Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, whether he plans to end the use of private for-profit contractors in the aid industry; and what assessment he has made of the potential merits of capping the salaries of aid charities’ CEOs.

DFID values the unique expertise all its partners offer in the administration of aid. To date, we have no plans to end our use of private for-profit contractors who play a small but vital part by bringing sector expertise, operational flexibility and innovation through, for example the early exploitation of new technology providing products or services in new or underdeveloped markets, enabling DFID to help people in some of the most challenging environments in the world.

DFID does not place a cap on salaries of aid charities’ CEOs, since we recognise that salaries are driven by competition and multiple market forces making it impractical to set a maximum salary. We do however subject all our partners to rigorous scrutiny of their effectiveness and value for money, in advance and throughout the delivery of our programmes. Our priority is to drive value for British taxpayers’ money, cost-effectiveness and impact in all our programmes.