Q60 Hugh Bayley: Is it Hutton or Alexander
who leads in negotiations?
Mr Lowcock: The person who has
been having the discussions with other countries and international
organisations on Doha is Douglas Alexander. There are other things
in Gareth Thomas's trade portfolio, for example potentially a
set of issues to do with anti-dumping. Depending on the issue,
I think that if Gareth Thomas wants to bring in another colleague
he will work out who is the right person according to the topic.
But as to the issue of Doha and EPAs,[28]
for example, it is clear that Douglas Alexander chairs the committee
and so on. As a practical matter, Ministers interact with Ministers
from other countries on lots of different topics and obviously
want to operate in a collective and corporate way but, in terms
of the responsibilities, what we have said sets out the arrangements
that the Prime Minister has put in place.
Q61 Hugh Bayley: At one stage there was
a big row with the United States—I forget the details—about
its foreign trading companies. The WTO said that a tax regime
imposed by Congress had to be changed and there was resistance
to it. If for example there was an issue about US compliance with
WTO judgments or requirements which Department would take the
lead?
Mr Lowcock: I do not remember
the detail of that case.
Q62 Hugh Bayley: I believe they were
called foreign service companies.
Mr Lowcock: Over the past two
weeks I am not aware that there has been a need for that kind
of discussion to take place. There are things that Gareth Thomas
has in his portfolio that are the more traditional British interests
in terms of trading regimes where obviously a lot of the expertise
is in DBERR. There are things on the Doha and EPAs side where
there is more sharing of expertise. I believe that as issues arise
Ministers will work out who is planning on maybe other topics
to have interaction with their relevant international counterparts
and who has particular interests and expertise, and within the
overall framework that the Prime Minister has put in place with
Douglas Alexander chairing it the committee will disport itself
accordingly.
Q63 Chairman: The Committee has had
some difficulty getting to grips with this issue before the new
arrangement which is probably welcome. I think that on three occasions
the DTI was due to appear before the Committee but failed to turn
up for different reasons. There is conflict between the issues
of trade promotion and development. In a sense, having two Ministers
with discrete responsibilities means that the development end
of it probably gets a slightly higher hit, but I suspect it also
means there could be some tensions between both Ministers and
Departments. We did think of inviting both together to see how
they would get on. I should like to put a final question on a
wider issue that arose at the Heilingendamm summit. In terms of
the general quality of DFID's leadership, the UK is fairly well
regarded. Wherever we go people comment favourably on the impact
of the Department's activities. As a country we are committed
to, and year on year have been moving visibly towards, the UN
target, but we seem to be out there ploughing a lone furrow with
pretty minimal support from other supposedly major donors. We
are also considering whether we should do a report on donor co-ordination.
Apart from standing on the touchline shouting the odds and saying
you are doing a good job, what can you do to persuade France,
Germany and other countries both to improve the volume and to
some extent the quality of their development effort?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: We are not
standing on the touchline; we are probably on the pitch. We are
pushing countries on the commitments that they made at Gleneagles
and subsequently, and some parts of the picture are better than
others. It is quite interesting that in terms of aid volume the
figure is now about $100 billion a year whereas at Monterrey it
was about $60 billion. It is not as if we have not moved forward,
but there is no doubt that a number of countries have quite a
bit to do to meet their commitments. The multilateral debt relief
initiative and HIPC[29]
have gone well. Some elements have gone well; some have not. I
am very optimistic about it. We have had a German presidency which
maintained development as a primary focus. We will have a Japanese
presidency which for a variety of reasons will be majoring in
African development again. We have another year and a half of
push to come on this. We have a new president of the World Bank
who wants to be very much engaged in this. I think it is very
important for the bank leadership to push in the same direction.
Mr Wolfowitz gave a lead on that and it is important for Mr Zoellick
to up it a notch further. I am not too depressed by this. We still
have a long way to go but we shall keep up the pressure. I believe
it was Atlee who said to Harold Laskey, "A period of silence
from you would be most welcome." I am afraid they will not
get that from the UK; there will be more pressure on others.
Q64 Chairman: I have had conversations
with people involved in development in some of the countries that
are not performing so well. They ask why it is that British public
opinion is particularly supportive of this, complaining—maybe
it provides them with an excuse—that somehow or other public
opinion in their own countries is not ready for that degree of
commitment. Do you have those discussions and, if so, how do you
answer them?
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: I have those
discussions particularly with my Japanese colleagues. That is
a country I know reasonably well. We have discussions as to whether
the Japanese polity, if you like, is too locked into old vested
interests, business and so on, and not enough into the younger
back-packing generation, whom one sees in Africa, Asia and everywhere
now, that might be a stronger supporter for official development
assistance. The answer tends to be that they are supportive of
development assistance but they mistrust government; they think
that government in Japan has not moved enough maybe in the direction
of DFID in terms of untying assistance and so on. I believe that
Japan has moved quite a long way, but there is more work to do
there. We have quite a lot of work to do in our own country. It
is quite interesting that the campaign Make Poverty History of
a couple of years ago energised a lot of people, but our research
shows that it is very much on the surface and has not gone down
further in terms of understanding the issues. As a team, in 10
years' time we would very much like DFID and development more
generally to be regarded in the way they do in Scandinavia, the
Netherlands and so on and to have a certain depth of knowledge
and understanding of the challenges but also the successes. We
have fertile ground here compared with some other countries; we
have vibrant civil society organisations, but we must make headway
with development awareness generally. We are going to up our game
on this.
Q65 Chairman: I think all of us can
testify to the fact that, whether it is schools, public meetings
or what-have-you, when this matter is addressed it is one of the
few issues that produces an audience.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Absolutely.
Ms Owen: It is also the case that
the British public thinks NGOs and charities do the good work
and DFID is not something it has in mind. We have a big job to
do to increase awareness of DFID and also where taxpayers' money
is going.
Q66 Sir Robert Smith: The problem
is that when someone abroad sees the work of DFID on the ground
the Department gets the credit but "British" is not
in the title and there is not necessarily an awareness that it
is a UK body.
Sir Suma Chakrabarti: Some 10
years ago the Government took the very clear view that, on the
basis of quite a lot of evidence, branding the UK's assistance
abroad in that sense tended to detract from country ownership
so that ownership of programmes and plans would be with the particular
countries. It pulled down the flag essentially for those things.
But we are having a more open debate about whether we should do
more branding in the UK for what we do. When my 11 year-old comes
home from school and talks only about WaterAid and Oxfam and not
DFID, even though in this country we are the major financier of
such development, I think it is time for a change.
Chairman: I think it is less to do with
flying the flag. "DFID" does not mean a lot in this
country outside the cognoscenti, so the position might be different
if it was called, say, UK Development, but that is for another
discussion. We very much appreciate these exchanges. As always,
we shall produce our report on your report with comments and criticisms
which we hope will be taken in the spirit in which they are made.
Thank you again for coming.
28 Economic Partnership Agreements Back
29
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Back
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