Transcript
Too Close for Comfort? Diplomacy and the Future of UK Aid
Preet Gill MP
Member of Parliament, Birmingham Edgbaston, Labour
Kirsty McNeill
Executive Director of Policy, Advocacy and Campaigns, Save the Children
Tracy McVeigh
Editor, Global Development Desk, The Guardian
Chair: Quentin Peel
Associate Fellow, Europe Programme, Chatham House
Event date: 18 November 2020
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2 Too Close for Comfort? Diplomacy, Development and the Future of UK Aid
Chatham House Staff
Sorry, Quentin, could you just unmute your microphone quickly? Thank you.
Quentin Peel
[Pause] Okay, shall I start again? Hello, everybody. I think I’m unmuted now, and I’m sorry. Did you not hear a word that I’ve said so far? Anyway, I was just welcoming you to Chatham House yet again, and worrying that if we talk about too close for comfort, it sounds like we’re urging everybody to be socially distanced, or else it might be what Boris Johnson had to say when he met that infectious Tory MP last week, but – which he somewhat regrets.
Anyway, that isn’t what we’ve come here to discuss, but the government’s sudden and slightly surprising decision last June, in the middle of the pandemic, to announce that it was going to merge two great government ministries, the Department for International Development would be merged into the Foreign Office. I can’t say it’s totally surprising because DFID, and its predecessors, have been political footballers – footballs ever since the Overseas Development Ministry was first created by the Labour Government in 1964, and then, in 1970, when the Tories came back, they immediately put it back into the Foreign Office, and then, when Labour came back in 74, it was a ministry again, and then, when the Tories got back in with Margaret Thatcher, it went back into the Foreign Office.
So, it’s been a political football all along, but this time, perhaps, we thought it was going to be different because David Cameron’s coalition seemed to really get the idea of an independent aid and development ministry, to get the idea that there should be a guaranteed budget, 0.7% of GDP. But guess what? That, too, suddenly seems to be in question. So, it’s a very timely debate that we’re having today, when not only the location of development in the government, but also the size of the development budget, may be being called into question, right in the middle of the pandemic.
So, the question we’ve got to ask today is, is it a good idea, and does it mean that aid will actually be more effectively delivered or less effectively delivered? And we’ve got an excellent panel, and a health warning, which I’ll come to. First in our panel, Preet Gill, Labour and Co-operative Party Member of Parliament for Birmingham Edgbaston since 2017, when she succeeded Gisela Stuart, somebody who has also sat on many panels at Chatham House. The first British Sikh woman to become a Member of Parliament, congratulations, Preet, and very rapidly promoted to the position of Shadow Secretary of State for International Development. The only question being that, given the reorganisation that is the subject of our debate, it’s not entirely clear whether you have a counterpart to talk to, Preet, but you can perhaps tell us about that when you speak. Preet has a first-class degree in sociology from the University of East London. She worked as a Social Worker both with street children in India and an Israeli kibbutz, has been in local government in the Sandwell Metropolitan Borough before she went to Parliament. She will be our first panellist.
Kirsty McNeill, who’s Executive Director of Policy, Advocacy and Campaigns at Save the Children, a former Special Advisor to Gordon Brown when he was Prime Minister. In the wonderful selection of things you were responsible for, Kirsty, stakeholder management, equalities, faith, and what I like best, non-traditional communications, which sounds like a wonderful thing to be responsible for. But you’ve also managed the STOPAIDS campaign, you’re Board Member at Make Poverty History, and many other NGOs, so somebody who comes from a long career in the NGO sector.
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And, finally, my fellow Journalist, Tracy McVeigh, a Journalist for more than 20 years, Editor now of the Global Development Desk at The Guardian, and also running foundations and philanthropic projects there, formerly Chief Reporter at The Observer, so welcome, also, Tracy.
Now the health warning. We don’t have a Conservative speaker or somebody who will vigorously defend the reforms introduced by the government, in spite of very enthusiastic efforts by my Chatham House colleagues in the meetings department. So, I may have to end up, as moderator, being something of a devil’s advocate from the Chair if I find that the debate is all a little bit one-sided. I would urge you also, the audience, to ask as provocative and tendentious questions as you like from the floor when we come to that. But, first, I’ll come to the panel.
Very quickly, a little bit of housekeeping. This meeting is on the record, the Chatham House Rule does not apply. You can use Twitter with the #CHEvents. If you want to submit questions, please do so throughout the event using the ‘Q&A’ function, not the ‘Chat’ function or the raised hand function, because they will be disabled. So, if you put in a question through the ‘Q&A’ function, I will get it and I will read it out, and I will try and get as many questions in as possible. And that, I think, is all I have to say now, and I’m going to hand over first to Preet.
Now, Preet, I’m actually just going to start off by saying – by asking you this. When that announcement came in June that the DFID was going to be wound up into the Foreign Office, what was your immediate reaction? Were you surprised or was it actually something you’d just been waiting to happen?
Preet Gill MP
Actually, it was one of shock. It was shock that, given that we’re in the midst of a global pandemic, is the government really embarking on taking such action? Because, of course, you saw the criticism from previous Prime Ministers, from across the world, you know, because DFID has given us our world-leading reputation around the world, its institutions with the independence that DFID really had, its expertise, its skills, its innovation, that has given it the role that it has. And, of course, what does Global Britain mean? ‘Cause this is, you know, something that the Tories use, you know, the rhetoric that they use around this very often, and, of course, this diminishes our position on the global stage. So I was really shocked because I think many of us thought, ahead of the integrated review, that there would be the discussion on defence, diplomacy and development, and, as a result of that consultation, the possible outcome could have been the takeover of DFID, or certainly we were expecting other changes to happen. So, the very fact that that was announced, I remember I was here in my house, in the living room, and when I heard that, I was absolutely shocked. I was really pleased that I got a call from the leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, saying that we would absolutely not be mirroring the government’s decision, we didn’t believe in it, and we would be retaining myself and the team, and we have done so since then.
Quentin Peel
And what about the latest series of speculations, indeed reports, suggesting that not only is the merger happening, but also, the budget for DFID is going to be cut in the next round of budget announcements from Rishi Sunak? I mean, that was described – the idea that it might be cut from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP was described by Dominic Raab in September as tittle-tattle. Well, does it seem to be happening, do you think it is going to happen?
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Preet Gill MP
Well, I think it’s really quite concerning. Firstly, just going back, you know, ahead of the summer recess, Raab announced £2.9 billion of cuts of ODA money. The concerning thing about this government, though, is that we’ve been drip-fed, in terms of what those cuts actually mean. We now know that they’ve reneged on their commitment for girls education in Rwanda, for example, but even now, despite PQs, despite questions at the despatch box, the government hasn’t actually detailed what those 2.9 billion cuts have already – what they mean and where they come from. So, this announcement of the 0.5, this means about £4 billion being further cut.
Again, my worry is, we’re not going to know the detail, is it going to be ODA money that is spent by other government departments that should be repurposed because it doesn’t meet the OECD debt calls around poverty reduction? We always knew that GNI was going to fall, but, you know, if we can afford money, as we have seen during this pandemic, of procuring and spending billions procuring PPE to those companies that have absolutely failed, we should not be reneging our commitment to the world’s poorest, especially not at this time, especially not ahead of the G7 Presidency.
This doesn’t show leadership, actually, so it’s really concerning, and, whilst it’s been reported in the media, we haven’t seen, as you know, today in PMQs, Annette [inaudible – 12:35] from my team asked this question and the Prime Minister pretty much ignored it and responded with some response to do with environment. And it is really worrying because if there’s anything that they have continued to say, every single Minister, including Rob, is that they are committed to the 0.7%.
Quentin Peel
Okay, but let me come back to the merger, because let me challenge you on this. Why is Labour so opposed to what some people would regard as an entirely logical development, that you should include development and diplomacy, maybe the third ‘D’, as well, defence, all in a coherent structure, reporting effectively in one line to one ministry? Because big issues that affect development all the time also do clearly come under the responsibility of the wider Foreign Office, big issues like climate change or indeed other ministries like tackling pandemics. So, is it really not – aren’t you being a bit naïve to think that you can keep aid and development in its own box?
Preet Gill MP
I think it’s a really good challenge, Quentin. I mean, development and diplomacy are both in the UK’s national interest, but they are very different, they require very different skillsets and focus. I mean, we do not know what the role of Diplomats in development is going to be. You know, what is that actually going to look like, who are Diplomats going to be reporting to, where is the government’s focus actually going to be, in terms of its strategy, where are we going to be putting money in?
And what I’m reminded of is the Pergau Dam scandal. I think Diplomats are going to be put in a very, very difficult position because, on one hand, we’re going to expect them to be taking up issues of human rights. Diaspora communities will want us to raise very difficult conversations, there’ll be interest of British companies, there’ll be pressure being put on, in terms of trade deals that we’re negotiating, and all the while, you know, we’re expecting Diplomats to then be, sort of, you know, putting in place priorities around development, trying to scale up projects, trying to work with governments. I think it makes that relationship very, very difficult, and I think it’s really important to keep them separate.
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My thing with the government, though, is it hasn’t been innovative, this is a political project, you already had in-country offices. Over the last, sort of, five years, what we’ve seen with DFID is the bureaucratisation of its staff because in-country offices were never allowed to build relationships with host governments. They weren’t allowed to scale up projects because, of course, this government has gone to a very short-term funding mechanism, in terms of how it wants to do its development priorities, and that simply doesn’t work.
We didn’t need to take this drastic action at this wrong time. You know, if we want to be Global Britain, we’ve got to show some clear leadership and conviction. We’ve got to learn from mistakes that we’ve made previously, and we’ve got to reassert our values, and, actually, what we should have done is we should have given our DFID colleagues who’ve got expertise in this areas, yes, they can work more closely with Diplomats, but actually, they are the ones that should be leading the charge, in terms of development, and working with civil society, and growing that engagement and those social movements in those countries.
Quentin Peel
Okay, very clearly put. I’m going to move now to Kirsty. Kirsty, when this was announced by Boris Johnson back in June, he said he had consulted very widely with a lot of NGOs about taking this decision. Were you consulted at Save the Children and, if you were, what would you have said?
Kirsty McNeill
So, this has been a matter of some controversy ‘cause actually, we can’t find anyone in the NGO community who claims they were consulted. So, this is certainly something, whether it’s a degree of disagreement between the Prime Minister believing he had conversations and those of us who were supposedly in them, feeling that actually, we didn’t have a conversation about the merger.
What we did have a conversation with the government about a proceeding merger announcement was where aid cuts would fall if they had to fall when the national income shrunk. And one of the things that we said, during those conversations was, which we have said all along, that if you’re going to pursue a merger, you really need to think about your manifesto commitments, which are barely dry. The ink on them is barely dry, and there were three of them, not only that you’ll stick to 0.7, that you will make sure that every girl is educated and that child – preventable child deaths come down. So, there’s three manifesto commitments, that’s what we’ve always been trying to hold the government to account around is how are you going to reconcile these at a time of aid coming down? We were already saying that there was a challenge of hitting those manifesto commitments when the aid budget was [inaudible – 17:26] to come down in the summer, and that’s only been exacerbated, our concern around that, over the coverage for the last few days.
Quentin Peel
What, actually, though, are your – from – coming from the NGO sector, what are your greatest concerns and fears about the effect on the big picture development policy of the British Government by bringing DFID in under the Foreign Office perspective? Is it that there will be too much commercial interest, that aid projects will suddenly become something that should be giving contracts to British companies, or is it that the national interest, rather narrowly written, will start affecting aid policies, so we’ll suddenly have our aid policies geared towards slowing down immigration, for example?
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Kirsty McNeill
A few different considerations, from our perspective. the first is that this has been an absolute triumph of politics over policy. So, there were no expert voices, suggesting this was the best way to secure the Sustainable Development Goals, not one. So, nobody with a long track record of programming on the ground or of policy research was saying, “We are full square behind this.” I don’t think it’s a surprise that your Chatham House colleagues have failed to find someone who would like to relitigate that case, because there have not been experts calling for this. And we know why this happened, it was partly in the service of a political and ideological imperative rather than an evidence and policy-led one. But we could relitigate this for years. What I’m more interested in is, now that it has happened, how do we mitigate some of the risks that we warned of? And we warned of several.
One, and, for my mind, the most important one, was that standards would be brought down to the level, the status quo level, of the Foreign Office, not brought up to the standards of DFID, and by standards I mean therefore things around transparency, value for money, impact that the public contract. We know that the public believes that their aid money should get spent saving and changing lives. The public make a very clear distinction between the moral purpose of aid and the self-interested purpose of diplomacy, and, quite apart from what the public believes, they require fundamentally different skills.
There is a reason that DFID was chockfull of superb Scientists, of health workers, of Economists, and there is a reason that the Foreign Office was historically chockfull of superb Security Analysts and Linguists. They’re fundamentally different fields of practice, and our worry was that, in trying to merge the two, you’d end up with a, kind of, cut and shut, where you ended up with the worst of both rather than the best of both. As I say, we could relitigate this forever.
For my mind, the really big, missed opportunity was where is the department for global challenges? We’ve effectively seen the 18th, 19th and 20th Century institution swallow up a development ministry, rather than taking the chance to have a genuinely 21st Century institution that takes care of some of the issues that will otherwise be orphans. Where is pandemic preparedness going to live in the government? Where is mass migration as an issue going to live in the government? Where does the cross-border drugs trade live in the government?
There is a number of issues that have multidimensional elements that make them genuinely global challenges, and the government unfortunately didn’t take the chance to create a 21st Century department that could have dealt with some of them, and instead just allowed the Foreign Office to swallow something up with no evidence so far that in the process it’s raised the quality and impact of aid and made it more in line with what the British public wants to see.
Quentin Peel
Do you think that the professionals in DFID, the aid professionals in DFID, do you see any evidence that they’re actually going to just leave the ministry and gear into international organisations or somewhere else?
Kirsty McNeill
Well, I mean, we’ve seen that already, but we’ve – to be honest, we’ve been seeing that for the last few years because this debate – whilst, as Preet said, the announcement was shocking, the debate has been raging, and people have noticed that there is increased enthusiasm for talking of a merger. There’s been
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increased enthusiasm and increasing enthusiasm for talk about cutting aid, and people have seen that, and they want to go into a multilateral system or into NGOs where they know that people are committed resolutely to one outcome and one outcome only, which is hitting the SDGs.
And that’s one of the other things that has really happened in this merger, we’ve lost sight of the fact – it was only in 2015 that the British Government signed up to indivisible and universal goals, that we were, as an entire government, supposed to be aiming to hit, and now I’m not clear who, around the Cabinet table, has hitting the SDGs as their one-line job description. That used to be the one-line job description of the Development Secretary, but who now sees that as their job to wake up every single day thinking about whether we’re going to fulfil these promises that we’ve made to our public, to other leaders, and, critically, to the poorest people in the world? You know, Desmond Tutu said that, of all promises, a promise made to the poor is the most sacred of all. Who thinks keeping the government’s promises is their job? That’s one of the things that’s gone missing in the architecture and the political priority that’s put around the Cabinet table.
Quentin Peel
Okay, thanks very much. Let me move to Tracy. Tracy, I want to put you, if I may, just slightly outside the debate here as somebody who takes a pretty long and hard look at the whole development industry, if you like, and, actually, what I want to ask you is this. Is it not realistic to say that the track record of traditional development aid has not been that brilliant? Has it really achieved what it was setting out to do, and shouldn’t we be asking some pretty tough questions of organisations like DFID about whether, in fact, they are actually making a real difference, or am I being too tough?
Tracy McVeigh
Well, I mean, I think absolutely, we should be asking far tougher questions, I would argue, right across the whole, kind of, aid landscape from NGOs to DFID, and we should still continue to be asking those questions. You know, aid is changing dramatically, and some people are keeping up and some people are not keeping up as well as they might and being as progressive as they might. You know, we have to be really, kind of, conscious of these, kind of [pause]…
Quentin Peel
We’ve lost you.
Tracy McVeigh
How am I doing now?
Quentin Peel
You’re back.
Tracy McVeigh
Am I back? Sorry. These, kind of, old, kind of, you know – the way we have run aid in the past has perhaps not been the best. We are learning, we’re starting to realise, that we need to work in partnerships with people. We need to give ownership to people within their own countries to – you know, rather than,
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kind of, parachuting ourselves in. All these things are lessons that the aid community, some are learning better than others.
But, you know, DFID was one of the most, kind of, sort of, audited institutions in Whitehall. I mean, it was, kind of, put on the spot. It was constantly, you know, politically audited. Each Minister was, kind of, sent in to – you know, to, kind of, bring back what was seen as this, kind of, terrible waste that must be going on in DFID because where is all this money going? And you would see these Ministers, kind of, arrive, determined to, kind of, cut, and then have these, kind of, Road to Damascus type experiences where they suddenly realised what brilliant work DFID was actually doing. And they would become incredibly impressed by the people there, by the expertise there, by – as everybody [audio cuts out – 25:52] the expertise that was within that department. Nobody’s saying that that was anything other than excellent and the top of its game.
But this is obviously not the way to do it, to just, kind of, kneejerk, take an ideological, political decision, a kneejerk decision, to just, kind of, go, “Right, we’re axing that, we’ll pop that in there, and there you go, Dominic Raab, you can have a nice increased little slush fund there for you to use for the Foreign Office who’s got a depleted budget.” I mean, it’s, kind of, crazy and enormously disrespectful, and short-termist, and nobody consulted with [audio cuts out – 26:34].
Quentin Peel
Your – unfortunately, your line is a bit wobbly but keep at it, keep talking, and we’ll get to you. We’re getting – we’re losing the odd sentence. Back to you.
Tracy McVeigh
Oh, sorry. So, you know, I do think it was – yes, we need to be continually having a conversation about how we deliver aid, what aid looks like. We need to be talking not so much with each other, but with people within those countries. You know, for me, the biggest problem was – politically is that, yes, poor people around the world are no longer represented around the Cabinet table in [audio cuts out – 27:15] in British Government. They definitely lose the, kind of – the overall, sort of, loss of DFID being not integrated, but subsumed by the Foreign Office.
Quentin Peel
Yeah, subsumed. I’m going to actually go back to Preet Gill, I think, Tracy, because you – it’s a bit of a wobbly line, but I hope that we can clear it up. Preet, one of the things that I think is, we mentioned earlier that you’re in the slightly embarrassing position of not having an obvious counterpart on the government benches who, if you like, you can hold to account. How does – I mean, leadership is absolutely critical to this, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we be looking to and hold – trying to hold the government to account to say, “You must have a very senior Minister in this role, something like a Foreign Office equivalent of a Chief Secretary in the Treasury, who would be almost on a parr with the Foreign Secretary, and actually, sitting at the Cabinet table?” Is there any hope of getting that sort of safeguard built in?
Preet Gill MP
Well, I think one wonders whether this was done deliberately, and, as you say, of course you need to have somebody that has got that responsibility for development, and, as Kirsty said, for the SDGs, the leave no- one behind agenda, and there doesn’t seem to be that. And so, when I am at the despatch box or when I
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am directing my questions, they are done either to Raab or they are done to the Ministers that hold joint responsibilities, in terms of country-specific thematic ‘cause they are across both FCO and development. And you’re absolutely right, this, you know, does require leadership, and I think this is a great idea. I have written to Raab around the – broadly around scrutiny functions, as well, and asked about whether he'd be willing to do that. Of course, I’m still awaiting a response from him, but you’re absolutely right. With the global challenges that we are thinking through ahead, we need to have somebody at the Cabinet level that is raising the issues on behalf of development, because, of course, Raab has got so many other things, in terms of his brief under FCO to do.
But what’s really been concerning for me, and what we’ve seen about Raab, and I think this is going to be a challenge more broadly for us, and especially for our team, is that he has refused to attend the International Development Select Committee. He doesn’t want to answer any questions, which is absolutely concerning. He doesn’t want to provide the detail of the 2.9 billion, and that’s pretty much what we have got with Raab, actually. He avoids the conversation and, of course, he doesn’t have the expertise and the skillset because he doesn’t come from that kind of background.
The money that – the ODA money that his department was spending under him as – when he was the Foreign Secretary was actually deemed to be not value for taxpayers’ money. It wasn’t meeting the OECD DAC rules, so you could actually safely say, he doesn’t know how to deliver priorities against ODA money because he wasn’t able to do that when he was – when he had that money under his spend. But I think there is – there really is a bigger, broader issue. I think that every aspect of government seems to be avoiding transparency and accountability across the board, we’ve seen that, just around the PPE procurement. We’ve had it in the national debate, and I think this is a real challenge, and that’s why it’s incumbent on all of us in this sector that care about development to be using our voices, to be lobbying, to be talking to our MPs. It can’t just be the opposition that does that.
Quentin Peel
Okay. I mean, I think you bring the focus back onto this question of transparency, and the fact that I think everybody has said that one of the things that DFID has been much more successful on than it used to be is actually making its actions and policies more transparent. But let me come to you, Kirsty, if I may, and say let’s look at this question of safeguards, and let’s try and say how can we hold government to account in this new setup and in this new system? Preet mentioned the International Development Committee. Is that now the relevant body or should, in fact, we be trying to hold it to account, through the Foreign Affairs Committee, with a much stronger development aspect? Can you see an obvious way to hold the government’s development policy to account?
Kirsty McNeill
So, I think the Foreign Affairs Committee will struggle to cover the breadth of waterfront of Britain’s international engagements in the diplomatic sphere, and the, kind of, technical, sort of, scrutiny that we would like to see around aid. But if we just zoomed out from the specifics for a moment, for me, there’s a real question about good faith and holding trust with the British public. If you go to the public in an election with a manifesto, their legitimate expectation is that you will stick to that manifesto.
The 0.7% commitment is enshrined in law. The Act does not make provision for people dipping into 0.7 like it’s a piggybank when they choose to. What the Act makes provision for is for the amount of money, so the pound figure, to expand or contract in line with the economy, and that is what has already
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happened. So, the cuts that Preet has talked about are those that are built into the way that the Act is designed.
What is really concerning – I’d say from a faith in politics and a public trust point of view, quite apart from the development implications, what is really concerning, about the last few days, is we’ve had active briefings from members of the government saying that the 0.7% commitment, which is enshrined in law, is not going to be treated as if it is enshrined in law, and it’s going to be treated as a matter of political choice, whether it is stuck to. So, we can have as many parliamentary forms of scrutiny as we like. If the bare minimum that we will stick to the legislation and be held to account if we fail to stick to the legislation – if that bare minimum threshold can’t get met, I’m not sure there’s any committee in the world that could have the relevant amount of scrutiny, if the government is prepared to play fast and loose with legislation that they have signed up to, and a manifesto commitment which, as I say, still has ink that’s not yet really dry.
Quentin Peel
Okay, well, Tracy, let me come to you. Can the media hold the government to account? I mean, one of the things that I [audio cuts out – 33:55] find interesting about that of the electorate, but actually, when you question people, the aid budget is actually regarded by a surprisingly large number of people as a very good thing. And I was looking at one particular poll you were talking about following the Ebola story today. It showed that, actually, above all, when it comes to dealing with health issues, pandemics like we’re suffering at the moment, people do understand why development aid is absolutely central. Do you think that that public attitude can be motivated and used to hold the government to account?
Tracy McVeigh
I hope so. I think, you know, the journalism and the media has had to, sort of, step into that spot a lot, and because we are, you know, going to countries where the issues are and reporting from them, and, you know, acting as that, kind of, conduit between British public and what is happening in the world. And, of course, as there’s been, kind of, trust issues with the media, that something that we’ve had to work incredibly hard to, kind of – to build on and to, kind of, increase our trust ourselves, and to make sure that we are communicating exactly and properly, with responsibility from these countries, exactly what is happening there, which feeds in, again, to holding to account both departments like DFID and NGOs themselves, you know, and how aid is correctly or incorrectly being, kind of, dispensed on the ground.
Again, it’s, kind of – it’s difficult because the media is – you know, we’re not immune from budget cuts, and, you know, economic, kind of, issues that are faced by all sorts of other industries at the moment, but it is really important that we do continue reporting. And, yes, the public interest is enormous in these stories. You know, I – we publish stories every single day, with individuals from countries in the developing world, and the interest in those stories is huge, absolutely huge, and that’s phenomenally encouraging. And I think any government who assumes that the public doesn’t care about poverty just because it’s happening in another country, whether it’s Ebola, whether it’s migrants drowning in the Mediterranean, or whether it’s, you know, children facing famine in Yemen, people do care. They absolutely do care, and I think the proof is there that people care.
Quentin Peel
Okay. Well, let’s see if our audience cares, too, because I’d like to open it up to the audience to ask questions and stop listening to my voice. I’ve got a question here from Rob May, who says – who asks
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“David Cameron said that in international negotiations, he didn’t accept that you either talk about growth investment and jobs, or you talk about human rights. You need to do both. Now, he suggests does this merger actually correct that disconnect? Let me put that to you, Preet, first. You’re muted.
Preet Gill MP
Yes. I think that’s a really good question, and I think – I did already touch on it. I think the difficulty, though, and – is, you know, what we saw with Pergau Dam scandal. I don’t see how Diplomats are going to be able to talk about growth investment and jobs and human rights, very difficult, very complex discussions, because, actually, what Diplomats are then going to get involved in is, you know, what’s going to be the impact of those human rights violations that they’re raising? How are they going to be addressed, consistently having to ask very difficult questions? And, of course, you know, if the response isn’t, you know, what one would expect, then what does that mean then, in terms of the growth and the investment and how will that impact?
I think Diplomats are going to be put in a very difficult position where they’re going to have to compromise human rights more likely, and they’re not going to be talking about those difficult situations. Actually, we already see that right now with British nationals across the board, we see just how difficult those conversations by Diplomats are. They say that themselves, they have to walk a very tight rope in respect of managing those relationships and, of course, when governments change, what happens then? Because if you have an agreement with one government and then actually it – that then changes, how do you continue those relationships building? I think it’s going to really compromise our position to do that.
Quentin Peel
Okay. Kirsty, can I come back to you on that question, too? I mean, is it – do you think that really behind this merger is a much more hardnosed, commercial view of the whole thing? If we’re going to have this huge development aid budget, we must make sure that British business is benefiting from it, and therefore, it’s going to be the commercial side that we bang away on and not the human rights side. Do you think that’s a danger?
Kirsty McNeill
I think there’s certainly a danger, and one thing I’d say is, if it is a self-interested move, it’s an extremely short-sighted move in turn. So, before I was in government, I worked on a G7, or then the J around Gleneagles, and it was enormously impactful to see different branches of government then working together. So actually, there was more than the sum of the parts from the fact that you had a Foreign Office doing the diplomatic track, you had DFID with a reach into bits of the world that the Foreign Office frankly doesn’t have a very good track record of connecting with, or very strong reputation in. You had a Treasury that was absolutely committed at that point to making sure that money was going to the poorest in the world, and then, of course, in Number 10, you had a leader that was bringing it altogether. So, we’ve got plenty of experience of things working in tandem, in parallel, in a way that’s mutually reinforcing and adds up to more than the sum of the parts, and the worry is that actually, we’ve ended up with something that’s less than the sum of the parts now because we don’t have that other string to our bow of the enormous soft power that comes with DFID’s reach and that is guaranteed and secured by the integrity and consistency of our 0.7% commitment.
And it is staggering to me that that, which has done us so much good from a self-interested point of view, that the long-term view about the good that has been done has been overtaken, now of all times, on – you
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know, just after President Biden has been elected, and just before he touches down in Air Force One in the UK for his first G7 summit. This is exactly the wrong time to send the message out into the world that we are taking a short-termist view about our national interest in the run-up to our G7, which could be the reintroduction of Global Britain to the world, when all eyes are upon us. This is exactly the wrong time to be talking about compromising a 0.7% commitment, quite apart from the fact we’re in the midst of the worst humanitarian emergency for 100 years. I cannot, for the life of me, see why this is even politically strategic in the short-term, quite apart from the long-term strategic implications for our country. I think the government has been enormously short-sighted, and will, in the end, view its current behaviour as counterproductive.
Quentin Peel
Okay, but I want to come back slightly to the coherence of this reorganisation, and I’ve got a question here from Neil Carmichael, who puts his finger on that, because he says, following up on Rob May’s question, “The FCDO, the FCO, and DFID are not equipped to talk about growth or jobs. Shouldn’t the Department for International Trade, or elements of it, actually be merged into the new FCDO setup, as well?” Tracy, and would you like to take that one? Is this actually a half-baked reorganisation?
Tracy McVeigh
I’m not sure, kind of, how seriously he means that question, but, I mean, you know, every single department at Whitehall overlaps. You know, it’s a giant Venn diagram. I mean, to choose two departments and integrate them, I think, to be honest, it might have been a little bit more, kind of, progressive and a bit more imaginative to think about actually how to get people within departments to communicate with each other better. I mean, that, really, was the problem, if there was a problem. So, I mean, you could choose any two departments. We were saying, you know, climate crisis, it’s – goes into absolutely everything, but you have to, at some point, have some boundaries between where your, kind of, expertise is going to concentrate itself. I mean, jobs is – and business – well, jobs and business then, you look at Africa and you’ve got this huge demographic of young people coming through in Africa, where we and the Millennium Development Goals, which then became the Sustainable Development Goals, have actually achieved enormous success, and Britain is a huge part of that, in reducing mortality rates. But you’ve now got this, kind of, huge, kind of, demographic coming through of young people who are going to need jobs. Does that then, sort of, factor into how we’re looking at business and business in – within Britain and jobs expanding out into the world? I mean, where do you, kind of, stop, I suppose, with integrating departments?
Quentin Peel
Okay. I’m getting quite a line-up of questions here, so I think we must try and get to as many as we can. A question here from Saleh Kamil Salek, “In terms of visibility as a development partner and soft power, as a post-Brexit Global Britain within a shrinking Commonwealth, does the UK have it right, and France, Germany and the US have it wrong? Preet, do you want to pick up on that? That, actually, we are a post- Brexit Britain within a shrinking commonwealth, but we need to therefore – I think the implication of the question is, we need to be more clearer about the national interest that we have to push.
Preet Gill MP
I think – look, I mean, firstly, I mean, we don’t have a deal, and goodness knows what’s going to happen, in terms of what that looks like, and, actually, what’s been concerning is 12% of ODA is spent through the
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EU, and the government has just given us no deal, no detail, in terms of what’s going to happen to that money next. There’s been no inclusion, in terms of the co-operation on foreign policy, on security, on defence, in terms of the reference for the UK-EU future relationship negotiations, and they’ve pretty much dropped any reference to overseas development from EU programmes. And I think there’s so much uncertainty around that because we know that there’s produce from African countries, which goes via ports through EU member states, and that will obviously face disruption and delay, and so we’ve got to work together with our European counterparts on these issues, on issues of migration, people crossing various borders, and so on and so forth.
So, I think the question seemed quite broad, in terms of trying to focus it down, in terms of what the asks were, but I – you know, so, I would say I just want to go back on the previous question, ‘cause I think it ties into this, is, you know, we’ve got to ask ourselves what are the evidence bases? When we talk about mergers, and this idea that suddenly, you know, trade and development and FDO all should come together, well, what about defence? You know, these, sort of, restructures cost a lot of money, and, in the midst of a global pandemic, and, you know, time, what we’ve seen with the government is they’re navel- gazing. It’ll probably cost about £50 million.
People have described this to be institutional vandalism. Why would you go and destroy something that’s world-leading, that has a brilliant reputation? Why don’t you review what doesn’t work and try and change that and adapt that? And, of course, our standing in the world is going to be absolutely important, but, of course, DFID gave us that standing already, and we’ve, kind of, pretty much destroyed that. Now, if we want to go and get trade deals and build our reputation with Commonwealth partners, then we’ve got to again – there hasn’t been the evidence of what government has been doing, what conversations it’s been having with African leaders, for example, in terms of opportunities going forward, so I think there’s a lot more that we need to do on that.
Quentin Peel
Okay, but let me follow-up with a question here from Megan McDowell. She says, “After running on a platform of America First in 2016 and cutting funding in international assistance, Donald Trump signed the BUILD Act in 2018, which adds new tools for the United States to utilise its foreign aid allocations. It’s been said that the BUILD Act was part of the US response to the recognition that China is a major challenger in the global economy, and increasingly involved in development, particularly as part of the BRI, the Belt and Road Initiative. Is it too much of a reach to assume that the DFID FCO merger may follow the same logic, that this merger is about strategic reasons? ‘Cause, if we’re blunt, China in Africa, for example, is pursuing very much a China national agenda.” Who would like to pick up on that? Tracy first?
Tracy McVeigh
I – it didn’t feel like a strategic move to me. It didn’t feel like someth – and had any – there have been any, kind of, intellectual thinking along the, kind of, Belt and Road idea, I would imagine the government would have perhaps tried to communicate that. I didn’t see any evidence of that. I mean, I think that’s terribly interesting, but I don’t think it was there, or I…
Quentin Peel
Any of your…
14 Too Close for Comfort? Diplomacy, Development and the Future of UK Aid
Tracy McVeigh
…didn’t see…
Quentin Peel
Either of your fellow panellists think there’s a, sort of, hey, this is actually about China and the big strategic picture? Preet, do you think there is an element of that?
Preet Gill MP
No, not in that way, but I – but what I would say that there was the unhealthy rhetoric around China and I want us to – I think with Biden we’ll move to something much more constructive, and we need to do that, because, as you said, you know, the developments that they are doing across Africa. We’ve got to take China with us. We’ve got to work with them, especially around global challenges, as Tra – as Kirsty talked about, whether that’s climate, whether that’s the debt crisis across the Global South, and initiatives on that. So, I don’t think so, but I think we – you know, there’s a lot of work to be done with China now that Biden has won. I’m really – I think all of us are just so much more hopeful that he will bring a different worldview to the Presidency, and he’s going to be embracing the multilateral co-operation, and I know he will place much more emphasis on development, so that’s really, really good news.
Quentin Peel
Okay. Kirsty, I want to come to you on the next one, I think, which – from John Holmes. “Is the case for increasing humanitarian aid as a proportion of the total aid spent increased by the recent changes, as well as by the pandemic, since it can more easily attract political and public support, than longer-term development aid? We should be focusing more on humanitarian aid.” Kirsty, what do you think about that?
Kirsty McNeill
So, we have a, sort of, saying in Save the Children that you should never bet against the British public, so time and time and time again, they will step forward with huge reserves of generosity and solidarity, and they actually have an incredibly sophisticated understanding of the external world. And they’re continually sold short, I think, by the headline writers, not Tracy, I hasten to add, but, occasionally, the rhetoric that you see in the media debate and on the backbenches in Parliament consistently, I wouldn’t go as far as to say smears, but really sells the British public short. Consistently, they say, “100%, we believe that British aid that saves a child’s life every two minutes through immunisation is something that I wholeheartedly support, even if I’m having a tough time here at home.”
I think John’s point about the proportion that should go to humanitarian is extremely well-taken, it’s an argument that we’ve made when you sometimes get this, sort of, rhetoric that the point about the 0.7 target is it just means money is being shovelled out the door, and people are trying desperately to find things to spend it on. It’s nonsense. Year after year after year, the global humanitarian appeals put out by the UN and elsewhere are not full. Year after year after year, you could say, at the end of every year, we have this allocation left over, we could spend it extraordinarily well in humanitarian concerns. So, I think the pots are already there, the costings are already there, there has sometimes been an unwillingness to spend in that way, so I think John’s point is incredibly well-taken. I think, however, I would say we’re sometimes too pessimistic about where the British public are willing to go, in terms of support for
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spending. I think next year, we are going to see, in the run-up to the G7, an extraordinarily large campaign in mobilisation of the British public. Those of you who lived through Make Poverty History, I think we can expect to see a huge outpouring of public concern. But, Quentin, if I may just go back to the previous question…
Quentin Peel
Yes.
Kirsty McNeill
…about whether this is an act of generosity from the public, or whether they are also coming from a place of self and national interest. I’d say the time to have that debate about strategy and Britain’s global positioning was in the integrated review. The government initiated an integrated review to look exactly at the kind of question about our strategic positioning, compared to China and other great power actors, and the Prime Minister and his Advisors decided for – you know, we can all speculate what reason, decided to not wait for the integrated review that they themselves had initiated, and instead, to rush out this announcement off the back of a very bad week of media performance and some very critical coverage coming from Marcus Rashford’s campaign about hunger here at home, amongst other things. So, the government initiated a review that it’s chosen not to wait for and listen to, but I, like your questioners, think it’s an incredibly important conversation for the country to be having, and we should be having it properly, listening to all the evidence and expertise that we can possibly muster.
Quentin Peel
Preet, do you – when do you expect that integrated review to land? Is it going to land in November, which I think it was promised for?
Preet Gill MP
Exactly, it was promised. I mean, they said they were going to consult and then everybody had said they hadn’t been consulted, and then, miraculously, on the website, in the summer, they put out a link for consultation, and it seems like the can’s been kicked down the road further. I think it’s going to be much later than the New Year now, and, even then, we don’t have any date or any detail as to when that’s likely to come about. And, as Kirsty said, that is so important because, actually, that’s where we should have been having those discussions, so it’s deeply, deeply concerning.
Quentin Peel
I’ve got a question here, Tracy, that – and do come back to any of the other ones if you’d like, but there’s a question from Dina Mufti. I’d appreciate – can – she says can the Freedom of Information Act be used to obtain the information they are not being transparent about? Have you used the Freedom of Information Act to get at, sort of, details or scandals about aid development projects?
Tracy McVeigh
And that’s not something I’ve done, no. I mean, I – kind of, my department mostly concentrates in reporting from abroad and back here, so it’s not something I’m an expert on at all, I’m sorry.
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Quentin Peel
Okay. I don’t know if either of the other panellists has any thoughts on that, otherwise we’ll move onto a question we can answer. Let me take this one. Governments – from Isabella Torta. The government’s talks about the UK being a force for good and a champion of multilateralism, supporting to Gavi inter alia. How can the UK maintain these promises while cutting the 0.7% committed to ODA? Can they do it without changing the law and go through parliament? Can they cut 0.7% without changing the law? Preet, can you give us the answer of a Member of Parliament?
Preet Gill MP
No, so, our – that’s our commitment, but, as Tracy said, there is provision in the Act that, obviously if the economy shrinks, then the 0.7 will shrink in line with that. So, we can still make our commitment, I mean, our commitments to Gavi have already been – the pledging conference has already been made, but what we do need to know is where are the cuts coming from? What is the four billion that’s likely to happen if it’s 0.5%? What does that actually involve? What was the 2.9 billion they announced before the summer? What has actually been cut? And that’s the problem here, is we just do not have the detail and the transparency, in respect of what the cuts actually look like, but, yes, there is provision in the Act, based on whether the economy shrinks. But no, they can’t – if they were wanting to, as a remedial manifesto commitment, it’d have to come back to Parliament and there’d have to be a proper debate and scrutiny if they wanted to change the Act.
Kirsty McNeill
Quentin…
Quentin Peel
Alright.
Kirsty McNeill
…could I add a…
Quentin Peel
Yes, do.
Kirsty McNeill
…final…
Quentin Peel
Come in, Kirsty.
Kirsty McNeill
…another point on that? It’s been interesting, some of the coverage, in recent days, that Ministers have said that they are worried about a judicial review, if they were to effectively treat the aid commitment as a
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piggybank and raid it for other forms of spending. They said they would be worried about receiving a judicial review were that to happen, and I think they’re absolutely right to worry about that because the Act, as drafted, just simply does not make any provision whatsoever for money to get spent on other issues. It’s an Act of Parliament designed to tie the hands of government decision-makers, so they’re not allowed to just untie their hands unilaterally. So, I think their worries about judicial review are extremely well-founded.
Quentin Peel
There is quite a backlash coming from the Conservative benches, isn’t there? I mean, we’re seeing quite a lot of Senior Conservatives actually come in, David Cameron as well, but people like Andrew Mitchell and so on, coming out and saying, “This really is not the way we go.” But let me put a question to you coming slightly from the other direction, from Barry Bayne. He says, “Canada merged its Aid Department into its Foreign Affairs Department and it seems to have worked reasonably well. The impression is that Canada did this with good intentions, which doesn’t necessarily seem to be the case in the UK, but can you see any upside to the UK merger? If you were faced with having to implement this, what’s the upside? Let me put that to you quite bluntly, Preet. Could you, coming in as a Labour Government in the future, say, “Actually, we can live with this, we’ll carry on?”
Preet Gill MP
I think, as Kirsty said, it’s really difficult, sitting here in 2020, knowing we’re going to have, you know, one of the worst economic and health crisis, and the global challenges ahead of the next general election 2024 will look very, very different, and the other thing is, we just don’t know if this is going to be successful. We have a government that’s navel-gazing, that’s, you know, in a Whitehall restructure, wasting time when it should be showing leadership on the global stage. So, actually, this announcement since June, what we’ve got from the government is very little. We just don’t know what it is that they’re doing. We know that they are redeploying, restructuring their staff, staff are leaving, the morale is really very low in DFID, and in the FCDO. So, actually, I don’t know actually, what the workforce is going to look like. I don’t know what its priorities are going to look like. I don’t even know if it’s going to work and whether we’re going to have scandals. It’s very difficult to make that commitment right now, but what I would say, the very fact that we have retained a distinct voice for development in opposition really, kind of, makes it very clear as to where our priorities are and how we see development to be undertaken, and that’s got to be done on an evidence basis. And, as you said in your opening, Quentin, you know, we’ve had this from 1960s, all the way to now, of governments coming in and changing and making those decisions, and I have no doubt that whatever the global health challenges are, Labour will be up to meeting those and will absolutely have a department in place that will meet that, but it’s too early to say. Thank you.
Quentin Peel
Okay, thanks. We’ve got about one minute left, and I have a question here from James Scott, directed at the media, so, Tracy, perhaps I’ll put this to you. “Do we have to see this merger and the broader changes to our ODA budget as an outcome of campaigns waged by the likes of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph, among others, against UK aid spending, and, if so, how could this be countered?”
Tracy McVeigh
Don’t buy the Daily Mail. I – obviously, there was some very strong voices in – led by the Daily Mail against our aid budget. They did also actually have published stories, which have been very positive about
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Britain’s place in the – in development and the good work it’s done. You know, there’s a couple of stories I can think of immediately, which – where they attacked individual projects, which I actually think they were very wrong to do and a defence could easily be made of.
I mean, does the Daily Mail reflect its readership and the people who, kind of, speak to it? It’s – is it a, kind of, circular – a circular thing? How can we combat it? We just have to – for me, personally, then we just – I have to just protect the journalism that I’m responsible for and the Journalists that I’m responsible for, and make sure that is as trustworthy as possible, and try and build our reputation by trustworthy. Do we want to go on a, kind of, pol – some sort of political campaign to address? That’s – I don’t really feel that that’s our role, no, we’re not a political party, we’re a newspaper. We’ll do our best to put out the journalism that we feel is the best possible journalism we can do, and I think that’s our role.
Quentin Peel
Okay, Tracy. I’ll just come in, as a fellow Journalist, and say we’ve got to keep people focused on what’s happening in the rest of the world. The worst of it will be if actually, we all go back to navel-gazing and just thinking about what’s relevant to ourselves and what’s relevant to our little island. That’s what worries me at the moment, but that’s a slightly personal comment.
Look, I want to thank all the panellists very much for their contributions. Thank you so much for making this a good, informative and lively debate. Thanks to all the audience, on the end of their screens, for being patient with me and my technological incompetence, and thanks to my colleagues, from the meetings department, for setting it all up. I don’t think that I’ve got anything to warn you about future meetings, so enjoy yourselves, long live liberation from the lockdown. Let’s hope we get there soon. Thanks very much.