|
The UK Government has rightly put increasing stress on the importance of governance. Parliaments are a key part of this and are essential to meeting many of DFID's ambitions for post-2015, including increasing the accountability of Governments, reducing poverty, tackling corruption and preventing conflicts. Many parliaments in developing countries can benefit from parliamentary strengthening, but working with parliaments is difficult and set-backs are common, especially, in Fragile and Conflict Affected Countries. A representative, accountable and effective parliament is an asset in any state, and no less necessary in fragile and challenging countries. A strong parliament which has sufficient resources to scrutinise its government will inevitably ensure greater transparency and better use of state revenues including official development assistance.
We estimate that very roughly about £250 million is spent globally on parliamentary strengthening. DFID is a major contributor, spending approximately £22.5 million from its bilateral programmes and according to DFID a further £3.5 million can be attributed as its share of multilaterals' expenditure.
In the past DFID staff have not always felt comfortable working with parliaments, but there have been improvements, including DFID s use of political economy analysis. There have been a number of recent Government initiatives to improve UK parliamentary strengthening, including a review of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and the appointment of a new CEO for the organisation. The Committee welcomes the Government's and DFID's efforts, but believes they should do more. We recommend that:
· DFID put parliaments at the heart of its governance work; in countries where DFID has an office, parliamentary strengthening should be a standard feature of DFID's work and of ensuring long term that aid is spent effectively
· in particular, DFID support the relevant parliamentary oversight Committee where DFID has a major programme, e.g. on health or education; we welcome the Minister's support for this.
· DFID recognise that multi-party politics gives voters greater choice and therefore greater leverage over their MPs and governments. This, of course, makes inter-party rivalry a common and welcome feature of a healthy parliament. DFID's parliamentary strengthening work should not shy away from working with political parties.
These recommendations are likely to involve an increase in expenditure on parliamentary strengthening relative to other programmes to promote democracy—albeit a relatively small one as parliamentary strengthening programmes are not expensive.
There is increasing recognition by practitioners and donors, including DFID, of the characteristics of best practice in parliamentary strengthening programmes. We particularly commend
· long term programmes with the ability to respond quickly and flexibly when opportunities arise
· combining parliamentary strengthening with associated relevant work, particularly with the media; however, combined work it is not a necessary part of parliamentary programmes and such work should not be a substitute for them
· political and party political awareness in the design and execution of programmes- it cannot be a simple technocratic exercise.
DFID is proud of its political economy analysis, but we were told that this does not always carry through into the implementation of programmes, in part because of DFID's commissioning processes; the DFID logframe and the results agenda, which emphasise short term, tangible results are the subject of particular criticism. We recommend that DFID develop a long term, sensitive and realistic approach to evaluating parliamentary strengthening programmes. We further recommend that DFID and FCO jointly undertake an assessment of what parliamentary strengthening programmes they have funded and what has worked.
In its commissioning, DFID puts a higher value on good project management skills than specialist expertise and prefers to commission large governance projects of which parliamentary strengthening is a part. Thus it provides large contracts to big sometimes non-specialist organisations which subcontract to others. We see the advantages of using large organisations such as the UNDP in some circumstances, e.g. where a several donors are involved or in some Fragile and Conflict Affected states (FCAs). We were surprised to discover the extent to which DFID uses large US organisations for its parliamentary strengthening work, running the risk of a switch from a parliamentary to a less accountable, Presidential system.
We recommend that DFID commission more expert organisations; and take a more hands-on approach to managing parliamentary work. We recommend that
· a joint DFID/FCO fund be established to commission expert organisations; this would also enable work to be commissioned at short notice when opportunities arise. A joint fund would combine the differing and important skills of the two departments. The fund could be on a similar scale to the £21.4 million which BBC Media Action received as a global grant from DFID in 2013-14
· when DFID has to commission larger suppliers, it nominate expert organisations to which larger suppliers should sub-contract; we welcome UNDPs willingness to do this, but DFID needs to ensure that too much is not top-sliced by the larger supplier.
· DFID improve its ability to act as an intelligent commissioner of parliamentary strengthening both in country and centrally; it should increase the number of specialist experts at the centre and ensure its governance advisers are aware of the importance of parliaments and develop closer links with the UK Parliament.
The 'Westminster brand' is often well regarded overseas and Westminster-based organisations have undertaken some excellent work. Many parliaments in developing, especially Commonwealth, countries are keen to work with Westminster-based organisations; this can involve a Westminster institution working with a 'southern' partner in a third country. However, DFID is used to working with large contractors on a scale which tends to exclude Westminster; the average programme budget for the 37 DFID programmes with parliamentary strengthening (these are large governance programmes which include a part on parliamentary strengthening) is £14.1 million, which is larger than the total annual budgets of the House of Commons Overseas Office, UK Branch of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, British Group of the Inter-Parliamentary Union and Westminster Foundation for Democracy combined.
We recommend that DFID make more use of Westminster organisations, especially where there is a demand for their expertise. But changes should be made at Westminster. DFID and the FCO are confronted by a host of institutions at Westminster. We recommend that
· the organisations at the Houses of Parliament be better coordinated with a single point of contact.
· consideration be given to the establishment of a stronger Westminster 'hub' which would bring together UK institutions with different kinds of expertise, enable them to cooperate rather than compete, and would be able to undertake larger projects
We welcome the changes which Westminster Foundation for Democracy is undertaking under its new CEO. The Westminster Foundation for Democracy should continue to develop its parliamentary strengthening work in combination with political parties. This should be encouraged and funded by DFID and FCO. To assist WFD's reforms we recommend WFD form closer links with the Houses of Parliament; and that staff be seconded from the House of Commons to WFD and vice versa.
| 
