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CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 945-iii House of COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE International Development Committee
RT HON DOUGLAS ALEXANDER, MR ANDREW STEER and MR MARTIN DINHAM Evidence heard in Public Questions 108 - 145
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
Oral Evidence Taken before the International Development Committee on Members present Malcolm Bruce, in the Chair John Battle Hugh Bayley John Bercow Mr Stephen Crabb Sir Robert Smith ________________ Witnesses: Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP, Secretary of State for International Development; Mr Martin Dinham, Director General International, and Mr Andrew Steer, Director General Policy and Research, Department for International Development, gave evidence. Q108 Chairman: Good afternoon, Secretary of State. Thank you once again for coming in to give evidence relating to the Annual Report. You are also coming in again in a couple of weeks' time on the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the IMF, which I think will raise a whole load of questions. We will try to keep them in the appropriate compartments. Can you introduce your team for the record? Mr Alexander: Of course. It is a genuine pleasure to be here. Perhaps I could introduce Andrew Steer, who is our Director General for Policy and Research, who oversees our work in areas such as health, education, and food security. Alongside me also is Martin Dinham, who is our Director General International, who oversees our work on international institutions and donors and also areas such as aid effectiveness. Q109 Chairman: Thank you very much. Obviously, we are particularly looking at the Call to Action the Prime Minister initiated along with others and we will discuss what was said and agreed at that meeting, but even since that meeting things have changed so we might need to see what updates there are. First of all, do you think that the response in real terms was satisfactory? If you do, what do you think in particular came out of that which you might regard as a major step forward given that the meeting had a clear purpose? Mr Alexander: Perhaps just a word by way of context. The origin of this event was the first speech
made on an international platform by our Prime Minister, a year ago in July, who
at the United Nations, alongside Ban Ki-moon, declared a development
emergency. It is greatly to Ban
Ki-moon's credit that thereafter he picked up the idea of saying there was an
opportunity to both refocus and re-galvanise the world's efforts around the MDGs[1]
by calling a United Nations High Level Event, which turned out to be on 25
September. At the High Level Event on 25
September in the concluding plenary session the Secretary-General himself
described it as an inspiring day for the United Nations. We would suggest that undoubtedly the outcome
of the event surpassed even our expectations - and we had high expectations,
albeit in very different circumstances in July 2007, when the idea was
originally proposed. In specific terms,
there were pledges which the United Nations estimated to be $16 billion worth
of commitments made by different stakeholders to tackle poverty. We had identified particular areas where we
were keen to see work taken forward and we saw progress on each of those
areas. I would be happy, along with
Andrew and Martin, to talk through those.
In addition to the specific financial pledges, which we should remember
were made as the global financial crisis was literally unfolding a few blocks
away in Q110 Chairman: Can I just interrupt with a slightly cynical note? We have had pledges before which the United Kingdom has certainly been fulfilling, or certainly projecting to fulfil, but many of the countries that made pledges do not seem to have followed them up. A clear question is that it is easy to make pledges but how substantial are they? Mr Alexander: Yes. On the morning of 25 September Bono, who was one of the attendees at the event, gave a long interview on CNN and he said, "Politicians like writing cheques but they are less keen to cash them," and we were very mindful of that in the preparation for the event. That being said, I would just add the final point I wanted to make and then I will deal with the specific point of pledges being made. We also wanted this to be a different kind of event, in the sense that we would confidently assert that this was the broadest ever coalition brought together to tackle global poverty, in the sense that this was not simply a governmental event, although more than 140 governments were in attendance and 50 heads of government or state attended the High Level Event, but we also saw representatives of global campaigns, like Bono, like Bob Geldof, and Elle Macpherson, but also a wide range of corporate CEOs for the first time directly involved in issues of poverty reduction and a wide range of NGOs as well. So it was a different type of event and it would be wrong to suggest that the pledges alone were the benchmark by which we judge success. That being said, we had looked long and hard at how best to ensure that we had a positive outcome from 25 September. Although it is by no means a perfect analogy, we had looked at the experience of 2005, which was the last time there had been a significant international effort to galvanise global opinion around the MDGs. We discerned that one of the successes of 2005 had been in some ways a much more benign domino effect than we risked with the financial crisis a few weeks ago, rather to put in place key stepping stones which led to more progressive outcomes as the months moved through 2005. We had first a discussion with the Development Ministers in the European Union and then a decision taken by the June European Council in 2005 in terms of a European Agenda For Action, moving on to the Gleneagles Summit and after the Gleneagles Summit the Millennium Review Summit in September 2005. We very much had that model in mind as we scoped the possibilities for this year to re-galvanise opinion. I would suggest that if you put together the European Agenda For Action that was agreed by the June European Council this year, you put in place the reaffirmation of commitments that had been agreed at Gleneagles that then emerged in the communiqué in Hokkaido for the G8, the new pledges that were made and the commitments made in New York at the High Level Event, allied to the progress that we made on aid effectiveness in Accra, and then anticipate the Doha Financing For Development Conference that will take place in just a few weeks, we have already taken steps to secure gains that might otherwise have been at risk given the global financial pressures. I would certainly say that we regard the progress that we have made internationally, of which the High Level Event is only one example, as having certainly focused international attention, obliged countries to make reaffirmations or new commitments which might otherwise not have been made in the present circumstances, and the challenge for all of us as an international community now of course is to deliver on the pledges that have been made, but the very specificity of the pledges that we were looking for countries to commit to in New York we judged to be one of the best guarantees to ensure that they actually do deliver on the pledges that were being made. Perhaps, Andrew, you could say a word in terms of some of the very specific pledges that we were privately canvassing other countries to engage upon and to ensure actually happened. Mr Steer: I think the issue of money is what certainly gets the headlines but
what we would rather do is start from the desired outcomes and increasingly
focus on that. There was a very real
effort here to ask the question "What is the problem and what are we trying to
solve?" For example, there are 500
million people suffering acutely from malaria every year and one million
deaths. What is reasonable to
achieve? It is a halving of that number,
and we can monitor those. Between here
and there, there are 125 million bed nets that are required; there are
affordable medicines for malaria that can be monitored. While the money is absolutely essential
because there are clear coefficients that go from money to delivering on the
ground, it is the delivery on the ground that we need to monitor from now on as
much as it is on the money. What we
tried to do is to start with what we are trying to do, work our way back to the
numbers, see the shortfall and then try to catalyse some donors that have not
been active before. For example, in
education getting $500 million from Q111 Chairman: The MDG deadline is 2015, you have a review in 2010, which is five years from there. Most of them are off track and when you ask people what their projected dates are they are 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. Presumably some of the point of this was to say "Are we going to meet any of these? What would we need to do to give us a chance of meeting these and if we cannot meet them by 2015, when will we meet them?" Mr Alexander: The parallel I would draw is, to take a topical example of the Glenrothes by‑election, when people say "Secretary of State, you are Election Coordinator. You have lost lots of by-elections recently. You are not going to win Glenrothes, are you?" you never plan a campaign on the basis of failure so you are absolutely sincere in saying "We are planning to win," certainly speaking on behalf of my own colleagues. Similarly, of course we recognize that a number of the MDGs are off track; of course we recognize that there are challenging international financial circumstances; but again, so resolute is our determination to see success on the MDGs that we want to plan for success, and we did. Over a long number of months - and officials within DFID and frankly across Whitehall deserve huge credit for this - we worked in a very disciplined way, not simply to say "What is the headline financial pledge?" but essentially to say "If you were to draw a Gantt chart of the MDGs and identify those areas where unless there is substantive new progress we will undoubtedly miss them by 2015," that was our starting point and really with that we then cajoled, persuaded, worked to fill in the gaps that existed in that spreadsheet in terms of "Clearly we have a problem with malaria. Who can we get to make specific measurable commitments to make sure that we close the bed net gap?" If we have a problem in terms of affordable drugs on malaria, how can we work with the Roll Back Malaria Coalition to make sure that we find the funding to do that? Martin, this was your daily business for months. Mr Dinham: Indeed. To give an example,
one of the building blocks for Q112 Hugh Bayley: Has the Department yet made an estimate of what the impact of the global financial crisis will be on incomes, GDP, in developing countries and therefore on the MDGs? For instance, have you made an assessment of the extent to which remittances will fall, the extent to which income from trade will fall, the extent to which investment flows will fall country by country? Mr Alexander: As with every other department of government, this is an unfolding picture but in that sense I am in a position where on a regular basis - it is usually coming to me once every ten days - I receive the latest assessment from our own Chief Economist within the Department, who is a recent hire for DFID but is an internationally renowned trade economist. In that sense, I have certainly found the indications that are being provided very helpful indeed. Developing countries are, of course, immediately affected in two major transmission channels, both in terms of capital flows and also in terms of trade. Lower growth in the OECD[2] countries will mean less demand for outputs from developing countries and remittances from OECD countries are also vulnerable to decrease. Private capital flows we anticipate will fall and shift back into the OECD areas and the dollar. We are, of course, in light of the emerging evidence of what has been a changing phenomenon, frankly, over recent months, trying to assess what the implications will be, not simply in terms of the 5.5 % growth that a number of African countries have been securing over the last five years but more broadly what the impact will be in terms of our own programmes, where up until now, for example, in sub-Saharan Africa, you have had the benign coming together of high commodity prices in recent years with relatively low rates of interest and available credit. It was, for example, one of the issues that I addressed directly in the Development Committee at the World Bank, where I was making a very clear plea for the Bank to assume what in many ways has been a traditional role for it, which is to undertake counter-cyclical lending, and in that sense we had been for some time looking at the capitalisation of the Bank's balance sheet to see what the stretch available for the Bank would be in terms of picking up some of the lending that in more benign international circumstances would have been picked up by the private sector. Q113 Hugh Bayley: One of the global leaders - I think it might have been Robert Zoellick - made a statement a few weeks ago that the impact of the financial crisis could undo all the progress that has been made since 2000 to date in relation to the MDGs. It is a broad statement, the sort of thing you say in a speech, and you, rightly, I think, Secretary of State, made the point that it will vary from country to country, whether they are an oil importer or an oil exporter, whether they are a very poor African country or a thrusting Asian country, hoping to achieve middle income status shortly. It does seem to me, however, that in terms of planning how your Department responds to events beyond your control, beyond our Government's control, in order to keep the work to achieve the MDGs on track, you need to make not a broad-brush, macroeconomic prediction about percentages of global slowdown; you need to do an analysis country by country, and clearly, the sensible countries to start with would be those countries where our programmes are particularly big in relation to other donors and the GDP of the country as a whole. We are going to be meeting you in two or three weeks' time. I imagine you are doing some work with your economists of this kind, but we would welcome a statement, if possible in advance of the session on the Bank's Annual Meeting, to get a feel, an example from one or two countries, of what you think the impact will be. I just do not know how we respond and how great the impact will be. Until you see figures, it is difficult to know that. Mr Alexander: I think I can assist the Committee on that. Let me start with a very specific example and
then I will ask Andrew to speak about the vulnerability matrix we have already
developed in terms of our key programmes.
Just a fortnight ago I was in Mr Steer: I think you are absolutely right.
That is precisely what one needs to do, because different countries will
be affected dramatically differently through all these channels the Secretary
of State is talking about. There is a
lot of work going on, obviously, within the international system. The World Bank has done a preliminary scoping
and come up with 32 countries that are extremely vulnerable. Obviously, the earlier rather domestic view
that the emerging economies would be to some extent insulated is turning out
not to be true, and some of us have always believed that would be the
case. The question is what happens to the
low income countries, the PSA[4]
countries, in particular. There we are just
starting to do some work on that, looking at indicators across the board,
different types of vulnerability.
Obviously, countries that have higher reserves are less vulnerable than
others; those that are more exposed to international financial flows; those
that are more exposed as exporters of certain kinds of commodities, the prices
might fall; countries that have high inflation are more vulnerable, and so on; countries
that are heavily indebted are obviously more vulnerable. What we have done as a preliminary -
literally in the last couple of days we have really been working hard on that -
we have a list of our PSA countries and then we trace these different
indicators and ask the question "Which are the countries that are most
vulnerable?" Obviously we have to
ground-truth that with all the analysis that is going on in the IMF and the
World Bank and so on, and obviously with our country offices who are close to
the ground. It is a very important
point. Just in terms of the rough
numbers, if you think of Africa, official development assistance to Q114 Hugh Bayley: If I may ask one last question, how quickly will DFID's priorities in spend change to address new circumstances? It is difficult, of course, where you make forward pledges but if you find that six of the countries on your list are particularly vulnerable and are going to be especially hard hit, and you calculate that there are some aid programmes which could mitigate the effect, would you shift more resources to those countries and, if so, how quickly could you do so? Mr Alexander: It is not always an issue of quantum as much as where money is
directed. Again, to take a relevant
example which I have been in discussions about in recent days, there is much
discussion at the moment in terms of Mr Dinham: Yes. Just to add to that, the international financial institutions, particularly the World Bank and the IMF, really in a sense were set up exactly to be able to be on the front foot to deliver for us in these kinds of situations. We have been working very closely, particularly with the Bank, pressing it and urging it to do the maximum to deal with these situations. For example, it is entirely possible for the Bank to significantly increase its level of lending. At the moment it lends about $13.5 billion a year. Because it is very heavily capitalised, it could actually up to double that amount to about $27 billion a year. This was suggested at the Development Committee. There is demand for that now whereas the private sector money is drying up.. The International Finance Corporation, one of the arms of the World Bank, is now coming forward with a proposal for a fund to help recapitalise banks in developing countries. It is important for the Bank, for example, to work very closely with the IMF in a number of these countries to ensure that they have coordinated advice as well as finance, and to look for innovative financing mechanisms which are appropriate to these kinds of spikes and shocks. There is a whole range of issues which we are working very closely on with the Bank and indeed the Fund at the moment. Mr Alexander: One other point I would add quickly on the Bank - and I am conscious that I will be before you again in a couple of weeks' time - is that we take great heart from the speedy response of the Bank to the global food crisis in the sense that the President, Bob Zoellick, I think deserves real credit for the extent to which he has been keen to ensure that the Bank plays an active and constructive role in partnership with WFP,[5] Josette Sheeran and others, but the fact that resources have been yielded up - I think the Bank package was $1.2 billion - we take as being a positive sign, and of course, Bob will be at the meeting taking place on 15 November and was represented at the G7 Finance Ministers' meeting that happened at the White House simultaneously with the Annual Meeting, so in that sense we are comfortable that both the Bank and the Fund are taking an active role in these discussions and we certainly welcome that. Q115 John Battle: One of the worrying things with a global media is that we seem to have one wave of a crisis that overwhelms the next. We were talking about the food price crisis, then the oil crisis, now the financial crisis. In response to Martin's last point, will the debt reduction initiative that has been on the table for some years and is still being worked through be reconciled with the refinancing initiatives or will the debt reduction work be put on the back-burner while we look at refinancing, which means we are not just managing the situation now but reducing the debts, which was the original target? Mr Dinham: I think that is an extremely good point. That is an issue that we need, with the IFIs,[6] to be focusing on. We can come back to you on that but it is absolutely critical. Q116 Chairman: It is fair to point out that the consequence of the latest crisis is that it has actually diminished the food and oil crisis. That is not exactly good news but it is not totally bad. You mentioned Ethiopian, Secretary of State, which you visited just recently. You said there in the light of your concerns about starving children being hidden from your visit, "In light of our continued concerns, I said I was now not prepared to make a multi-annual commitment." Can you just clarify what the situation is in relation to Ethiopia and how that fits - and I understand the reasoning - with the statement you just made about the need to maintain long-term commitment? Mr Alexander: Yes, certainly. I had, as I
say, a two and a half-hour very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Meles
in which actually there was at least as much focus on the issue of the new NGO
law that was under contemplation as the discussions which afterwards both the Times
and the Telegraph focused on. I
had both Times and Telegraph reporters with me when we visited
the Somali region, and I think they judged that their readers were perhaps more
interested in whether malnourished children had been removed from hospital than
the intricacies of the NGO law, but we were in policy terms concerned both by
the adequacy and effectiveness of the Government of Ethiopia's response to the
humanitarian challenge in the Somali region and also what the immediate and
long-term impact will be of the civil society law that is under discussion and
is making progress through the government and ultimately through the Ethiopian
Parliament. In the course of that
conversation with Prime Minister Meles I made very clear that we allocate
resources within the Department for International Development on the basis of
clear evidence of effectiveness in terms of poverty reduction, and to that
extent we have seen real and decisive progress being made by the Government of Ethiopia
in recent years. If you look at progress
on the MDGs that we have been discussing, Q117 Chairman: Are you able to give any indication of timescale? You were going to make an announcement. Mr Alexander: Because we have indicative numbers which we use for planning purposes, once we have a CSR[8] envelope - as you would imagine, we develop that for each of our countries - it is open to us but there is no deadline for us to at any point put into the public domain planning assumptions that we have as firm commitments. As I say, I have made clear that we want to track what progress is being made on both of those issues, discuss it with European partners and with the incoming US administration, and in the meantime we will carry on with some of the very successful work that I witnessed in terms of production of safety nets, education, health and the other programmes that I visited during the time I was there. Q118 Mr Crabb: Firstly, I am probably not alone on the Committee in being very encouraged by your comments about the importance of human rights being mainstreamed to what you are trying to do, not just handing out cheques in terms of development assistance. Coming back to the issue of the money, how do we square your very positive opening comments about the need for funding pledges or reaffirmed pledges for funding at the High Level Event in New York with reports we have been seeing in the last two weeks or so that, for example, some of our larger European partners -Italy, France, Spain - announcing that they are going to either freeze or cut their aid budgets in response to the financial crisis? Are you not concerned that the likelihood is that for the next 12 months or two years the trend will be for donor countries to tighten their aid budgets rather than give more? Mr Alexander: Of course, our challenge is both to meet our obligations as the Mr Dinham: Absolutely, and I think that was part of the very strong rationale
for the EU Agenda For Action document and the work going into that, which
actually underlined what the implications were of the 0.56% commitment by 2010
by Europe and actually concretise that in detailed allocations to sectors as
well as an overall figure. Indeed, with
the UN High Level Event one of the key purposes was to secure real commitments
from people which would carry them forward towards those overall promises that
we have made. That has been our key
intention and, as the Secretary of State has said, Q119 Mr Crabb: In terms of what we are doing within the UK, given the discussion that we were having a few moments ago about the impact of the financial crisis on emerging markets in the poorest countries, do you see any scope for accelerating the progress that we are making to reaching 0.7 % of GNI, to see that there is a need and a scope to increase the assistance we are giving? Mr Alexander: I think, with respect to the question you have just asked, our most
pressing challenge is to ensure that not simply the Q120 Mr Crabb: You are probably unique amongst your Cabinet colleagues in enjoying double-digit percentage increases in your budget in the next few years. Many of the other Whitehall departments are responsible for very real public services that matter to people in this country and they are going through some extremely tight spending round decisions at the moment. How concerned are you that public support here within the UK for this continuous ramping up of our aid budget will be sustained at a time when people are losing their jobs, losing their houses and starting to endure a level of economic pain we have not seen in this country for quite some time? Mr Alexander: I shared a public platform, as the Chair of the Committee knows, with Simon Maxwell of ODI,[10] earlier this week, and he spoke graphically about this being a moment of real danger for development, and I am far from complacent in terms of the hard-won consensus that has been built in recent years. At the same time - and Presbyterian ministers' sons are not known for their natural good cheer and optimism - I have an uncharacteristic optimism on this particular point. If you take my constituents, who are genuinely concerned at the moment as the impact of higher gas bills, higher electricity bills, the cost of filling the car and the cost of buying the weekly shopping impact on household budgets, if you look at the experience of those constituents over the last six or seven months, on one level it has been a unique example of the extent to which we now live in a genuinely interdependent world, because if you take each of those issues - food, fuel or finance - by any reckoning, no country can adequately respond to those challenges by saying "We are going to pull up the drawbridge. We are going to have uniquely national solutions." In that sense I think - and this places a heavy burden of responsibility on all of us as politicians - if we find the right public language, that recognizes the real concerns that people here in the United Kingdom feel about their living standards, about the cost of petrol, about the cost of food and about the cost of their general household budgets, I do believe there is an opportunity for people to understand the extent to which recent events remind us that we have a genuinely shared interest in delivering a world that is less unequal, more peaceful and more sustainable than the world of recent decades. In that sense, that is far from a given. It will require a quality of argument and a seriousness of intent and repetition that will challenge us all, but I do believe that the circumstances are there where, if we get right the public discussion that we have, people can come to an even clearer understanding of the extent to which the impact of a drought in Australia now directly impacts on the price of bread in Paisley, the extent to which the change in the oil price will directly impact on the lives of all of our constituents. Given that reality of interdependence, I think the opportunity to make the case for development spending being an investment in our shared future is actually quite strong. Q121 John Bercow: I very much welcome what you have just said, Secretary of State, and I entirely understand the point about interdependence and the sense that we are doing what we are doing, or the Government is doing what it is doing, aided and abetted by others, not merely out of some spirit of altruism but in the collective interest of the world as a whole. However, even if one leaves that point aside and even if one does think of it substantially in terms of a duty to those less fortunate, I confess that I think there is good reason to be fairly optimistic because, frankly, the growth of the 24-hour media, and in particular the graphic physical depiction on our screens of people enduring grinding poverty, are such that I would hope in all sorts of different constituencies, Labour, Conservative, middle-class and working-class, there would be a sense that, whatever our privations, they are minimal and insignificant by comparison with those of the people whom it is our business to help, and you should help most those who have least. On the subject of seeking to extract from other governments commitments to stick to what they said they would do, and recognizing that you cannot possibly be expected to be the financier of last resort if other people renege on their commitments, how confident are you that you are going to get those commitments? Secondly, leaving aside the bird's eye view, if you look at the worm's eye level, and individual, in some cases multilateral programmes in which we are engaged as taxpayers, are you at all concerned that some of those programmes might suffer even though we have retained our commitment to them and perhaps increased ours because other people have, frankly, copped out? Mr Alexander: Let me try and deal with each of your points in turn. I think you were right to pull me up in
recognizing that I think there are two parallel arguments we need to make for
development in a downturn. One is to see
we have a shared interest, and to that extent, whether it be the benign
consequences of an interdependent world, with unprecedented opportunities for
travel, for sharing of ideas and mobility of capital, there are also very
dangerous consequences, whether it be disease, terrorism, a script with which
all of us in this room would be familiar, but there is undoubtedly an argument around
interdependence. It is important however
not to lose sight of the fact that the moral case for development expenditure endures. If you look at the latest World Bank figures,
published only about five weeks ago, the estimated number of people vulnerable
to hunger are not down but up, inevitably, as a consequence of the global food
price rises, from 850 million to 967 million people. Because the cost of food has risen does not
change the value of a human life. If we
are called upon to act when there are 850 million people going to bed tonight
vulnerable to hunger, if there are 967 million people, now is the time to re-dedicate
ourselves to that moral obligation. In
that sense, I do think that - and I would put all of us in this category around
this room - we need to be committed to the interests of effective development
expenditure. We should not be shy in
these circumstances from continuing to make the moral case as well as the
shared interest, interdependence case.
On the second point you make in terms of the United Kingdom Government
cannot be the financier of last resort, of course that is true. There is always a tension and a balance here
because there is always the opportunity to accentuate the extent to which
Britain is meeting its commitments at the expense of other governments and say "Well,
look how well we are doing relative to others."
Frankly, as all of us as practising politicians would know, that perhaps
is not the most astute strategy if you are trying to simultaneously influence
those governments to make their pledges.
You sometimes, in discussions like this, get into a cat and mouse
exchange where we say "Will you name which governments are not meeting their
commitments?" and you say "There is a number of partners" and we all know the
script. That being said, we have thought
a lot about this and continue to think a lot about it. One of the approaches we have taken is,
firstly, to ask how we create those moments - and that is in part what we were
trying to do over the last six months - to replicate the focus and scrutiny on
the conduct of other governments as well as, to be fair, our own, which will
oblige other governments to recognize the extent to which they are or are not
meeting their commitments. The very fact
that you had a range of celebrities in John Bercow: Secretary of State, can I tell you that your incisive rebuke to the most blinkered Euro-scepticism is duly noted. I will circulate it amongst colleagues. Thank you for those answers, which were extremely helpful. Chairman: We are not proceeding very quickly through the questions, interesting as that exchange is. Q122 Sir Robert Smith: The Business Call to Action event in May 2008, according to your website, was aimed to inspire companies to commit to concrete transformative initiatives that used their core business and to access up-to-the-minute information, money and business expertise as well as create new business and employment opportunities. Out of that High Level Event what sort of private sector initiatives were agreed? Mr Alexander: Let me give you three very specific examples. One is Yara International, who are a
Norwegian-based fertiliser supplier, who are now making, as a result of pledges
made at the High Level Event, a $60 million investment to build a fertiliser
terminal in two key African ports in Tanzania and Mozambique to significantly
improve port efficiencies for agricultural inputs, crucial for small-scale
farmers in particular. A second one is Map
International, who are a financial infrastructure technology provider. When I asked my officials at the time of the
meeting "What does that mean?", they provide electronic banking facilities to 2
million people in Q123 Sir Robert Smith: What are the next steps for the Business Call to Action? Mr Alexander: Essentially, what we have formed now is a consortium which involves a limited but continuing role for not only the UK Government but the International Business Leaders Forum, the Clinton Global Initiative, the World Economic Forum, the UNDP,[11] who have in many ways been the body to whom we have looked for confirmation as to the development gains from the proposals that we have received from these companies. That consortium will continue to take forward its work. The next significant event, we would anticipate, will take place in Davos at the end of January, where there will be a further opportunity to review progress that has been made. We would not anticipate that the consortium in the immediate months between now and Davos will be looking to secure lots of additional new pledges, although, of course, if people want to come forward with serious propositions they will be considered, but a big part of the work will now be in taking forward, monitoring and supporting the announcements that have been made whether prior to the event or at the event in September. Q124 Sir Robert Smith: How do you see, from when those commitments were made in a different economic world, private sector companies actually being able to deliver through this current financial crisis? Mr Alexander: Fortunately for myself, I asked this question ahead of coming to the committee. We have had no indication from any of the 27 companies that the commitments that they have made have been compromised by the economic downturn now, or not across the balance sheets and business models of each of these companies, but there has been no indication whatsoever of any of the companies drawing back from the commitments that they have made in recent months. Q125 Sir Robert Smith: Presumably the recruitment of new companies could be somewhat less? Mr Alexander: Listen, I cannot predict, because, frankly, we do not have in our own mind a target number that we were working towards. We have made a huge effort, both around the event that we hosted here in London in May around the launch of the Business Call to Action and then for another moment in New York on 25 September; and there was, inevitably, after those two spurts to the line a necessary changing of the consortium in the sense that new partners have emerged and we want to get this onto a sustainable basis, but we were anticipating even before the financial events of September a period of immediate consolidation after the specific meeting in May and the specific events in September. Mr Dinham: I think what was interesting
particularly about the event in May but carried forward to September was the
amount of interest and almost competition that was going on between private
sector companies really attracted by this proposition. This is not us going to them and asking for
charity or philanthropic contributions but something which actually made sense
with their bottom line, which was making a huge contribution to employment and
other services particularly in Q126 Sir Robert Smith: A related thing to do with the private sector. I understand that a silver lining of past complaints about Africa is that the African banking system has been very conservative and very highly regulated, but the consequence of that is that they were not involved in sub-prime markets and that sort of thing. Does that give some confidence that maybe, at least when it comes to going forward, that the African banking system may be better placed to cope? Mr Alexander: I think it is quite difficult to talk in generic terms about the African banking system. I think there is probably an easy distinction. On the one hand you have quite an advanced banking system in South Africa, you have, again, a quite large and powerful banking system in Nigeria and then you have a third category, which is banking systems which are often much less connected to the international financial system than would be the case in other more developed markets. I certainly would not want to sit here today and, hand on heart, say there will be no difficulties being visited upon the African banks or the African countries that I have mentioned, but you are certainly right in recognising that the fact that they are not themselves large enough or connected enough in many countries to have already felt the impact of the global financial crisis offers some grounds for optimism that they will be able to undertake the work they have been undertaking in recent years. On the other hand, I would caution against blanket predictions at this stage because there may well be individual institutions that have particular problems related to the commercial decisions they are taking. Mr Steer: I think that is absolutely
right. There is no question; the banks
there are just not as integrated and so there is opportunity; there are grounds
for hope. Linking that to your previous
question, I think the trick in the coming year is going to be to monitor these
27 companies to make absolutely sure that our hypothesis of investing in Q127 Sir Robert Smith: So on a scale it may not be a big thing, but if it sets an example and encourages others and shows the way, then it is an important start. Mr Steer: That is what this is all
about. There are some investments that
are fabulous that, quite frankly, we do not need to highlight because everybody
knows them, there is a lot that is not attractive. There is a zone in the middle which
is now growing because the quality of policy-making in Mr Alexander: Can I add one brief point on
this? Relating to our earlier
conversation as to how you make the case for development on a downturn, when I
was in the Q128 John Battle: Can I come back to the Global Malaria Plan that was announced at the High Level Event, because it set an aim of achieving near zero preventable deaths by 2015, but people assess that that would take investment of a billion dollars a year being raised from now until then, and that was drawn up before the credit crunch, so how realistic is that plan? Can it possibly be achieved or will it just be another target that disappears into the distance? Mr Alexander: One of the reasons that we are optimistic in terms of the progress that has been made on growth by the launch of the Global Malaria Action Plan and also the event that took place in New York is it is probably the best exemplar of putting together a different kind of coalition than that which has been put together in the past, in the sense that with the engagement of private sector people like Ray Chambers, Peter Chernin at News International, there is real private sector engagement on the issue of malaria in a way there has not been in the past. Secondly, in a more co-ordinated fashion than has been the case on previous diseases or in previous years, we have the real engagement of people like the Gates Foundation, and in that sense you have got the philanthropic piece, you have got the private sector piece and you also have the kind of government commitments that Gordon made when he was appearing on Pop Idol, or American Idol, in the United States earlier in the year with an additional 20 million bed nets to make a contribution to filling the bed net gap. So in that sense our measure of the capacity to achieve the Global Malaria Action Plan is not solely contingent on the level of public investment that is secured. That being said, you are absolutely right in recognising that our estimate is the Global Malaria Action Plan will require $5.3 billion in 2009 worldwide, about $2.2 billion for Africa and $6.2 billion worldwide in 2010, $2.86 billion of which is for Africa to expand the malaria control programmes, and will also require an additional $750-$900 million per year to meet the needs for research, vaccines, drugs and other tools. So we have made some progress, but it is right to recognise that the plan identified numbers that need to be moved forward. Again, it bears on the point that Martin made earlier, the very specificity of the Global Malaria Action Plan and the gap that still needs to be filled to meet it to me is an assistance in meeting the challenge of malaria rather than a threat to meeting the challenge of malaria. Mr Steer: I think one of the things that we need to be able to do in malaria, which I think we can, is to demonstrate that this investment is really a wonderful investment. It costs $17 to reduce a disability adjusted life-year in malaria, and that is the standard measure, the so-called DALY. Anything under $100 is traditionally regarded as actually a pretty good investment. That means if there are 500 million cases of pretty serious malaria every year and a million deaths, and it is mainly children, for $17, using the technologies, a combination of spraying and bed nets, you can basically restore a lost year of life either through death or, more likely, through disease. If that is an adult, even if they are only making $150 a year, that is an incredible rate of return. If it is a child, it speaks for itself - that is just a wonderful investment. What we have to be able to do is demonstrate that, and who would not want to put money in with that kind of rate of return, but we have to be able to demonstrate it, which I think we can. Q129 John Battle: Could I apply that across to the Task Force on Innovation Financing for Health Systems, because there, as far as I understand it, the first year is going to be spent exploring funding mechanisms rather than getting on and doing the job. Are we losing a year by doing planning? Why do not those mechanisms for financing that you applied to the malaria initiative apply to this taskforce, or am I being too sceptical? The reason is, we need not just set to targets but to make sure that the stones to reach down that road are in position, do we not? Mr Alexander: I am reminded of Barack
Obama's response when challenged as to why he is not taking part in the debate
while dealing with the global financial crisis, and he said, "As President of
the Q130 John Battle: But unless - and this is where I am not clear - there are parallel financing structures, or will the money go through things like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and malaria or the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation? Will it be used in the existing funding mechanisms or will you be setting up parallel ones? Mr Alexander: No, there is no presumption that we will be setting up parallel structures at all. We are saying, however, if you look at the opportunities that we have, for example, anticipating the Italian G8 Presidency next year, this is now a very serious and credible task force that we have established. We have got Bob Zoellick co-chairing with Gordon, we have got Prime Minister Stoltenberg, if I recollect we have got Margaret Chan from the World Health Organisation, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Bernard Kouchner, Giulio Tremonti, the Italian Finance Minister, anticipating the G8 Presidency. We have put together a serious group of people which we believe will give us clout and authority as a taskforce internationally. We consciously have recognised this. The main criticism is not have you just set up a planning process that will takes months and months and months. If anything, we have put ourselves under a huge degree of pressure in terms of can we start work immediately, and, although we are still working on this, we would probably anticipate that there will be a task force meeting in Doha at the Financing for Development Conference, our first opportunity for the task force to get together and start its work, and given the normal planning timescales for these kind of tasks forces, that is quite quick, anticipating that we want quick results. But we are convinced that, given the collective experience that we have, whether through the AMC,[14] whether through other forms of innovative financing, the challenge is to apply that to a sector which historically has not had the focus on innovative financing in particular in relation to health workers. Mr Dinham: That is right. We are genuinely open about what this taskforce could come up with. There is a whole range of possible outcomes. As you say, some form of IFFIm (International Financing Facility for Immunisation) arrangement, increase donor support for health results, more debt for health SWAps,[15] private participation and the financing and delivery of health services, insurance-based health schemes, whatever. There is a range of possibilities and this is genuinely a way in which we can lever more resources. Q131 John Battle: As long as it is levering more resources in. The reason I asked the question is that in this room, perhaps not that long ago, we were looking at funds to increase assistance for anti-retrovirals for HIV/AIDS, and we are doing an inquiry on AIDS, as you know, at the same time as this. I am rather hoping we can guarantee that it is not just a shift in facility and malaria becomes more important than HIV. Similarly, when we went for the anti-retrovirals we neglected the TB elements, so we have got to go back to it. How can we keep all of them, increase the maximum drive for all of these, so that we actually get nearer the final goals that we are aiming at? That is the issue really, is it not? Mr Alexander: We very much see this as new resources for health in developing countries. The other point I would make would be I personally greatly welcome the involvement of Bob Zoellick, in the sense that I know there has been some criticism in the past in terms of the record of the World Bank in terms of investment in health and it is an issue which I think he is gripping within the bank, but also it holds out, again, a kind of false multiplier effect that not only can we look to lever in new resources, but also it will mean that you have as President of the World Bank somebody who is across quite simply the best thinking anywhere in the world on innovative financing for health and, simply in terms of the World Bank piece, never mind the additional resources, I think that is a significant gain. Mr Dinham: They are also, of course, the treasurer for the advance market commitment for vaccines. Q132 John Battle: Mr Zoellick is still there. If the elections go in a certain direction next week, he may move on. Mr Alexander: Could you possibly tempt me into a prediction on that! Q133 John Battle: He might be treasurer. Mr Alexander: We will have a view by the next time we meet! Q134 John Bercow: Secretary of State, to ensure that the Millennium Development Goal of all children completing primary education by 2015 is met, it logically follows, of course, that universal access to schooling has to be achieved by 2010. What specific steps is DFID taking to ensure that new teachers are trained for schools built as a matter of urgency to facilitate the achievement of this important objective? Mr Alexander: The context in which all of
our spending on education takes place is the pledge which preceded my arrival
in the department, but I am delighted that it was made in terms of the
£8.5 billion that has been pledged between 2006-07 and 2015-16, and in
that sense, we have been working very hard.
I personally have witnessed the results.
I saw for myself in three countries that I recall most recently, one was
in Q135 John Bercow: That is a very helpful answer, but I wonder if, as a follow up, Secretary of State, I can ask you whether the Class of 2015 Partnership, announced at the High Level Event, includes specific gender targets within its aims? Because you will be aware of, and I am sure duly disappointed by, the fact that the 2005 MDG gender equity in education target was missed and, sadly, missed by a mile. Mr Alexander: It is impossible to build
credible strategies for getting those 75 million kids into school unless you
recognise the centrality not just of gender but disability. From my recollection, I do not have the
figures in front of me, but I think one in every six of those children is in Q136 John Bercow: As a very brief follow-up, Secretary of State, may I say thank you again for that and for your commitment to build upon the work that you have already done. I wonder if I could just, in a sense, suggest that this committee can offer reinforcement and ballast to you in your efforts: because on the one hand, obviously, cultural factors very often are of longstanding and they are not easily tackled, and one has to be both sensitive to them but not, ultimately, led by them, and, to put it very bluntly, there is a compelling case, I think, for affirmative action in this context. It logically follows that if girls are far behind and if there is a general default presumption in a family with devastatingly inadequate resources in favour of sending the boy rather than the girl, or if a judgment has to be made to withdraw a child where there are school user fees, to withdraw the girl rather than the boy, frankly, that needs to be revisited, and it is perfectly legitimate if DFID is paying the piper for it, at least to some extent, to call the tune. The second point, if I may say, Secretary of State, is that I think it has been a recurrent feature of our visits as an International Development Committee, there are a number of different places in respect of a range of projects not specifically related to primary education, to find that in so many cases we go to these meetings about women's issues and it is men who are speaking. On one occasion Malcolm and I and Ann McKechin, whom of course we are delighted now to see as a member of the Government and, sadly, no longer a member of this committee, were absolutely infuriated that there was a woman - I can think of one at least, and there were other examples - who had a Master's degree, who was standing there serving the tea while men prated on eloquently at very considerable length and it is a fair bet that a number of them will have lesser qualifications. Mr Alexander: Sounds a bit like my kitchen! I simply observe the fact that probably none of us are well qualified to comment on this, given that all of the witnesses and all of the questioners are men, and I am conscious that we are having this discussion against that backdrop. I would also say with humility that, following the reshuffle, all of the ministers at the Department for International Development are men. Partly as a result of that, I have taken on the responsibility of being the minister responsible for gender issues within the department, because I wanted an unequivocal message sent out that at the highest level of the department that we do and continue to take extremely seriously the gender dimension to the challenge of poverty reduction. In the best traditions of the Civil Service, I have been surreptitiously passed two notes clearly determined to make sure that I present an accurate picture of the department's work. One note, if I may quickly indulge the committee, says, "Target missed but progress." In 1999 there were 94 girls per 100 boys in school and, happily, in 2006 that number has at least risen to 97 girls per 100. So there has been progress, but I am far from complacent and there is more to be done. The second torn piece of paper I was passed was just confirming that the Fast-Track iInitiative endorsement of which I spoke requires very specific attention being paid to the issue of gender. So I can assure you that, if there are further opportunities for dialogue with the committee, we will continue, I hope, to prove the sincerity of our concern, but it is a very fundamental part of our thinking about the challenge of education. Mr Steer: Just to support your point
about affirmative action, yes, affirmative action is required and that is why
actual cash is handed over to parents to enable their children, their girls, to
go to school in countries like Chairman: I am pleading with the Labour whips to ensure that Ms McKechin's replacement is female; otherwise we will have an all male committee. John Bercow: That will be deeply unsatisfactory, and then there will be questions of pots calling kettles black and all that sort of thing, as people start moaning about these matters. Chairman: We genuinely try to feminise ourselves with at least one woman. Q137 John Bercow: Mr Dinham wants to say something, I think. Mr Dinham: No, it was just to re-emphasise that the Class of 2015 event had this issue about girls' education shot right through it, and if you look at the UN document, which sets out all the various pledges which have been issued, a number of them refer to girls' education and specifically Norway put in $180 million specifically for that through the UNICEF Programme, so it was quite a strong motif really. Q138 John Battle: We have, quite rightly, referred to the Prime Minister and, indeed, his wife. There have been defaults on MDG5 on maternal health, which has fallen the furthest behind, but if gender is to be driven as a theme throughout all the MDGs, it does seem that some of them are both too narrow and others are not even taken into scope. For example, with HIV/AIDS the question of violence against women is a theme that we are waking up to perhaps late in the day. I just wonder whether, on the whole question of gender equality, if we set each of the targets against gender equality most are really far off track. Should we not be setting specific targets, perhaps along John Bercow's lines of affirmative action, for women and girls in all the MDGs? Would that not help set a framework to be much more inclusive, although we are still hoping they will trickle down and reach through? Mr Alexander: It is interesting. I had a similar conversation relatively recently with my Danish counterpart, Ulla Tørnǽs, who is responsible for taking a strong leadership role on the issue of gender at the High Level Event, and you can have quite a theological conversation as to whether it is better to have a vertical or horizontal target: do you think of the target in terms of gender equality as running, like a theme through a stick of rock, through all of the MDGs, or is it better to identify and specify specific gender outcomes in terms of poverty reduction? I think the real test is the progress that we make, and in that sense my answer on gender would echo my broader response when people say why is it that the MDGs do not have enough emphasis on climate change, or conflict, or other issues which, were the MDGs being written today, probably would have a stronger emphasis. At one level you can have a critique of the MDGs to say they are, by definition, if there are eight of them, somewhat reductionist, they do not cover everything. Frankly, it is an important conversation to have, but at the moment it is the best framework we have, and I do not want to give people the excuse to spend months or years reflecting your earlier question, having conversations about how to redraw matrices for the MDGs, I want us to get on with the job, and in that sense at the High Level Event in New York the UN estimate $265 million was specifically committed to women's education. That to me is a better use of the collective time of the international community than at this point in the progress towards the MDGs or, indeed, the failure to make progress redrawing the matrix. Q139 John Battle: I take your point, and I am not redrawing matrices, but the reality is on the ground as it were. To cross-reference a conversation that this committee is having co-terminis with this conversation, if you like, on HIV and AIDS, is the question that 60 % of women that suffer HIV/AIDS - and pregnant women - there is a massive issue there - and one of the issues that DFID have been good at has been doing some work on the ground on violence against women and HIV/AIDS, I think, if I remember, in Bangladesh, Nepal and South Africa. Can I flag that up with you and say that as well as setting a matrix out, perhaps some of the practice on the ground that DFID has implemented already ought to be disseminated right across the international agencies to make sure that it is built into their practice. We may then make some more progress as a whole. I make a plea to say that there is some good work going on on the ground. It may not be in the matrix, but unless we get there, we will not get the outcomes that we would want. Mr Alexander: I have got the figures in
front of me for John Bercow: The committee has the same problem Secretary of State. Q140 Hugh Bayley: Compared to some select committees, we are pretty supportive of the department we are going to scrutinise. In fact, our previous Chairman described it as a conspiracy, the committee working with the department to rein in support for the department's work out of the Government, and I think it is still generally true, we very warmly support the work that the department does, but we have a gripe, and the gripe is this. In our report on global food security we raised the concern that the way that DFID measures progress towards Millennium Development Goal 1 uses poverty as the indicator rather than nutrition. Millennium Development Goal 1, of course, is to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, and they are not the same things. I do not think one could make a credible argument that you remove hunger simply by increasing people's income. There is clearly a correlation but they are not the same thing. I wonder, when you were looking at the committee's recommendation and making your response when you decided to make no change to the way you assess the department's contribution towards the achievement of Millennium Development Goal 1, whether you came close to adding a nutrition indicator or whether you would want to add a nutrition indicator somewhere else. That struck us as very important when we wrote our report back in June and July and, given what has happened to food prices since, I think it is even more important. I wonder whether it is something you would like to comment on and possibly consider further. Mr Alexander: A word of context before I come on to this specific response that we offered to the committee. The Davos Conference that took place last year at the end of January was noteworthy, and it is usually to Bob Zoellick's credit by the fact that he took the opportunity, frankly ahead of anybody else, of highlighting the quite seminal Lancet article that identified nutrition in particular as a problem, and he took the opportunity to talk about the fact that the international community was going to have to recognise nutrition and hunger as a significant issue in the months ahead. Actually, with certainly Andrew, one of the things I did when I came back from that conference was to say, "I want to see my agriculture people and I want to see my health people in a room so that I am confident that we are across these issues", because, frankly, nutrition had not been a central focus of my work in the first six to eight months in the department but I wanted to make sure that, as one of the key international donors, we were across this issue. I think there has been recognition, which is reflected in the response that we gave to the committee's work, that this is an issue that has grown in significance, not least in the light of the rising food prices. I would, with respect, somewhat diverge from the overly pessimistic characterisation you have offered of my response, or the Government's response to your report, in the sense that in front of me I have got the exact wording for clarity: "DFID's policy in the research division established a nutrition taskforce team in June this year. Ministers" - myself - "have asked the team to recommend ways in which DFID can strengthen its focus on improved nutrition outcomes in the context of rising food prices", and in that sense that is work that we are taking forward. We are looking to have a nutrition strategy by the end of 2008 and in that sense there is ongoing work on this issue. Andrew, do you want to add to that? Mr Steer: I think your comments and
criticisms were fair. DFID, I think, has
done some wonderful work on nutrition.
The way we have gone into it, though, has been a lot through social
transfers, as you know, in 20 countries in Q141 Hugh Bayley: I am certainly reassured that you are working in the area. In your response you said this in explanation of the department's policy, "We have selected eight of the 48 MDG indicators, one for each MDG, as a summary measure of progress against the PSA in 22 partner countries. We have selected a poverty measure - the proportion of population with income below one dollar - as our indicator of progress against MDG1 to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger." Our question to you is: why did you chose the poverty indicator, not the nutrition indicator? If you do work on this field, and I am reassured to know that you are re-examining the matter, perhaps you do not need to pursue it further, but I think as a committee, if you decide as a result of your nutrition work to retain the single indicator for MDG1 as a poverty indicator rather than a nutritional indicator, can we have an explanation of why you think it is the right thing to do? Mr Alexander: With respect, I think there is a slight risk if we are not complete in the quotation, in the sense that the following sentence is also relevant. It states, "We will, however, continue to monitor progress against all MDG indicators, including those of malnutrition, throughout the PSA period." In that sense we can have a further exchange, and I hope that the undertakings that we have given reflect the seriousness with which we reflect on the work on the committee. On the other hand, it does not seem to me to be inappropriate to see that you can both have summary indicators and take a more comprehensive look by measuring all of them, but I take the point you have said, and, as I said, there is continuing work underway within the department. Q142 John Battle: In terms of the sensitivity of the indicators, some of the Government specialists now are saying, obviously, a dollar a day, you cannot survive on that in a rural area. It is very different from trying to survive on that if you are in an urban area. I think in the past we have focused on hunger as a rural issue and not as an urban issue. Given that now more than half the population in the world live in urban conurbations, will the indicators be sensitive enough to realise that there is malnutrition and hunger in the urban centres that might actually be a greater challenge than in the rural areas? Mr Steer: I think it is certainly true that more attention will, and should, be given to urban issues by the development community world-wide. With regard to the poverty indicators, at the country level, which is where it matters, country level poverty indicators, if they are done well, reflect crises in different regions of the country, so that would already be embedded in the overall poverty measure, to the extent that you would wish all good measures of poverty - and generally the World Bank tends to lead this work - would have regionally disaggregated and urban/rural disaggregated measures because the bundle of goods that you are trying to measure is different in those two and the prices are quite different in the two, as you say. Q143 Chairman: Following on from that, coming towards the end, the food security issue obviously has changed somewhat from the extreme situation earlier in the year. I am not sure whether you have made an evaluation, but clearly some of the prices have come down. I guess it is too early for people to predict what the overall trends are, but there were two particular points. One was the World Food Programme's Purchase for Progress initiative, in other words to buy more locally and secure their supplies more effectively, and at the same time as helping local farmers get more of a share of the purchasing power, and your own commitment to increase investment in agricultural production. Are you able to give us an indication, first of all, how this was addressed at the summit and how it is going to be taken forward, because clearly these are two issues which should help alleviate these kinds of crises in the future and actually contribute to development and poverty reduction at the same time? Mr Alexander: I am happy to do so. I think it might be helpful for the information of the committee if Andrew very quickly goes through what is happening to commodity prices on three of the key markets, because I asked a similar question earlier and was in some ways both encouraged and educated by what he told me in terms of wheat and rice, because it tells quite a different picture in each of them. Mr Steer: Certainly, Chairman, you are absolutely right that prices today are lower substantially - wheat is 47 % down on its peak, maize is 35 % down, rice is 26 % down on its peak - but if you compare prices today with a time when they were reasonably stable, like October 2004, four years ago, wheat is up 66 %, maize is up 98 % and, most disconcerting of all, rice up 253 %. So, whilst there are some grounds for encouragement in that, the spike has gone, but I think we are all very much aware for three or four well-known reasons that the era of really low prices is not with us any more. Mr Alexander: In terms of what actually
happened at the High Level Event, those assembled promised nearly $2 billion
for emergency food aid to stop the immediate tragedy of the threat of
starvation of the horn of Q144 Chairman: Is there specific progress on this Global Partnership for Food and Agriculture? Mr Alexander: Yes. I can give you some of the details in terms of GPAF, as it has come to be known. It was envisaged as being a compact which will bring together a broad range of different partners behind nationally developed country plans, in some ways not dissimilar to the kind of conversations we were having earlier in terms of the Fast-Track Initiative, both to hold people to account and help facilitate access to the finance. It will involve donors, developing countries, international agencies, civil society and the private sector; it will use existing financing mechanisms and instruments. We are not looking to establish a new global fund for food but rather to see how can we use the effective instruments, help align stakeholders by working through national and regional plans, in particular CAADP,[16] in terms of agricultural research for Africa and also the African-led social protection processes and, finally, help to take forward the UN Comprehensive Framework for Action. In terms of progress that has been made to date on that, we have the initial proposal of this at the Rome Summit in June, broad support reflected for it in the July Summit of the G8, and we used the High Level Event to actually further strengthen the commitments and, as I say, there were $2 billion worth of commitments made. I think the success of the Global Partnership for Food and Agriculture is reflected, in particular, by the size of the World Bank commitment, the $1.2 billion, which, frankly, has reflected a speed of response and an integrated partnership approach which has not always been replicated in the past but is certainly proving its worth in terms of the World Food Programme. Q145 Chairman: You had the aim of doubling production in participating countries. What you did not say is how many countries you hoped would participate and by when you would double production. Are you able to give you any firmer idea as to that? Mr Alexander: As the clock ticks towards Chairman: Secretary of State, thank you very much. I think the committee appreciates that you will be appearing in front of us twice in two weeks, which is not ideal for either of us, I guess, but it gives us an opportunity to pull a lot of threads together, particularly in international institutions. Thank you and your team very much for coming. [1] Millennium Development Goals [2] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [3] UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [4] Public Service Agreement [5] The World Food Programme [6] International Financial Institutions [7] Civil Society Organisations [8] Comprehensive Spending Review [9] Official Development Assistance [10] Overseas Development Institute [11] UN Development Programme [12] Millennium Challenge Corporation [13] US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief [14] Advance Market Commitment for Vaccines [15] Sector Wide Approaches [16] Comprehensive [17] Supplementary written evidence submitted by DFID |