Welcome to the International Development Committee. We are fortunate to have Minister Baroness Chapman and Melinda in front of us. Melinda, which department are you director of now?

I am director general for global issues.

Brilliant. We will get into why I have to ask you that, because I know the structure is changing. We are specifically asking questions around our inquiry into the future of UK aid and development but, Minister, there is so much going on in the world right now that you understand that we will probably also go into some country-specific or policy-specific areas that are current rather than just forward-looking. I am interested in the philosophical shift the Government are making from grants to expertise. I believe we have just received the response, finally, on the Committee’s inquiry into value for money. How and why are you making those shifts and, from a value for money point of view, how are you going to ensure that we get value for money if we are moving away from the status quo?

Hopefully the letter explains the value for money approach that we came to speak about when you did your inquiry, so hopefully that will be dealt with. The shift from grants to expertise is quite fundamental. When I first got this job, I was looking at what we were doing and how much of it was programming or working with partners to deliver services, and looking at the shift that I think was already taking place to doing more technical assistance, so working with countries to do the things that were important for them. An example I always use is around education, where countries say they want to take more responsibility. They want to determine how and where kids are taught. They want to design their own curriculum. They want to have their own teaching profession to provide opportunities for employment, and they want to take control, which I think any of us can understand and relate to. In more and more places, where we can, this is the right way for a country like the UK to help a country on that journey, and I absolutely understand that it is not always possible. Then, because of the expertise and the public education system we have, we are able to provide a great deal of advice and expertise on how to train teachers on safeguarding in the classroom, on the use of technology, on curriculum design, on transition, on assessment—all of these things. We can get our professional teachers, our education advisers, our universities, working together with a country so that they can improve their own systems and deliver their own education systems for their children. That is better in the long term than us showing up and providing education to a population where they do not have much control over it. We might be using local teaching staff, or we might not. That shift has happened slowly, and there is still a need in places that need emergency education. Someone just has to get in there and provide the service because kids need to be educated here and now, because you do not have time. Where you do have time, opportunity and a Government that wants to work on this, I think the United Kingdom providing that expertise and working more in partnership is the more modern, long-term, sustainable thing to do. That is what grants to expertise means, and why it is important.

How do you prevent it from becoming terribly colonial, “We know best and we are going to come and tell you what to do because we are the experts”?

If you do that, in the end they do not listen, do they? Because no one wants to be treated like that, and it is not a partnership that I would recognise. If it is not working for the country, it will not work. It must be done on more equal terms where we properly take the time to understand what their priorities are, where they are at the moment, what their vision is, and where we need to start. Are we starting with early years or primary? Do they want to focus more on technical education? There are countries that are now very worried about the number of young people they have who do not have the prospect of good employment. They want to work on what we would call further and higher education. We must start with a real spirit of partnership. That is something I think the UK can do well. You could say that some other countries do not have as good a track record of working in that way, but I feel quite passionately that it is something we can and should do.

Let me give you an example. You spoke about education, and you spoke about working with Governments. There are some Governments that we have a close working relationship with that have no regard for girls’ education, or education for people from different castes, minorities or religious groups. Without having the grants that you could give to civil society groups to do a pilot to prove to a Government that providing education for those sorts of people is the right thing and does benefit the country, how will you ever change systems?

You might still need to do some of that.

Will there still be the money to do some of that?

There will be some money to do some of that in the places where that is what you have to do. The example that probably springs to the front of most people’s minds would be Afghanistan, and it is likely that it is what we would have to do in that situation. The other thing you can do as part of the process of building an education system in partnership is make the case for why failing to adequately educate 50% of your population is not in the long-term interests of your economy. Those discussions are had. The other thing I would say is that you would not deal with a policy area such as education in isolation. In places such as Pakistan, we are working with civil society groups not to give them great sums of money to provide a service but to work with them on advocacy skills and ways of building a voluntary sector infrastructure network, which will enable them to effectively lobby their Government to make a difference to domestic policy on these sorts of issues. This stuff is very long term. This is not about getting in there, doing a project and seeing a result. The whole system change is a long-term approach. I think it is the right way, to respond to your point of not wanting to be neo-colonialist about it. In some respects it is how you get the sustained change that means we are not having the same conversations about the same places in 20 years’ time.

There have been. Initially I thought this was going to be really challenging, because everyone says cross-Whitehall is very hard to pull together, but I think we are doing quite well with this. We ran the allocations process from FCDO, where we spoke to DSIT, DEFRA, DESNZ, the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care—I think that is all of them—about how much ODA they would get to make decisions about, and that was relatively collegiate. There were some tough conversations, but we reached an agreement. We did not need to have No. 10 or the Treasury intervene in that, so that was very good. One of the good things it brought about was Minister-to-Minister conversations and senior official discussions with other teams about what this was really for. Alongside that, we have reworked what was called the ODA board, which I think used to meet once a year. I hope I am not being unfair, but it was a bit like everybody came, said that what they were doing was great and went away and did it again next year. We have shifted away from that, and we now have an open book with other Departments, and we have all committed that everyone can see what everyone else is doing. The point of that is to minimise the risk of duplication or cross-cutting activity, to stop this issue that happened in the past where our in-country team would not know what DEFRA was spending in that country, so they could not get a diplomatic benefit from it. That just makes us look unco-ordinated as the UK, and it is just not good. We are going to deal with all of that. We have just finished work on a cross-Whitehall research and development strategy for our ODA spend, and I have done that alongside Patrick Vallance. That has involved the Department of Health and Social Care, DESNZ and DSIT, and it has been very good. It has been an opportunity for challenge across Departments, and we have agreed principles of how we are going to work. The next phase of that will be about looking at our climate finance and taking the same approach, to make sure there is some coherence across what we are doing and that we are not duplicating, so that everyone knows what is what and why we are doing things. It will bring a bit more cohesion to the whole thing.

Minister, could I interject there? The Government have removed the specific Disability Minister. Is that a deprioritisation of our commitment to supporting people with disabilities, both in the UK and around the world, or does it fit under someone else’s brief now?

I am not aware that decision came anywhere near the FCDO, but I would not read across from that to any ODA priorities. We have to make our own choices and prioritise.

Does disability fall under your portfolio?

I am responsible for ODA spend across Whitehall.

Can you give us an assurance that you will keep a close eye so that those with disabilities are still getting the support they need?

I cannot promise that we will not be making any changes to any programmes, but I can promise you that we will continue to monitor it. I will give you a personal assurance that this is important to me.

Thank you. Sorry, James.

It is the ODA board.

Yes.

We are working through exactly how often it will meet. I think once a year means it cannot do its job. So far we have had a meeting to set up the terms of reference and agree how we are going to work. We have had several meetings with DESNZ, DEFRA and me around COP and some of the climate issues. We have compered meetings to do the research and development piece. They have worked well. We now need to take that back to the ODA board in full, and I think we have a meeting scheduled in the next few weeks to do that. We need to work out what the natural rhythm of these things is. It is a high commitment to get all these Ministers from different Departments together and to service this, so it should not meet for nothing, but it is the main way that we are going to get accountability and coherence across Whitehall, so it matters. I am determined to make sure that it considers things of substance and makes decisions, and that is where we hold each other to account and do it for real. We just will not sign things off for an easy life. This is to be a place of proper challenge, debate and changing decisions if we need to.

I do not see why they are not. I believe so.

Yes. If they are not, I do not see why we cannot get it to you.

That is a really good question. I think it does depend on engagement with other Departments, but it is wider than that because when we say “A community of expertise” we are not just talking about Government Departments. We are talking about the tech sector, universities, pharmaceuticals and the World Service. All these players have expertise to share, and there is a nerd-to-nerd diplomacy that seems to work. If you want to do something around health, you are probably much more likely to listen to someone who has professional expertise than a health adviser at the FCDO, who may be able to broker it and add value in that way. I think this needs to be a Team UK community of expertise rather than just Government.

Minister, can I give you a specific example and declare an interest? I chair the APPG for the ocean, and one of the issues we have is that the ocean cuts across different Departments. Marine protection helps fishing people, but it is also a trade issue. The wind farms coming into the oceans are a DESNZ issue. ODA has been fantastic on its blue planet work, but unless all these Departments are working together, one is literally tripping up the other. For example, since the 1980s, 98% of our cod stock has gone. Is that the sort of thing about which one of the Ministers sitting around the table would bring up and say, “Look, this is something that cuts across. We need to get a solution here. We need to get a strategy”? Is it that granular?

It can be.

Can you take oceans, please?

We have done exactly that, and the challenge you describe, Chair, is exactly right. Within these there are areas that cut right across Government. Oceans is one, elements of climate is another and energy is another. However, that is the nature of the global goods part of development, and the process the Minister describes does the ODA part of it, but it also does the strategy part. We are trying to aim for the right outcome across both, and our special reps on climate and nature—Rachel and Ruth—are very often observing all of this for us and giving us their guidance and thoughts. For her part, Ruth Davis has focused on oceans, agriculture and forestry, at least to critique where we are getting it wrong in terms of coherence.

In terms of the shift to expertise, what will you be putting in place to monitor its effectiveness or successes? What are your plans?

We are going to run it through communities of expertise. There will be groups that work together, and the idea is that these will be often multidisciplinary so that we can benefit from different areas of knowledge. Melinda can speak to exactly how we will monitor the data, but it will be done just as we do with anything else that we do. There will be a programme design, a business case will be made and then the intervention will happen. It will be monitored, and adapted mid-process should it need to be. If we feel that we are not getting traction or that the impact is not happening, we can withdraw or shift. A Government might think, “They want a certain thing and might realise that we have a big rule of law issue here that is holding back the growth objectives they wanted to work on with us, so let us deal with this first.” It needs to have that flexibility included, but it is important that we do not just do this work and forget that measuring impact and finding ways of doing that, that hold up, are very important.

I think the challenge with moving to evidence for systems strengthening is that it is harder to monitor the system that you are changing. It is easy to monitor how many people you are reaching, but if you are trying to improve an education system, an economic policy or a health financing system, we have to go through many more layers to think about where we are going to be most helpful in terms of the evidence we are marshalling, how we are marshalling it, what the policy changes are that we are looking for and how many people the policy change will impact. It is incumbent on us to think through better monitoring, evaluation and learning strategies so that it is more likely to be successful and sustainable in the long run, because we are saying not just that we reached 300,000 students but that we have effected a policy that is going to cover a whole region or a whole country.

One of the other conceptual shifts that I think we are seeing is from bilateral aid to multilateral aid. I do not know if that is a philosophical shift or if it is just an inevitability when aid cuts are as drastic as they are. Can you tell us about the philosophy behind it and also speak to that in the context of UK soft power? There is a bit of a paradox in that, on the one hand, we want to increase our overseas presence, influence and soft power, but one of the best ways we have been doing that is through the thing that we are cutting back the deepest.

What other countries do is calculate the amount of their contribution to something like IDA or Gavi, and they say that it is part of their contribution to that country. We do not do that, or we have not for a long time. We might want to think about that, because I think it is important for transparency and there is a diplomatic benefit to doing it. There are several reasons why the shift is taking place. One of them is that, in some cases, the multilateral system is coming under threat. We can have a very long discussion about why that might be, but we feel that there are some agencies that we really want to back. We think that the Global Fund and what it does on HIV, malaria and TB is very important. It is a good buy. There is a critical mass issue around this. If we did not take part, how viable is it really? If big donors like us do not back these things, that becomes a question. There is that sort of reason to be in. We get to operate at scale. IDA through the World Bank is massive. You are able to make big changes that way. They have a wide geographical spread, good expertise, good relationships. There is a stake from very many other countries. Because we are big contributors and we have an excellent team in Washington, we get to influence what the World Bank does in a way that other countries cannot. I have never had a conversation with Ajay Banga about the fragile and conflict-affected states strategy. I have had many where I have not talked about that, and he would tell you that, because we are absolutely determined that an organisation set up in that way, and with that size, should be active in those places. There is debate at the World Bank about whether or not, and to what extent, it should be. We have a clear view, and we use our status there to argue for it. That is another reason. A good example of this would be the African Development Bank and the fund to which we committed in December. We are the biggest donor to the African Development Fund, which is African-led. It is something that they take huge pride in. It is very well run and effective. It leverages additional money. For every £1 we put in I think they get another £5, and it is able to operate in places that we and other agencies find very difficult. One example would be the conflict-affected areas of Sudan, where they can work through local partners to provide services that no one else can because of the relationships they have and because they are African-led. There are lots of good reasons to work through the multilateral system. However, it is not just about the money; it is about the arguments that it enables you to have and the leadership it gives and undertakes as a platform. There is a cost, as you say, which means there is less to spend bilaterally. However, it has been a very long time since the UK was so big in a country that our bilateral ODA programming was the thing that would make a country do something. We just have not been at that scale for a while, and we should not be. We should be working more in partnership. I have to remind myself—sometimes with these conversations, you would think that nearly all the international money flowing into lower- and middle-income countries was ODA, and it really is not; it is about 7%—that about 3% of the GNI of Africa is ODA. The rest of it is coming through FDI. Too much is coming through debt, by the way. That is a whole other thing that we probably want to talk about. Our ability to influence is not about the size of our ODA programme. It can be about that, and historically maybe more so, but it is much more about our diplomatic work, our political connections, the role we play in the multilateral space. That really matters to a lot of these countries. They know who the big donors are to Gavi and the Global Fund. They see it, and they see what we do at the UN. All of that together has led me to the place where I think that shifting to a greater extent—we still are going to have a substantial amount of money going through other programmes, but having more of a proportion of our spend going through those big organisations is the best thing we can do to get the impact that we want, and it makes a statement about who the UK is.

Just a couple of follow-up questions. I appreciate what I thought was a very good defence of the multilateral system, and there is no question about the value of that. When it comes to bilateral UK relationships, what is likely to have more impact: a UK aid programme and partnership with a country or simply telling them, “By the way, we contributed to this pot of money that somebody else controls”? Also, it is not just about Government-to-Government relationships. It is also about the world that we live in. Prior to my life as a Member of Parliament, I spent a lot of time living among the world’s poorest and listening to their attitudes to the world. I think it would surprise a lot of British people the degree to which billions of people around the world look to China, India and countries that do not share our values as more natural allies for their country than they do to us, because UK aid is becoming so invisible to them. Do you see that as a problem?

That is not because China has an amazing ODA programme. It is because they have invested. We can have a conversation about the nature of that investment, but I think you are hearing more and more from countries that they recognise a potential dependency as a consequence of that, and they do not want to fall foul of it. They want to spread their partnerships, and they are very interested in talking to us principally about helping them do things such as raising more revenue domestically—how they can improve their own tax base to pay for their own services to give them control. In the end, for many countries, development is about how they gain control and make their own choices. They do not want to be beholden to us any more than they want to be beholden to China or anyone else. They want that sovereignty. However, the way that China has gone about it in the past is not the way that we would ever want to do this. Having said all that, we do have a development dialogue with China, which we are just embarking upon. I think there is perhaps a recognition within China—and I am not here to speak for them—that they need to evolve their approach, because there is a reputational consequence of some of the ways of working that have taken place in the past.

I think that is my concern, though. Where the USA and the UK have vacated spaces and China and other actors have moved in, they are the ones building not just the aid relationships but the trade relationships with those countries where we have pulled out. Given that we have values of democracy and treating workers with fairness, and so on, would it not be a good thing if the UK were to have those trading relationships and aid relationships that China is developing?

I think trade relationships, absolutely, and we have recently reworked our developing countries trading scheme because I agree with you on that. I think countries do not really want an aid relationship in that way, in the way that they may have done in the past. I think that is changing, and we must listen. One of the reasons that we did our revised Africa approach in December was to reflect what African countries have said to us about what they want this relationship to look like. It is the whole thing about getting beyond aid. One of the things that was said to me is, “Oh, well, if you used your ODA money, we could get countries to do things that we want”. We are nowhere near big enough to be in that place, but what we can have is good conversations about rule of law, human rights, trade and regulating communications. One of the big conversations that countries want to have is about regulation in standards, because they recognise that if you want to trade globally, you must have that. You are going to be blocked, or trade is going to be very difficult, unless you have those things, and they really want to work with us on those issues. You do not do that through a big ODA programme, but you definitely do it through sharing the expertise, knowledge and experience we have.

Thank you for coming, Minister. When you talk in that vein to Norway, for example, they will push back and say that they maintain their aid at current levels because of the moral imperative, but also because it is useful for their influence and where they want to be. Although it is not a direct relationship between trade and aid, surely those relationships and the soft power and influence that aid gives us, especially being pre-eminent in those areas, is important to the UK. I use the example of the Sahel, which looks like it is going to be cut quite dramatically. When they appeared in front of us, one of your Permanent Under-Secretaries said that the French had been doing lots in the Sahel and pouring in lots of money for a long time, and they did not achieve anything. The message seemed to be that we may as well all go home. I am sure that is not what he meant, but my point is that in a place such as Africa, which has a huge emerging market where I think 60% of people are under 25, why would we not do as much as we can bilaterally with nations not only for the moral imperative but also to extend our influence?

You could do that. If that was your overriding objective from your ODA programme—and this is not what I think Norway is doing, by the way—and if you said, “This is all about UK influence, and we want to use our ODA programme to buy that”, I would be out. That is not what I want to do. I am about alleviating poverty and stabilising countries to enable them to go on that journey themselves. That is what I believe in, and it is what I think our ODA programme should be for. Yes, you could carry on doing that bilaterally if you wanted to. I don’t think we have ever done it bilaterally, and that is a choice, but you would miss out on all the money that you would leverage in through investment. You would miss out on influencing the billions that other countries put in as well, where we are using our influence on far greater sums of money than we would if we only had influence on our own. If you are happy with that, fine. You could take that approach, but that is not my understanding. That is not what I believe ODA is for.

No, not yet.

I know. I want them to be published. We are almost done.

You probably have heard this quite a bit.

I know, and you are right to push back. One of the reasons it has been delayed a little bit longer is that we got the latest equalities impact assessments back, and I wanted to make a few more changes. That will all become clear, and we will publish those assessments alongside.

That is exactly right. It is done, but we are not quite ready. I am hoping it is very soon, and I know I said that last time.

Three years.

Minister, my heart is swelling at the thought that an equalities impact assessment has been done in advance and responded to, one hopes.

You will see the workings.

Good. I am dumbfounded that the last Government retrospectively did it, and then told us that the majority of cuts were falling on women and girls, so thank you.

If I may ask just one more on this, I understand your point that often an African Government, for example, will tell you that they do not want aid.

That is not quite right but—

Yes, but I suppose what they do not want is interference. I understand that, but many of the poorest places in the world are also weak and fragile states with weak governance, and the population does not always have a say in running their country. None the less, do you see an importance in making sure that we get aid to the people in those positions who are vulnerable and voiceless, and who are not able to make decisions that affect their lives?

That is a very good point, and when we have done our allocations, we have tried to prioritise where programming goes to places where it is really needed. There are things that we have done in the past that, if you took the purest, completely cold, hard logic of what I have said, you would be withdrawing from certain things. Because of the assessments, we have put them back in because the idea that the system could be strengthened quickly enough to be able to deliver was not realistic. We have not been completely dogmatic about it. That is another reason why we continue to work through UN agencies because, to deliver at scale in some of the places you are thinking about, that is what you need to be able to do. We work through the ICRC, the IRC and others because they can get to those people. You are right. What we are arguing is, I think, the right thing in general terms, but there will always be places where that is not realistic.

To complete the response, the original question was about the shift to multilateral. We still have a large bilateral envelope, and the shift in percentage terms when the allocations are published you will see is not such a great swing that we have not thought about that bit. The shift to working more with evidence and expertise is part of how we then think about how we apply soft power bilaterally. Of course, another development shift is to working more through local organisations to do what you describe, which is about making sure we are getting to the people who need it most and not going through the layers of different systems.

I am delighted to hear that. I was not aware that pushing to more local was one of the shifts.

Yes. That is how we are interpreting soft power in the bilateral envelope of aid. The other point—to respond to Monica—is that our heads of mission are tasked in-country to do exactly what you describe, to think about how we pull together all the levers to advance bilaterally the partnership and the relationship with the Government, of which development, trade and investment are parts. That is part of the integration theory that, if we get that bit right, we can be much greater than the sum of our parts through country plans, so that all the levers are pulling in the same direction. As you have heard in this Committee, it has been bumpy along the way, but the point you make about how we represent as the UK, how we show up as the UK and how we deal with partners is very much at the forefront of our minds when we are doing those country strategies.

Minister, can I push you a little bit on the World Bank? I was very surprised when we increased our IDA contribution by 40%, and I do not know if we did that under your watch. I agree that the staff we have over there are absolutely phenomenal, and whenever we meet them they are inspiring and influential, but I imagine that they would fill a minibus versus the 20,000-odd people in the World Bank. Realistically, how much influence do we have? More specifically, what is it that you are trying to influence? What are the outcomes that you are not seeing now that you want to see in the future, and how realistic is it that we can achieve that even with an uplift?

Thank you for saying that about the team at the World Bank.

They are brilliant.

I agree that they are, and they punch way above their weight. The way they do that is by building relationships with the right people. I have a conversation on repeat with Ajay Banga about how it is not a humanitarian organisation but a development organisation, and I say, “Yes, but you need to get yourselves into these fragile, conflict-affected states because, although you are not doing humanitarian work, you are doing development work.” You can do it in those places, and the two overlap far more than you would think from some of the conversations that are had, and in some countries they are dealt with completely differently. That is not how we think, and we have been successful. You can see in the most recent strategy that the World Bank has published on fragile states that it is demonstrably different because of the influence of the UK. We do not just go out there championing things that we think are important and hoping for the best; we build coalitions with others who are likeminded on various issues. I think the two that have come under most threat of late are gender and climate, where we have been very clear about what we think and what we expect, and we have been able to act as a counterweight to some of the other pressures upon the Bank. I think we need to do more to make sure the World Bank is present in places where it may not be if we were not there making the argument. I think there is a lot more we can do but, because of the success we have had over the last year with those strategies, I am quite confident that we can continue to do that.

Minister, we are a load of development geeks, and we are not aware of that. How is my constituent in Rotherham meant to be aware so that they can be proud of it and therefore campaign to keep our development money?

That is a much bigger question about how the Government talk to the citizens of this country about the important work they are paying for and why they should continue to pay for it, I guess.

We will probably want to come on to that in more detail, but with the specifics of the World Bank, how are you going to—

We are doing it badly, I think. We are making a shocking job of this. I think most of my former constituents in Darlington—including me until a few years ago—would probably not have been able to explain to you what the World Bank is, what it does and why it exists. I think the Government have a role in doing a much better job of talking about that. If you just leave that to the Government, it is probably not going to be that successful. I have this conversation with NGOs quite frequently, and there are some brilliant pieces of work being done by the ONE Campaign and others, Global Citizen, trying to get into this issue about how we talk about development in a way that means something and is up to date. I just do not think we have cracked it. I think we need to challenge ourselves on this, because I do not think we are doing it well enough at all.

Minister, this is the most clarity we have received from you about why you are prioritising the multilaterals. Committee members may agree or disagree, but at least you are giving us something. My frustration is that there is a clear shift to this. As you have already said, it is the Global Fund, Gavi, UN agencies in general. That is not being communicated to this Committee, so the assumption we make is that it is an easy way to get rid of the money and, by association, get rid of the project staff. Am I wrong in that assumption?

Yes, you are wrong in that assumption, but I must think about the fact that it was your assumption. That tells me there is something that I should be doing. I already know that the Government do not communicate well on this issue. Obviously, they are brilliant at communicating everything else at all times, but I think there is a genuine challenge here. The Government do not have the answer to this. I do not think anybody really does, and it is not just our challenge. It is for the whole sector to ask themselves how they can do it better.

The point is that if you are not making it clear to the Committee that is meant to be scrutinising you, how on earth can the rest of the country understand what we are doing and support it?

That is entirely fair.

On another point that you raised—this goes to what Monica Harding was bringing up—I know you have not published your spending, but are there going to be particular areas that the UK can champion and that we can all be proud of? I am thinking that the Norwegian Refugee Council do an amazing job. Qatar does an amazing job on convening for peace. I am thinking there are more specific things that no one is interested in, such as neglected tropical diseases, atrocity prevention and private debt relief, where we are in a prime place to be able to do something. Are you looking to have something that is the UK’s specific offering?

We will have a list of things. Definitely private finance and getting international money flowing into the global south. We are uniquely placed to do that, I think. There will be things such as mine clearance where we have a great track record. The nation wants to see us continue to do that. Health, generally. We have a great deal of expertise and knowledge not just in R&D, science and vaccine development, but in how to deliver health interventions to a population at scale. We said initially that we wanted to prioritise health, climate and humanitarian, so that is where we are now. However, I think there is a question about where we go next, such as whether we want to look at expanding the work that we do on private capital mobilisation and public markets work but also technology. I do not think this is a decision that the Government take on their own. The Government have a convening and leadership role here, but we need to say to the sector, “Who’s in?” I am getting some very positive messages from the City and from finance, particularly about wanting to be more active and taking seriously their responsibilities as global citizens. Any decent Government need to think about how we enable this—not how we take it and do it, but how we create an infrastructure and an ecosystem here that facilitates that kind of work.

Let’s try to get into some of the specifics of that if we can.

Thank you, Minister. What reprioritising in geographical or thematic focus has taken place since Yvette Cooper was appointed Foreign Secretary?

Yvette is very clear about violence against women and girls, and she feels strongly about it. She wants to see that reflected in the work she is responsible for. We will make sure that happens. We are having a development conference in the first half of this year, and she wants that to be a key thread. I think that is absolutely right, so we will do that. She is also looking at migration, how we work to reduce some of the horrific journeys that see people exploited and die on those routes. Some of it can be about ODA, but a lot of this is about how we combine our diplomatic, political and other connections to try to make change.

You have spoken previously about mainstreaming across women and girls within the spend. Do you have a clear idea about how those issues are now going to be mainstreamed and what that looks like?

The mainstreaming approach must also happen with development generally. There is no getting away from the fact that you must prioritise if you cut 40% of your budget, otherwise you just end up doing loads of things very badly. The way we deal with the fact we have had to do that and protect our work on gender is to make sure it is something on which we have much more widespread training, skills and awareness. That is how we measure and assess our interventions, and score for gender, and we require more of our programmes to have that element to them. We just could not afford to carry on doing all the things that we were doing before, so we must make sure that gender is accounted for in a different way. When we looked at the impact assessments, we have not disproportionately hit women and girls. That is very important, and we have managed that, but it is not a one and done. We must keep the focus and the pressure on teams to ensure that it does not slip at all.

I can complete the answer. We also have Harriet Harman who, as you know, is a special representative. The work that we have done with her has been about how to mainstream across development, but also how to use your political levers to actively and vocally back in-country change agents who have legitimacy. Again, it is how we work across all the tools that we have in-country to push forward on movements, people and priorities that are going to make a difference. As part of that, there is a refresh of our international strategy on women and girls, and the plan is to set some of that out.

What is the timescale of that?

To be confirmed, but as soon as possible.

That is now five different strategy reviews that are ongoing or commissioned.

The others being?

I cannot remember. If you give me a minute, we can get them pulled up for you.

When we have been in conversation with Ministers, what we wanted to do with this one was not simply to do a rollover of what we have said previously but, rather, to use the moment of having Harriet Harman, Baroness Chapman and the Foreign Secretary—who are all passionate about these issues—to look hard at what we are trying to effect in this world, in the context of the rollback, and get it right. That is true of the women and girls strategy. It is also true of the violence against women and girls policy.

The rollback on women’s rights?

Yes. The point is that this is a different environment now, within which we must put forward a strategy and priorities and plan for how we will do mainstreaming while also doing the political piece, the lobbying, the campaigning and the focus points. That is linked as much to what we are thinking about domestically as to what we need to do internationally—making our statements very watertight and making sure our programmes are following through. It needs to be thoroughly done.

It is great that there is going to be a plan and that there is a strategy, and we look forward to seeing that. Do you have any kind of timeline for what that looks like? I know you said it is to be confirmed, but do we have any idea of what it looks like?

We have already done the first round, so I think within a couple of months.

You spoke about the measures you have to change to see what it looks like to make sure this is working across the new strategy. Could you tell us what that looks like practically, in terms of those changes to measure it and collect data, and its impact?

There are two things. One is how we look at the impact through our ODA spend, according to the markers relating to gender. We need to understand how it is impacting women and girls, the amount of resource we can attribute to that using the OECD DAC Gender Markers. That is an important part of getting it right. There is also a consideration of how much of the totality of our bilateral spend we want to focus on gender, where we are looking at the proportion that we have had previously and whether that is right and whether we can increase it. Then, in the political and campaigning space, there is a different set of indicators, because that is more about a country’s legislation and the cultural impacts, which are very hard to measure—the number of women involved in politics, women’s economic empowerment—and that is more about understanding the indicators and what the changes mean for a country’s trajectory. That is more at the macro level, so we must do both.

I know. I went to Bangladesh and had a very good conversation with Professor Yunus. The key to unlocking it was nothing to do with ODA whatsoever. I was there to visit refugee camps, and I visited a lot of programming. The key to it was sharing information with Bangladesh so they could see the numbers of people, the visa decisions that were being taken and how many people were overstaying and claiming asylum. Once we shared all that information in the spirit of collective partnership, we were able to secure what we needed. The Bangladesh example proves that it is not just about ODA programming. It astonishes me that, in the past, we have been prevented from sharing information with countries. Just over a year ago, I was having this exact issue with Brazil. Once we reached a place where we could share data, it opened so many doors because Governments feel respected. They do not feel that we are targeting them and picking on them for some reason. They understand why we are concerned.

It is not tied to migration. There may be things in some places where we can work. I think one of the things we have failed to do on migration is to properly understand, in a particular place for a particular group of people, what is going on there that is making this happen. We try to have interventions that we apply across the board, in Vietnam, in Eritrea, so that if it is not working, we can ask, “Is it because it is so context-specific?” It is about understanding what is happening, who it is, what is driving it, what their Government’s role could be. Are there things around livelihoods that we can do? Is there something around alternative routes that people can take? I think that looking at all of this in a place-specific way is where I can add some value to this. The Home Office will do what the Home Office needs to do, and we now have a regular meeting between me and Alex Norris, looking at a different route, a different situation, each time. I think Minister Norris is in Turkey at the moment, or he was last week. We are trying to look at this in a much more pragmatic, solution-focused way. If that sometimes involves ODA, great, but experience is starting to show that it is usually not the case.

I meant for the whole FCDO, and development is obviously a key part of it. What we are learning is that there are conversations you can have in a country as a Development Minister. You are starting from a different position, and it is different from sending a Security Minister or Home Office Minister. You are starting from a slightly different premise. That is an interesting and quite instructive thing in terms of how we deploy development figures. Some of the work that the Foreign Office is doing on migration will be around returns agreements, legal changes in other countries, UK letters to assert that someone has a particular nationality without having to get all the documents verified here before someone can be returned, visa arrangements. All these sorts of things are probably more immediately impactful than some of the longer-term development work, but that is still important. You must bring it all together.

We love prevention and early intervention, and that is exactly what this sounds like. It also sounds like common sense, so all grist to your mill. I have three members who want to come in on this. Can I ask both the members and, with respect, the Minister for tighter answers and questions?

Thank you, Minister, and I go back to this whole issue of women and girls. Violence against women and girls is a terrible thing. We have been looking a lot at what is going on in Sudan and the ultimate horrors that are happening there but, in terms of development, women and girls collect 70% of the water when they do not have a tap in the home. If we want to be serious about mainstreaming that, we must be serious about WASH. But the statistics are that between 2018 and 2023, under the previous Government, the money going to WASH went down by 82%—and that was before the current aid cuts—from £236 million to £37 million. I hate to think what is going to be done to it now, but surely if we are really serious about mainstreaming women and girls, we must include WASH.

I agree, but we do not always have to do it bilaterally. Improvements in access to clean water are often well delivered multilaterally. If you look at the African Development Bank, some of the things that it likes to focus on are just those sorts of projects. Just because we might be spending less bilaterally does not mean that something is not critically important. We are using our influence to ensure that it happens, but it should be done in a long-term way that sits well with the Government of the country. What we do not want to do is spend money on assets that become redundant.

I think it is vital that it is transparent.

Of course. I agree, but all this information is there. I think this is something that we could take away, how this is presented. We have not particularly seen it as our job to highlight and promote some of the projects done through the multilateral system. I think it is quite a good suggestion for us to rethink that, to answer the very fair point you make.

The ODA budget seems like a bucket that you pinch from to sort out domestic problems—asylum hotels, migration and climate change, which for everyone is the biggest threat coming towards us—but at the same time, the bucket has been emptied and is very stretched. Why is that? Why is it seen as easy pickings? Is it something about a lack of support for the budget, or is it the lack of clarity on what the budget is for?

I think the Tories mismanaged it. Melinda cannot get involved with this but, half the time, I honestly do not know what they were doing with their day. There was no ODA strategy across Government. There was a kind of lip-service meeting. No one knew what anyone else was doing. Things that were not scored particularly highly when they were inspected carried on anyway. Ministers would go on a trip, come back and say, “We must do something about X. Find me some money.” I think that is appalling, so I do recognise what you are saying. One of the things that I feel the Prime Minister tasked me to do was to bring some sense to all of this. Yes, we are doing it at a time that we are cutting the money, but that has forced us to have the discipline to make sure we get a grip on this, so that when we get some more money, it is spent so much better than it was before. I do not know if ODA has been a pot that you dip into, or if it has been a badge that you put on things, just to get yourself up to a certain percentage. I cannot answer for the psychology of it, but I think that if we do not get more organised on this across Whitehall, you will quite rightly come back to me in a couple of years and say that it is still as messy as it has ever been.

Minister, I think you are being somewhat disingenuous. There is a twinkle in your eye, so I think you know what I am going to say. Almost a year ago to the day, this Government cut ODA from 0.5% to 0.3% and very publicly gave the money to defence. At a time of such global insecurity—we were speaking earlier about early intervention and prevention—the best method to stop people migrating is for them to be safe, secure and prosperous in their own home. We are taking away the very money from that and putting it into defence. We had Ministers in front of us two weeks ago talking about women, peace and security, and the Defence Minister was not saying, “Yes, it is great. We are now going to be doing more about getting women around the peace table.” They are the sort of things that we need to see. While I do not know how you are managing it internally, on the absolute baseline, this Government have cut as much.

Yes, sorry. My interpretation of Monica’s question was about how you are gripping the budget that you have. The budget that I have is the budget that I have. Would I like a bigger one? Yes.

My understanding of her question was that there is a bucket of money called ODA, and we seem to be taking out of it to give to different Departments.

That is not what is happening. That decision on defence is one that I know this Committee disagrees with, but I think that was not a case of unthinkingly—

It is disagreed with, because its objectives are not going to be met.

I understand that, but the Government’s perspective is that hard power matters right now, too, and it matters diplomatically as well as defensively. You do not need me to go into the events of the last couple of weeks. Would I prefer to have additional money to spend on things that I believe in? Yes, but I understand that you can only spend it once. There was a need to find money quickly to commit to defence. Now, my view is that it means I can have some really robust conversations with Defence Ministers about defence attachés, how they work with our teams, the work we are doing with Governments—particularly in the Sahel, where their No. 1 concern is defence and security. How does the UK provide support in the right way to maintain some semblance of stability in these really difficult parts of the world? That is where, with the MOD, the dynamic of this relationship has changed a little bit. That is partly because of personalities in a new Government. I think that shift in spend gives me every right to go and say—

We would support you on that, Minister.

Thank you very much. I think we have to maintain the view that we are one team as a United Kingdom Government.

Does the Prime Minister agree with you?

About what? But yes, at all times.

About your having the right to speak to other Departments, and that—

Yes. It does not mean I have the right to go and tell them what to do, but I am responsible for ODA spend across Whitehall. That has to be done in a really collegiate way. I think it is really important that we do this together as a Government and a team of Ministers. So far, that is working really well. The SDR has set the priorities for the MOD, but it is amazingly open to conversations about how we work together. I have views on its decisions on drawdown of defence attachés, but we talk about it, and we talk about how we navigate this.

Do you agree that development is a soft power?

Of course it is, yes, but so is diplomacy, politics and culture. It all fits together. What you did not see in the past is those things aligning sufficiently.

I agree.

Very quickly, I have a follow-up question on women and girls. The evidence shows that every £1 we spend on women and girls is obviously more beneficial than any other spend we make. It helps boys and men every day. Why is there pushback on spending and prioritising that money in that place?

There isn’t. There is just less money. If we can do an intervention on nutrition, for example, and make sure it is not a specific, standalone, “This is a gender programme”—but it will almost certainly primarily benefit women and girls—that is a good programme. That is what I mean. One of the purposes of the equalities impact assessment process is to make sure that we don’t unthinkingly, disproportionately withdraw things or make decisions that would disproportionately impact women and girls. I think we have managed to do that. Obviously, we will get the final analysis, and others will have their say, but what I cannot say to you is that we can cut 40% of our spend and there will be no detrimental impact on any women or girls anywhere. It is about whether that impact is disproportionately hitting that population. I think we can do that. It is not easy, and I am trying to be as open with you as I can.

Would you say you are a feminist Development Minister?

Yes.

And would you say we are going to see a feminist development policy?

Yes, I would.

What do you think are the keys to restoring public awareness and confidence in the spending of ODA?

I don’t know. I speak to lots of people about this, and I read virtually everything I can on public attitudes. We have spoken at length to More in Common and pollster organisations. I think the ONE Campaign do an amazing job on this. In some ways, I think it would be a good start if we could persuade people who are inclined to support development work, who may contribute themselves or who have always supported it, and who understand the benefits to the UK of being active in this space. If we could just persuade those people that Government spend their development money well, I think that would be an improvement on where we have been. I think confidence in all of this has been utterly shattered. Part of that is because the Government somewhat gave up talking to the public about development some years ago, and it has not been a positive approach. One of the things I need to do this year—and one of the reasons we want to have the conference—is much more outward-facing work. Now we have gone through the pain of what we had to do, we need to think of how to have those conversations in a way that feels fresh and different. Development has changed because the world has changed, Africa is changing. It is not as it was in 2005, and the things that we need to do are different. Going back to the question you asked me earlier, I do not think anyone has really bothered talking to the public about that. It is partly because the Government have not bothered, but it is also because NGOs and even faith organisations, who used to be brilliant at this, now have one-to-one relationships with their donor base. When I first joined Oxfam, we used to go around to someone’s house and have a monthly meeting to talk about whatever it was we cared about in the world. We would pay our subs, and it was a community activity. I am pretty sure that does not happen anymore. A really important question is: how do we build that network of support out in the community in this country? I do not have all the answers. I do not think Ministers should pretend they do on these things, but I would really welcome a conversation about this with our faith organisations and NGOs.

Do the Government have a strategy of their own to increase public perception and awareness of the good that aid and development can do?

No, we don’t, not specifically. We have comms plans, and things like that. I would be really open to doing that. With all humility, I think that sometimes Governments are not the best people at changing public attitudes in these sorts of policy areas, or at least they should not attempt to do it by themselves. I think it is really important that, even if we do not do it perfectly, we make a real effort this year to figure out how we articulate—in a way that is common sense and makes sense to people—what it is that we are doing and the thinking that has gone into it. We have not done that yet, but I think it is something we should do.

To go back to your previous points, when you talked about the need to rethink the way in which you talk to the public, but also the way in which you look at how multilateral spending impacts real lives. I can give no better example than when I was country rep for WaterAid in Tanzania, and I have worked with WASH all over the world. That issue of WASH really cuts across the board. People do get it. If FCDO was to play a better role in getting across what it is doing in that sector, I think it would do itself some favours.

Yes, I think WASH is really relatable. I think another one is vaccines. Probably the best bit of communicating we did last year—and we did not prioritise communication specifically last year, but we do need to this year—was around the Gavi replenishment, where we went to GSK in Stevenage to talk to scientists who developed the vaccine in this country. We highlighted how many UK jobs were reliant on this and the amazing data about lives saved through this intervention. I think that worked really quite well. There are things, as you say, with WASH and a few others, where there is a more natural way in.

I completely agree with you that NGOs have massively dropped the ball on talking to the public about development. As somebody who worked and had these battles at the time, we thought that they thought we had won. We had got 0.7%, and that was it. We could move on. I was making the case very strongly that, no, we had to keep relying on it. Unfortunately, they were kneecapped by the previous Government, who took away the PPA grants, which many were using to bolster their campaign efforts. The other thing it was doing was supporting development education in schools. I wonder if you have any thoughts about how we might be able to support some of that coming back. In terms of getting the next generation of young people behind development, it was such a brilliant way of doing things, and it could be integrated into the curriculum again if conversations happen with DFE.

Yes. I have met quite a few groups of schoolchildren, who usually want to talk about education in developing countries, but not only that. It is really good, and it is really inspiring. The other thing that went wrong is not just that the last Government did those things, but that they actively and deliberately rubbished the agenda. Not everyone who was part of that Government did it, and certainly I know people in the Tory party who care passionately about this. I do not want to be held to account for every view that everyone in the Labour party has, but I think it is really sad that it was allowed to happen. Everyone who cares about this has a responsibility to figure out how to rebuild confidence, because it has been utterly shattered.

Minister, I think the question was about whether you will look at refunding something like that. It is hugely valuable for a very low financial—

Development and education specifically.

Yes, I am happy to look, but I cannot make any promises at all. It might be something where we have a wider conversation with colleagues at DFE about how things can be incorporated. I know lots of teachers who more or less do this anyway.

It could be a matter of access to resources, staff time or online—

When I have seen it done well, it is where a teacher is passionately involved and active, and they bring—

Yes, or direct school-to-school contact.

Yes. Let me look at it, because I think it is a really good question.

Thank you. Next we have Brian Mundell.

David. I think Brian Mundell is a large-scale haulier in Argyll. I have seen his lorries.

Is he now? I was waiting to see where you were going on that.

Minister, I certainly agree with you. I have spoken out strongly on this. The corporatisation of the NGOs was a real setback, because they lost an army of advocates—individual citizens who could challenge people they met at social events, and in other contexts, on the issue. That has been diminished, and it is very hard to see how you can build that back. While I respect what you say in relation to the role of Government, do you not agree that the Government have a role in relation to the sector, in terms of stimulating debate and discussion? I am concerned that there are still too many people within the sector in the UK who think that maybe next year, or shortly thereafter, it will just go back to what it was, and essentially that should be the focus of their efforts to lobby for a return of what they have known. We know that is not going to be the case, even if there was more money. When we were in the US last autumn, what struck us was that the sector there seemed to have accepted that things may change, that they are not going to go back to exactly what they were. Therefore, lobbying simply to get back to where we were is a waste and is actually stifling innovative discussion. Do you see yourself having a role in ensuring that we have that sort of innovative discussion and debate here in the UK as to how we can go forward in a positive way with, almost inevitably, less resources?

Yes, I really do. I think with the engagement I have had with NGOs in the UK, there has been something of a journey. It started off very angry—for understandable reasons—but over the months we have built a reasonably good relationship, not in all cases, but more and more. There is a sort of, “Okay, what can we do?” approach to this. We had a really good meeting, via Bond, with a group of NGOs just last week about the development conference. They were feeding in ideas for discussions they would like to have, and suggesting roles they could play and whether there could be a fringe programme around this, at which they could hold events and campaign, which I think is really positive. We have had lots of conversations. I have had some about WASH specifically, but also about debt. There is a real appetite to do something with us on debt, recognising that the nature of debt has completely changed from the last time there was a big moment on this. There is a huge amount of expertise in those organisations that I need, and that we want to support. I hope we do not just end up in a situation where it is all about inputs. I think the 0.7% campaign, looking back, is all about what you put in. Actually, we need to get to campaigning that is all about outcomes. I think that most NGOs understand that really well. The other thing, which ties to the earlier question about communication—and please tell me what you think—is that I feel the public in this country, who have cared about this for a long time, almost need a win in which they are told, “What you have done over all these years has meant that this many women have given birth safely; child mortality has improved to this extent; more and more children go to school”. We need to tell people that this stuff works, because the impression many people have is that it is a black hole we put money into, and nothing ever gets better. That is not true. Things do get better as a consequence of the work that this country has led on development, and they deserve the credit for that. We need to go back to them and tell them so.

I want to impress here that the public perception of aid is really important, and there is a need for the Government to have some type of communication strategy around this to improve public confidence. This is taxpayers’ money, and obviously ODA is at 0.3% but we need it to increase. You have mentioned some really positive things that have happened with ODA spend on maternity, health and women’s health. We also know from evidence we have heard in this Committee that it is rolling backwards because of the reduction of the funds. People need to hear about what is happening and what can happen, but they also need to hear about how to deal with the mismanagement of funds and how the Government are allaying the public’s fears on that. It is about having a really good communication strategy and improving people’s confidence that the money is being spent well, and about what the Government are doing to make sure it is spent responsibly.

I completely agree with you. We have not really tried to do that in a long, long time, but we should. I am happy to come back with something laying out how we do that so we can get your views on it.

Minister, I also think the opposite. We would be very happy to come and chat with you. As you can see, we are a Committee that loves chatting. We have got through a third of our questions, and we have a little over half an hour left. Unless we ask succinct questions, we are not going to get the answers we seek from the Minister, who is being very generous with her time. Minister, you are being very generous with your time, but can you be a little briefer?

All right.

I am pleased to hear the Minister’s offer. It would be great to have you come back with some type of communication strategy, plan or draft. It would be really helpful.

Minister, the Henry Jackson Society recently did a report, which was heavily covered in The Daily Mail, on the risk of cash transfers being exploited. How do you combat that?

If WASH is the thing, as Brian says, where the public have a lot of confidence, cash transfers are the one thing where they seriously don’t, so we have to be really careful with this stuff. I pulled a project in Malawi because I felt it was not sufficiently targeted, and it was undermining public confidence. There are places and times when cash transfers are the best and most efficient way to work, and they are emergency humanitarian disasters—

Very empowering, and it tends to go to women as well.

To women, exactly. I think we need to tread carefully. Whenever we use this, we need to make sure that we can absolutely base it on evidence and experience, and that there is data that says this is the only way to get food and shelter to the population that desperately needs it. There is no point in us saying that it is uncontroversial because the data says it is right. You need to be really clear about what you are doing and why, that you have your systems there and that it is all properly accounted for. I think we are better than a lot of places at doing that.

Thank you. A lot better.

I wanted to ask about plans for a conference this year, and whether you could elaborate on your current plans. My specific interest, which will not surprise you, is whether you are any further along in discussions around development finance and using it as an opportunity to leverage more money, working with the private sector, international finance facilities and so on.

Yes. We are getting on with it. We have a date now, which I do not think we have announced, but we have it.

Share it with us, Minister.

I don’t know if I can.

Give us a month.

I will give you a month, which is May.

We knew that already.

I knew it was May, yes.

Well, I haven’t told you anything that I shouldn’t have, in that case.

You can.

Later. We have to get some coherence around this, and I think this is an opportunity for the UK to do something that is distinctly us. This cannot be the kind of conference you go to that could be absolutely anywhere in the world. We all say how important it is that we all work together on this, that and the other, maybe you pledge a little bit of money, but nothing actually changes as a consequence. We do not want to do that. We want to do something that moves the debate on. At the moment, I think we might want to look at the issue of money and how you pay for things. We have the emerging markets task force and all that work with the City. It is a brilliant opportunity to showcase that and the work we are doing on insurance, to really expose more people to it. That will help with the communications piece, but it will also get more people and more confidence in. I think our friends in the philanthropic and tech sectors are really interested in that. The other thing we should do is really look at technology and social media, which is a big point of discussion for us this week. It is really big everywhere you go in the world, the impact that it is having on democracies and participation, on women, how the emergency response room teams were able to devise an app in real time—in the most difficult place to do anything on earth—to enable them to distribute resources fairly quickly to make sure that what they had got to the places that needed it and they could make quick decisions. All of this is not a traditional development conference discussion.

Are you assuming it is going to be in the UK?

We are looking at co-hosting. I think the UK is actually a good place to do technology and finance. It would be really interesting to do it somewhere else, but I think, just being pragmatic, people like coming to the UK. I am very keen for it to be as outward-facing and inclusive as it can be. So we involve non-government figures—

Hybrid as well, please.

Good point. Fine. Yes.

Otherwise, you are immediately excluding people who cannot afford it, and visas of course.

Yes, that’s fair.

On the innovative finance side of it, is there anything more you can say on that point? It is okay if you cannot. I raised the question in the House at FCDO questions earlier, and I am very keen to see that the Treasury is working with you on this because we accept—or at least I do—the fiscal rules that the Chancellor set out. No one is seeking to break that, but there are innovative ways not to go against that, not undermine any credibility in the UK economy, but provide guarantees that enable us to leverage more finance. Cleverer minds than me have great ideas about it. I am just interested to know your perspective.

We are having active conversations with the Treasury. However far we get by the development conference, the point of having the conference when we are is for it to lead on to the G20 the following year, where I think this could be an important part of that. Obviously, the Cabinet Office is looking at what it wants to prioritise, but I think this is something where the UK has expertise. We have the City of London. We are already doing things with the IFC, with ADF. We are showing that we are already making decisions that back ourselves on this, and we want to show that this works. We need to give a platform for partner Government voices, who will say, “We want more of this, please”. The development conference is a chance to do that. Perhaps the conversations that we are having with the Treasury—which are really positive; this is not a one-sided thing by any means. Treasury is genuinely interested in how we do this better. I am quite optimistic that we will get some progress.

Do you have plans to involve the Committee in this?

I think we should. How would you like to be involved? We could get you on panels.

That would be great. Within the next few weeks, we will hopefully be delivering our Future of Aid report to you, which will be where we think, from the evidence we have received—and we have received over 200 pieces of evidence—the Government ought to be focusing their attention. Hopefully that will give some guide or reinforce the areas that you are considering. It will be interesting to have your ideas in advance on what you want as the outcome, so that we can see if you achieve them or not. We are a resource, we are well connected and we have an amazing Committee team around us, so please use us.

The best innovative finance factoring tool that I saw was the TFFF, and I know the Committee wrote to you about that. First of all, it is great for public perception because it is not a grant, as we know it. Can you elaborate on what will happen to that, whether there will be funding behind it from the UK?

If, when we have done our due diligence, it stacks up, we would consider it, for sure. What I was never going to do was agree to substantially commit to a fund because there was a big conference happening. That is not the way we make big decisions about money. We have supported TFFF in getting it as far as it has got to, and we have worked with the Brazilians on the technical support around that, but we need to understand a lot more about exactly how it is going to work before we can commit to taking part ourselves. Will it be big enough to do what it says it wants to do? How will it make its decisions? What is the governance going to look like? Will it achieve its objectives? I understood the time pressure to decide by a particular weekend. I did not feel that would be the right way to make that particular choice. I do not know yet if it is going to be the right place to put our climate money. It might well be.

You have written to us on this, and it is something we are going to incorporate into our forthcoming climate finance inquiry. We will have a watching brief on that, if you could keep us informed.

Minister, what plans do you have for the resourcing and remit of ICAI going forward?

You have asked me a lot about money for women and girls, money for WASH, all of these things. We are spending about £5 million a year on ICAI.[1] This is a prioritisation situation. I have to ask myself whether that is the right use of that money or whether we could get what we need more efficiently. Is there a different way of enabling that accountability function to take place? I do not know the outcome of that at the moment, but we have to challenge ourselves on it. I understand why we need that mechanism that monitors what we do, as you do, and I know you value their reports, as do I, but it is wrong just to carry on funding things in the same way we always have when we are not doing that to any other area of our business.

If you were to reduce the resources, how will you ensure that there is ongoing external evaluation and scrutiny? We have heard in previous discussion about getting public support that one of the rods that is used against development is money not being well spent. One of the things that ICAI have been able to do is to provide an external evaluation. Maybe that has not always got out to the public, but they are providing that to support the benefits, or in some case disbenefits, of the spending. How would it be achieved more cost effectively if you were not investing in ICAI?

I recognise what you are saying. The question that I need to ask myself is whether that investment has achieved what it was designed to do? If part of it was around public confidence, I would say, no, it has not. It has done other things. We take the reports seriously, we respond to them, we adapt in response to what ICAI has to say because it is good thorough work. Is it something we can continue to do in the same way in the current context? I am not sure. I have not decided and welcome thoughts on it. It would be odd to leave that unchanged while we are making substantial reductions in frontline services.

What are the options: a reduced ICAI or something completely different?

Those are both options. Leaving things the same is an option. Asking the NAO to do it is an option. I have not made a choice. If you have a view, I would be open to hearing it.

As I am sure you are aware, this Committee has statutory oversight of ICAI. If you are going through this thought process, we would welcome early oversight of that, because it is something we need to be involved in.

Absolutely.

Thank you very much.

To answer the question from a technical point of view, you asked what are the ways in which we have oversight. Of course there is the NAO. Every programme we have requires us to have some kind of third-party assessment of our evidence. That is baked into our programme operating framework. There is also a transparency index that we are involved with that has led some of those initiatives. We also have internal audits. We have the IDC as well, which scrutinises and reports. There are multiple ways in which we look at the impact of programmes already.

Some quick-fire questions, starting with the Minister, and Melinda you might like to add something as well. First, have you managed to move faster than Olly Robbins to make sure you have the staff you need to deliver your vision for ODA?

We are outpacing Olly Robbins quite well. He is doing something really hard, and he is trying to deal with the fact that we have 30% more people than we had 10 years ago, even allowing for the merger. That is very strange and needs to be addressed. We also need to think about how the world has changed, what the skills are that we need as an FCDO. Within that, I need to make sure he does not make decisions that leave us unable to deliver our development strategy. Because we made some early choices and have been really clear on what it is we are trying to do, he knows what it is that we need, and I meet him and tell him in no uncertain terms what that should look like. I support him in his ambition and mission. It matters to me, as a lifelong trade union member, that this is done properly and fairly, that communication is good and that consultation is done correctly.

Do you think that is happening?

I do.

The unions do not.

No, they are challenging back, as they should. I am assured that it is, but there is a watching brief on this. Olly has done the senior roles. That has not been easy or straightforward, of course, but that is the right way round to do it. To do that cutting of senior roles first, and then the logic is slightly more straightforward. They now need to make some more changes, and they need to be getting to more of the restructuring side of things, where there is more of a broadly understood process that needs to be undertaken. I do not for one second think that this is straightforward, and we need to maintain the clarity that we have around what communities of expertise are going to look like, what in-country teams need to have and what skills we need. If we are going to do a lot more on finance and public market mobilisation, that is a very different skillset to some of the things we have had in the past. There is a question that we are currently asking ourselves about how much reskilling you do, and how much some people do not want to be part of that when you need to do some new recruitment to fill those roles. There is a lot happening. It is my job to get clarity in front of the decision makers so they can make those choices.

We have done the senior layer. We are now doing the next layer down, which is the director layer, and those directors are then responsible for designing their departments with the capabilities that the Minister describes. We are also building a capability for the whole of the FCDO with the British Diplomatic Academy. The test falls, in terms of how much resource, expertise, capability can sit within each of the directorates, how they work across each other and how the whole network relates to the country network. The overseas network review is part of that puzzle as well.

On that specific point, how confident are you that the directors and interim directors have the necessary understanding and development for those directorates to make the workforce changes that are currently under way?

As someone who has spent a lot of time interviewing prospective directors, very. We have asked these questions about technical skills as part of the overall interview, alongside the competencies. I am very confident that the directors we have in place are a top-calibre group of people who are both diplomats and technical experts where they need to be.

When we were speaking to the trade unions, it felt like it was the other way round, that they were making decisions and were put in departments before they knew what the department looked like, and they were then having to make those cuts. There is great concern about that loss of expertise, as Brian referred to.

Although we describe them sequentially, all of these things are, in effect, going on at the same time. We have a view about the capability that we need, and the size of the departments that we are going to be able to structure around that. Because we have worked on these projects over a long period of time, we have a sense of the capabilities that we need to build. Although it sounds linear, it is more iterative, and it is based on processes happening, more or less, at the same time.

Minister, have you seen a workforce plan or skills audit?

I have for the area of the business that I am responsible for.

So, the two directorates?

Melinda has presented me with that. To be absolutely clear about it, as a Minister, it would be highly inappropriate for me to get involved in HR decisions, but I do make it my business to make sure that—I need Melinda to assure me that the organisation that Olly, Nick Dyer and she are building will be able to deliver the strategy that I am responsible for.

Minister, let me push you a little bit on that. I would not expect you to get involved in the HR side of things at all, but it is your responsibility to come up with the policy priorities and communicate those. You are assured that your priority and the Foreign Secretary’s priority policies have been relayed so that the team that you are going to get will have the skills you need to deliver?

Yes, absolutely right.

Are some directors being asked to model savings and/or reductions of more than 25%?

We cut our budget by 40%. We have been doing nothing but that. What do you mean?

This is on staffing.

We would have to because this is not just a salami-slicing exercise. There will be more emphasis on some things and far less on others, so it is inevitable.

We have been told that the development directorates are being asked to model 40% to protect the more strategic directorates, such as the NATO and Commonwealth directorates.

It no longer makes sense to say that this is a development directorate in the way it used to be. One of the things I am trying to get away from is this separation of purpose around the building. It is great that you now have former DFID staff members as heads of mission, such as in Ethiopia. You also have former FCO purely diplomatic team members who are development directors in Bangladesh. Everything we do needs to be interdisciplinary and complementary. That is the way I am thinking about it.

First, in this new structure, there is no directorate that is exclusively development. The expectation is that they layer in some concentrated programmes, but they have diplomacy, policy, multilateral, network support. No, there is no development directorate as we had before. We have spread it across the piece, which is interesting because it means that more of the directorates in security need to factor in, for example, migration, development thinking and ODA planning. Secondly, no directorate has been asked to go up to 40%. Some that have almost got to that point are there because we have merged three or four different directorates and there is a lot of overlap. The efficiency can be made, and outcomes will not necessarily be impacted, but the efficiency does need to be made. In other directorates that are heavy spends, such as international finance or economic development and economic growth, the cut is much less. We have looked hard at this to make sure development is embedded right across the FCDO. That way, it will have more power and pack more of a punch. Taking a perspective of which capabilities within development we need to build—private capital, international finance—where do we seek efficiencies and what can we reduce?

Part of the problem is that we are fumbling around in the dark over this, and it is a massive change to FCDO, particularly to development—both the cuts and the staffing. I dread to think how it feels, particularly for the more junior-level staff who are having to live this, because our job is only to scrutinise it. The sooner you can get that clarity out—we were told that the decisions were being made before Christmas, and then it was January, and then February. These are mortgages, children’s schools. Some of the poorest people in the world are looking to know if their schemes are going forward or not. The more transparent and the quicker you can get this done, the better. Part of the problem is that the unions we are speaking to feel equally in the dark, so they are unable to give either guidance or reassurance. I hear you say they are fully engaged. They might be fully engaged, but they are not getting all of the information they are requesting. Anything you could do on that, Minister, I would be really grateful for. To give you one example, we wrote to you on 27 November about some very specific things relating to staffing, and we have still not had a reply. It is not the easiest thing to engage with right now and your intervention would, hopefully, smooth the passage and help everyone.

Okay.

Thank you very much. We have a few quick-fires on topics. As I was walking into the meeting, there were pictures circulating of Israeli bulldozers bulldozing what is claimed to be the UNRWA site in East Jerusalem. I do not know if you can confirm whether that is the case. For me, a UN member bulldozing a UN facility is completely off the scale of unacceptability. I do not want to hear condemnation. If you can confirm that is what is happening, I want to hear what we are going to do about it.

I cannot confirm that. I have not been briefed on it. It would be a bad idea for me to say anything on that at all, given that the first I heard of it is from you just now.

I will move on to the 37 NGOs that have been deregistered. Again, please do not tell me that we condemn it and it is not acceptable. What are we doing on the ground to try to get those vital services to the people who need them?

We do not agree with that deregistration. We think it is the wrong thing to do. We make that point repeatedly, and we speak to others to encourage them to make that point as well. I met Tom Fletcher last week, and it was one of the conversations we had. I met some of the NGOs affected as well. Some of them are in quite a difficult position. They are being asked to compromise some of the ways they feel they should work in order to carry on.

They are in a hugely compromised position.

It is really difficult. The important thing for us is that we stand by those organisations that need us to, and that we work to maximum effect through the agencies that are able to get access. This is just one of a list of problems that we have at the moment. Yes, things have improved since the ceasefire, but if anyone thinks that this means that all the aid is flowing and is getting where it should, it really is not. We still have issues with dual use and getting access. All the crossings are not open. There are still huge problems. Things are a bit better. IPC assessments have said we are no longer in as dire a situation as we were, but there is still a lot that we need to be doing to get the aid and the access where it needs to be.

What about things like planning permission on the E1, which effectively completely ringfences East Jerusalem?

We have a clear position on that. Minister Falconer has argued that it should not be happening, and that is a conversation we continue to have, particularly following our announcement recognising Palestine. A logical position for us to take is that these sorts of things are being done deliberately to frustrate the viability of a Palestinian state.

On that, I am still waiting for the name of the Palestinian that is going to be on the oversight committee for Gaza. How are we involved in that? Are we involved in that?

I would have to talk to Minister Falconer about where he has got to and where that is. We have argued for a Palestinian committee as part of the process, and that is only really happening because we have made that case. We feel very strongly that there needs to be Palestinian voice and representation in decisions that are made now. This is a dynamic situation. Understanding of what the board of peace looks like and the limitations of what it would be responsible for, how people are involved, what the governance arrangements are for that, is a little more fluid than we initially thought when the resolution was passed at the UN. We are closely involved, but we have not shifted from our principal position about the necessity for Palestinian representation.

Also in the rebuilding efforts?

Yes, absolutely.

We are going to move on to Sudan now.

Sudan in five minutes will not give it any justice at all as I know you are personally committed, as is your team and the team in the Foreign Office. Clearly it is the biggest humanitarian disaster since records began, the scale of the killing in El Fasher. With the UK as penholder on the UN Security Council, it shows perhaps how little leverage we have. Since we last spoke to you here, what specific actions has the UK taken, or have you taken, to further diplomatic engagement around humanitarian access and the ending of the war?

This is a massive priority for the Foreign Secretary. I am really proud of the way she has come in and gripped this. She has very few conversations where she does not raise Sudan, which is absolutely right. All of us, when we talk to our counterparts either in the US, in Gulf states or in the region will emphasise the point about humanitarian access, but also the necessity for a pause in the fighting. There are various diplomatic processes, which you will be aware of, and we are as involved as we can be in those. Through the accountability measures that we have instigated via the UN, we will stay the course on this for as long as it takes. When we spoke at length to Tom Fletcher last week about Sudan, he was telling us that the UN has got to El Fasher. We have not yet received the reports, and I do not think the world is fully aware of the horrors and the scale of it. When that happens, there will be a spotlight on some people. This is very sensitive diplomatically, and it is not for me to announce big things on this particular issue this afternoon, but it will be very uncomfortable for people who have, knowingly or otherwise, enabled this situation to come about. I hope the pressure of the world’s focus will soon lead to some kind of pause in the fighting, because that has to happen to give us the space to talk about where we go next.

I assume that you are talking about the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

I am not saying anything. We all know that this is not just a situation of two warring parties in a country, happening in isolation. It is not just one or two other countries; this is part of a wider regional situation going as far as the horn of Africa and Yemen.

As the Development Minister who is having to deal with the consequences of civilians being slaughtered, is it not your place to be able to call out the UAE and Saudi Arabia for their proxy war?

I will call out whoever I think needs calling out at a time when I think calling them out brings about an improvement in the situation. That is the only test I apply.

Can I push you a bit further? You talk about your focus on it, which is really welcome. Would that translate to more Foreign Office development staff on the ground in and around Sudan? More than there are at the moment?

We have already substantially increased our team of staff working on Sudan. We generally work through partners on the ground, because they can get the access. We talked about the African Development Bank earlier, but we also work through UN agencies, the IRC and others, and I have been to see what they do. FCDO does not deliver services, direct services, in that way, in those contexts—it never has. We always work through partners. It would be brilliant to be in a situation where there was such a surge in humanitarian activity that we needed more people to be present in Chad and Sudan to be able to work alongside. At the moment, we are heavily restricted and are completely working through agencies and partners.

Being there and being able to talk to the various groups, old-style diplomacy, may be the only thing that gets through at the moment.

Yes, but there are limits when you talk about war in general. We have been at it for years. There are pressures that we need to exert as an international community. The UK alone, and no country alone—even the biggest, most powerful country—can, by itself, bring about the change that we need. This needs to be a concerted effort.

Last time you came, you talked about diaspora groups and meeting with them to discuss Sudan. Has that happened?

I want to do more of that. Last week I went to an art exhibition—I do not get a chance to do things like that very often—at a project showcasing Sudanese art, and they had some very well-known artists. Their purpose in doing this was to show that Sudan is not just conflict. There is a rich history and vibrant cultural life emanating from Sudan, and they were very proud of it. They talked a little bit about the conflict, but actually they wanted to talk about their country and why they love it so much, and how proud they are to be Sudanese.

Is there a mechanism that the FCDO has to talk to the African Union about Sudan, or indeed other things? How does that work?

We have a good relationship with the African Union. I have been invited to speak at their conference next month, or in March. I am told that it is the first time this has happened in a very long time, so it is seen as an improvement in that relationship. They are an essential partner for us.

That will be at a conference. Is there any direct communication?

We have an envoy at the African Union permanently, and I regularly meet representatives because, as they always say—and they are right—you need African solutions to African issues. That makes a lot of sense to me.

In Yemen, another country in conflict, similar players are having their proxy wars. And it is another country on which we are the penholder. What diplomatic steps are we taking to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in that country, and how are you working with local actors to deliver the support that is needed?

We have to work with local actors because, especially in the north of Yemen—I cannot remember the number—there are UN team members being held. Minister Falconer was there quite recently. Again, it is another context where the wider regional dynamics are at play, and it is difficult to completely separate these things from one another. Again, we are working with the United Nations on access, where we can, in the south, and we are working through local partners. It is difficult, to put it mildly, but I think we have a particular responsibility because of history and our penholder status. There is no easy, quick answer, I do not think.

The final question from me, and then I am turning to David “Trucker” Mundell. I do not know if you heard the interview with António Guterres, the UN Secretary-General, on “Today” two days ago, I think it was.

It was only yesterday.

You are joking!

I know. It is one of those weeks.

It really is. He was talking about how the UN needed to change itself, how the world had changed so dramatically, and how development offered an awful lot of solutions to the problems we now face, at the same time as many of us in the world are stepping away from development work. I wonder if you could speak a little to that. You talked earlier about multilaterals, but I wonder if you can talk about how we are helping to shape this. For example, we are the penholder on various things. He was putting forward the argument that the people who make up the UN Security Council need to be broadened, or different, or change, and that the veto makes a joke of what we are trying to do.

I had long conversations with the Secretary-General over the weekend. He met the Foreign Secretary as well, and I am pretty sure he met the Prime Minister. What he is talking about is the need for the UN to change, and we agree. The US clearly agrees with that as well. Perhaps our ideas for how it should change may differ, but there is no doubt of that, and it is right. We completely support the UN, and if it did not exist, we would be working hard to create it right now.

Absolutely.

It is frustrating. It can be slow, and there are these issues with vetoes and the Security Council at the moment. All of that is true, and there are other ways of organising internationally, a coalition of the willing and that kind of thing, that are emerging as a response to some of that—but that is not all the UN is. The UN does some phenomenal work that nobody else could do at such scale and speed. Without a doubt, there needs to be a process of change. There are too many different organisations operating in a country, requiring things of the host Government and not co-ordinating with each other. It is inefficient. All of that needs to be dealt with, and the Secretary-General is very clear that it is his job to do that. I think it is our job—well, we hold the UN to account and we instigate change. There are some specific changes that I would like to see, which we spoke about, but, through all of that, we do it from a position of support and as a critical friend who wants to do this because we believe in what the UN stands for and what it can do. We are not people who think that it is irrelevant, a bit of a nuisance, out of date or does not have a role in the future. It absolutely does.

Both the UN and the Geneva Conventions are basically based on gentlemen’s agreements—and I use that phrase deliberately—to do the honourable thing. There are laws around them, which we increasingly see being broken, breached, pushed, challenged and, perhaps most importantly from our point of view, not enforced. I would say that one of the core values of Britain is that we follow the rule of law. Do you also see your part of FCDO, the FCDO as a whole and this Government as a whole doing more on the international stage to enforce and remind our friends—and our enemies—about the rule of law and observing it?

That is now probably more important than it has ever been. We fund some interesting work through Geneva Call on IHL and with armed groups in Colombia, and other things. We believe in this. I think what you see, though, is our desire to do this through consensus, persuasion and advocacy, and where the limit of that lies. There is no point pretending that there has ever been a golden era where it has not been tested, but it is very visible now because of the way it is being tested. Does that mean we give up and stop making those arguments and explaining why we believe in those things? Absolutely not. There has never been complete consensus on this in the way we would like to see, but we keep going.

I would argue that with democracies, and the number of people living under democracies, shrinking ever further, now is absolutely the time for us to stand up very robustly to those who are challenging it.

Minister, I want to ask about two specific subjects that we have discussed before. One is HIV and the target to eradicate new transmissions globally by 2030. When the APPG met, we acknowledged that you had got what we perceived to be the best possible deal on the Global Fund in all the circumstances that you faced. However, in order for the UK to maintain that leadership, there are other organisations that we need to support, such as the Robert Carr Fund, Unitaid and UNAIDS. Can you give us some hope that, when you make your various announcements, support will be there for those organisations? It is essential to complement the Global Fund to achieve that objective.

I cannot say that everything you have listed will be protected because, if I did, everyone would just ask me for their four or five things and we would have nothing to announce. I understand what you are saying and why you are saying it. I think we did the right thing with the Global Fund, not least because of the brilliant lobbying that we had in Parliament—that was very effective—and the job that the leader of the Global Fund, Peter Sands, did internationally. It was very good to see the US join to the extent that it did as well. It was powerful. The way we co-ordinate and work through UN organisations, the Robert Carr Fund and others needs to be brought together. We need to have conversations about what, in 2026. That is the right way to get the impact, given the changes in technology and some of the shifts we are seeing more widely. I think that is the moment where we have those conversations. In terms of what that means for funding, the allocations will be published soon. However, whatever they are, I think our commitment to working alongside those organisations that have proved themselves effective is not going to change.

I am just going to ask you to continue with the UK’s investment in the Child Nutrition Fund, because that is almost the single most effective contribution that we can make.

Minister, thank you so much. Melinda, I also appreciate you coming. Thank you ever so much. You gave us loads of evidence. You put some cats back into boxes. Hopefully they are not Schrödinger’s cats and they will be alive when we open the boxes. Thank you very much for your time. [1] Witness correction: the correct figure is circa £4 million a year on ICAI.