This is the International Development Select Committee’s one-off session with ICAI on their annual programme of work. We will look back and, hopefully, look forward a little bit. Jillian, welcome—I know you have not done a full year yet, but your commissioners started a few months before you. We were very grateful for the report that you recently released, and I think you are releasing your next one tomorrow. You give us a lot to chew over. Could you introduce yourself, and then perhaps we could introduce Ekpe and the role that he takes?

Thank you very much. I am Jillian Popkins; I am the Chief Commissioner at the Independent Commission for Aid Impact. It is nice to see everybody.

What is the Independent Commission for Aid Impact?

We are an advisory arm’s length body that scrutinises the UK’s development efforts to provide learning and ensure that they deliver value for money and impact, particularly for the poorest people.

I am Ekpe Attah. I am the Head of the Secretariat at ICAI. We have a small team of 10 civil servants that provide the secretariat support to the board of commissioners.

To clarify, is it the 2015 Act or one earlier than that in which ICAI and its independence was put into statute?

I want to say the first Act, from 2010.

It is reaffirmed in the 2015 Act.

Thank you. The IDC acts as your advocate in Parliament. We are really grateful for the independent scrutiny role that you take on. It is vital, and I would argue, particularly in the times of ever-increasing aid cuts, that we need to ensure that we have transparency and value for money going forward.

Welcome. Could you start by telling us what the ICAI’s highlights have been since the beginning of this commission in July 2024?

What is most important to us is that ICAI’s reviews are used and that they make a positive contribution to the impact and value for money of the UK’s development efforts. So my highlights are very much the things that we have published and the engagement events that we have hosted or co-hosted this year. We published “How UK aid is spent” and co-hosted an event with Chatham House the day after the Prime Minister announced the reduction of ODA to 0.3% of GNI. That report gave a baseline. It set the scene for UK spending in the context of very volatile global times, and it also meant that we could set the current picture from which the UK Government are now reshaping the UK’s development efforts. That was, we hope, very useful for Government and others in setting the scene and understanding the consequential choices that have been made since then. We also published the ODA management information note, clarifying how the target is managed within Government and looking particularly at how changes to the way that the Government manage the target would affect the budget. We also published “UK aid to Sudan”, which you heard about last week. Engagement with this Committee has been very important to us, so it was great that we could provide our evidence to the inquiry last week. We were very grateful for the opportunity to co-host an event earlier in the summer, where we were able to bring yourselves and colleagues from Parliament and from the sector together to think about what impact, scrutiny and value for money looked like in a 0.3% world. Those are the highlights—the reviews and the engagement. On the challenges, you will appreciate that we are doing our scrutiny, which is looking at how well the Government are delivering against their objectives in a situation with a number of unknowns, with the budget changes, the approach being revised, and the FCDO in a state of change and flux. That makes it a bit more challenging. There are two elements of challenge that I will highlight. One is that we need to deliver our reviews in a timely way, so that we are delivering evidence that can feed into and help support decision making. We are constantly seeking to be agile without losing the depth and quality of reviews that our partners and stakeholders tell us they value as something that ICAI brings to the landscape. Another of the challenges is that, by their nature, the ICAI reviews look back, so we need to be able to look back and learn from the past and then formulate recommendations that will help inform a future that will look different and is all so unclear at the moment. Finally, it is always an important challenge for me as Chief Commissioner and for ICAI to maintain our independence. Uniquely perhaps among arm’s length bodies that are sponsored by the FCDO, we are not big enough to receive grant in aid, so we rely on the systems and the operations of FCDO to feed and water our work and to keep us running and, in very straitened fiscal circumstances where rules have become stricter, they are also being applied less flexibly to ICAI. So maintaining our independence through this process of restructuring changes continues to be a challenge, which this Committee has been aware of over previous commissions.

One of the things we as a Committee are very interested in is the public perception of aid. While it seems that the popularity of aid has remained consistent over decades, sometimes the effectiveness is questioned. How does ICAI play into that debate? Did you have any media interest in some of your reports or reviews? How does what you do feed into those public perceptions?

There are several threads to that, and I will try to answer all of them. We play into that debate by putting factual information in the public domain in a way that is understandable and accessible to the taxpayer, to non-specialists, as well as to experts and specialists such as yourselves—so making sure that the debate is informed by evidence. We are focusing then on saying what that evidence tells us about the impact of what is being achieved. In a situation where there is a relatively low level of confidence and understanding of what the UK actually does, it is very important that we are able to put factual evidence in the public domain. For example, on how UK aid is spent, it is about setting that baseline—how much are we actually spending and where in the UK, and how does that sit in the bigger context? We will continue to make that important contribution. Similarly, a lot of the information that we published on ODA management is very technical, in terms of how that budget is managed, but it has a material impact on what is driving decisions, who benefits from them and how value for money is achieved. By clarifying some of that, I hope we are playing a valuable role in helping people to scrutinise and make informed judgments. In terms of the media, as you might expect, we had interest around the time that the reduction to 0.3% was announced. We were approached about that, and we routinely get approached on issues where ICAI has a body of evidence to speak about. That is when we choose to play in that space, because that is key to our remit. I am sorry—I have forgotten the last bit of your question.

I think you have answered it all; thank you.

Your response is very helpful in this context, because we had a debate in Parliament earlier today about ODA, and the recurring issue relating to concerns about waste was raised. But what you offer is an opportunity for an independent analysis of that, and therefore, if public concerns about wasteful spending are to be met, that can only be done by that independent analysis, in my view. At your pre-appointment hearing with the Committee, you said that your priorities would include defining what success looks like and building ICAI’s relationships. How do you feel that you have delivered on those priorities?

Having been in post since January—for 10 months—my view hasn’t changed that the building blocks for success are the reviews and making sure that we have a regular drumbeat of high-quality, independent, rigorous and salient reports that put evidence in the public domain. I was pleased that we were able to deliver a work plan, and thank you for supporting the quick approval of that soon after I was in post. That cadence of reviews has been, I hope, a solid achievement so far this year. There is more to come, including tomorrow. For me, the real sign of success is building the demand, so that decision makers in Government say, “Well, what do ICAI reports say about the issues?” when they are making quite big decisions, at the moment, in terms of where to invest the reducing aid budget and how to work. There is a huge body of evidence available. Being able to synthesise that and get it to the right people and feed into those relationships is important. I am pleased that I have been able to have regular meetings with Baroness Chapman and previously with Anneliese Dodds in that role. I feel that that relationship is on a solid footing, that there is an understanding of what ICAI has to offer, and that our reviews and the work plan reflects areas that are important for Ministers.

Do you feel you have a good relationship with the FCDO?

I certainly have a good relationship with Ministers. They are interested and engaged with the things that we are presenting information on. I have a very engaged and constructive relationship with the sponsorship team and the FCDO more broadly, who, of course, do two things: they support us in our role and our operations, and they co-ordinate how our work can support the Department and the Government more broadly to improve impact and value for money. We meet regularly and candidly, and they are engaged. They are dealing with a lot of change at the moment, and we are certainly engaging with them on what that change means both for ICAI in its operations and how we can support them in ensuring that impact and value for money are enhanced through that process of change and beyond. I think it is a good start.

At your pre-appointment hearing, you also mentioned the importance of doing more with less. How have you ensured that ICAI has delivered good value for money since you were appointed?

I picked up a strong track record. ICAI has had a flat budget since 2019. The resources available for our programme have not increased but ICAI has continued to deliver a full programme of reviews since then. We have our budget agreed until March next year and we are waiting to hear what our budget will look like for the remaining years. We continue to focus on value for money, in terms of how we work with our suppliers. So it is about making sure that we have the most appropriate and cost-effective methodologies to answer the questions in the fullest way possible, so that the reviews are rigorous and of high quality. We also think about value for money when we look at the range of review topics that we have in our work plan—so how will it be aligned with the issues that Government are thinking about and draw on the body of evidence that ICAI has looked at over a long period, so that we are not repeating things but are building and drawing more evidence? There are things, specifically, that we are doing more of, rather than them being brand new, such as really trying to work the reports so we get as much value as possible by engaging with people who can use them. We are also starting to look more at how we do follow-up and recommendations, because, ultimately, the value of the reviews will be in seeing that they have made a difference and that they have led to improvements in value for money in the Government’s handling of our recommendations. Those are a couple of areas that are still a work in progress, but as you would expect, I will continue to look at how we get the best value out of the resources that we have.

There must be a minimum amount of resources that you require to do the job effectively.

Yes.

Do you think you are at that level of resources, and if there was any suggestion that resources should be reduced, would it then mean that you would not be able to do the job effectively?

Let me break it down a bit for you. If we get less programme resource, we will be able to do less scrutiny. I think there is a fairly direct relationship between the number of reviews that we can do and the amount of money that we receive, but that is not the only thing in the mix. We also have staff—the very capable secretariat of civil servants—so were the money to be reduced slightly but the staff remain in place, we could probably manage. But if our staff were to be reduced, as a very small secretariat and a very small organisation, it would be difficult to get the value that we get out of whatever budget that we have. We have very restricted flexibility over how we use the different elements of our budget, so that is a third factor that affects the value that we can deliver and therefore the level of scrutiny that we can deliver. It will not surprise you to hear that I do not want to see our budget reduced in any way, but I am very aware that these are straitened fiscal circumstances. And it is not just the budget; it is the budget plus the money plus the way that we can have more flexibility and delegated authority to use those things together to do the job well.

How many FCDO seconded staff do you have?

We have 10 civil servants in the secretariat.

Yes—so 10 is our full head count.

With the reduced budget, how do you recommend that the Government maximise the impact and value for money of UK aid going forward?

We have looked at the question of what happens when budget changes quite a lot in the last few years, because this is not a new set of circumstances. In answering that question, I go back to looking at what lessons can be learned from the period since 2019. It is quite a big question, so I will choose a couple of things and then pause, and you can follow up or redirect me. One thing that happened last time there was a series of budget reductions, plus shifts in the architecture, plus a change in approach, was something that became known as strategic drift. One of the things that the Government can do is make sure that there is clarity about what role the UK will play with a reduced budget and this new approach that has been designed, and specifically what we want to achieve, because as a scrutiny body, we are looking at how well the Government are delivering against their objectives. To the extent that those are clear, it then becomes much more effective in terms of being able to scrutinise. We have found, over the period of the last commission and the current reviews we have done, that there is often clarity at the level of a programme, but when you get to the level of a portfolio or a strategic approach, you get greater fragmentation and less coherence. That is something, from the conversations I have had, that I think the Government are really keen to look at. That strategic clarity and clarity of objectives is going to help.

To clarify, is that strategic drift with respect to the strategic goal of poverty reduction?

I am talking now about what we found in our synthesis report on the changes from 2019 to 2023, which did find that there had been a move away from poverty reduction as focused on reaching the very poorest, and that is something that we can learn from. We must ensure that those lessons are taken and not repeated particularly in terms of the poverty focus.

It is interesting that you say that that gets harder as you move down from the programmatic level to the project level. Are you able to describe that dynamic a bit?

Sorry, perhaps I was not clear. It was more that the objectives are clear at the programme level, but when you look at the portfolio—so, the number of different instruments that the Government might use across different Departments on climate for example, or across different instruments in terms of mobilising private finance—we found in previous reviews that you then get a level of fragmentation. So it is about the ability to say, “This instrument to deliver this objective gives us so much value for money compared with another instrument”. We found that, over the body of reviews, there is room to make sure that there is greater coherence across that portfolio level.

So you believe that coherence and reaching strategic goals would deliver better value for money. Does that correctly paraphrase what you are saying?

Yes. The evidence from our reviews has shown that if you have a clear strategic objective, you can then choose which of the instruments you want to prioritise to deliver that objective, and that sometimes those instruments have proliferated without the level of clarity over what the comparative advantages of each are and which ones give you best value.

To press you a bit further on this, do you think you have been clear enough with successive Ministers about that point and with the officials that you work with in the Department to get that message home?

I can speak only for the conversations that I have had and the meetings that I have been in. There is an appreciation of this, particularly in the context of reduced budgets, and there is a desire to have a greater level of co-ordination across Departments and to look at what different levers the Government can use alongside finance to get the impact that they are looking for.

Lastly, perhaps I can ask you to be a bit more normative on how that could look. I know it is not your role as ICAI to be political or set the strategic direction of the Department, but when we talk about the cuts across various themes or programmes, which ones ring alarm bells purely in relation to value for money, from a poverty reduction perspective?

Let me take the four shifts, which is the way in which the Government are thinking about how they will change how the UK does its delivery. For example, there is moving from a donor to an investor, which basically means using grant money to leverage more private capital—a very important element of any development strategy globally and nationally. But we have found in our reviews that that tends to crowd money into middle-income country markets, and that there have been issues with some of the ways in which it is able to evidence the impact of that in terms of the returns on investment. It is about different instruments using different methodologies, and the transparency not being there to allow us to see that the expected returns on investment come from private capital rather than public finance, for example. There is a body of learning that shows that if you are going to use ever scarcer grant finance to blend or attract in private capital, you are probably going to be moving your investment more into a middle-income rather than a low-income country. Obviously, many different channels of finance are needed for development, but rare grant finance is incredibly important in conflict, fragile and humanitarian situations, and it forms up to 30% of the budget for the lowest-income countries. It is much less significant and plays a much smaller role in middle-income and higher-income countries. So when you look at that picture, and you think of targeting your scarce grant resource, those are the trade-offs, and those are the decisions for the Government to make, but that is where we can bring a body of knowledge. It is not that these instruments are not important or that they do not achieve good impacts, but in terms of whether we are focusing the scarcest resource of grant money on those countries with the highest number of the most extremely poor people, that is probably not going to be the instrument that delivers that outcome for you.

Very lastly, do you think that ICAI is perhaps a bit too focused on the method and modality versus the thematic priorities? You are quite focused in ICAI on the mechanisms of delivery and the processes around that, rather than necessarily on triaging different thematic priorities, whether that is health or education. Do you think that is a fair reflection, or am I being unfair?

It is an interesting reflection. Looking back over the course of the third commission, I would probably have to go away and tally up the balance of things that we looked at. In our work plan for this year, we have a focus on the theme of violence against women and girls, which is a review that we are starting now. We have looked at Sudan, which is a humanitarian situation, and we have looked at some of the mechanics, which I think you are referring to—some of the processes—of how you turn an objective into activity with a particular set of outcomes. We have tried to seek a balance. As for whether we have a bias, I am going to go away and have a good hard look at that, because we should be looking at a representative picture. That said, we are aligning with the Government’s objectives, so we are having an interesting conversation about our work plan for next year in relation to some of the sectors that the UK has invested in very heavily in the past and played a very important role in, such as education. There is still important work to do in terms of thinking about—if this is the decision that is made—moving out of some of those thematic areas. How do you do that responsibly? How do you sustain the value for money and the impact in the future, particularly when the commitment to return to 0.7% is still there and you may want to think about building back later? There are important questions for us to scrutinise in relation to some of those themes, because the Government will want to be as responsible as possible in shoring up value for money and impact, even where they are no longer actively investing in those areas but might still be providing expertise. I do not know whether that answers your question, but I will definitely check that we are not missing a theme.

If you could report back that would be very interesting.

I will, yes.

Right back?

In a sentence, it was the risk that the increasing budget, which was the environment that we were in at the time, was not driven by strategic objectives and not delivering impact or value for money, because there was a fiscal imperative to get the money out the door. I think that is still true, although we are in a different environment. There is not a fiscal imperative to get money out the door, but there is a fiscal imperative to make sure that the target, which is both a floor and a ceiling, is still met. We need to ensure that impact and value for money are driving difficult choices. That is still true, and if ICAI was not here to do that, there would be a gap in the responsibility in terms of getting an independent view on that, which is in the legislation.

Can you clarify a bit more?

One of the things we bring is deep, specialist expertise. International development is a complex area of public spending. It has an accountability to people outside the UK—the countries and the populations that development impacts in a positive way—as well as to the UK taxpayer. There is a uniqueness in how we think about development, judge success and think about what good looks like that, in the ICAI model, draws on the expertise that myself, Liz Ditchburn and Harold Freeman as commissioners bring. That is why we were selected for these posts. I think there is something about that technical perspective that we bring as ICAI. We also have the ability, because we are independent, to go into greater depth, and to focus and do very full and thorough reviews that give a nuanced picture over time. We work very hard to add value to what is already in existence. The third thing is that the officials that we interact with, when we are doing the reviews, are very engaged with the process of the review. Our experience previously, and also in the reviews we have done in this commission so far, has been that there has been a real openness from officials to engage with us and learn. Even when we are holding up a mirror to things that need to be addressed, we find that there is a real engagement and willingness to learn. I have spoken a lot so far about scrutiny, but the learning is also very important. That is very important now, at a time when the Government are trying a new approach and are very concerned about continuing to deliver impact. We can contribute to that learning as well with our independence.

That is a key question for me. We ended the third commission with a very high level of acceptance or partial acceptance of our recommendations, but a much lower level of evidence that those recommendations were being implemented. As we have been looking at how we do follow-up in phase three, I have been very concerned to ask how we close that gap, because the key question is whether the reviews are leading to material change that points to improved impact and value for money. I am in a very good discussion with FCDO now about how we do that. If it would help, I can say a little bit about that.

That would be interesting. I wince every time a politician says “lessons learned”. What we want is implementation, so how that would look in practice.

What we are not going to change is a request for the Government, six weeks after publication, to tell us whether they accept the recommendations and what they will do, but we are no longer going to publish a stand-alone annual report on follow-up recommendations. That is partly in response to feedback from Government that that sometimes meant we were looking at reviews that had only been done a couple of months ago. Even in the space of a year, it is quite a short time to see any change. We are not going to do that any more. We want to focus on being sure that the Government have a plan in place six months after they have accepted, partially accepted or not accepted the recommendations, and then follow up a year after that to see what has been done and what has changed because of what has been done. The other reason for that is that everybody is working in such a dynamic context at the moment that there may be things beyond the ICAI recommendations that have been brought into the mix and have led to change as well. We want to make sure that it is a meaningful process of learning and accountability.

It struck me, when you were talking about you as experts, how the role of ICAI has changed after the merger. Is there more of a role for ICAI now that perhaps some expertise has been lost from the FCDO, as was stated after the merger? How did your role change in that environment?

That is an interesting question. There is something about the continuity that ICAI offers when there is a lot of change. We very much build over the phases of the commission, and our reviews are a body of institutional knowledge so that we can see what is changing. On the question of expertise, the real focus on poverty, which is, after all, the purpose of international development in the legislation, and the fact that we provide something that is required in the legislation keeps us very focused on that, whereas the expertise in the civil service inside FCDO will play a slightly different role in thinking about how to implement policy. We have a broader remit to look at what works. There are some overlaps, but I think we do have that longer perspective and can reflect on how the expertise is being used through our reviews and what level of expertise there is.

I will make this a statement because I think it is an unfair question. I am concerned, with regard to the four essential priorities, that the direct focus on poverty reduction and probably the poorest people could get diluted still further. Has ICAI seen a shift away from poverty reduction with the merger? You referenced in earlier reviews that you had seen a bit of that. Is that something that you will document, or is that something you can speak on now?

It is something that we will continue to look at very closely across all our reviews, because that is the overall purpose of aid. It is a very broad definition, so we must acknowledge that. The synthesis report that ICAI published that looked at what we learned from all our reviews in phase three up to 2023 did highlight this as an issue and as a question that needed to be continually under scrutiny. One of the reasons why was that multilateral spending had been protected during that round of budget reductions at the expense of more flexible bilateral programming. The more flexible bilateral programming is the instrument by which you reach the poorest and most excluded people most directly and most flexibly. You saw that shift, and on the basis of that, it is true to say that there was less of an emphasis on directly reaching “leaving no one behind”. When we look at the four shifts that have been shared publicly, we do not know exactly what they will look like, and we need to wait and see how they will be implemented. The shift towards localisation clearly gives a very big opportunity to work directly with the poorest people and with first responders in a humanitarian situation, but that has not been an area of strength for the UK. You heard about that last week in the Sudan review, picking up a theme that had also been in our annual report, from our reviews last year in the humanitarian context. That is a big opportunity to think about how to reach the poorest most directly and to be effective through localisation. I have already talked about what some of the previous findings were in relation to emphasising innovative finance and capital, in terms of where the money gets to. It is not possible to generalise, but to your question, we will definitely continue to prioritise looking at what the poverty focus is and how it is being implemented.

I am sorry to keep popping in and out, but what you are saying is inspiring ideas in my head. I am interested in the risk appetite of localisation and what your response to that is. It strikes me as being essential, as you say, to get to the neediest, but then there is an increased risk appetite around that, which if we believe all the history, we do not like because we want to make sure that our taxpayers’ money gets directly to where it is meant to be and that there is no waste. Of course, there will be some waste in that.

Yes. That is a very neat summary of what we have found, in terms of our localisation work. Again, if I think about the Sudan review that you discussed last week, we found that the UK had a lower risk appetite compared with other donors, and that other donors could get more money more directly to locally led organisations, whereas the UK response—I am talking about Sudan now, but this chimes with findings from reviews in the previous year on Afghanistan and Ukraine in particular—that the UK has tended to work more through multilateral organisations. That means that the local organisations are at the end of a delivery chain, so that is not quite the same as participatory grant making or something that builds those organisations and suggests a low risk appetite relative to others. The other point about risk in localisation is about the risk to those organisations of receiving UK funds, particularly in conflict and fragile situations. The risk needs to be well understood and the risk appetite needs to be clear. That is for Government to decide.

Why do you think we lack that appetite?

Again, if I think about what we said or found in the Sudan review, it was about ensuring that the systems were fit for purpose. On the one hand, you have the risk appetite, and on the other hand, you have the systems, which need to be aligned to what it is you are trying to achieve. Some of the systems, if I remember correctly, were a bit too slow and were not able to get money to organisations that did not have the infrastructure to meet the standard of managing that finance that the UK and ODA require.

So is it a cultural inheritance, a legacy issue?

Yes, I think so. It would need to work differently from the way that it works at the moment to do the kind of localisation that some of the other donors have managed to do.

We are all waiting to see how the Government plans to take that forward.

Moving on to upcoming reviews, in the first report of this commission, ICAI said that it would look at specific issues across multiple reviews. On which specific cross-review issues will ICAI focus during this commission and why?

We are looking at climate as one of the key issues. That is for obvious reasons—because of the importance of climate, and its relationship with extreme poverty and the sustainability of poverty reduction in the world, and also because the Government have recommitted to delivering £11.6 billion of climate finance by the end of 2026, and that will take an increasing share of a reducing budget, so there is a materiality point there. We will publish a review tomorrow on the UK’s work to support energy transitions, and we will continue to look at climate finance as a theme, so we will have reviews that are focused on climate and then we will have reviews that look at climate as a theme. That is one area where we want to focus. Another theme that we have chosen to focus on is human rights and democracy. We are kicking off a review, which I mentioned earlier, on ending violence against women and girls. It is important to look at the non-financial dimensions of poverty and to reflect the ways in which the FCDO, as a merged Department, can bring diplomacy, development and defence together around some of these issues. We have chosen “humanitarian” as a theme because it is a huge and growing issue around the world and has been a focus for the UK Government. So we will look at humanitarian and make sure that we have plenty in our work plan and portfolio going forward, so that we can build a body of evidence and knowledge, and pick up on the themes from the last review, in terms of how we do humanitarian response where it is increasingly difficult to gain access, and where international law is increasingly not respected and so forth.

At your pre-appointment hearing, you said that you would seek to increase ICAI’s impact. What plans have you put in place to increase ICAI’s impact?

We are reviewing our theory of change at the moment, which means that we are looking at some of the assumptions made in the third commission about how ICAI achieves impact, and recognising that the context has changed. We will publish that early next year so that we can update our key performance indicators and be properly held to account for the level of impact and where we seek to achieve impact. I have mentioned that we need to make sure that the work plan is aligned with the Government’s approach, and also the key global issues and issues of salience and concern. The reviews that we choose are absolutely central to our impact. They must be of interest, useful and used by people. I have mentioned the follow-up work. That is the key line of sight to impact: what is different as a result of the evidence that we bring to this Committee, Parliament and the public, in terms of being able to build a good understanding of where the UK can have the best impact and value for money? We really want to work all the reviews. We have just completed a refresh of our engagement strategy to look at how we can use what are very limited resources in order to properly make sure that we think about who is using our work, and build that back into the design and scope of the reviews, so that we have a focus on our end users as we design the scope, questions and timing with which we deliver our products. Those are just a few of the things that we are doing to try to squeeze the maximum possible value out of the privilege that we have in doing this work.

Based on ICAI’s reviews, has the Government’s international development funding delivered on their stated aims for international development?

That is a very big question.

It is really about directing you towards whether the Government have succeeded or failed in their aims.

You can give us a multi-year answer if you want—multi-Government, multi-year.

I will start with the multi-Government, and add that it is too soon to say for the Government at the moment. Over the period of ICAI’s existence, without a doubt, the dominant finding has been that the UK has added value, been effective and had a positive impact. Of course, that can sometimes get overshadowed by the commitment to continue to improve and to learn. In my view, ICAI reviews have always sought to be fair but not to hold back from saying, even if it is good, that there is always more, in this kind of work, that needs to be done and to get the best value for taxpayers’ money. On the whole, UK development has been effective and has delivered very well against its goals. The difficulties arose in relation to, first, the economic volatility that meant there were changes in managing the money, combined with a reduction in the budget to 0.5%, combined with a shift in policy, combined with successive changes in Ministers that meant there were different policy priorities in quick succession that officials were responding to, and combined with the merger. We know from the reviews we did that all those changes undermined the UK’s effectiveness and the respect in which it was held overseas. So in a nutshell, it has been good, and there have been moments where we can see why the reputation and the impact of the UK’s development effort has needed to show resilience. We found that it has shown that resilience, in looking at the reviews from the last commission. Many of those reviews remained positive, notwithstanding all the changes. My predecessor reflected that that might, at least in part, have been due to the long history and the long foundation that was there, and raised questions about whether that would continue to be the case. I think we are very definitely entering a different era, where we are not able to say yet what this new approach that the Government are setting out will mean and what impact and value for money it will deliver. But we do think that there is a huge body of evidence from our reviews, this Committee and elsewhere from which the Government can learn to get that approach up and running and get it right.

Ekpe, you are eager to come in.

Only to agree.

Perhaps I can bring you in, because you have been in post for a while now. Have you seen changes across different Government Departments, rather than just the FCDO, in how effective they have or have not been on development, and is that a change that you think is continuing? I know that past ICAI reports have been very critical of other Departments. Have you seen them all rising to the level that particularly DFID, but FCDO, has been playing at?

I have been here for a while now, but over time, yes, to some extent, and we saw that across our reviews going up to probably around the time of the merger. At that time, more ODA money was going outside of DFID, as it was, and going into other Government Departments, so we did see some positive direction of travel then. Subsequently, with the exception of IDRC and money spent in this country by the Home Office, the amount of money spent outside the main ODA spend in the Department has contracted again. To a certain extent, what we have seen, with the exception of the Home Office, is just a reflection of the amount of ODA being spent outside going up and now going down again.

Are those Departments spending it well?

They were spending it better, but it is simply that the amount of ODA money—I think we will probably see this trend increasing even more with the spending review period we have coming up—they are now spending has reduced compared with, say, three or four years ago.

I want to take this in a slightly different direction—although I appreciate that last question—in terms of the way ICAI works with development partners and hears from them how things are going. Institutional memory is incredibly important, and that usually resides among the partners, rather than FCDO.

In our individual reviews, we will certainly seek the perspectives and views from a range of partners—so direct partners with the UK Government, whether they are national government partners or delivery partners, or indeed, we have an approach that was called citizen engagement, which we are in the process of reviewing, that sought views from people closest to the issues, with lived experience, who able to give their perspective particularly on what the impact of the UK’s approach would be. Is that what you mean?

Yes, and to what extent that is valued by development partners.

Our consultation of them?

Yes.

That is a good question. Sometimes we find that there is a bit of fatigue from partners. Particularly with the Sudan review, we were judicious about whose time we take and how we ensure that we are very careful and ethical about how we are using time, when people are in difficult situations and have other things that they need to focus on. We find that people do appreciate being asked. The important thing that we then do is to make sure that the findings return to those people so that they can be used and useful for them as well, and so they feel that they have been part of the process and not just that the information has been extracted from them.

As a result of Baroness Shafik’s development review, ICAI’s mandate has expanded. What will the expansion mandate mean in practice?

As you know, Baroness Chapman wrote to me at the end of the summer recess—the letter was copied to yourselves—clarifying that ICAI’s mandate would be broadened. What that means is that we now have a mandate to look at not just ODA spending, but all the levers for development impact at the Government’s disposal. That means looking at development partnerships, the use of expertise and policy influence on global issues. The first thing to say is that the broadened mandate will align with the Government’s new approach, where money and other things are of equal or greater importance. In terms of what that means for us, it is very welcome, and it is positive for our independence. It means that we are well aligned with the Government’s approach, and as we look at our work plan, we will now be able to ensure that our reviews reflect the fullness of that mandate. We have always looked at those things, in the sense that we have never just looked at money and spending in isolation, because we know that it does not work that way. So it is a bit of a shift in aperture—it means that we can now focus on elements that are not primarily financial and look more holistically at some of those things. On a practical level, we sometimes get a bit of pushback from some Departments when we request information, or questions about whether some of the things that we have been looking at have been in the scope of our mandate. To the extent that this is communicated and implemented well, it should also make it much easier to do a comprehensive job.

You said that that would be a positive impact in terms of your independence.

Yes.

We are expecting a statement on Monday about the expanded remit. Indeed, you and I had a meeting with an FCDO director last week, who confirmed that we would have a statement on Monday about your remit. There is a lot of talk about cuts. We know that there will be a 25% cut to staffing from FCDO. Can I put on record that I feel for the staff having that hanging over their heads? It seems they have had five years of uncertainty, so I am sorry that they are once again in that situation. Do you read anything into the fact that the promised statement about your expanded remit has not been forthcoming?

It is within the prerogative of the Minister to make that statement when she feels that it is the right time to do so. I very much welcome the clarity that we have had as ICAI. We are engaging constructively with the FCDO, in terms of the budget settlement for the coming year of the spending review. We are very conscious of the fiscal circumstances, and I guess that if there are changes to be made, they will need to be taken into consideration as well. But I am not sighted on any of the barriers to that or the timing around that being announced.

For me, it is like waving a big red flag, because we did not ask for the statement but they were very fulsome that it was coming. It is also curious—and I look to my second Clerk—in that we have been pushing this week for where the statement is, and we have had no correspondence on it. Please be assured that we will keep on pushing to try to get that clarity, not least because you need it. There are two follow-up questions from me. One relates to the expanded mandate. By the nature of your work, your inquiries are retrospective. Do you see a benefit to have a future-looking influence on the Government? You know what works and what does not. With changing Ministers, ICAI is one of the consistencies of best practice, or things to avoid. Are you ever consulted on that sort of thing? Do you feel that your expanded mandate will include that sort of help and guidance?

I think I mentioned this when I was talking about the success factor. Building the trust and confidence in ICAI’s work, and building the demand such that officials and the Minister are saying, “What does ICAI say about this?” and bringing us in, would be a real sign of success for me. I am in very constructive discussions with the FCDO at the moment about how we make sure that we lodge the recommendations that are at a corporate strategic level at the right moment, in the right systems, and with the right people in FCDO—I should have mentioned this earlier when I was talking about follow up. That is so we are not only looking review by review, but, where we are picking up things that are systemic or that relate to overarching themes of a focus, they filter up to those kinds of discussions. What was called the star chamber, and what is now I believe called the board for ODA and development delivery—forgive me, I think I have that name slightly wrong—

It has probably changed by now.

I have certainly been proposing and encouraging them to invite us to talk about ICAI’s work across Government Departments. When there are discussions tabled on specific issues where ICAI has a body of knowledge, we would be very keen to ensure that we are sharing that in those kinds of conversations. I am finding that there is an openness at the moment, and I hope to see it come to fruition, in terms of actual discussions.

That is very encouraging. An earlier question was about stakeholders, and I do not think you mentioned this sector. I might be wrong, but what is ICAI’s relationship with the humanitarian development sector and what do you think your role should be?

We have a good, constructive relationship with the sector. We certainly get positive feedback from them, in terms of how useful they find our reviews. We see that, and we see them sharing and commenting on them. We very much welcome that, because it is part of the important way that we can achieve reach when our resources are so limited. We also consult with the sector, as we do with officials, you and others, to shape our work plans—what are the issues and areas that they think we should take into account? We continue then to guard our independence very fiercely, and to put that in the mix, and to think where we can add value, but where we can make sure that we are doing something that only ICAI can do. We engage with them regularly and constructively, and we very much welcome their ability to reach a broader public than we could on our own.

To perhaps come full circle back to helping the Department triage its priorities, you referred to some conversations—presumably in private, you have been having many of those conversations. Is there a role for ICAI to more systematically take this triaging of different—again, I am not necessarily talking about the modality and the method—thematic priorities into its work, at a time when, clearly, that work needs to happen and it needs to be done less with a sledgehammer and more with a scalpel, wherever possible? Do you think that ICAI is well placed to play a more systematic role in that than you already do?

If I can check that I understood you correctly, do you mean that we should be advising the Government on where they should focus in relation to those priorities, as they are making those difficult decisions?

Yes, because it seems that is happening anyway, albeit that it is not necessarily systematised or forward-looking, or at least has not been forward-looking.

Let me say a couple of things. Because of the fact that we do look back—we review what the Government have done—we will definitely look at how the Government have approached the round of reductions and changes at a future point. I know that that is not your question, but that is the core of what we do—to look back and then provide lessons for moving forward. It is not ICAI’s role to advise the Government on what they should do. That is a nuance, but it is our role to put the evidence in the public domain, so that as they are deciding what they should do, they are well informed by our independent evidence. Those decisions are very clearly for Government to make, with our evidence supporting that process. I mention the first point because I am not sighted on the detail of how that triage is happening in the Government at the moment, and I would not necessarily expect to be, beyond the conversations I have where I am updated, and where officials are very candid and open with me about that. That would be a different kind of role from the one that we have a remit for at the moment. It would be more akin to the Office for Budget Responsibility. We can highlight the trade-offs, but we do not go as far as to say, “Well, if you do this, then—”. We would say that that is not as focused on poverty, or that it is not within our remit at the moment to go that far. We are very keen, as I am sure you have heard, to be able to support that decision-making process, and to be brought into it where Government feel that is going to be useful. We hope that they would find that useful.

Thank you. We really appreciate the work that you do. It definitely helps and builds on the work of this Committee. The skills and specialism that you bring is so valuable for the Committee and Parliament, and we really appreciate it. We are building a new relationship with you, Liz and Harold—the commissioners—and we are very excited to see the direction that you take ICAI in. Ekpe, you and your team have consistently been absolutely fantastic, and there have been some quite choppy waters for a few years, so thank you again for what you have all done. We look forward to working with you on the expanded mandate, and we will continue to advocate for what a vital, useful and precious resource you are to FCDO and this Government as a whole. Thank you very much for today’s session, and thank you for what you do.