend at the Provincial
Council level, but according to the statistics we have from our
team there 82% of the contracts were executed in the sense that
they were let. That does not necessarily mean the money has gone
out the door, and again in the Iraqi system you pay once the work
is finished, which is also a significant challenge. In terms of
other capacity-building work in the centre of government and how
you measure some of our work with the Prime Minister's office
and particularly the Council of Ministers' Secretariat, which
is in effect the Iraqi Cabinet, we set outputs for ourselves which
were about whether regular committee meetings took place, whether
anybody recorded the decisions taken, and whether those were subsequently
given to the line ministries to action, and you can know whether
that has happened and we have seen some improvement in that such
that there is a reasonably functioning Council of Ministers' Secretariat.
The trick is then the execution of those decisions but it is possible
to measure these things. It very much depends how you draw the
initial logical framework and what you measure yourself against,
and in some cases we have been overambitious. We have tried to
look for big transformations and then we have scaled back to look
for more practical things we can measure.
Mr Alexander: Just to illustrate
why that example is of general relevance, in 2006 Iraq spent only
23% of its investment budget, so the capacity to allocate contracts
against them is key. The Finance Ministry has now accumulated
reserves of over $10 billion which it is not at the moment in
a position to spend. I imagine that would be a pleasant problem
for Alastair Darling but the truth is we are in a similar position
of seeing, while infrastructure is familiar and is identifiable,
our serious responsibility is to assist the Iraqis in a discrete
set of challenges which are to spend the money which they themselves
have generated effectively, and there has been real progress in
Basra in recent months but it is very difficult to disaggregate
what portion of that can be attributed to technical assistance
and what to a more functioning politics.
Q36 John Battle: I think I am reacting
to your view in the past that I thought it was unfair that the
NGOs are always asked: how much have you spent on projects and
how much have you spent on administration? There is always this
pressure to do it on fresh air and you do need the institutions
to deliver the aid that goes out there, and I am really looking
at your budgets now and saying you are moving in that domain where
some of your funding is not direct building projects but could
be people and could be revenue costs, and they are always the
ones that are under the pressure of why are you spending money
talking to someone to tell them to do it, and I am asking the
question of whether we can find ways of spelling out that that
can be evaluated, targeted and move things on. It would not be
a bad thing to put in your report, dare I suggest, and make more
transparent and upfront, because it is actually suggesting that
institution building is key to development, and I am not sure
we are getting there because people are still thinking if you
build wells and roads it is development, and you do not need institutions.
I think you really do.
Mr Alexander: The positive figures
that we have offered you are the benign interpretation in terms
of the real progress that has been made. There is also another
explanation for where we now are in terms of priorities identified
which is that since 2003 the Coalition has spent vast sums of
money, $32 billion, but that itself has not solved Iraq's underlying
problems or provided a sustainable growth path. That relies on
not just security but politics and capacity to spend, and in that
sense we would not want to be in a position where on behalf of
the British taxpayer or in evidence before your Committee we are
suggesting that it is a scarcity of resource that is the principle
inhibitor to the development of Iraq. It is a far more challenging,
coming together of politics, security and capacity to which money
can make a contribution if appropriately directed, but it is not
principally a scarcity of resource that lies at the root of this
problem.
Q37 John Battle: And sometimes that
is more difficult to argue for in terms of development than actually
saying "There is the money; it went on that project".
Mr Alexander: Exactly.
Q38 Chairman: If I can just follow
on from that. First, this Committee welcomes the diminution of
the DFID budget to Iraq for just the reasons you have stated—there
are other middle-income countries where maybe the money could
be more effectively spent and where resources could be released,
but specifically John Battle has been talking about what you are
doing to help capacity, but can I put it the other way around?
In Iraq the Government has the money; what is stopping it from
spending it?
Mr Alexander: Probably it would
be safe to seek the refuge of the Foreign Office at this point
in the sense that, reflecting conversations I had with General
Petraeus in Baghdad, there is no doubt that the capacity, for
example, to sustain economic reconstruction in the south cannot
be disaggregated from the functioning of governance at the centre,
and in that sense while there has been welcome progress in recent
months in terms of the engagement of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
and his deputies, and some progress at least on the de-Ba'athification
law, if not yet the progress we would like to see either on the
provincial powers law or the hydrocarbons law. There is no doubt
that the inability to find both political reconciliation and the
pace of progress we want to see in the political institutions
within Iraq have inhibited the economic and social development
that we are keen to see.
Mr Lever: There is a very wide
range of factors at play here, of course. As the Secretary of
State has said, security is number one. The lack of technocratic
capability in line ministries is in part due to the drain of educated
professionals from some parts of Iraqi society, and, as I mentioned
earlier, the fact that the relationship between the centre and
the regions is not yet clearly defined, the respective powers
of each, and also the technical ability of the centre to understand
what the regions want and need in terms of development, the regions'
ability to make that case convincingly to the centre and then
the centre's technical ability to channel the money down to the
regions. But what we are seeing in all cases in this area, Mr
Chairman, is signs of improvement and growing Iraqi willing capacity
to do the things themselves rather than do them at our behest.
Just to give you a couple of very subjective examples of this:
in early 2007 an event was held in Baghdad called the Basra Development
Forum which brought together essentially the representatives of
the Provincial Council, local politicians, the Governor and the
Deputy Prime Minister --
Mr Alexander: I was there too.
Mr Lever: The early December one?
The first one was in early 2007, it was all broadcast on live
TV and was a very good opportunity not just for the Iraqi players
themselves to engage but for the man in the street to see that
there was a process of government going on here where their elected
representatives were engaging with the Government in Iraq and
they were being told what they had to spend, and the people understood
that that money should be coming their way to be spent and in
turn were able to take that into account in their voting intentions
in the future. The one that happened in early 2007, the first
one, we gave an enormous amount of support and encouragement to
in terms of supporting the administrative arrangements, helping
the Iraqis with preparation of the agenda, and so on and so forth.
The one in December, although the Secretary of State was there
and perhaps he is better qualified to talk on it, as I understand
it was a much more Iraqi-led initiative. This was the central
Government and the local authorities themselves saying let's have
another one of these events, the last one was very good, we can
run this more or less ourselves. So it is not the case that the
degree of support and encouragement and assistance that we are
providing remains flat all the way through; we can actually see
many people in the Iraqi system building on and learning from
what we have helped them do in the past. Another rather subjective
example but I think a good one nonetheless would be, for example,
the provincial development strategy in Basra which is drawn up
by the Provincial Development Committee, part of the Provincial
Council. In previous years we have given an enormous amount of
assistance to the Provincial Development Committee to help them
draw up the development strategy, checking at every stage, facilitating
their discussions with other Iraqi stakeholders and so on and
so forth. This year for their latest, 2007 revision of the provincial
development strategy much more of that work has been led and done
on an own initiative basis by the Iraqi stakeholders in Basra
with a much reduced input from us, and the quality of the product
is clearly improving. The 2007 revision has an annual fiscal strategy
in it; it has a sector-by-sector top-down prioritisation clearly
marked; it is not finalised yet so perhaps I should not say too
much but these are examples of how the torch is passing, as it
were.
Mr Alexander: Taking up that example,
when I arrived in Basra there was clearly real concern amongst
our staff and the FCO staff supporting us in the Provincial Reconstruction
Team given that they said: "Secretary of State, this really
is an initiative of the Government of Iraq; we are not really
sure what tomorrow will bring for you in terms of whether the
meeting will function and what will be said", and in some
ways that was much more eloquent testimony to what we have described,
that this had been captured in the best possible sense and run
by the Iraqi governments themselves. As it turns out the key political
significance was not simply that the whole event was broadcast
so that the population of Basra saw their Prime Minister and their
Deputy Prime Minister publicly committing themselves to development
of the south, but also the very clear reconciliation between the
Governor of the Basra area and the national political leadership.
There simply had not been either that private interaction nor
the public affirmation of the determination to work together in
economic development for several months, at least preceding the
meeting in December, so in that sense—and one should be
careful not to overclaim and not to overstate—but that was
a very powerful example of what has been described to you, that
it is slow, often painfully slow, but nonetheless there is no
doubt that there are individuals within the Government of Iraq
determined to assume that responsibility on a tighter timescale
than has sometimes appeared apparent in recent years.
Q39 Chairman: I understand that DFID
has a project with the Ministry of the Interior, and we were told
that it has focused on strategic planning including administrative
controls to reduce corruption and clarify the legal and constitutional
framework and human resource management. What stage is that at
and what kind of impact has it had?
Mr Alexander: I was talking to
Giles before the Committee in terms of the Ministry of the Interior
and the work that is being done, and from, again, a relatively
low base we were quite encouraged in terms of the progress being
made with the support of what the United Kingdom is doing.
Mr Lever: A huge amount of Coalition
effort has gone into supporting work with the Ministry of the
Interior as a whole because obviously they control the police
and the criminal justice system which is key to the functioning
of the rule of law and to developing the Iraqi security force
capacity, which I use as an umbrella to cover the army and the
police, to tackle crime and violence with a much reduced need
for international support. So there is a much broader and very
large scale international effort going in to support and help
the Ministry of Interior to train and equip police and also to
develop the rule of law sector, and we are contributing to that
in various ways. At a general level we are reviewing our overall
strategy for supporting security sector reform and the rule of
law in Iraq with DFID and MoD[14]
and others.
9 The World Health Organization Back
10
Ev 24 Back
11
Non-governmental organisations Back
12
European Commission Back
13
Provincial Reconstruction Team Back
14
The Ministry of Defence Back
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