The United Kingdom’s aid budget may be
sealed by law at 0.7 percent of gross national income, but the governing
Conservative Party is looking beyond the country’s Department for International Development to
make efficiency savings wherever aid goals aren’t being met.
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U.K. Chancellor of the
Exchequer and First Secretary of State George Osborne
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Chancellor
George Osborne told reporters last week that he intends to examine the
increasing amount of aid coming out of departments other than DfID — including
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and ministries of defense and education —
to make sure U.K. aid, as he put it, is “really saving lives.”
In
the midst of a governmentwide hiring freeze and stinging cuts to the domestic
budget, concerns are mounting that DfID and other agencies could buckle under
the pressure to administer the comparably hefty 0.7 percent allotted to foreign
aid. Aid groups and DfID officials are largely supportive of Osborne’s call for
increased scrutiny, hoping the measures will bridge the gap in oversight
between DfID and other aid-administering departments, over which DfID has no
jurisdiction.
“All
U.K. aid, regardless of the government department that spends it, must be
focused on poverty reduction,” Joanna Rea, head of public affairs at the Overseas Development Institute, a
U.K.-based think tank, told Devex.
“A
clear cross-Whitehall approach to international development would ensure that
DfID can maintain oversight of aid spending in all government departments.”
Osborne’s
call for greater oversight comes as conservative media outlets across the U.K.
take aim at aid, accusing the government of rushing money out the door to
multilaterals like theGlobal Fund to Fight AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis in order to reach the 0.7
percent goal. And there are ongoing allegations of questionable spending too,
in particular directed at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The FCO has come
under fire repeatedly in the past three years, notably for allegedly funding
the construction of a water park in Morocco and hosting theater workshops in
Ecuador.
“We
welcome this review into overseas aid which builds on DfID’s relentless drive
for value for money,” a DfID spokesperson wrote in an email to Devex.
“Whether
through increasing ministerial oversight, reducing consultancy costs or
inviting the private sector to compete for better results, we’re ensuring every
pound is being spent as efficiently and effectively as possible.”
The
last three years have seen an annual 1-2 percent increase in aid flows from
non-DfID departments, Rea and others told Devex, most recently with aid funds
moved into capital spending.
At
the same time, sources at Publish What You Fund added that
there is disputing evidence of whether aid has become more fragmented across
departments and to what degree, but acknowledged it is a valid concern in the
development community. DfID oversees around $17 billion annually, while the FCO
controls around $543 million.
“The
U.K. has reached its aid target, which is a real achievement, but we need to
refocus now on improving the effectiveness of U.K. aid spending,” Amy Dodd,
director of the U.K. Aid Network told Devex.
“This
means a hard look at how aid-spending departments perform, ensuring that they
are held to the same high development standards as DfID and improving the
coherence of development work across government.”
The
problem of coordinating oversight of all aid spending is a recurring concern
for members of the U.K. aid community, many of whom hope DfID will take the
wheel in administering aid across the government.
Alison
Evans, chief at the Independent Commission for Aid Impact alluded early this month to
a strong potential for “turf wars” between departments over aid spending. “If
you’ve got a department that is essentially sitting on a ringfenced budget of
that nature that’s been written into law, they absolutely have to take the
leadership on this,” she said, speaking to the Guardian.
“Without
a very clear strategic vision for how official development assistance needs to
be delivered in the U.K., there’s going to be potential possibly for some loss
of turf,” she said.
Justine
Greening, the U.K.’s secretary of state for development expressed frustration
in June over the FCO’s choice of projects, which subsequently led Foreign
Secretary Philip Hammond to initiate an investigation into his department’s aid
spending.
Despite
broad consensus around the issue of aid effectiveness, Osborne’s pledge to
ensure U.K. aid is “saving lives” has some in the global development community
worried about how the government will assess its aid efforts.
“There
are some contexts in which it is easier to demonstrate ‘saving lives’ than in
others, but putting figures to this can be tricky,” Farah Nazeer, director of policy
and campaigns atBond — a U.K. membership body for
nongovernmental organizations — told Devex.
“It
is easier to show the ‘improvement in people’s lives’ which is what most aid
spending does,” Nazeer said. “For more entrenched issues such as influencing a
government policy or international climate negotiations to bring about
institutional change, then this becomes more challenging.”
Officials
from several U.K.-based development organizations told Devex that while the
measures posed little to no immediate threat to their own budgets, there is
concern that the cost-cutting ethos could spill over into an upcoming review of
the government’s partnerships with CSOs.
Worries
that increased government pressure on aid efficiency could miss the nuances of
aid effectiveness come just as Greening announces the terms for the forthcoming Civil Society Partnership Review, a
DfID-led assessment of CSOs engaged with the U.K. on implementing foreign aid
projects.
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