Examination of Witnesses (Questions 167
- 179)
WEDNESDAY 1 JULY 2009
MR GARETH
THOMAS MP, DR
YUSAF SAMIULLAH
AND MR
PETER DAVIES
Q167 Chairman:
Thank you for coming in. Could you introduce yourself and your
team for the record, please?
Mr Thomas:
Mr Bruce, thank you for the opportunity to appear before the Committee
again, on this particular subject. Yusaf Samiullah, to my right,
is our Head of Infrastructure Profession, and Peter Davies is
a Senior Infrastructure Advisor within the Department.
Q168 Chairman:
Thank you very much. As you know, the Committee is conducting
an inquiry urbanisation and poverty, which I think has been quite
an eye-opener for the Committee. The statistics we know are that
the majority of people living in the world are living in towns
and cities, and the proportion living in urban poverty is rising
very rapidly. That brings us to an interesting point. A paper
produced in 2001 by DFID, of which we have had a copy, made a
very strong commitment to meeting the urban challenge and making
that a very significant part of the DFID strategy; yet it appears
that as urban poverty has risen, DFID's engagement and commitment
in tackling it has appeared to decline. Can you explain how that
has happened?
Mr Thomas: If you will forgive
me, I would not accept your analysis. The 2001 policy paper of
which I also have a copy here, I think is still very relevant
in terms of the analysis that it offers. I hope that I will get
the chance during the course of our hearing to point to a number
of our programmes that address the many different challenges that
urbanisation brings, be it in Asia, in Africa or indeed the Caribbean.
I would also want to point to a number of the multilateral institutions
with whom we work which are also working heavily on urbanisation
challenges. Indeed, a number are in the process of potentially
stepping up their work on urbanisation. What I would accept is
that, given the pace of urbanisation, further policy thinking
within the Department will be required. I flag two things to you
specifically, Mr Bruce. One is that we are working on an infrastructure
strategy paper at the moment, which will certainly reference the
challenges that urbanisation brings in one particular section
of that work. I believe also that we will need to focus more of
our thinking on how we can improve the governance and development
of cities to manage those challenges of increasing urbanisation.
I have kick-started some work in that area, but I have to say
to you that it is very early days at the moment.
Q169 Chairman:
Thank you. That slightly begs the next question. You assert, perfectly
reasonably, that the policy paper still stands as the underpinning
of the strategy, but if you are updating and reviewing it, do
you envisage coming up with a specific stated public policy, strategy
or a paper updating that? It is, after all, eight years and you
say the pace has changed. It would be appropriate, would it not,
to benchmark that and identify what the changes are and what the
priorities might be for the future? Do you envisage a specific
statement on a strategy for urban poverty coming from the Department?
Mr Thomas: At this stage, I have
to say I do not because I think what was in the 2001 policy paper,
the analysis that was offered there, is still broadly right. I
do think we need to update our work on infrastructure. As I say,
urbanisation is very much part of the context for some of the
infrastructure challenges that developing countries face—a
very significant number. As I say, there is work we need to do
to step up our engagement on the governance of cities precisely
to help them manage the challenges of urbanisation going forward.
I appreciate that that is not a clear answer to your question.
In a sense, I think we will address the challenges of urbanisation
in a series of different ways, specifically on cities' governance
going forward, I hope. As I say, I have kick-started some work
in that area, certainly on infrastructure. I suggest to the Committee
that we are already tackling some of the challenges of urbanisation
that come in the context of what we are already doing in health,
education and economic growth, et cetera. The White Paper, which
we are about to publish, will obviously allude to some of the
further challenges that we will need to take into account.
Q170 Chairman:
I do not think for a minute the Committee wants to suggest that
DFID is not engaged in dealing with urban poverty; it was the
structure for dealing with it, if you like, that we were trying
to probe. For example, in the annex of the 2001 paper there is
a huge amount of data from a variety of sources, not only from
the World Bank but from DFID as well, giving both current and
projected urban populations and projected growth rates. Is there
any value in the case for bringing that kind of paper up to date
or is it in the public domain elsewhere?
Mr Thomas: I would suggest it
is in the public domain elsewhere. The World Bank carried out
a World Development Report that effectively focused on urbanisation
and addressed some of the challenges there. They are planning
a new urban and local government strategy and they are working
on that at the moment. One of the things that that will look at
is the potential to draw up a list of indicators for the performance
of cities, to judge levels of poverty, quality of life, et cetera.
There is similarly work that the Asian Development Bank has done.
They have already got an urban sector strategy. They have a new
initiative that they are working on, a cities development initiative
for Asia. The African Development Bank has also started work on
an urban strategy. There is a series of pieces of work being done
on urbanisation by multilateral bodies. I think we will also pick
up some specific challenges that are linked to urbanisation, as
I say, through our infrastructure strategy paper and potentially
through the work we might do on cities.
Chairman: As you will see from questions
that are about to flow and from the evidence we have taken already,
there seems to be quite strong demand for a clearer updated statement
from DFID as to how it is proceeding. It does not mean we have
come to a definitive conclusion but there is almost a clamour
for DFID to clarify what it is doing, and a number of the questions
will reflect that. I leave that for you to think about.
Q171 Mr Stunell:
In a way, Minister, you have made it easy for us because you have
said that you still regard the 2001 document as the vehicle for
judging the performance of the Department. We have taken quite
a lot of evidence, for instance, from the Development Planning
Unit, who say that they are finding engagement on urban issues
with DFID comparatively difficult because you do not have an identified
person and you do not have an identified unit; and, as they would
put it to us, some of the skills that were present are not as
explicit or present now. Can you respond to those concerns, and
particularly that the urban message is not visible within DFID
as it presents itself to other organisations and NGOs et cetera?
Mr Thomas: In terms of a point
of contact, I would see Yusaf as the first point of contact as
the Head of our Infrastructure Profession. We have 42 infrastructure
and urban development advisors; 19 of whom are based in the UK
and the rest overseas. There is a whole series of other advisers
in the Department who effectively work on urbanisation issues
through the sector-specific work they do, be it on health or education,
et cetera. You cannot work on health and on education without
having to have some understanding of the context of your work,
and urbanisation is undoubtedly part of the development context.
I would dispute the notion that there has been a complete loss
of urbanisation expertise within the Department; I do not think
there has been. It is true to say that we do not have a dedicated
team as such, focused purely on urbanisation. We organise the
Department in a different way, around sector-specific issues rather
than some of the cross-cutting themes that provide some context
for that sector-specific work; so we do have teams that focus
on health, education, et cetera. We have fewer teams that focus
on cross-cutting issues like urbanisation, but I would suggest
that the expertise is still very much there.
Q172 Mr Stunell:
The evidence we have taken suggests that it is not readily visible
to those who are in the same field, so I wonder whether you would
take that away and consider it—that you have not actually
got an identifiable urban poverty development team either in the
UK or urban poverty specialists operating in the field, and I
wonder if you feel that in the light of that, and bearing in mind
you have invited us to regard the 2001 paper as the benchmark,
whether we have not in fact drifted away from the direction that
that paper set out.
Mr Thomas: I do not think so.
The largest programme where we are spending resources is India,
where we have a very substantial urban programme, and a planned
programme going forward. There is potentially some £236 million
going forward. There is no way you can have that size of programme
without having expertise on urbanisation in the Department, in
the Department's office in New Delhi and in the states, there.
I think the expertise is there. I will reflect on the point, Mr
Stunell, that you and Mr Bruce have made about whether there is
a way of providing a clearer access point for those who are focused
on urbanisation, who want to talk to DFID about that. I would
want to use this appearance, in a sense, if I may, to re-emphasise
the point I made earlier: Mr Samiullah I would see as the first
point of contact on urbanisation issues in London. Outside London
it would be country offices, but that would be the contact point.
Andrew Stunell: I appreciate that reply.
Thank you.
Q173 John Battle:
Can I ask about co-operation across the whole of Government! I
ask it because I look, perhaps too idealistically, to DFID to
lead Government into new areas of vision and anticipation of the
future, frankly. I was just a little bit disappointed that in
the written evidence, talking about co-operation with other Government
departments on urbanisation, the focus seemed to be on Russia,
Brazil, India and China. I know there is urbanisation in Brazil,
India, Russia and China, but I was looking for something larger
and perhaps making the link with what is going on in our own large
towns and cities as well, because I think the work DFID does and
is exploring and experimenting with now will apply in my city,
hopefully sooner rather than later. I just want to put the question
to you in this way: where is the tie-up with—I think they
call it now the Department for Communities and Local Government?
There does not seem to be a strong tie there, or that you are
pushing that department from what you learn of work in other international
cities. When you say to me, which follows the point in a way,
the broad indicators, of course, are health and education, but
the whole point of focusing on urbanisation is that it throws
up a separate, specialist box of problems and challenges that
we may need to develop particularly. I am thinking of the big
four, which are pretty basic: fresh air in cities, energy and
waste management in cities; economic regeneration, which does
relate to growth of course, but transport as well. I think that
those four key areas that form a nexus with urbanisation, apply
in Britain as well. Why are you not doing more to drive our own
indigenous Department for Communities and Local Government to
catch on to some of these big issues that we should be tackling
together?
Mr Thomas: Forgive me, I am a
Minister in the Department for International Development and not
a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government,
and therefore I do not think it is my responsibility to drive,
as a Minister, what is happening on the ground in the UK. We do
work with DCLG on any international dimension of their work. For
example, there is, every couple of years, I think, a World Urban
Forum, where often it is a DCLG Minister that leads the delegation,
but there are usually senior DFID officials in that delegation.
We work with them, on, for example, work around the Cities Alliance.
Mr Samiullah represented the Department at a recent meeting of
the Cities Alliance in Marseilles. We also work with them on work
that is done by the Commonwealth Local Government Programme, which
has some 34 different capacity-building projects in a series of
Commonwealth countries. On occasion we use their expertise as
well as our own expertise to help monitor the spending that that
programme funds.
Q174 John Battle:
I am not so convinced, if you will forgive me, on the commitment
to the World Urban Forum. I think it was Mr Narayan who went,
and I think DFID sent a note in November that said—that
was the World Urban Forum—"Otherwise UK input was limited."
I think one official went from DFID and it was not ministerial.
In a way I am not so worried about whether we go out there to
the World Urban Forum; I am more interested in what happens with
the co-ordination in Whitehall. My vision would be to have you—and
I am putting it to you personally, in a way, as a DFID Minister,
and you are now a Minister of State—to say: "Look what
we are working on, what our officials and the quality of their
work shows us from urbanisation and the development of urbanisation
internationally, is that we need to take this much more seriously
in Britain and learn from what is going on elsewhere in the world
and apply it here as well. So would you be sympathetic perhaps
to my suggestion that there should be a dedicated Cabinet sub-committee
on urbanisation here, to draw the themes together, so that it
is not the north helping the south any more, but we see these
challenges as common now—fresh air, energy and waste are
common—there are other arguments that the Daily Mail
has about whether we have green dustbins or not, but the challenges
for waste management in urban cities are much larger, but it is
our rubbish being dumped there, so we need to have a link to those
challenges. Similarly with transportation—models of urbanisation
and transportation, and are people in and out of work and regeneration—I
think we have got common causes, but I am not convinced that we
are looking at it the right way. Could you and your colleague,
the Secretary of State—could DFID do a bit more to press
for a Cabinet sub-committee on urbanisation that applies to north
and south simultaneously? Would it be worth doing?
Mr Thomas: You are asking me effectively
to be an imperialist in terms of other Government responsibilities,
and I think with respect I have got plenty to do in the Department
for International Development rather than trying to tread on colleagues'
territory in terms of the urbanisation challenges in the UK.
Q175 John Battle:
Do you not see them as the same challenges? That is what I am
asking.
Mr Thomas: I think they are very
different. They have their similarities, of course, and the issues
that you identify—I would probably add a series of other
challenges—are there for developing countries. There may
be occasion when, if you like, some of the urban planning expertise
that is in our cities and our regional and local governments might
be useful for developing countries and governments overseas, but
the challenges are very different. The challenges that Calcutta
faces are very different to the challenges that Nairobi would
face. There are of course common themes, but the country context
and the city context is very different to those, say, of Leeds
or London.
John Battle: It is interesting! Half
of Europe's cities are going to San Paulo to look at their urban
transport system to see how you can get thousands of people into
the city centre to work. So I would suggest that on transport
alone there is some interchange that—or maybe, Chairman,
we could explore it under the relations with local government.
Q176 Hugh Bayley:
I wanted to push you a bit further, Minister, on the case that
John is making about the similarities between strategies to deal
with poor quality of life in urban areas in the developed world
and the developing world. When we heard evidence a week ago from
the International Institute for Environment and Development, and
Homeless International, they were at great pains to point out
that if you want a comprehensive, integrated approach that unites
policy on urban housing, urban education and urban healthcare
and so on, you need to consult the poor themselves, and consumer
community groups like women's savings circles in Indian cities
are one way of getting buy-in from a community. That is something
we know from our own work in our own constituencies in Britain:
if you work with a community you address problems, and if you
try and impose solutions from the top they do not always work.
Will your Department look more closely at ways of empowering and
listening to the voice of the urban poor?
Mr Thomas: The straight answer
to that is "yes". In our programmes, for example, in
India, we have seen strong demands for participation by local
people in the planning of urban redevelopment programmes in their
cities. I think that one of the successes, for example, of our
urban programme in Andra Pradesh, which has recently completed,
is that it helped generate a significant increase in the number
of women's self-help groups with access to credit. They are able
to set up employment initiatives and run programmes themselves.
One of the differences between Asia and Africa—and I would
suggest between some African cities and our experience in the
UK—is that the level of community representation and community
organisation is significantly greater in some of the Asian cities
in which we operate, and I would suggest in our own cities too,
than there is in Africa. One of the other significant differences—if
I may go back briefly to Mr Battle's question—between some
of the challenges we face here in the UK and the developing country
space is around security of tenure, for example, where there is
far less question about who owns what in the UK than there is
in many developing countries. We do not have the same challenges
in terms of slums as we see in many developing countries, so I
think there are major differences between the challenges that
urbanisation is still bringing in developed countries like our
own and that developing countries themselves face.
Q177 Hugh Bayley:
I think you are right that there is a difference in the degree
to which city leaders in Africa listen to the organised voice
of slum-dwellers compared with some other parts of the world.
We were told that in Thailand particularly—and what was
happening in India was also, as you said yourself, cited as a
good example—that slum-dweller leaders from India go to
Africa and try to mobilise similar networks of savers groups and
groups that give voice to slum-dwellers in Africa. Given that
DFID is a good development partner in India with these groups,
could you not get your officials from India swapping lessons more
widely? I apologise to Mr Sharma!
Mr Thomas: There is a sharing
of expertise internally within the Department. I talked about
the specific infrastructure and urban development advisers. Those
advisers do come together and share expertise. Mr Samiullah, who
is here and who is responsible for—to use the jargon—the
retreats that these advisers have, will I am sure take away your
suggestion, Mr Bayley, that you make for further sessions on what
has worked in India. I would not want to leave the Committee with
the impression that there is no community organisation in African
cities and that we have no programmes to work with such community
organisations. There are examples of work in Kenya and Nigeria,
for example, where community organisations are in existence, and
we are working with those groups.
Q178 Mr Sharma:
My question was taken away, which I do not mind! As you mentioned,
and as is clear, there are projects that are highly praised at
all levels. You yourself, Minister, admitted that there is a working
relationship with what we have learnt from India and south Asia,
and we are taking those ideas back to Africa. Are there any particular
areas you have already programmed to take into African countries?
Mr Thomas: Before I answer your
direct question, Mr Sharma, perhaps it would be worth me flagging
to the Committee that the largest number of slum-dwellers live
in Asia, which is one of the reasons why our programmes in Asia
do have a significant focus on some of the urban challenges that
are there, be it in India, or indeed in Bangladesh. You asked
me about work specifically in Africa. We have work, for example,
being done in Kenya where we are contributing to work that is
led by UN-Habitat and the Cities Alliance. They are working to
improve livelihoods in slums and tackle some of the issues around
shelter and infrastructure work there. There is a whole series
of work with orphans and vulnerable children around social protection,
work that inevitably impacts on slum-dwellers as well as on those
living in rural areas. Again, one of the multilateral programmes
that we contribute to, the Community-Led Infrastructure Finance
Facility (CLIFF), has worked, for example, in one of the most
densely populated slum areas in Kenya, Haruma, with already some
success in terms of the number of families that have been directly
helped. There are other examples of work that tackle different
challenges around urbanisation, in, for example, Nigeria, which
I can go into if the Committee wants, but why do I not stop there
initially.
Q179 Chairman:
Thank you, Minister. You have addressed your statement that you
are still focused on the 2001 paper, yet it is not only DFID that
appears to have swung its attention away. When we started this
inquiry we were told that the Swedish development agency was rather
good on urban development, but we subsequently found out that
Sweden has dismantled its urban development unit. Then we were
told that Germany and Switzerland had cut theirs down. Interestingly
enough, the World Bank is developing an urban strategy, and you
have mentioned that the African Development Bank is doing it.
There does seem to be a degree of confusion amongst the international
community as to what the proper focus should be. I repeat that
nobody is suggesting that all these organisations are not engaged
with urban communities and urban poverty; but there seems to be
a lack of focus which says this is an increasing area of poverty,
an area where we need to address the particular needs of the slums
and urban poverty, and yet agencies are all moving in different
directions and at different speeds. Can you explain that? Can
you also say, given that DFID is such a big contributor to both
the African Development Bank and the World Bank, how DFID is plugging
into what they are doing, if they are beginning now to redevelop
their own urban policy strategies?
Mr Thomas: I come back to my original
response to your question. We acknowledge the challenges that
urbanisation brings, but seek to address those challenges through
the sector-specific work that we do, albeit that two particular
pieces of work we are doing will more directly focus on urbanisation,
the infrastructure work and the cities work that has more recently
been kicked off. Even a donor the size of the UK has to make choices
about where to focus policy thinking and programme spending. We
have sought to try to narrow the number of areas we work on so
that we can be more effective in the areas where we do work. As
I say, we do work very substantially on health and on education,
and that is in urban environments just as much as it is in rural
environments. We are seeing, as you quite rightly say, multilaterals
starting to do a lot more work potentially on urbanisation. The
World Bank is clearly stepping up its work and is planning a new
urban and local government strategy, as I said. The Asian Development
Bank, back in 2006, reviewed its work programme and is now seeking
to take forward specific work on cities development in Asia. In
Africa, the African Development Bank is following those two multilateral
agencies and is stepping up its work in this area. Given that
one of the big challenges around urbanisation is infrastructure,
it is right that the major multilaterals, with their expertise
on infrastructure, should seek to do more on urbanisation, rather
than donors such as ourselves, once we have done work on some
aspects of the infrastructure challenges. I think it is right
that those organisations that are much more focused in that area
should lead broader work on urbanisation going forward.
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