Foreign Affairs Committee - Minutes of EvidenceHC 86-II

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Foreign Affairs Committee

on Tuesday 8 October 2013

Members present:

Richard Ottaway (Chair)

Mr John Baron

Mike Gapes

Mark Hendrick

Sandra Osborne

Mr Frank Roy

Sir John Stanley

Rory Stewart

____________________

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Lynne Featherstone, Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for International Development, Susanna Moorehead, Director, Western and Southern Africa, Department for International Development, and Mark Bowman, Director-General, Humanitarian, Security, Conflict and International Finance, Department for International Development, gave evidence.

Q141 Chair: I welcome members of the public to the third evidence session of the Committee’s inquiry into the UK’s response to extremism and political instability in North and West Africa. We felt it was important to hear from DFID, given the evidence that has emerged so far about the apparent link between poverty and lack of opportunity and extremism in the developing world, and about the region’s rapid population growth, which some experts consider may pose a threat to fragile states in the region. The session also affords the first opportunity of this Parliament for the Committee to ask DFID about how it integrates its development work with the UK Government’s foreign policy and security goals, particularly in North and West Africa.

I welcome the Parliamentary Under-Secretary at DFID, Lynne Featherstone, and her colleagues, Mark Bowman, director general, humanitarian, security, conflict and international finance, and Susanna Moorehead, director, West and Southern Africa, Department for International Development. I welcome all of you here today.

Minister, thank you very much for coming; it is much appreciated that you should find the time. Could I start with a fairly general question about whether DFID sees tackling extremism and instability in the developing world as one of its core roles?

Lynne Featherstone: Yes, it does, but obviously in a DFID sort of manner. You rightly said, Chair, that extremism and terrorism occur because of those issues that DFID is so good at dealing with-poverty, hunger, disease, lack of education, lack of jobs, no civil society voice, no proper institutions, poor governance, those sorts of thing. Therefore, our core business is, by its very nature, development, and development is soft power in terms of building stability overseas.

Q142 Chair: So you accept that poverty, disease and the other things that you listed are causes of extremism?

Lynne Featherstone: I think they are very often linked, because if you go over to the Sahel or Mali and there is no employment, no hope, no voice, no nothing, and someone offers you money to join them-I think there is a natural correlation between those two things. If you are a young man with no hope, what are you going to do except take the money and start fighting?

Q143 Chair: You have produced a number of publications, including Building Stability Overseas and Working Effectively in Conflict-affected and Fragile Situations-this is before your time, Minister-

Lynne Featherstone: I was going to say that.

Chair: But certainly during this Parliament. Do they address that particular aspect?

Lynne Featherstone: Yes, they do. DFID has been scaling up its work in fragile and conflict-affected states. In the area you are interested in, which would be Nigeria, Libya, Sierra Leone, Mali and the wider Sahel, we spend about 30% of our official development aid in that way-supporting those countries, dealing with the drivers of instability. Building Stability Overseas, which was FCO, MOD and ourselves, is a cross-Government effort to address all those drivers, whether they are developmental, political or economic.

Q144 Chair: Do you have many joint meetings with the Foreign Office on this?

Lynne Featherstone: Yes, we have lots of joint meetings with the Foreign Office, if not personally then certainly at official levels. Other Ministers are involved more than myself, in particular the Minister of State and the Secretary of State.

Chair: We will probably come back to that in a minute.

Q145 Sir John Stanley: My experience as a trustee of ActionAid for 10 years and ministerially is that you deliver aid via Governments at your peril, and the only certain way of ensuring aid gets into the right hands is to deliver it directly to the communities that you seek to serve. What is the Government’s policy on the extent to which it will or will not deliver aid to Government agencies in this geographical area in particular?

Lynne Featherstone: Nigeria is a good example. Not a penny goes through general budget support to the Government, because the Nigerian Government is perhaps not as transparent and reliable as our own. We work through NGOs and occasionally sector support, but in Nigeria it tends to be with tried and tested implementation partners who we know will deliver on the ground.

Some of the work we do is around technical assistance or capacity building. As you say, things do not always go where they should, but in a country where you are trying to get to the point of being able to leave, part of our job is to try to build in, because we have great expertise and respected world leaders, the technical assistance such as audit trails, public finance committees, the rigour of institutionalised government and transparency that can deliver, but it is a bit of a hard job in that area.

Q146 Sir John Stanley: So you do sometimes give aid to Government bodies, and you just judge it on a case-by-case basis. Is that right?

Lynne Featherstone: In that area we do not actually give any budget support per se. All cases are examined and a decision is made according to our four guiding principles about whether we can put in budget support or it is more appropriate to do it through another agency. In this area, it is almost always through implementing partners, or, in the Sahel and Mali, we work through the big institutions such as the EU and the World Bank, who are on the ground.

Q147 Mr Baron: A very quick question. You mentioned Nigeria, and you correctly mentioned the link between poverty and extremism. Corruption is a key factor in Nigeria: 70% of the population live below the poverty line of about £1.30 a day, yet we know it is immensely rich in natural resources. Does there ever come a point in DFID’s calculations where it says, "Look, we need to do much more to get Governments to clean up their act before we put aid in," given that in this Government alone the aid budget to Nigeria is approaching £1 billion in the last three or four years.

Lynne Featherstone: That is correct: this year it is £275,0001. Of course, you are right. In Nigeria it is oil, and the revenues obviously are helpful to some degree, but the revenue that is actually delivered in public service is something like 0.55 cents per person. Clearly, it is not going where it should.

DFID assesses all the time, and we are very careful with taxpayers’ money, for obvious reasons. We have regular reviews, assessments and milestones for all the money so we can assess where things are and that they are not going wrong. We do take decisions to suspend aid in all its forms at various times, but because we are not putting any through the Government of Nigeria-unlike, say, Uganda, where we have just suspended budget support-there is nothing to suspend. In those instances, we reprogramme.

Q148 Mr Baron: You have put £1 billion into a country where 70% of people live below the poverty line, and you admitted you are not going via Government agencies. What are this Government doing to put more pressure on those Government agencies? Does there ever come a point-if you do not mind me saying so, Minister, I do not think you quite answered the question-when you hold the aid as, in many respects, a Damocles’ sword to achieve Government reform? Ultimately, the best way of helping people in Nigeria is ensuring better government.

Lynne Featherstone: Indeed, but as I am explaining, we do not put money through the Government per se, through budget support, so that is not a direct threat we can make. However, we are working in I think six or 11 focus states, where we do great work. Of course, we use the leverage we have through our programmes to influence the Nigerian Government and any Government we work with, and that is why I talk of soft power. There do come points at which we decide not to continue to support one form of funding or another, but we have a long history with Nigeria and we hope to double our trade with Nigeria. We have Ministers going in both directions all the time, and we have a very productive relationship, but you have to accept that we are working in an imperfect world, and some parts of that world are more imperfect than others, and among them is Nigeria.

Q149 Mr Roy: In these dangerous times, it is imperative-indeed, it is commendable-that DFID’s budget is increasing, even as the FCO’s budget is declining. Should DFID become more expressly orientated towards achieving the United Kingdom Government’s foreign policy goals, or should it continue to focus on poverty alleviation as its absolutely core priority? Should you make up the weight in foreign policy goals?

Lynne Featherstone: Sorry, what was the first half of your question?

Mr Roy: You have an increase in budget against a declining Foreign Office budget. Should you therefore make up for that loss, or should you keep to your core policy?

Lynne Featherstone: No, I think there is great strength in what DFID does. It is one of our tremendously powerful weapons-probably not the right choice of word-in the countries in which we work. It gives us access and a seat at the table in a way we would have in no other way. In terms of poverty alleviation, I was recently in northern Nigeria looking at the education programmes-I think your Committee went there recently. That work is long term, but if you ultimately want to support a country to move on in development terms, you have to do the ground work on poverty: that includes water and sanitation, disease, education and livelihoods. In some ways, that is a very simple equation, but it is the most profound in the work DFID does.

Mark Bowman: May I add a reflection on that? I would answer the question in terms of there being a greater overlap between objectives now. If you look at the statistics, you see that the majority of poor people now live in conflict-affected states; that is certainly the trend. Those are the countries that have made the least progress towards the MDGs. In those countries, there is a clear overlap between development objectives and broader security objectives, simply for the reason that DFID as an organisation is focused on development and bringing people out of extreme poverty, but that is impossible without addressing some of the issues around stability, security, corruption and the rule of law. The requirement is for parts of Government to work together and for DFID to recognise that we have clear objectives, but that they overlap with other Government objectives.

Q150 Sandra Osborne: Could I ask about the criteria for giving bilateral aid? In a 2011 report called Working Effectively in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States, the International Development Committee was critical because DFID had not clarified the extent to which security interests were a relevant criterion. Does the fact that a country is perceived as vulnerable to extremism constituting a potential threat to the UK make it more or less likely that DFID would give bilateral support?

Lynne Featherstone: It is not, as far as I am aware, one of the actual criteria-the four principles. However, we work very closely in co-operation across Whitehall and work with our colleagues in the FCO and the MOD, and there would be discussions about the likely repercussions on the UK if we were not to work in a country. A range of considerations is taken into account in terms of why we work in some countries and not others, but basically, 21 of the 28 countries in which our work is focused are the poorest and most marginalised countries in the world.

Q151 Sandra Osborne: But if a security threat is a criterion, should that not be explicitly stated in your aims and objectives?

Lynne Featherstone: It is not an explicit objective of DFID, but it may be something that, with colleagues, is thought to be useful. If for an example you take Mali and the Sahel, where we do not have an office, because that is not a country with which we have a bilateral relationship, clearly the security risks there made us decide that we wanted to do development work and to build in some resilience-in my view, that is one of the best ways of working in those areas-but in those instances, we had to work through multilateral agencies, because we are not on the ground bilaterally. It is not absolute or explicit; each case is judged case-by-case. Do you want to add to that, Susanna?

Susanna Moorehead: The criterion for investment in a country is primarily poverty, but as Mark said, you increasingly see an overlap between poverty and insecurity. Our starting point is the per capita income, say, of a particular country, and if there is an additional security threat, that is part of our engagement. However, if you look at a country such as Syria, for example, we were not involved there until recently, but now we have one of the largest humanitarian operations ever launched, because there is clearly an immediate need. We would not think of having long-term engagement in a wealthier country, because our resources are deemed to be for poverty reduction.

Q152 Sandra Osborne: Do you think that it would enhance public credibility here-with the taxpayer-if it was clearer or more transparent that the DFID budget is making a contribution towards protecting their own security?

Lynne Featherstone: That is difficult, because we are instructed by very rigid rules from the OECD on what can be described as overseas development aid. They are very specific, so what we can do is not strictly a direct alternative or an operation that would deal with security per se. An example is that we can train police on, say, community policing or gender-based issues and those sort of things, but we cannot train the military. There are very precise OECD rules, which we can supply to the Committee if you wish, about what counts as overseas development aid or not. They are very strict rules so, in a sense, we are working with colleagues on where development work actually has an effect and an impact on the security of a situation, but we cannot do direct work with the military or on security because of those rules.

Mark Bowman: The OECD DAC rules are exceptionally clear: terms expenditure only counts as ODA if its primary purpose is the economic development and welfare of the recipient country.

Lynne Featherstone: There is quite a clear division of labour, if you like.

Q153 Mark Hendrick: China is a major investor and donor in Africa, obviously providing a great deal of economic help and support. Do you see a big role for China as a potential partner in combating insecurity and terrorism?

Lynne Featherstone: Potential, yes. I see potential in China as a partner. I am trying; I have asked to get more involved, if you like, with China. China has been setting up a Department of Development for the first time, and I hope to go and see that as soon as possible. I don’t know if it is up and running yet. Is it, Susanna?

Susanna Moorehead: It is in its infancy, but yes.

Lynne Featherstone: You are absolutely right, Mr Hendrick, that China is a significant investor-particularly in Africa, which is my patch. We come from a very different place from China, particularly on issues about human rights. I do not know whether this is anecdotal or not, but a president of one African country, when we asked about his human rights in order to invest, said, "Well, I’ll get China to do it. They do not ask these questions."

I see the potential, but I think it may be a challenging role. However, China is so big, I do not think it can be ignored-and the world is changing a bit at the moment, so maybe there is an opportunity there.

Q154 Mark Hendrick: I recall that when the Olympics were in China in 2008, every African leader who went to Beijing for the Olympics had a half-hour meeting with either the president or the prime minister. They value their relationship with Africa to the extent that they want to develop it, because of natural resources, clearly-but they also do not attach the strings that we do to aid.

Lynne Featherstone: Exactly.

Q155 Mark Hendrick: Do you think the fact that we attach strings in the way that we do makes things more difficult for us? Do you see any possibility of working with the Chinese, rather than them just getting on with it on their own, as they seem to be doing in so many countries at the moment?

Lynne Featherstone: I think you are right; we need to be talking to them. I think we are more stringent, but it is a funny thing. At one level, in some of the countries that DFID works in, there is a desire to do things right and properly, and that totally contravenes the idea that the elite is running off with all the resources. You go to some parts of Africa, and almost every building or road there has been built by the Chinese. But you are absolutely right; we need to be talking to them. We come from very different places, but I still think that that is work we need to do. They are so important in the development world.

Susanna Moorehead: Certainly not in every country, but a number of our offices have conversations increasingly with the Chinese. I would not want to give you the impression that the Chinese are part of the traditional donor group, but there is a recognition of the need to have conversations. Similarly with the Indians, they have set up a development agency within their Foreign Affairs Ministry, and they are keen to discuss with us how and whether we can collaborate. Notwithstanding what the Minister says, they have different criteria of what success looks like.

Q156 Mike Gapes: Do you think that DFID is involved in an ideological battle in sub-Saharan Africa for the rights of women and girls to get education, for human rights and for democratic values?

Lynne Featherstone: Whether we are or not, the reality is that if you educate a girl, you solve most of the other problems along with it, whether it is rights-based or not. We are rights-based, and there are really no two ways about that. If you educate a girl, you know that you get fewer children and that you space out children, and if you empower women to work, you get the village-look, this Committee is more experienced than me in most of these things.

Q157 Mike Gapes: May I press you? Other countries are investing significant sums in parts of sub-Saharan Africa that do not have that agenda. We can name Saudi Arabia, Qatar or Iran, and we can talk about religious organisations that come out of more extreme forms of Islamism from India. Do you think that a battle for hearts and minds is going on in sub-Saharan Africa and that we have that ideological conflict?

Lynne Featherstone: There is quite a battle on a number of fronts, with extreme Islamist focus versus more traditional western values, if that is what you are getting at.

Q158 Mike Gapes: I am not talking about western values; I am talking about democratic values-universal values, if you like.

Lynne Featherstone: I was phrasing it perhaps in terms of how it is seen in other parts of the world. I think you are absolutely right. Personally, I think there is a schism in the world, and it often reveals itself in women’s rights. Right now, there is quite a move to roll back the hard-won rights that women have achieved in the world-for example, on sexual or reproductive health. You have this extreme Islamist arc, but bookended by Russia at one end and the Vatican at the other. I would add LGBT rights, because where women are oppressed, generally homosexuals do even worse. So I think there is an ideological battle.

However, given the practicalities of development in the poorest and most marginalised countries, the way to deal with it is often as we do-educating girls, bringing access to health or water, sanitation, microfinance, whatever-which actually benefits the whole community. Where we work holistically, in communities and with religious leaders who are part of our work generally in sub-Saharan Africa-you cannot really work there without them-it can be a force for good, but that is not against the extremist ideology that you are phrasing.

Q159 Mike Gapes: Does DFID monitor the extent to which extremist groups are spreading within sub-Saharan Africa, or is that role left to the FCO?

Lynne Featherstone: I asked Susanna that question only this morning. There is some information, but not as much as we would like.

Q160 Mike Gapes: Is that mainly led by the FCO, rather than DFID?

Susanna Moorehead: It is principally the FCO, but we work everywhere, particularly in very fragile countries, and we have extremely close links.

Q161 Mike Gapes: There are countries with a significant DFID presence, but there might not be much of an FCO presence. You have people in the remote areas and are in touch with the NGOs on the ground, so you might have more information.

Susanna Moorehead: Indeed, and if we do, we share that with our Foreign Office colleagues. But in northern Mali, for example, we do not have as much information as we should have; we have more than we did six months ago, but we could do with a lot more.

Lynne Featherstone: What the connections are and so on.

Q162 Chair: Turning to the issue of population growth, do you accept that this region has some of the highest population growth in the world?

Lynne Featherstone: Of course I do-that is factual.

Q163 Chair: We are also seeing in the region some of the highest levels of insecurity and instability in the world. Do you think that there is a correlation between the two?

Lynne Featherstone: Inevitably, when you have such huge population growth, it is poverty that it really goes hand in hand with-there is the correlation with the extremism, rather than simply large families. In a way, it is one of the big issues for North and West Africa-those countries have phenomenal growth, growth we can only wish for, but their population growth, at something like 2.5%, means that everything else stagnates and they cannot really advance.

DFID’s approach to that is really about giving, particularly to women and girls, choice, voice and control over their own lives. Where that is given, and it is really on sexual and reproductive health issues, women actually choose to use it, on the whole, and to space their children and therefore to have fewer. We know that as families get less poor, or richer, they in turn have fewer children, and that is something to be worked on.

We are also working in countries where death stalks most big families and where your only guarantee in old age is having a bigger family-that is one thing we are up against. Population growth is of course an issue, but there can never be coercion or population control per se, because that would be unethical. However, we do want to promote well-being and a benign cycle.

Q164 Chair: In truth, it is not a question of coercion or control; women want contraception, but they cannot get it.

Lynne Featherstone: Indeed. We are doing our best, working with numerous partners, to deliver it in numerous countries in Africa. I myself have not been in this part of the world, but the last time I was in Uganda I went to an outpost-to a contraceptive day, which had been put out on the radio, in conjunction with Marie Stopes. It was in the middle of nowhere, as many of these places are. As we arrived, there was a mile-long queue of women who had come from all parts of the area to queue for contraceptive health.

Q165 Chair: So a voluntary family planning programme would be successful, inherently. Do you agree that, were we able to stabilise the levels of population growth, it would go some way towards stabilising insecurity in the region?

Lynne Featherstone: I do not know that I could be that direct about it-

Chair: You have just gone one way-

Lynne Featherstone: Poverty causes it, rather than there being a direct correlation.

Q166 Chair: If we eliminate poverty-

Lynne Featherstone: And poverty to security, so it is an indirect link, yes.

Q167 Chair: So, you can see a chain of causation between stabilising population growth and-

Lynne Featherstone: I do not have the evidence in front of me that suggests there is a direct link, but I can see that if you have a lot of people with no food and no education, you are likely to get instability.

Q168 Chair: What would be the consequences of stabilising population growth?

Lynne Featherstone: The population growth would eventually come down.

Susanna Moorehead: I do not think that in and of itself, stabilising population would be enough to ensure security. High population growth, if that can be productively employed, can also be very stabilising. If people realised that it is better to invest in peace and prosperity than fighting, population growth could be a stabilising factor in its own right.

The real question is whether there are jobs for the young population to do and whether there are institutions to make sure that people are educated, have health care and have electricity. It is a broader question of economic development that is likely to drive down population growth, as we have seen in the developed world.

Q169 Chair: I agree with all that. If we do not address that and population growth stays high, do you think instability can be removed with high population growth?

Susanna Moorehead: If you do nothing else, it will be very difficult.

Q170 Chair: What is the DFID target on family planning for the region?

Lynne Featherstone: I do not have that in my head.

Susanna Moorehead: I do not think I do, either.

Lynne Featherstone: Can we supply that to the Committee?

Q171 Chair: Yes, please do. I presume the policy set out in the family planning summit of last year still stands.

Lynne Featherstone: Yes, and I am going to the next one in Ethiopia in November.

Q172 Chair: I was invited, but unfortunately cannot make it.

Lynne Featherstone: I will give them your best wishes.

Q173 Chair: Can I just clarify the targets of DFID on family planning? You published a paper called, Choices for women: planned pregnancies, safe births and healthy newborns in December 2012, which was updated on the website in March 2013. On one page it says that DFID is committed to helping at least 24 million girls and women use modern methods of family planning, but on the next page it says 10 million. I imagine that 24 million is the correct figure.

Susanna Moorehead: It is, yes.

Q174 Chair: Thank you. Are you coming across any barriers in the acceptance of family planning? You were talking about the queues.

Lynne Featherstone: Yes.

Q175 Chair: Are the barriers religious?

Lynne Featherstone: Yes, to an extent.

Susanna Moorehead: Religious, social and cultural.

Lynne Featherstone: There is a whole range of reasons to keep women down.

Q176 Chair: You seem to have reservations about the UNFPA. Have you thought about seeking alternative partners?

Susanna Moorehead: We use a number of different partners to deliver family planning services, depending on the country. Some of them come through the private sector and some of them through other UN agencies.

Q177 Chair: Do you think the UNFPA is not up to the mark at the moment?

Lynne Featherstone: I would like to encourage them to be stronger in some aspects.

Q178 Mr Baron: We briefly touched on corruption in places like Nigeria and how that is inhibiting the work of DFID. The answer seems to be that we do not route aid through Government Departments. I suggest that your own expectations as a Department are not great-quite low, in fact-and you expect a high failure rate with regard to many of your projects. You say yourself in your annual report-correct me if I am wrong-that Nigeria is off track in achieving the millennium development goals. Given our discussion today, do you think there is a case for changing tactics, given that corruption does seem to be inhibiting your work?

Lynne Featherstone: All these things are judged as we go along, in and of themselves. First, it is very difficult when you are trying to, in a sense, change the nature of something that has been so fundamental in that country, where the way of life has been around corruption, an informal tax system and so on and so forth. We do a lot of work to try to change that basic, unhelpful formula. We do a lot of work, say, on EITI in the extractives sector and things like that to try to get them to understand that transparency and signing up to these things give them international kudos and status. That is one way of doing it.

We are always trying to leverage better. An example is that I went to see a new sovereign bank in-Nigeria was it? Someone is going to have to help me with this-

Susanna Moorehead: I am not sure.

Lynne Featherstone: Forget that. What I would say is that we judge it all of the time. If you are saying, "Should we be tougher? Should we be stronger all the time?" it is not that easy to re-programme some of our programmes. I would argue that our programmes in northern Nigeria in particular, which is the particularly unstable part of Nigeria, help to deliver a situation where we have some traction. For example-this isn’t directly on your question-when I was there, having been to the north, I was able in a meeting with Vice-President Sambo to push him on some of the human rights abuses in the north. It gives you the ability to say things that you cannot normally say if you are working in the country, and trying to encourage the things you want.

I am more in favour of soft power, but you have to have a stick as well. I appreciate what you are saying, but the balance is very difficult. DFID does withdraw and stop development aid at times, so that even if we are not doing it in Nigeria, they must know what happened in Rwanda and what we have just done in Uganda. It is not as though we never use the stick to say, "Enough is enough. You have broken one of our partnership principles. We cannot go on with you."

Nigeria is a complex country. You have this boomtown at one end, with huge population growth and huge rates of poverty. It is tackling something very complex. I do not have a simple answer for you. Maybe we should be tougher, but I don’t know what that would look like.

Chair: We have a statement on Syria in the House in 15 minutes.

Lynne Featherstone: I know. I want to hear it too. I was just trying to think that through, because these are very important issues on which we have a fine balance to hold the ring.

Q179 Mr Baron: Moving on, you talked about the re-programming of projects, that DFID is trying to work in the north to give girls an education and so forth. What about the almajiris, these boys who are sent north and detached from their parents? We are talking perhaps about some millions. It is quite a scale of a problem and a fertile ground for extremists. What more is DFID going to do about that?

Lynne Featherstone: We work with religious leaders in the main religions and in the cults, and with charismatic preachers. That is the only way to access these boys. In our schools programme, the ESSPIN, we also fund state schools, which are ginormous, and state education within the religious, koranic schooling. I visited both when I was there. In that way, we hope that, because you are learning something that is communal and having access to core subjects, that in its own right will begin to unite.

What is dangerous is when there is no connection left between the religious world and the rest of the functioning local communities. Through our efforts on education there, we are bringing those two worlds together. Also, we are working with religious leaders to make it inclusive.

Q180 Rory Stewart: The £128 million that you will be spending over the next three years in Mali and western Sahel-how does it break down? What kind of staffing levels do you have at present on the ground?

Lynne Featherstone: If you want staffing levels, I have to turn to, who actually lived in Mali for four years. She also has the details of the programmes.

Susanna Moorehead: Yes, the £128 million is a regional programme, and we were very keen when that was allocated not to say how much would go to particular countries. Part of the reason for that was that an awful lot of resources were being given by the international community to Mali, and we felt that if Mali got all the resources, the instability would, rather like water, go to the point of least resistance in the very fragile neighbouring countries, so we have purposefully kept it flexible.

We are not planning to have a bilateral programme in that part of the world, so those resources will be spent via multilateral agencies in which we are either a shareholder or a member state, such as through the World Bank, some UN agencies and possibly in collaboration with other bilateral donors.

Q181 Rory Stewart: I have to interrupt, because I am afraid that we are rather short of time. To put it in very blunt, simple language, are you essentially giving this money to the World Bank and other multilateral agencies to spend in accordance with various programmes that are not currently specified?

Susanna Moorehead: No. The £128 million is an allocation that is then broken down in specific programmatic agreements with the World Bank, such as a social protection scheme that the World Bank is in the process of setting up and which we have endorsed as a shareholder and board member of the World Bank. In that instance we will make sure that the programme can cover a wider area than would otherwise have been the case.

Q182 Rory Stewart: When did you announce this money? How much of the money have you so far spent, as opposed to committed?

Susanna Moorehead: I think the announcement was made in May.

Lynne Featherstone: It was 15 May at the high-level conference on development in Mali.

Q183 Rory Stewart: How much of the money has been spent so far?

Susanna Moorehead: I would have to get back to you on the precise amount. It is not very much.

Lynne Featherstone: The conference itself generated $4.2 billion, of which our contribution was £128 million.

Susanna Moorehead: This is an allocation over a three-year period.

Q184 Rory Stewart: Presumably the reason why you cannot provide any details is because these multilateral programmes have not yet been fully developed or specified; they are still at the development stage.

Susanna Moorehead: No, I just do not have them to hand. In order to facilitate programming, we make an allocation. Obviously, humanitarian aid is disbursed very quickly. I will have to get back to you on the figures, but that is where the highest spend has been. On the longer-term resilience programming, which is this £128 million, it will be programmed over the course of the next three years.

Q185 Rory Stewart: I would be very grateful if you could send us a note specifically defining exactly how much has been spent to date, how much you expect to be spent within the next 12 months and exactly how it is allocated between the different programmes.

Susanna Moorehead: With pleasure.

Q186 Rory Stewart: How many Mali specialists do you have in your team?

Susanna Moorehead: We have two people in Mali. One is based in the embassy and one is currently based in the EU. On the humanitarian side, we have probably three, if not four. On the development resilience side, there are two people.

Q187 Rory Stewart: So you have eight full-time DFID staff members currently based in Mali? Or is it two?

Susanna Moorehead: No, sorry. There are two in Mali. The rest are in London. They are not working on Mali full time; they are working on the wider Sahel.

Q188 Rory Stewart: So you have two DFID staff members in Mali?

Susanna Moorehead: Yes.

Q189 Rory Stewart: What are their tour lengths?

Susanna Moorehead: I think the one in the embassy is for a year at the moment, but that can be renewed. The one in the EU I would have to check, but I think it is probably longer than that.

Q190 Rory Stewart: In terms of the programmes that you are planning to pursue, to what extent have you taken on board the lessons of the failure of the DFID programmes on governance and civil society in Iraq and Afghanistan in your approach to a fragile state in Mali?

Chair: I have to adjourn in three minutes’ time.

Susanna Moorehead: The short answer is that we have. The circumstances in Afghanistan and Iraq are very different from Mali. We regularly learn the lessons from our engagement in fragile states, including those where we believe that our engagement has been extremely successful, such as Sierra Leone. The single greatest message that we take away is that we need to stay engaged. We need to be prepared to take risks because there is no blueprint for what works in these places. We need to work with others, be they bilateral or multilateral, in the most effective manner.

Lynne Featherstone: I would just conclude that these are the toughest places in the world to work, and we are trying to do the most difficult things. Believe me, we learned the lessons but not everything is replicable from one country to another. We must stay engaged because these are very dangerous areas in the world for us.

Chair: Minister, thank you very much indeed. I found that particularly useful and I am grateful to you and both of your colleagues.