International Aid Reviews: Conclusions

Lord Bishop of Chester Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

The noble Lord maybe missed the part of the speech that said that the Secretary of State has committed to supporting regional programmes. As he absolutely rightly points out, some of the smaller countries will have greater responses from their regional areas than from bilateral programmes, which are smaller and less able to reach widely. We support the regional programmes very much.

I come back to the point about Burundi and Lesotho, which I keep pronouncing wrongly. We believe that they have comparative partners that are far better placed than us to deliver aid. Therefore, we will help them through the regional programmes.

In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, I should say that our regional integration work, which is managed by TradeMark East Africa, which has an established office in Bujumbura, will provide support for Angola and Burundi, so that is covered well. We will not just leave them out there and we are not suddenly going to stop—the process will phase down by 2016.

The noble Lord is absolutely right that we have a keen focus on agriculture, which is really important for food security, not only for that area but for us, too. We have pledged from 2009, when the Opposition were in government, £1.1 billion over three years. We are therefore taking agriculture sustainability very seriously. We are committed to food security and agriculture and are working with the FAO as well as other multilaterals, including the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme, to ensure that we have a strong programme in place.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I press the Minister on an aspect of the Statement that has not featured in the questions so far—the point that,

“it is critical that the UK increases its focus on helping countries to build open and responsive political systems”.

In the conclusions there is simply a reference to holding “freer and fairer elections”, but building democracies is about more than just helping countries to hold elections; it is about helping to build institutions in a society that support democracy. Could the Minister say a bit more about that?

[Baroness Verma]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for that question. Of course this is about more than just fairer elections; it is about making sure that the institutions in countries where there has been corruption and where unstable Governments have held office are removed or strengthened. Therefore, DfID, through its programmes of technical support and assistance, can ensure that we help Governments who want our help to train people in place to be able to hold Governments and funded institutions to account. We will not tolerate corruption; we want corruption to be eradicated. Therefore, we take all allegations of corruption and of misappropriation of funds very seriously, and we will work very strongly with Governments to ensure, with their assistance, that we put in place stronger good governance in the political systems. However, this is not about freer and fairer elections—I understand that; it is about giving people at grass-roots level the ability to hold the politicians representing them to account.

We have also put into place a watchdog that will monitor all our aid—where it is spent, how it is spent and what the outcomes and results are—so that people across the world can just log on and see for themselves. If that aid is not reaching them, they have a place to come back to and ask for recourse.