Protection of the EU’s Financial Interests

Debate between Roger Mullin and Desmond Swayne

Monday 8th February 2016 General Committees

[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. May I say I admire how you have generated such a beautiful gender balance on the bench beside you?

I have two questions, if I may. My first is for the Minister of State. I am interested in this issue because I have spent much of my life in parts of the developing world and on aid projects. I have a very precise question, but, by way of a short preamble, I have a lot of sympathy with those who are at times critical of agencies that operate internationally. At one stage in my life I was in Yemen to look at a college built with World Bank money and with United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation development. My terms of reference were simple: we have built this building, now tell us what to do with it. It was not necessarily the best project that had been set up. The Minister mentioned the recent report, published on the EU website, on the amount of money wasted. He said that in his and the Government’s view, the report was “very good”. Will he explain precisely what “very good” is?

[Mr Swayne]

I was referring to the multilateral aid review that we carry out periodically. The last update was in 2011. We assess the effectiveness of all the multilateral organisations through which we operate as a prelude to deciding on what terms we are prepared to continue using them as development partners. The EU institutions are part of that review. Specifically, we judged their financial controls and their effectiveness in deploying the finance that they are given to deliver projects on the ground to be very good. I said that to counter the criticism set out a couple of weeks ago that they are too slow and that it will be 27.5 years before they can deploy the finance that they have been given. That is a snapshot, or the use of a management tool to draw a wholly inappropriate conclusion.

[Roger Mullin]

My supplementary to the Financial Secretary is also about the international aspects of fraud. Many projects funded through the European Union require multinational partnerships. I am aware that some fraud has occurred in more than one member state. Does he have a general view of how the UK compares with other EU member states on multinational projects?