Supplementary written evidence submitted
by the UK Aid Network
Our members (Oxfam, Save the Children and World
Vision) were very grateful for the opportunity to give evidence
to your enquiry on the 0.7% legislation last week. As I mentioned
to you informally after the evidence session, our members who
gave evidence were hoping to respond to questions relating to
the costs/benefits of legislation and the impact it may have internationally,
but in the end these questions were not posed directly to them
(the questions posed to them focussed mainly on aid definitions,
why legislation is important and whether a consultation was necessary)—although
I recognise they were still free to express views on these matters.
I therefore wanted to let you know what their planned responses
were, in case these can be taken into account.
Firstly, on the matter of costs/benefits, our
members were keen to highlight that although there are challenges
around spending aid increases effectively (raised by witnesses
from ODI and IDS) we need to remember that over the long term
we can spend this money more effectively—especially as there
are such enormous development needs around the world—and
it is not just a matter of what can be done in the next three
years as we scale up to 0.7% in 2013. We also feel quite strongly
that this legislation will help to promote progress on aid effectiveness
as it will allow us all to stop debating aid volumes and focus
more intensively on challenges around aid effectiveness. The protection
of legislation will also help encourage a more open and challenging
debate on aid effectiveness and therefore hopefully to identify
critical reforms for making aid more effective.
On the matter of international impacts, we are
already aware that campaigners across Europe are using the example
of the UK in their campaigning and therefore we believe the UK's
approach will lead to pressure being put on other donors to do
the same. For example, Oxfam International have just released
a press release, which calls for EU member states to make their
aid commitments legally binding.[48]
We are also working with a coalition of NGOs from across Europe
on a report on aid to be released in May, and legally binding
commitments will probably be one of our recommendations.
I do hope you might be able to take these responses
into account, as we think they are hugely significant ones for
the inquiry to incorporate and we didn't hear them directly addressed
in the other evidence that was given.
Gideon Rabinowitz
Coordinator
48 Heed EC warning that European credibility is being
undermined by aid failures, says Oxfam, Reuters UK, 5 March 2010. Back
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