CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 95-iiHouse of COMMONSMINUTES OF EVIDENCETAKEN BEFOREINTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE
DFID'S PROGRAMME IN
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Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament: W B Gurney & Sons LLP, Hope House, Telephone Number: 020 7233 1935
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Oral Evidence
Taken before the International Development Committee
on
Members present
Malcolm Bruce, in the Chair
John Battle
Hugh Bayley
Mr Mark Hendrick
Mr Marsha Singh
Andrew Stunell
________________
Witnesses: Mr Mike Foster MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, and Mr Chris Austin, Head of DFID Bangladesh, Department for International Development, gave evidence.
Q139 Chairman: Good afternoon, Minister and Chris, welcome. It is nice to see you here again. I hardly need to ask you to introduce yourselves. I will just say for the record that we have Michael Foster, the Parliamentary Under Secretary, and Chris Austin, the Head of DFID in Bangladesh. Thank you both for coming in. As you know, this is the last evidence session that we are taking, having visited Bangladesh and taken a number of evidence sessions and also having had two public meetings in London and Birmingham to try and connect with some of the Bangladesh diaspora and get some input from them. Just to start the discussion, I wonder if you could clarify the scale of DFID's operation and engagements in Bangladesh; you have changed it, but, just before we even get to that, can you give us an indication of what the funding was because we are slightly at odds with our briefing and other information we have? For example, for the last three years what was the total DFID funding for Bangladesh? Are you able to give us that?
Mr Foster: Thanks, Chairman, and thanks
for the opportunity to talk about our work in
Q140 Chairman: What is the figure for 2008-09?
Mr Austin: The expenditure for 2008-09 was £132 million, and in 2007-08 it was £129 million, but the original allocations for both of those years were lower. They were £114 million in 2007-08 and £116 million in 2008-09. It may have been that you received figures that aggregated the aid framework rather than the outturn.
Q141 Chairman: So the actual spend was £132 million for 2008-09, which is slightly different from DFID's brief, but that is the reason why?
Mr Foster: Yes.
Q142 Chairman: In 2006 it was only £75 million. Why was that?
Mr Austin: In 2003-04 it was £55 million, the figure that the Minister referred to.
Q143 Chairman: We are working on your own brief that tells us that it was £75 million in 2006.
Mr Foster: I must admit I would have to look back -----
Q144 Chairman: It is just for clarification. There seems to be a slight discrepancy in the funding.
Mr Foster: We will find out what the final outturn was for that particular year. The figure I gave for 2003-04 was £55 million bilateral spend.[1]
Q145 Chairman: So what you are basically saying is that it has increased steadily subject to some slight aggregation of expenditure?
Mr Foster: Yes, it is fair to say that. It is whether you define "steadily" as a real increase from £55 million to getting on for £150 million.
Q146 Chairman: It would be helpful because, as I say, taking it from your brief, we see a picture like this and you have described it as more like that.
Mr Foster: Yes.
Mr Austin: I am sorry if there is an error in the brief we gave you about 2006. The actual outturn has been between £109 million and £132 million since about 2005-06.
Q147 Chairman: For the benefit of the transcript I should say that it looks as if it is up and down as opposed to a steady increase. Waving my hands about does not help. Perhaps you would get us clarification on that just so that we are clear about it. You have reduced the number of projects and effectively you seem to be doing more with fewer partners. What are the reasons for that?
Mr Foster: One of the issues we are
trying to address is to look at things like the aid effectiveness agenda. We have what we think is a relatively
balanced portfolio in
Q148 Chairman: So have you discontinued particular types of projects or just the number of people you are engaging with?
Mr Austin: If I could add to what the
Minister has said about the number of partners, the country programme
evaluation in 2006 found that we had too many projects and were spreading
ourselves across too many relationships.
I think we had about 80 spending lines at the time, so we have been
implementing the recommendations to reduce direct funding for individual NGOs,
for example, and instead are supporting Challenge Funds like the Rights and
Governance Challenge Fund which supports over 100 NGOs through a granting
arrangement. That gives us breadth of
coverage but is something that is more manageable for us to administer. In terms of areas where we have stopped
funding over the last two or three years, we no longer provide sector budget
support for the transport area. That was
stopped because of corruption concerns, but we also felt it was not a priority
area for
Q149 Chairman: Are you satisfied that you can monitor what you are doing because, as I understand it, in terms of the structure of the NGOs in Bangladesh it appears that if you deal with them they then subcontract, and I have to say that that was something that we picked up even just at a reception we had at your place when people were saying that people down the track were or were not getting it or the wrong people were getting it. People will say these things for their own reasons but are you satisfied that you are able to monitor effectively where those project funds are actually going?
Mr Foster: At a broader level the portfolio score that DFID Bangladesh has had has improved, so that would imply that the direction of travel that we have been going along has improved the ability of DFID to deliver on the ground and that improvement is something that demonstrates the breadth of approach and the reduction in the number of programmes. It has not diminished our impact on the ground but improved it.
Q150 Mr Singh: Chris, I may have misheard you. You said you were changing your approach to NGOs. You have Challenge funding, and yet from our visit I understand, and I hope I understand it properly, that you are giving BRAC, which we will come on to later as I want to go into that particularly, direct budget support. It is that contradiction that seems to be there.
Mr Austin: If I may clarify on your point and on the monitoring of the Challenge Funds, we have five delivery instruments to spread the financial and implementation risks in Bangladesh - pooled funds managed by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank; support channelled through a UN agency; thirdly, Challenge Funds managed by another body on our behalf; fourth, direct contracting, for example the Chars programme that some of you visited; and fifth is BRAC, which is an entity in itself. It is unique; it is the largest NGO in the world and has been around since 1971, so that is in a different category from the Challenge Fund support and the support through the Chars programme that works with the local NGOs to deliver services or provide advice to poor people. On monitoring the Challenge Funds, for example, the rights and governance one, the Manusher Jonno Foundation does the due diligence on project proposals and it monitors them and provides us with a report on implementation and finance. We review that and we do a sample survey of individual grantees, and for that particular programme we funded an impact evaluation independently done about three or four months ago that confirmed that there were a lot of good results. It also provided some suggestions about how the operation of the fund could be improved in terms of selection and monitoring. I am confident that we have got the best monitoring arrangement we can have, and it is important, as some of you mentioned in the discussion during your visit, that where there are concerns about financial mismanagement or programmes not working as intended we get that feedback from whatever source and that will help us cross-check our own policies.
Q151 Mr Singh: That is fine. You are saying that you are reducing your dependence on NGOs and yet at the same time -----
Mr Austin: BRAC is almost a multilateral
organisation. It operates in several
African countries as well as in
Q152 John Battle: May I, through you, Minister, thank Chris Austin and the DFID team? I have been on this Committee eight years and I have to say I have felt that the team, the quality, the expertise and the evident engagement of DFID staff in Bangladesh was one of the best DFID teams that I have seen in the world; I think the job they are doing is superb. There is an expanding programme, and may I also thank you for the programme you arranged for us as well. It was a very good visit and it got us into the detail. I did not go to the Chars Livelihoods Programme but I went to look at BRAC and was impressed and got to the edges - I will put it that way - of rural development. I hope you take my question in the right spirit but, were I to go back, hopefully, I would not leave Dhaka and the reason is that there is a mega-city which has massive challenges. Since I have been back meeting Bangladeshi people in my own neighbourhood they have said to me, "Did you manage to get from the office to the minister's office?", because of the transport problems in the middle of Dhaka. In other words, there is a mega-city there and I just want to put the question to you in these terms. I have got a hint of the work with Chars Livelihoods, a hint of the work with BRAC, the rural livelihoods, but what about the urban poverty reduction, because most of the world's people live in cities now? People are crowding into Dhaka and I really wondered, looking out of the hotel window down across on the river at what in Latin America are called shanty towns, the whole of that kind of area, is the balance of the programme right? I am not asking for it all to go into urban but are we taking urban development seriously, and does DFID have urban expertise on the ground in Dhaka?
Mr Foster: First of all, Mr Battle, I
echo your comments, and it is good that they are on the record, about the team
in
Q153 Mr Singh: We as a committee are dealing with new things at the moment which I am very pleased with. We are talking to the diaspora community, which is, as I say, very interesting, but in terms of DFID do you have any relationship with the diaspora community within the UK (and it is a very important and large community) and their views on development? Secondly, when we were in Bangladesh we were told that it is difficult for DFID staff to talk with communities properly in Bangladesh and so, resulting from that, is that an issue to do with staffing constraints, ie, direct contact with communities here? I am not criticising because we are doing it new and if you have not done it that is not a problem but I think it is an important issue that you may need to take on board.
Mr Foster: It is one we take
seriously. If I could just quote the
list of the types of engagement activities that we have had with the Bangladeshi
diaspora to begin with in the
Mr Singh: Oh, magic!
Q154 John Battle: They are little pocket cards.
Mr Foster: Little pocket cards.
Q155 Mr Singh: Who do they go to? Do they go to me?
Mr Foster: This can go to you, certainly. This also goes through the Bangladeshi diaspora and through stakeholders.
Q156 Mr Singh: No, not in my constituency.
Mr Foster: I also have produced this newsletter which went to every single MP. I electronically sent it to every single MP -----
Q157 Mr Singh: Yes, but not to my constituents.
Mr Foster: ----- with a request that said, "If anybody wants these free of charge delivered to their constituency address to send to their constituents, they are free to do so and I will get them posted to them".
John Battle: 5,000 for him.
Q158 Mr Singh: Excellent!
Mr Foster: I have to say, Mr Singh, there were not many MPs - and it was disappointing - who actually contacted DFID and said, "I would like some more hard copies of this".
Q159 Mr Singh: Then I apologise. If you will deliver them free -----
Mr Foster: They are delivered free and that will be clear in the covering letter.
Q160 Mr Singh: Then I do apologise and I will take you up on that offer.
Mr Foster: The other issue about
contacting
Q161 Chairman: It is a popular criticism of DFID country programmes that you are all stuck in the capital city and do not get out. We know that is not true, although partly that is because we go as a committee and we know that is not true when we go, but the serious point behind it rather than the malicious one is that your staffing levels are not very high. Is it a constraint? It takes time to get to places, so is there a constraint about how much your staff can get out and about in the country?
Mr Austin: It is an explicit objective
for everybody working on the programme to undertake some kind of field visit
and it is also a development opportunity for our staff who work in human
resources and managing the finances to participate in reviews and field
visits. Some of our Bangladeshi staff
find it very uplifting personally, certainly one or two who have visited
humanitarian relief operations had not seen that kind of thing up close and
personal. As the Minister said, we did
about 200 days of visits outside
Q162 Andrew Stunell: I think we have all got experience of how much you consult but you still at the review meeting meet the one person that you never spoke to; that is how it happens. It was quite striking at the two meetings we had with the diaspora that, as we know, the majority of the diaspora community comes from Sylhet and that is not an area where DFID is particularly active. There was an almost complete lack of awareness of the fact that DFID was doing work in Bangladesh and so there clearly is scope for more engagement at one level or another, perhaps taking account of the fact that something I had thought would be true, that they would have feedback from Bangladesh about the work that was being supported by DFID, is absolutely absent because they come from a different part of Bangladesh.
Mr Foster: That is why all these
newsletters were produced, in the hope of reaching all parts of Bangladesh, not
just those who receive UK aid but also those who can pass the message on from
the UK back to Bangladesh about the nature of the work and the support that
goes on, and in terms of the particular issue of Sylhet, we are looking at
doing some work on vocational training for would-be chefs in the Sylhet area
for their potential employment within Bangladesh. Again, that is where DFID can come into play,
but part of the challenge of our work generally, not just in
Q163 Andrew Stunell: We come to the whole governance issue. We have had plenty of evidence that you provided for us when we visited and also from the witnesses that the political culture in Bangladesh is quite different from the UK in that kinship and patronage and ethnicity and a wide variety of factors come into play. What are the implications for DFID's programme and how are you protecting it? If I can just point to that, is that not made more difficult with the Challenge Fund mechanism which means you are at least one step removed from a decision about who gets the help and who takes the decision about the delivery of that patronage?
Mr Foster: Without doubt, Mr Stunell,
you are right to point out that
Mr Austin: On the overall implications of governance to start with, our country governance assessment identified all of the issues that you refer to and the conclusion for our current phase of the country programme was that we needed to step up our efforts to support Bangladesh in order to improve the institutions of democracy, particularly parliament and the Elections Commission, and that we should even tread into the sensitive area of working with the political parties in Bangladesh, so with our American and UNDP colleagues we are developing a package of support for those institutions based on what Bangladesh is asking us for. That is building on work that we have been involved with for the past several years to improve state capability in managing the public finances and support for the police, and we will continue to support supply side efforts to improve the accountability of government, transparency of our own operations but also government spending. On the Challenge Funds, I think we have to recognise that it is a challenge, if you will forgive me, to ensure that patronage does not creep into allocations. The criteria for the kinds of activities are published, the results of funding rounds are published, so there is a clear and transparent process for the decisions that are taken and we have an ombudsman mechanism built into the Challenge Funds that will independently test the results. One of our other Challenge Funds, for example, supporting activities to improve household incomes, includes international people on the selection board to give it independent verification. As we discussed during your visit, where we find information that comes anecdotally about awards being made with some favouritism attached, we investigate them. The issue that was mentioned to some of you during the visit we have looked at and we are satisfied that there have not been any inappropriate decisions made under the Rights and Governance Challenge Fund but we will continue to monitor its performance and look very carefully at the breakdown of which organisations receive their grants.
Q164 Andrew Stunell: The UK Ombudsman publishes a report saying what has been upheld and what has been dismissed. Has your ombudsman process upheld any complaints or has it always confirmed that you have made the right decision?
Mr Austin: I would need to check that and let you know. I am not aware of any that have been upheld. I do know that for the Rights and Governance Challenge Fund there is an awful lot of applications, so not all of them can be satisfied and I know that the Manusher Jonno Foundation has cancelled grants where they have found evidence of financial mismanagement or poor implementation.
Q165 Andrew Stunell: Could we perhaps have a piece of paper which sets out some of that?
Mr Austin: Yes.
Q166 Andrew Stunell: That would be useful. Can I just pick up one of the points you raised? You mentioned a programme that you have with the police. We took evidence this week that the police programme had been good but did not appear to have had a long term focus. Would you think that was a fair criticism?
Mr Austin: I am not familiar with the criticisms. Is this one of your other witnesses?
Q167 Andrew Stunell: I will just park that for the moment. Maybe I am on the wrong track there.
Mr Austin: It has a long term focus because the programme that we are supporting with UNDP and the European Commission has been running for four years, I think, and we are just starting with the government a further five-year phase. The ambition to help the police develop from what is seen as a force for pressure into a public service will take quite a bit of time. There has been some tangible progress in getting a police ordinance drafted but not yet passed, and in getting a police strategic plan prepared providing new police stations which are more welcoming for people to report crimes or suspected crimes. The most recent survey I have seen suggested that there had been an increase in general public confidence in reporting to the police. That may be out of date. It may have declined a little bit in recent months. We would need to continue checking that. That is one of the output indicators, if you like, of confidence in the police force.
Q168 Mr Hendrick: Just staying on the question of governance, we met the prime minister who I though was very impressive. The government party seemed to be wanting to do things. The opposition seemed to be living in some sort of post-colonial age as if they have replaced the British colonial masters that were there in the past and wanted to keep that type of society albeit governed by themselves. They were not taking part in any meaningful way in holding the government to account or scrutiny of government because they were not attending parliament and it was almost as if the political and governmental aspects of it were something totally separate from what we saw with BRAC and civil society generally, who were trying to improve people's lives. Obviously, in this country and in more mature democracies civil society and charities, NGOs, are quite happy about working hand in hand with government and vice versa, and we spoke to Fazle Abed[3] who was not keen to get involved with the government of either political party. But what is it in particular in Bangladesh that is stopping that meaningful interaction because it seems that BRAC and other organisations are doing a lot of things government should be doing and government almost seems to be washing its hands of?
Mr Foster: I think you are right, Mr
Hendrick, in identifying that there is a very confrontational nature to
politics in
Q169 Mr Singh: That leads me into my next question about what you are doing to try to increase accountability. I know for this Committee and for DFID that we want to do everything and it is impossible to do, but local government in the history of the UK seems to be a great service provider and tackles many of the problems that we have in our urban society. We know that local government is not accountable in Bangladesh. Is DFID paying any attention to that or doing anything in particular to try and strengthen local government structures and accountability?
Mr Foster: We are certainly working with
Transparency International in their grass roots campaign and we are extending
the number of districts that Transparency International work with as a way of
strengthening the democratic functions at a lower level. Obviously, we were involved in the production
of the photo ID electoral roll for the last set of general elections, but that
again gave people confidence that there was a proper route of accountability
through the ballot box which had not always been the case in the past, and that
clearly helps build confidence at the grass roots that there is another route
by which we can do good work. We support
the Bangladesh Electoral Commission as well in the work that they do, and that
is working with political parties on their structures, on their accountability
and transparency and performing the same function as they do in the
Q170 Mr Singh: But people's access is at local level and not at national government level, so how do people at local level feel? What are we doing at the local level to empower them to affect their local politicians, if we are?
Mr Austin: On the overall local government model, the Bangladesh government has not asked development partners for substantive support in this area but we know the adviser to the prime minister has been thinking about what strengthening of local government systems and staffing they would like to do. I am hopeful that we will have some substantive discussion about that issue early in the new year and we will consider then what role DFID bilaterally might play in that. There are a number of other development partners, including UNDP, who might be even better placed than we are to have a lead role. Through a number of the programmes that we are operating there is work being done to strengthen demand for accountability at local level through the communities that some of you saw with the water and sanitation programme. There are similar activities through the education programme that are supporting school committees where parents get to know how much money should be spent on extending classrooms in their schools and where the teachers should be coming from. Some of you visited a district hospital where under the health programme we have got the beginnings of some delegation of authority so that the Civil Surgeon can do some recruitment direct instead of having to go more or less to the minister level at headquarters to recruit cleaners. So the kinds of checks and balances that may seem to outsiders excessive are slowly being broken down, but, for the reasons that Mr Hendrick was talking about, the confrontational nature of politics, governments have tended to be reluctant to let go in practice.
Q171 Mr Singh: The point is then that DFID is just trying to work a way through it rather than being able to do anything at the moment?
Mr Austin: Yes. There could be a top-down brilliantly planned
approach to develop local government capacities, increase their revenue raising
powers and give them clear responsibilities as distinct from government. The system is more of a de-concentrated rather
than a decentralised system, but in terms of the programmes that we are working
with in poor urban and rural communities the model that we follow and the model
that other development partners follow tends to be forming community groups so there
is quite a groundswell of demand. It is
just not yet connected in the way that we might recognise in the
Q172 Chairman: Your programme involves strengthening and training the civil service. We had some discussion of that at one of the round-tables and we heard that you have got £2.5 million going into that aspect and £15 million over five years into the Management at the Top (MATT) programme, but there were a couple of issues raised with us. You say that UK support has helped to train 800 out of 4,100 civil servants and the overall objective is 2,000, but it has been pointed out to us by witnesses that there is a bit of a turnover, particularly when there is a change of government, so first of all the ones we are training, the ones who stay there, are only the ones that are there at the time, that are available for training and they may be removed if there is a change of government. That was one point. What else can you do to ensure that you have a trained civil service that understands that their job is, and I put it crudely, to deliver rather than act as gatekeepers to all those barriers to delivery?
Mr Foster: There is recognition that civil service reform is a long term project, partly because of the nature of what you have just described, Chairman, civil service staff turnover. We are also looking, not just in terms of working with the ministry of establishment and recruitment of civil servants but also through the public sector financial management, at the allegations of corruption that I know have harmed Bangladesh and the government system, so a lot of our effort is also going into making the system more accountable, more transparent, computerising budgetary systems, for example, strengthening external audit functions. All of that brings a form of discipline within government departments that will add to and support the type of direct civil service training that you mentioned our programme was delivering.
Mr Austin: If I may add something,
Chairman, just on your specific question about the senior civil service trained
under MATT2, I am pretty confident that they will have moved jobs since they
did their training. I would like to
check how many of them are still in the civil service.[4] The fact that they have moved jobs does not
undermine the value of the generic leadership and strategic planning training
that the MATT programme is designed to deliver, and some MATT graduates are now
in influential positions, such as the Prime Minister's private secretary or the
Director for
Q173 Chairman: The other respect was where some of the training was taking place which is obviously not on the job or in-post training. One suggestion was that maybe we should run courses in the UK that they should come to. The second was that, no, we should not do that; we should be encouraging the development of tertiary training capacity within country. But we also had an engagement with the diaspora who were saying that there is a huge number of UK resident Bangladeshis, some of whom may be first and second generation British citizens, who could possibly play a role in transferring experience, knowledge and skills but only if it was done on a significant basis; in other words, if they were seconded for a year or two years to do a job rather than just going for short postings where they would not really have a lot of influence. On both of those where should they be trained and is there a role for the diaspora?
Mr Foster: At a principle level I agree
with your comments about the role of the diaspora and certainly at the Country
Plan launch there were some very senior UK civil servants who were Bangladeshi
and so in theory would fit the bill that you have just described, Chairman, who
clearly have got strong links with Bangladesh, to be engaged in seeing the
country develop, so that might be a route.
I am certainly willing to look at and explore ideas with the government
of
Q174 Chairman: The other argument that is put is that it is a kind of perk for civil servants to be told, "You are going to go and get a training course in the UK", which is probably quite expensive, and where the money could usefully build up the capacity in country if it was not spent here. It might deprive some of our colleges of income but that should not surely be a legitimate reason for doing it.
Mr Austin: On the Management at the Top
programme, some of the civil servants have come to the
Chairman: We did not get large crowds at our meeting with the diaspora but they were reasonably influential, some of them, and they were quite keen on this idea, so if the department was going to explore it I think you would get a ready response. You mentioned the tax base, Chris, and John Battle has a question about that.
Q175 John Battle: I think you said the government only get 11% of GDP from tax revenue for a population of 160 million.
Mr Austin: Yes.
Q176 John Battle: That is a low tax base, is it not? I think you are engaged with a number of programmes to strengthen the tax base, as it were, and to increase the number of registered tax-payers from 3 million to 5 million over 5 years. Given the culture of Bangladesh, the prospects of that do not look so good, and we were told when we were there that the National Board of Revenue is still unable to hire people because of a local dispute which makes the job almost impossible. First of all, is that dispute still going on? Where is that programme up to?
Mr Austin: We have been providing
support to the National Board of Revenue, or had, for 5 years until summer 2008
and had hoped to have a seamless continuation for a new programme. For various reasons we were not able to agree
with the
Q177 Chairman: It is not unique to Bangladesh that institutional structural reform could take 10 to 20 years, so your tax reform programme is a long haul yet. But what would worry me slightly is when we had the Permanent Secretary before us, she suggested that the department is taking an aggressive stand on poorly performing projects, and she said that if your project is scoring badly for 6 months you are basically sent off to restructure and do something about it. If after 6 months you cannot restructure and start to deliver better results they are actively managing those projects out of the portfolio and saying, "Look: if it is not working call it a day and move on".[5] What is the chance of survival of the tax reform programme under that kind of edict, I am tempted to ask?
Mr Foster: At a broader level the type
of programme that we are working in has got to be the basis of sound
sustainable development. There is no way
Q178 John Battle: If you do a micromanagement on that programme it is not going to stand up. I am merely asking, will you be sticking with it? I think it is an important programme in saying that but, given the strictures of the Permanent Secretary, will you be able to stick with it?
Mr Austin: The key part of Minouche
Shafik's evidence was that if we have a poorly performing programme we need to
do something about it. In
Chairman: Parliamentary strengthening is something this Committee is extremely interested in always, but Hugh Bayley has, through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), particularly long term experience and commitment to it.
Hugh Bayley: I do not think I need to declare an interest -----
Chairman: No; I was really asserting your expertise.
John Battle: He did a good job.
Q179 Hugh Bayley: I would just like to put on the record that I am no longer the Chairman of the Foundation but nevertheless I wanted to ask some questions about it. To begin with more generally though, it is absolutely clear to me that the quality of governance and of politics (and they are not the same thing) in Bangladesh both act as substantial impediments to the successful implementation of development partnerships, so I applaud the fact that DFID is putting quite large sums of money into both improving governance and improving parliamentary and political systems. Could you give us a brief description of what conversations you have had with the Westminster Foundation in this regard and what work they are doing or that you are in negotiations with them about what they might do and what other partners are providing services of these kinds funded by DFID to players in Bangladesh?
Mr Foster: Chris will talk about the
detailed conversations in
Mr Austin: Thank you, Minister. The Westminster Foundation has not had any
engagement in Bangladesh until now, but with a little bit of prompting from
DFID and the Foreign Office they agreed to send a scoping mission to Bangladesh
which visited about two months ago and had meetings with colleagues in our team
but particularly with parliament, with the Speaker and representatives of the
main parties. They only last week sent
us their report which confirms our own analysis very much as you described,
that there is quite a bit of strengthening that needs to be done to standing
committees and briefing of MPs about their roles. We see the Westminster Foundation, because of
its role and unique characteristics, as a very valuable way for us to support
political party reform in
Q180 Chairman: Can I just stop you for clarification on that because this was raised with us at the meeting we had in Tower Hamlets rather critically. They were very concerned, was the question, that the UK Government was giving money to USAID. I did not want to stop your flow but I just wondered if you could explain a little bit more that particular relationship.
Mr Austin: The kind of arrangement is
not completely unknown and in fact in
Q181 Hugh Bayley: That is helpful. I do have some further questions for the Minister but first, Mr Austin, you have a £20 million programme over 5 years, of which £1 million or £1.5 million to £2 million might go to the Westminster Foundation. Given the importance that the prime minister clearly attached, from what she said to us when we met her, to the Westminster model, it strikes me as rather odd that so much of the funding, 80%, 85%, should go to institutions with no experience of the Westminster system which the government itself wants to emulate to some extent. I might say a year or so ago the Africa All Party Group, which I chair, published a report on parliamentary capacity building and it was absolutely clear that political and parliamentary strengthening is not the same as building capacity amongst tax collectors, shall we say, to administer things better. It has to be built within the political context that exists there. It cannot be imposed from outside. How do you square the feeling coming from the government that they want to learn some lessons from Britain - not exclusively, I presume and they emphasise Britain in particular - with putting 85% of the budget behind institutions that just do not have that experience?
Mr Austin: If I could explain the breakdown, I think about £10 million is being channelled through USAID. £7.5 million is a grant to Transparency International Bangladesh to support the services that the Minister described a little earlier. At the moment we have suggested £1 million to the Westminster Foundation to support their activities, as a start. This will be allocated without any competition because of the unique status of WFD. We believe there is quite a lot that could be done with that amount of money, but we want to assess progress and react to the ongoing debate between WFD and their Bangladeshi counterparts about how that might grow over time. That explains the breakdown of the funding in this particular programme.
Q182 Hugh Bayley: Could I turn, Minister, to the wider question of your department's relationship with the Westminster Foundation, not specifically with regard to work in Bangladesh? The Foundation was set up 15 or 20 years ago at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was funded as a Foreign Office non-departmental public body to nurture democracy within central and eastern Europe. It has grown its mission in Africa and in the MENA[6] region in particular. From time to time your department has funded work, quite recently very effective work in my view, around the elections in Sierra Leone and, amongst other things, did a role play with the then President Kabbah on what he would do if he found he was not elected. On what day would he move out of the state house? On what day would he pass command of the armed forces to a successor? Of course he was not re-elected and he did perform as he performed in the role play. I think you did an extremely effective job of work. You have also through your Governance and Transparency Fund made funding of I think £5 million available to the Westminster Foundation for parliamentary capacity building work in six countries, two in Europe, two in the MENA region, two in Africa. You are clearly building up a relationship with the Foundation. The Foundation in their evidence to us have said, "Why does not DFID develop a strategic relationship with the Foundation in the same way that the Foreign Office does?" In other words, to provide it with core funding and to provide officials who keep in close touch with the Foundation and indeed attend board meetings so that you can improve the performance or tailor the performance of the Westminster Foundation to your needs as a department in the same way that the Foreign Office does. It says, "This is a priority for us." Is that something that you will consider seriously when you are in discussions with Meg Munn?
Mr Foster: I do not know what is on Meg's agenda when she comes to meet me in January, but I am willing to explore the nature of the relationship that we have with the Westminster Foundation. At the moment we probably feel that it is better on a project by project basis as the organisation matures and grows its own capacity, but in the longer term it might be that we end up with a more strategic arrangement like a PPA.[7] I do not know whether now is the right time for that, but I am more than happy to explore it with Meg when she comes to see me in January.
Q183 Hugh Bayley: I would say - and I hope you will reflect on this before you meet with Meg - that I sense that DFID feels that WFD was created in the Foreign Office mould to do work of a kind that the Foreign Office wished to pursue. That does not fit neatly and perfectly with the development paradigm. It is not there as exactly the organisation you would want to choose. You hope it will develop more in that direction and you may develop a strategic relationship if that were to come about. It will never develop in the way that you want unless you roll up your shirt sleeves and you get involved with it and you have your officials working with it on a regular basis. These individual projects are valuable to your department, valuable to the Westminster Foundation, but you are not going to turn it round. How do you as a department strike the balance between the need for untying aid, which I accept, whilst at the same time providing funding through British institutions if that is the appropriate thing to do? You talked about Chevening Scholarships a little while ago. You would not dream as a government Minister of saying, "Let us scrap Chevening Scholarships. They are tied to British institutions. Let us just provide a scholarship programme that can go to Australia, India or Canada." We provide Chevening Scholarships because we want our higher education institutions to have links and partnerships with the rest of the world. Should we not be doing the same with governance or should you not at least be considering whether you should develop a strategic relationship with a British governance body which is itself part of the government?
Mr Foster: I recognise the line you are
asking me to consider. When I meet with
Meg I will certainly be mindful of what you have had to say. Of course if the Committee want to make that
as one of their recommendations in terms of future directions for DFID then
clearly we will respond and reflect upon those considerations. You are right. There are other issues that we also have to
take into account. The tying of the aid
bit is part of the equation but it is also, if we had a programme with the
Westminster Foundation, what it would deliver.
The point about the Chevening Scholarships was not just that a higher
education institution in the
Hugh Bayley: You have made that particular point better than I made it and I hear what you say. It will be up to the Committee what recommendations it puts forward and by the time you respond you will have had your meeting with Meg. May I just say this last thing in passing? When the Labour Party came to government 12 years ago, it made a commitment to joined up government, to saying, "We will not have government working in departmental silos. We will think what is it that our government wants to achieve and then we will work on a cross-departmental basis to deliver." Both you and the Foreign Office have sums of money to work on governance although you have, I would guess, 90% of it and yet this is a field in relation to the Foundation where you have silos big time. We really must have some joined up government. That is my view and I hope my colleagues will back that as well.
Chairman: Watch this space, Minister.
Q184 Mr Singh: For once I certainly will back you up. It is not very often. From the top to a bit lower down, we had a conversation a little time ago about local government and we raised the issue of increasing demand for services. What is DFID doing to support civil society to create that demand?
Mr Foster: A couple of examples spring
to mind. One is the work that we do with
Transparency International that I mentioned in terms of the grass roots
campaigning there. Another one that is a
useful tool - I know it is aimed at a national level but it actually has
ramifications at a local level as well, as we will have seen here in the
Q185 Mr Singh: That is very helpful but civil society has to be local. It has to belong to where it is and neither Transparency International nor the BBC World Service are civil society, important though they are, in the kind of sense that I am talking about. If we go back to the point we had earlier about local government and increasing demand, which mechanism would that demand come through but local civic and civil society?
Mr Austin: Transparency International is
Transparency International Bangladesh, its own chapter. It works with what I think of as the
equivalent of citizens' advice bureau.
As the Minister explained earlier, that programme support that the
Q186 Mr Singh: There must be in Bangladesh, like in many areas in south Asia and south east Asia village committees which are probably heavily gender biased but have influence. We could try to change that gender bias and try to give them some more influence to demand something more from local government or local governors or local district commissioners. Are we doing anything in that area?
Mr Austin: The Challenge Fund Programme
for Rights and Governance works with local NGOs and supports local community
groups and may well work with village and ward committees as well. Whenever there is a humanitarian situation
and disaster preparedness, the programme that we have been supporting there
works with local communities so they are empowered because they are the people
that we talk with and provide information to, to arrange or supervise the
delivery of services, whether it is an emergency situation or a longer term
one. The status of those groups is not
something that we can influence directly as a development partner, but it is
part of the fabric of
Q187 Mr Singh: The dichotomy is that we just had a conversation with you about the Westminster Foundation. I do not mean this in any derogatory sense because I come from a peasant background, but what about a peasant foundation and increasing local empowerment?
Mr Austin: It is not for us as a
development partner to tell
Q188 Mr Singh: Is there any donor coordination of community initiatives or support for civil society or is everybody doing their own thing?
Mr Austin: It is probably yes to both of
them, to be frank. There is improving
donor coordination through what are called sub-groups of the local consultative
group. There are five that cover the
broad area of governance. One of them
looks at support through local communities.
There is some exchange of information about policy dialogue and
interestingly the group that we co-chair with
Q189 Chairman: Just taking up the point on the role of the NGOs and government, how do you get the links between government and NGOs to work and indeed to improve, given the exact tension you have described? Government does not deliver as well as NGOs but wants to. How do you actually prioritise between the two and get them to link together?
Mr Foster: One of the challenges that is out there is the capacity of government to deliver and whether it is capable of doing so, obviously, looking at the risk of going through a government mechanism, which is why we have had that investment in public sector financial management and better governance of cash that way. For us as a department it is about maintaining the broad range of mechanisms to fund our development work whilst engaging the government. To be fair to the government of Bangladesh, they are engaged in issues of donor coordination, in examining aid effectiveness, so they know that there is a gain to be made by taking away some of the tension that was mentioned that faces us wherever we have a development relationship between our own individual, direct intervention which might well be very capable and minimal risk in terms of donor funds but loses the connection between the people and the government, which is obviously something we want to strengthen and foster in the longer term. Engagement with the government itself is the way forward, but making sure that our work is aligned to their particular challenge and the things that they want us to deliver will also help.
Q190 Chairman: One would assume that part of the idea is to demonstrate by working with NGOs that the NGOs can deliver almost a challenge or an engagement to government to say, "You could pick that up if you could deliver it the same way." We noticed that in the education budget you have been giving £15 million in support for NGOs and £3 million for government in the current year. Next year you are reducing the NGO support to £3.5 million without any corresponding increase in government. Is that an indication that they are both failing or is something else going on?
Mr Austin: That is just an indication of
the case load of programmes. The NGO
funding for education is BRAC. We have
provided £18 million to BRAC over one
Q191 John Battle: Again, I thought BRAC was incredibly impressive. The most impressive part of BRAC was our visit to the village where they are working with the ultra poor, where I saw the pattern of working with basic livelihoods with people that had to develop their incomes to get enough to get a loan from the Grameen Bank. It was reaching the parts the others were not reaching. The community development was in there. The social enterprise was in there. Legal advice was in there. I think they call them barefoot lawyers as well as barefoot medical. I have never seen that put together before. I thought the complexion of that was the best in the world, frankly. I was quite excited to find out when we came back here can we do it in my constituency. They are developing ideas and projects in Tower Hamlets, so some of that work is replicable here in a holistic way to tackle some of the inner city challenges we face. It is a really important organisation. Having said that, I want to press on how consultations are going with the proposed new money arrangements with DFID. It seems to me you are almost treating them now as the government and doing a kind of budget support with BRAC. Where are those conversations up to at the moment?
Mr Foster: First of all, we are mindful of the expertise on the ground that BRAC are delivering. There is no doubt they are delivering as a development partner in the way that you have just described. It is, I think, the biggest NGO in the world, as Chris has said, but in terms of does it replace government, no, it does not. In terms of the scale of what it delivers on education for example, I think I am right in saying that BRAC educates one million children at primary school compared to 16 million through the government, so the scale is not there to replicate government; nor is the desire to replicate government either.
Mr Austin: On the specific question
about the negotiations for a Programme Partnership Arrangement, we have
completed the due diligence assessment of BRAC's institutional arrangements and
financial management arrangements, so we are quietly confident that we will be
able to conclude a
Q192 John Battle: I would imagine you have also managed the relationships with the other NGOs, some of which are quite renowned. Professor Wood has experience with those. Proshika is one of them. I know the scale and size are not quite the same but there are other quality NGOs in Bangladesh. How do you make sure you do not send the wrong signals to other NGOs that you are putting all your eggs in one basket? They are the best and world class and you go with them. That does not mean you put money into low quality ones of course, but what signal does it also send to the NGOs relative to the state sector? I am actually more passionate probably than any other Member of this Committee for budget support, defending the state, local government and national government as a structural way of taking people out of poverty and getting the economies running properly, not displacing them with NGOs. Perhaps the question that was left behind at BRAC was when we met Fazle Abed and he made one remark that he did not deal with political parties because he did not want to get into any murky business. He was almost saying that the alternative civil society structure was there but the institutional structures are not there. I do not think you can have one without the other in the best of all worlds. I just wonder what is the signal and the implication of that decision of funding BRAC to that extent for the other NGOs and for the government?
Mr Foster: In terms of the signal that
we are sending, it is a special relationship that we have with BRAC in
Q193 Chairman: Like China really.
Mr Foster: Very similar, yes.
Q194 Andrew
Stunell: Can we just take a look at the implications of
climate change on DFID's programme? I
have two aspects in mind. One is the
actual amount of money. The other is the
mechanism by which it is decided to spend it.
If we could just take the money issue first, there does not appear to be
any budget line in the existing budget which could be said to be the climate
change line. We have had two figures
which we are a bit uncertain about of £60 million and £75 million as being
allocated to Bangladesh to deal with climate change. Could you say how they are going to be
disbursed and what the timescale is? Of
course an issue for this Committee is to be absolutely clear that we are
talking about additional funding and not taking funding from core poverty
relief and
Mr Austin: We have committed £75 million
over five years to support the
Q195 Andrew Stunell: That is over a five year period. We are talking about something like £15 million a year or something like that?
Mr Austin: Yes. The disbursement phasing will be contingent
on how quickly the multi-donor trust fund starts operating and disbursing. That is the most obvious support that we are
providing to help
Mr Foster: The point about additionality
is well rehearsed now in terms of what the Prime Minister and the Secretary of
State have said about additionality to deal with climate change adaptation and
mitigation. It is part of the negotiations
that are ongoing in
Q196 Andrew Stunell: If we look ahead over the next few years, in the near future we are going to have a figure produced by the UK government relating to the Copenhagen agreement hopefully and some of that will be available for Bangladesh?
Mr Foster: Yes.
Q197 Andrew Stunell: I am not quite sure how the 10% limitation interacts with that figure. If we take a notional £150 million programme at the present time, 10% of that would be £15 million, which is approximately what is allocated at the moment, so approximately the 10% is already being spent in Bangladesh. When, say, another £50 million turns up, to take a notional figure, from the Copenhagen agreement, how is that going to be transmuted into programming and budgeting in Bangladesh?
Mr Foster: In terms of our ODA, what we
have said is that 10% of our ODA can be used for climate change adaptation and
mitigation. In terms of new forms of
finance that come out of
Q198 Andrew Stunell: I was not really trying to get you to give a specific commitment to Bangladesh. I was trying to understand what the interaction of the 10%, let us call it, deduction from the poverty programmes in support of climate change is and what is going to happen to that 10%. Does that 10% come back into poverty reduction when there is a different £50 million coming in? You can see the questions I am asking. It may be that that is something you would want to give us some separate advice on but it seems to me a crucial question as far as this Committee is concerned in terms of whether or not the poor are losing out or could potentially lose out.
Mr Foster: That is exactly why we have
been very clear that climate change financing has to be additional to our ODA
commitment. Our 0.7% commitment by 2013
- any climate change financing that comes out of
Q199 Chairman: I hear what you say Minister. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister's announcement about the increased funds created some kind of negative comments from what I saw, possibly because people are confused. We had a figure of £800 million as the first figure, which the Prime Minister is committing towards the Environmental Trust Fund. Then he said £1.5 billion towards the EU package. It is understandable in those circumstances - I think that is the line of Andrew Stunell's questioning - that this starts to look like a potential threat to the ODA. Notwithstanding what ministers are saying, sums are being tossed into the pot that do not look entirely consistent with the 10%.
Mr Foster: My understanding is the £1.2
billion was in effect a
Q200 Chairman: Is this additional money?
Mr Foster: This is additional. This is not part of our 0.7% ODA commitment by 2013.
Q201 Chairman: Does the £800 million that was committed to the Environmental Trust Fund come out of the 10%?
Mr Foster: I would have to check whether
that was part of our 10% and get back to you.
Certainly the additional allocations that have been made by the Prime
Minister as part of the run up to the discussions in
Chairman: We would appreciate it if perhaps we could have a note on that. I think it would be in our mutual interest.[11]
Q202 Andrew Stunell: Could I just turn to the mechanisms that we have? We have the multi-donor trust fund. We have the Bangladesh trust fund. We also have the conundrum which we explored briefly in an SI[12] committee about EU leadership of EU spending in Bangladesh. I was quite surprised to find that the UK was not the lead country as far as EU spending is concerned. Can you say something about the mechanisms and whether you are satisfied for instance that the World Bank has its act together as far as this goes? What about increasing transfers to the Bangladesh trust fund? Perhaps you could briefly say where the EU funding and management of funding comes into it?
Mr Foster: The issue in the SI Committee
that we were both on was more to do with development funding per se rather
than climate change funding. The issue
there as to why the
Mr Austin: If I could add a word of
clarification on the mechanism and on the
Q203 Hugh Bayley: Having money and having money effectively managed is important. To illustrate why I think the discussion in the last 20 minutes leaves the public absolutely adrift, we have not in the last 20 minutes explained, even in terms of one single example, how these funds, hundreds of millions here and trust funds there, are going to make any difference to people, apart from Mr Austin's passing reference to enhancing household level resilience. What you need to do is talk about building homes higher than the flood level and explain to the public in Britain that this is what our climate change adaptation money is doing. It is providing different livelihoods for fishermen whose fishing grounds are being destroyed. It is about reforesting areas where people live. Until we start talking about these things, the public will not think all the billions pledged to one fund or another will make a scrap of difference. Let us talk about the £60 million. How will Mr Austin's team of experts make sure that we force the World Bank to deliver the maximum number of plinths for homes and new livelihoods for people whose farming land is lost? In other words, how will the multi-donor trust fund be made accountable for delivering results to the people?
Mr Foster: Let me talk about the point
you raise about dealing with people. You
are absolutely right. It is a trap we
all fall into, to talk about billions of funds, the volume of funding, and
assume everybody in the wide world knows exactly what they deliver on the
ground. For me, the Chars Livelihood
Programme is a classic example of where you could actually combine an attack on
the impact of climate change through flooding and raising the plinths of
houses. It is also a poverty reduction
programme with the cows and seeds for the families as a way of generating
income. It deals with health. It deals with education and also water and sanitation
that I know this Committee is very passionate about. That is a holistic way of looking at
development and at the future of climate change adaptation. I am keen to pursue examples like that, but
it is also in other areas of work that we are engaged with. If we tell a better story people can
understand why we are moving in this direction in terms of development. It is not a flippant comment but we talk
about the conversion of people to have ducks rather than chickens to deal with
areas that are prone to flooding. They
provide the same benefits but they just adapt to wet conditions better. It is about getting farmers to look at
harvesting crabs as a way of generating income in areas that are becoming more
wet and saline and rehabilitating mangrove swamps as an example. Our work on climate change also looks at some
of the research that is going to be needed on developing saline resistant rice,
which will be a major benefit to
Mr Austin: On telling human stories
about how climate change is already affecting Bangladeshis, we have invested
quite a bit of effort over the last two or three months in supporting regional
journalists and UK journalists to visit Bangladesh to see the issues for
themselves. There have been some good
programmes on the BBC and reports in the
Chairman: We can see this is work in progress, but you can see from our line of questioning that if we are a bit confused other people are likely to be. A note on some of these issues would be mutually beneficial.[13]
Q204 Hugh Bayley: I want the additional climate adaptation money to be additional money, but I think it would be wrong to give the impression that these are two entirely different things that are being funded because the adaptation work, if it is building a plinth, has a major development benefit. How will your department work to make sure in Bangladesh and elsewhere that every pound of British money spent bilaterally or multilaterally on climate change adaptation in developing countries gets in addition to the adaptation benefit the maximum development gain per pound spent, because otherwise we really do miss a trick. It is not a zero sum of money - money spent on development plus money spent on climate gain - it is how to make an increased pool of money do more for adaptation.
Mr Foster: It is a point well made. It is why the Secretary of State was over in
Q205 Hugh Bayley: That is not enough. That £60 million could improve the livelihoods of 10 million people or 15 million people, depending on whether you go for policy plan A or policy plan B. You should be putting in the development analysis to ensure that you go for plan B if that is the plan assisting more families to maximise the development effectiveness.
Mr Foster: We are not going to disagree
at all in terms of what we are trying to do.
Just in terms of the scale of the problem affecting Bangladesh, if we
focus on this one country in particular, that is why I say it cannot but have a
direct development impact, anything we do on climate change, because the scale
of the problem is literally just so great in that one country alone. It might be different in other countries
affected by climate change but for
Chairman: I think it is inevitable that the development community is watching very closely to see that there is added value and added benefit and it is not an either/or. I think that is really where we are coming from.
Q206 John Battle: The Himalayas act as a water tower. 90% of the water then flows down through Bangladesh but it is its relations with the neighbours that I would be interested in. There is a South Asia Water Initiative and I wonder if Bangladesh and DFID are involved in that initiative at all - i.e., to manage the water better from the Himalayas.
Mr Foster: Yes. We are funding the South Asia Water Initiative. It is certainly something that was flagged up to me when I was in Nepal as a major issue of concern to get the six or seven countries that surround the Himalayas involved in this regional body because the challenges of the melting glaciers mean that literally three quarters of a billion people are affected in terms of their drinking water alone from Himalayan sourced water. We know it is a real challenge.
Q207 John Battle: You are seriously engaged with that initiative?
Mr Foster: Absolutely. The name escapes me at this moment in time,
but the lead person from the UN on this I met in
Q208 John Battle: The numbers bandied around at the moment are in the right ball park. 13 million are incredibly vulnerable now. What struck me in what we learned about Bangladesh was that climate change is not something that is going to happen in 2050. It is happening now in Bangladesh. People are losing their livelihoods because they are drowning now, putting it crudely. Did you say 13 million or 15 million are immediately to be affected and another 60 million later on? Are those the numbers?
Mr Foster: It is 15 million now, is it not?
Mr Austin: At least 15 million are
directly affected. I will check the
figure and confirm this but I think it is 40 million who are potentially
vulnerable at the moment because they are living in very low areas. It may be worth reminding ourselves that 80%
of
Q209 John Battle: That image, if spelt out more popularly, if I can put it that way, would make sense of a lot of the discussions and the numbers being bandied around at Copenhagen. It might drive it home a bit more seriously. They cannot all come and live in our house. One person in Bangladesh said did I know anybody who lived in my village from Bangladesh and I said, "Yes." They said, "Is it in Bradford, because we know someone there. Could we move there instead?" I mention that because, Minister, you said that in terms of migration and the effects of migration what happens - you made a very prescient comment - is that people will not move to Bradford. They will move to Dhaka, to the towns, so that urban issues will become very important. What is DFID doing to help Bangladesh and its neighbours deal with that probable migration? I know we wish we could keep people where they are and give them livelihoods at the moment, but migration is coming. What is DFID's approach?
Mr Austin: Not directly to help stop
people from moving. All of our programme
is directed at helping
Q210 John Battle: The Finance Minister in Bangladesh has asked other countries to take migrants from Bangladesh. I can understand if I am stood up to my ankles in water traditionally collecting rice. Then the water comes in higher. It is salt water. I am now up to my waist and I am fishing for shrimps. I can understand the transition and helping people manage. It is called "adaptation" and very good it is. In the longer term I do not think that is going to be sufficient, given the scale of vulnerability of Bangladesh. The ORCHID[14] assessment recommended that the DFID programme should develop a multi-donor approach "to stimulate international dialogue around complex and crucial, politically charged issues of mass migration and trans-boundary water initiatives." I go back to my point. Is it Dhaka or is it Leeds and Bradford? Can we talk about it, because ORCHID is suggesting that we do, not only us but a multi-donor thing. Would we take the initiative to get that going?
Mr Foster: We are working on the
trans-boundary water issues through the South Asia Water Initiative. We also recognise the need to improve the
educational standing of people from
Q211 John Battle: I think I am pushing for a debate that may be just slightly ahead of its time. I suspect the next Copenhagen in 20 or 30 years' time will be about migration. It is difficult to take on and I think that not only Britain but the whole world is going to be engaged in conversation about people moving round the world on a scale we have never seen before on this earth.
Mr Foster: If you spoke to Mo Ibrahim he would say exactly that.
Q212 Hugh Bayley: We have had evidence from a Dr Gill, a consultant, who said that there was a danger that the lessons of the 2008 food price spike will be forgotten. What steps are DFID taking to minimise the impact of food price spikes on the annual monga season in Bangladesh? Would DFID support the idea of an enhanced public food distribution system as a way of improving food security?
Mr Foster: I think it would be fair to
say that food and food security as an issue for the developing world had
slipped off the radar prior to the food price spikes and the developed world is
now looking at this with far more seriousness and more intent and backing it up
with resources. I know our counterparts
in USAID have made this a big feature of their programmes as we have done with
our country plan for
Q213 Hugh Bayley: What about this idea of a sort of public ration card targeted on disadvantaged groups?
Mr Austin: If I could add another word
about what advice the
Chairman: In spite of the fact that the
Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition are both women, the status of
women in
Q214 John Battle: We have had a long session in depth on many of the issues. I do not think the question of women's gender inequality in Bangladesh should be left off the agenda in any conversation. NGOs have suggested that you include specific targets for women in all DFID programmes. Are you planning to do it? What discussions have you had with the Bangladesh government about practical measures to tackle gender inequality?
Mr Foster: In terms of the programmes that we have and whether we should have a specific target, all of the programmes that we have actually monitor their impact, disaggregated by sex so that we can see what we are doing on the ground and that it is delivering. Our programmes generally in DFID are gender mainstreamed. That is how they are developed to begin with. Then, having the disaggregation of our monitoring can be a check on whether we are doing what we set out to do with our programmes.
Q215 Chairman: Chris, I know you have a role in this.
Mr Austin: I do. I am privileged to be the gender champion for
the
John Battle: I would have thought that some of the work BRAC was doing in that village on gender inequality was absolutely superb work and was easily translated back to some of the difficulties we have in our own inner city constituencies.
Q216 Chairman: We have also made a recommendation that at least two Members of this Committee should always be women. We would be happy for there to be a lot more than two but we do not have any at the moment. It is embarrassing. Thanks to the fact that we do have women advisers, as a Committee, I hope we are aware of these issues but it does not always give us total credibility when we are all men. In every country we have visited in the last year energy has been a problem, the lack of it and the intermittency. There is a coal project which is somewhat controversial involving a UK company. I just wondered if you could give us your take on it. It is the Phulbari Coal Project. They were at your reception and they have visited me here in London and put in a note. They argue that this would provide better quality electricity using cleaner coal, but it would involve the displacement of people. Clearly some of the NGOs and other campaigners are against it. Could you just give us an indication of where the department is on this and whether indeed there are discussions involving the Department for Business about the project?
Mr Foster: The mine in question is
clearly an issue for the government of
Q217 Chairman: Has there been any discussion between DFID and the Business Department about this particular project?
Mr Foster: I have not been party to any discussions. I would have to check with my officials whether they have had discussions. In the broader sense, whenever displacement of this scale is being discussed, we would always be minded to suggest that the social and environmental impacts were taken into account.
Q218 Chairman: I understand that but the counterpoint from the protagonists says here you have a country which desperately needs power. They have their own resources of coal which are cleaner than the alternatives - not cleaner than gas but cleaner than the coal they are importing - and it is a good thing that they are developing. Are we just entirely neutral about that or do we have a view given that we know the energy shortfall is an issue and a constraint?
Mr Austin: Just to clarify first of all on the officials conversing, we talk to our UKTI colleagues who are in the High Commission in Dhaka because we have received similar briefings from the company and we have received some of the concerns expressed by local, international and UK NGOs. We have a kind of joined up understanding of the issues. As the Minister said, the government has to confirm the licence for this mine to go ahead. As far as I am aware, they have not done that yet. The government has said that, of the four issues they want to talk about most explicitly at the Bangladeshi development forum, energy and power is one of them. Amongst the development partner group, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Japan are the development partners with the most funding and technical expertise in this area. We would expect them to be at the front of policy dialogue with government to make sure that, once government reaches its policy decisions, the implementation is carried out in the best possible way, including the social and environmental mitigation measures.
Q219 Chairman: Thank you very much for that. I just felt it was important to put it on the record because there certainly needs to be some engagement about it. Can I thank both of you very much indeed? It has been quite a long session. The Committee, as I think you will appreciate, has been fascinated by its visit and seen a lot of good things being done both by DFID and indeed in terms of the country itself, but huge challenges as well both for their politicians, governments and for the people, given the physical pressures they are under, and a resilience that is quite remarkable in the circumstances. I hope we will be writing a useful report and obviously your contributions have been essential. If I may echo what John Battle said, Chris, thank you very much to your team for facilitating our visit. I think the Minister is going again. Is that right?
Mr Foster: The hope is, yes, subject to things that might be happening next year.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
[1] Supplementary written evidence submitted by DFID
[2] Supplementary written evidence submitted by DFID
[3] The Director of the BRAC organisation
[4] Supplementary written evidence submitted by DFID
[5] See evidence taken on 24 November 2009 from the DFID Permanent Secretary, Q 41
[6] Middle East and
[7] Partnership Programme Agreement
[8] International Finance Corporation of the World Bank
[9] Official Development Assistance
[10] The Minister subsequently sent a note to the Committee to correct this statement. See supplementary written evidence submitted by DFID.
[11] Supplementary written evidence submitted by DFID
[12] Statutory Instrument
[13] Supplementary written evidence submitted by DFID
[14] Opportunities and Risks of Climate Change and Disasters Methodology
[15]