2 Inquiries into Government policy
proposals
7. As referred to above, DFID's major policy
proposals in this Session were set out in the White Paper Eliminating
World Poverty: Building our Common Future published in July.
Our contribution to the drafting of the White Paper took the form
of publishing two reports in time to inform the consultation process.
We will comment on the policy proposals in detail as part of our
assessment of the DFID Annual Report 2009.
Aid Under Pressure: Support for
Development Assistance in a Global Economic Downturn
8. Our inquiry made clear that the economic downturn
was threatening economic development in poor countries. Initial
predictions that the developing world would be insulated from
the worst of the financial turbulence did not prove to be correct.
Poor countries have experienced significantly reduced income from
trade, remittances and foreign investment. It is predicted that
an additional 90 million people will be living in poverty by the
end of 2010 and that 400,000 more children are likely to die.
Progress towards MDG 1 on eradicating poverty and hunger has been
set back three years.
9. In our Report, we welcomed the measures taken
by DFID and the international community to assist poor countries
to cope with the downturn, particularly the billions of dollars
pledged at the G20 summit in April.[7]
However, we cautioned that this huge boost in funding needed to
be accompanied by reform of the international financial institutions,
particularly their governance, to ensure the full involvement
of developing countries. We also stressed the importance of donor
countries adhering to their promises on aid funding and particularly
the target of allocating 0.7% of gross national income to development
assistance by 2015.
10. We were concerned that the downturn might
be undermining previously strong UK public support for aid. We
called on DFID to do more to show the public the positive outcomes
of its work in poor countries and to raise its visibility both
at home and abroad. We were pleased to see that DFID launched
a new UKaid logo in the White Paper which aims to make
the impact of UK aid expenditure and DFID's work more obvious
to the UK public, as well as to people in developing countries.
The Secretary of State had invited our views on this rebranding
in his evidence to the inquiry and we supported it in our Report.
We will monitor the impact of this change as part of our ongoing
evaluation of DFID's effectiveness.
11. As public support for development was such
a key topic in this inquiry, we decided to be innovative in the
methods we used to gauge levels of support. We conducted an on-line
consultation in which we asked the public to tell us what they
thought about the effectiveness of UK aid and development. We
also held two public meetings, in Leeds and Bradford, where a
range of development issues was discussed. This enabled us to
reach out beyond our normal stakeholder group of academics, non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) and official bodies and to provide an opportunity
for members of the public to share their views with us. We are
grateful to Parliament's new Outreach service for their help in
making these meetings a success. We plan to repeat this process
in our inquiry into DFID's Programme in Bangladesh (see below).
Progress on Implementation of
DFID's HIV/AIDS Strategy
12. It has been our practice in this Parliament
to conduct an annual inquiry into different aspects of the challenges
presented by HIV/AIDS and to publish a report to coincide with
World AIDS Day on 1 December.
13. Last Session, we examined DFID's new HIV/AIDS
Strategy, Achieving Universal Access, which was published
in June 2008.[8] Our Report
welcomed many of the initiatives and commitments announced in
DFID's new Strategy but we also expressed a number of concerns.
We identified significant deficiencies in the detail about implementation
of the Strategy which the Government did not then adequately address
in its Response, despite a number of requests for specific information.[9]
In this year's inquiry, we therefore decided to follow
up some of the issues which had not been resolved in the Government's
Response, as well as assessing recent developments.
14. Our Report will be published in the new Session.
The further evidence we received from DFID did nothing to change
the conclusion we reached last year: that key elements of DFID's
AIDS Strategy—increased funding for health systems in developing
countries and for social protection programmes—are necessary
and welcome measures but are not sufficiently targeted to ensure
that they deal effectively with the specific health and social
challenges which HIV/AIDS presents. It is clear that the 2010
target for universal access to HIV/AIDS treatment will be missed
by a wide margin. Our view is that this is very disappointing
and that it must not be compounded by failure to maintain the
levels of support for HIV/AIDS programmes agreed by the international
community. DFID is a lead donor for and supporter of HIV/AIDS
services in developing countries. We strongly believe that the
UK should continue to demonstrate that its commitment to tackling
this crucial development challenge has not diminished. It should
also apply pressure to donor partners to show the same undiminished
support, by honouring their funding pledges.
7 Fourth Report of Session 2008-09, Aid Under Pressure:
Support for Development in a Global Economic Downturn, HC
179-I Back
8
DFID, Achieving Universal Access-the UK's strategy for halting
and reversing the spread of HIV in the developing world, June
2008 Back
9
First Special Report of Session 2008-09, HIV/AIDS: DFID's New
Strategy: Government Response to the Committee's Twelfth Report
of Session 2007-08, HC 235 Back
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