Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what assessment her Department has made of the potential merits of harmonising reporting requirements across donors.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
DFID uses and supports the OECD Development Assistance Committee’s (DAC) system for Official Development Assistance (ODA) statistics and the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), which both facilitate harmonised reporting from donors.
The OECD DAC system provides authoritative ODA spend statistics from donor countries according to the internationally agreed definition of ODA, which enables donor effort to be reported in a standardised and comparable format. As a DAC member, the UK is committed to transparent reporting of ODA in a way that allows international comparisons.
IATI is an initiative to improve the transparency of development and humanitarian resources, including results, based on a standard reporting format. More than 900 organisations and donors are publishing their data to the IATI standard. DFID is encouraging all its partners to join IATI to enhance transparency to both taxpayers and beneficiaries and to improve harmonisation and efficiency.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what recent steps her Department has taken to reduce the bureaucratic cost of delivering humanitarian aid.
Answered by Alistair Burt
DFID is committed to working for a more efficient and effective global humanitarian system that helps save more lives and reduces suffering. All organisations spending UK taxpayers’ money, including DFID, must adhere to minimum requirements to demonstrate value for money and that we are safeguarding vulnerable people. In the rules governing how DFID spends UK Aid, some process requirements are streamlined for emergency humanitarian aid, to minimise delay in meeting urgent need.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department has taken to engage with international working groups that work to fulfil the 10 Grand Bargain principles.
Answered by Alistair Burt
DFID is committed to delivering on the Grand Bargain commitments and to supporting a more effective and efficient humanitarian system. Between August 2017 and October 2018, the UK was on the Grand Bargain Facilitation Group, where we sought to maintain momentum on all Grand Bargain workstreams. The UK has also focused its efforts on Grand Bargain commitments that are the most critical enablers of transformative change. The UK co-convenes (along with the World Food Programme) the cash workstream, which was assessed to have had the best performance across the breadth of its commitments in 2017. The UK has also been active in supporting the Grand Bargain workstreams, for example on joint needs assessment and accountability to affected populations.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department has taken to independently verify the performance of the UN humanitarian agencies that it contributes to funding in South Sudan.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of the performance of DFID’s partners is central to our programming to ensure that we deliver the best possible service to people in extreme poverty.
DFID South Sudan’s M&E involves both contracted external M&E service providers, who regularly conduct independent monitoring visits to UN humanitarian agencies; and DFID staff, who monitor UN humanitarian agencies on field trips and regularly discuss performance, assess and manage risks, and track progress with UN partners.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what estimate she has made of the transaction costs incurred by her Department’s reporting requirements for UN humanitarian agencies.
Answered by Alistair Burt
DFID’s reporting and due diligence requirements are necessarily rigorous in order to safeguard vulnerable people and ensure value for money for the UK tax-payer. We expect all DFID partners, including UN agencies, to meet these high standards.
DFID carefully determines reporting requirements to reflect the specific context. DFID does not have data on transaction costs but is undertaking a range of initiatives to streamline and make more consistent our requirements of UN agencies.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that economic development programmes help the most marginalised and vulnerable in target countries.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
DFID’s 2017 Economic Development Strategy commits to help the most marginalised and vulnerable people through DFID’s economic development programmes, including people living in extreme poverty, women and girls, and people with disabilities. Programming decisions and design are informed by context-specific analysis of opportunities and constraints for supporting inclusive growth that spreads benefits and opportunities right across society. Under the 2014 Gender Equality Act, DFID considers the impact of development or humanitarian assistance on gender equality. DFID’s Inclusive Data Charter Action Plan and DFID’s Disability Inclusion Strategy, both launched in 2018, set out specific steps to make economic development programmes more inclusive.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what plans her Department has to increase the proportion of Official Development Assistance spent in the least developed countries and fragile states.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
DFID spends sixty percent of its country specific bilateral ODA in the least developed countries and continues to meet its commitment to allocate at least fifty percent of its budget to fragile states as set out in the 2015 Aid Strategy. This does not preclude DFID from increasing the proportion of its spend to these states due to unforeseen disasters or events in any given period.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to provide humanitarian support to vulnerable children in the demilitarised zone in Idleb, Syria.
Answered by Alistair Burt
As of September 2018, DFID has committed additional aid funding of up to £32 million for Northern Syria. DFID’s education programming has so far contributed to improved access to better quality education for 270,000 children in Northwest Syria, including children inside and outside the de-militarised zone. Our support in Idlib has also provided safe spaces for children and victims of gender-based violence, funded capacity building of vital child protection services by Syrian organisations and provided immunisations for 95,000 children under five between January and June 2018.
We continue to advocate for the protection of all civilians in Idlib, including at the UN Security Council, and call on all parties to adhere to agreed ceasefires and cessations of hostilities. It is crucial that unhindered humanitarian access is maintained in Northwest Syria so that aid can reach those in desperate need, and that a reckless military offensive by the Syrian regime is avoided.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to support Somalia in preparing for future droughts.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
Since the devastating famine in 2011, the UK has been helping families and communities in Somalia better cope with drought and other shocks by improving water supplies, agriculture, health care and promoting economic development. We have also invested in early warning systems to better identify when and where drought will hit hardest. This means that when help is needed it can be quicker and better targeted. All this work enabled us to play a leading role, along with Somali and international partners, in preventing famine during a major drought in 2017. It is also reducing significantly the impact of humanitarian disasters due to drought and other causes in Somalia in the future.
Asked by: Chris Law (Scottish National Party - Dundee West)
Question to the Department for International Development:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps her Department is taking to prevent child marriage in Somalia.
Answered by Harriett Baldwin
The UK is supporting discussions in communities across Somalia to encourage an end to harmful practices, including child marriage. In 2018 our programme reached over 11,000 community members and 900 religious leaders across the country. We also continue to support UN efforts with the Ministry of Women and Human Rights to strengthen the implementation of policy and appropriate legislation aimed at protecting children from this practice.