Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 166)
TUESDAY 23 JUNE 2009
MR DAVID
SATTHERTHWAITE AND
MR LARRY
ENGLISH
Q160 John Battle:
The Tenants' Association.
Mr English: We have had discussions
with the TSA[8]
and they are very willing to do it. It is how we actually get
that to happen. What we do have the opportunity to do is we do
have places where that is set up to happen. It just needs the
kind of authority, the kind of sanction, that would resource those
different entities to be in that same space.
John Battle: Thank you.
Q161 Chairman:
You are saying that DFID has a lack of focus on urban poverty
and poverty reduction, but is that not true of the developing
countries as well? Is it true that they have their supposed Poverty
Reduction Strategies but do they really build in a focus on urban
poverty? To be fair, the Committee—and I give some credit
to Mr Battle, who was very anxious that we do this report—has
probably taken a little while to cotton on to the fact of how
much development needs to be addressing people living in urban
poverty in developing countries. The image of development, very
often, is rural, with wells and villages and things. Of course,
that is relevant but that is almost the whole image to most people,
yet there are more and more people in that situation. Are the
governments and the communities of developing countries on board
on this? Are they really clued up to the fact that actually, perhaps,
the top of their strategy ought to be to deal with their urban
poor?
Mr Satterthwaite: Some certainly
are. A shocking fact: you can go to a 300-page PRSP and you ask
"slums"—nothing; "squatter settlements"—nothing;
"urban"—appendix 7. It just is not in the conception
of the people that develop the PSRPs that there is a thing called
"urban poverty" that has importance. I think that is
mainly the fault of the World Bank staff. It is not the fault
of the nations. That is a slight exaggeration; India is certainly
taking urban poverty very seriously; pretty much every Latin American
nation is; most of the middle income nations in Asia are—some
with very good policies. In North Africa there are some very good
urban policies, but in sub-Saharan Africa less so. Which of the
African countries? Senegal has had a reasonable policy on urban
poverty, but I am kind of struggling to look for good examples.
Q162 Chairman:
Mr English was shaking his head when I was asking my question.
Mr English: I think this is a
point we made. The observation that I feel is clearest is from
Thomas Melin of SIDA who said that the complexity of the interdepartmental
collaboration that is required to actually address slum issues
(even where they are highlighted the strategy) is difficult in
this country but more difficult in sub-Saharan African countries.
So it is unlikely that the mechanics of developing a strategy
and prioritising housing is going to happen if there is not a
culture of interdepartmental collaboration. So it could be purely
the lack of that policy or that way of managing the issue that
is not identified. There is a lot of anti-urban bias. I have been
to ministers of housing in Africa—even the one in Nigeria
said: "Could you focus on building houses in rural areas
so that these people can go back home?" That has been repeated
with many, many other countries. There are a lot of other people
who have written about this; the fact that cities are regarded
as places for the elite.
Q163 Chairman:
Other evidence that we have been given as we have gone through
this inquiry is that although it requires investment and it requires
planning, in some ways it is easier to deliver poverty reduction
in an urban environment than it is in a rural environment—to
deliver water, sanitation, power and all these other things.
Mr English: Exactly. In one small
space you can deliver on just about every MDG just by one intervention,
and that is what makes it, sometimes, so difficult to understand.
Q164 Chairman:
Just a comment on the irony of Nigeria, and then a final question.
Mr English: My example was some
time back, I must say.
Q165 Chairman:
What we were told every day, and we experienced every day, was
that the big problem in Nigeria was the shortage of electrical
power, which meant the lights were literally going on and off
all the time and, consequently, everywhere you went people were
running generators, because they could not rely on the power system.
Yet, the price of power is subsidised. They said: "We cannot
possibly put up the price of electricity in order to fund investment
because it will hit the poor"; but the reality was that the
poor were not buying electricity; they were generating it much
more expensively through diesel generators. Going back to the
earlier discussion, you are saying DFID needs to get its act together
as a leading donor, then it needs to work with developing country
partnerships to help them get their act together. So there is
a quite major shift required if we are going to address this,
I think, is what you are both telling us.
Mr Satterthwaite: Yes. One interesting
indication: DFID understood that governance was very important,
but it hardly focused on local governance. If you are looking
at the poor in Lagos it is all local organisations they need to
negotiate with: for tenure, for schools, for health care, for
drains, for water, for sanitation, for transport. It is getting
the understanding that you have got to drive local governance
reform if you are going to deliver. We would never have got rid
of cholera in the UK if it had not been driven by city government,
by municipal government. You need that competence and capacity
in city/municipal government all over Africa.
Chairman: That is a very important point.
We actually visited the Megacity project in Lagos. It is a wonderful
empty office; it would have been completely empty if we had not
turned up! The professor actually had to come in to meet us in
his own office to discuss the project that was not being taken
forward. I think we have got quite a lot of food for thought,
and I think by the time we have finished DFID is going to have
quite a lot of food for thought as well.
Q166 Mr Singh:
The only difficulty I have is that budgets are both limited and
committed. It is easy to make a recommendation in this Committee
that DFID should do a lot more about urban poverty. What would
suffer? I do not think the budget is going to expand to cover
that. Will we do this at the expense of tackling rural poverty?
Mr Satterthwaite: Absolutely not.
If DFID decided, over the next five years, to ramp up support
to £100 million, that is a very small part of DFID's total
commitment. If it is steering that with and through the urban
poor and local governments, you get incredible value for money.
It sounds very heretical but some of the best aid agencies I know
have very heavy staff costs because they engage with the urban
poor and their community organisations and give the least money
that is needed. I know this is really tough; every bilateral agency
is judged on its spend and its staff costs, but if you actually
want to work with the urban poor and never give them too much
money it takes a relationship, and a relationship needs staff
and it needs staff on the ground. We have got to think of urban
poverty reduction as a partnership with the urban poor driving
it, and that means you have to structure your funding differently.
Sometimes that $18,000 provided quickly in response is going to
have tremendous implications, much more than the $50 million that
you were planning on a big initiative. How do we get DFID to support
hundreds of community-driven initiatives which then filter up
and begin to address the local governance issue? Institutionally
difficult but if we do not think of a way of doing it we are not
going to reduce urban poverty.
Mr English: I would like to add
the same point that was made in the last session around local
government. I do think that there is a lot of resource in the
UK; there is a lot of expertise. What, probably, many people do
not know is a lot of our support has actually come from, as I
have mentioned before, housing associations that have twinned
with other organisations in the south, helped them to develop
over time and have been patient enough to do that We have already
had discussions with the TSA, with the NHF[9]
and the Scottish Federation and the other federations, as well
as the CIH,[10]
to actually mobilise more resources—and I mean resources,
not just financial, in terms of people who want to get involved.
The reason we have always stayed away from that is the question
of translation; it is a completely different environment and,
often, it can be well-intended and those kinds of resources are
not helpful. However, I still think it is a challenge that DFID
does not meet. It is not just financial resources; I think DFID
needs to engage its own sectors; it needs to involve. We have
personally taken it upon ourselves to make sure that every person
who is into housing in this country understands the housing issues
outside of this country.
Chairman: A good question to ask, Marsha,
and I think you got a good answer. Thank you both very much indeed.
As I was saying, I think we have a serious challenge here. More
and more people living in an urban environment are an increasing
proportion of the poor people we are supposed to help and, yet,
it would appear, really, as we go through this inquiry, we do
not have proper structures for dealing with it. I believe this
is going to be a timely and important inquiry. It will not be
in time for the White Paper but, frankly, that is beside the point,
I think. Thank you both very much indeed.
8 Tenant Services Authority. Back
9
National Housing Federation. Back
10
Chartered Institute of Housing. Back
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