Speeches by Cooper.

“Countries, or the country directors, have known for some time that this was the direction of travel.”

“We have been given a three-year allocation. In terms of the FCDO’s ODA funding, that allocation is provided for us. That is why we have done the three-year allocations. I think there have been times in the past where effectively the FCDO’s funding fluctuated depending on what was going on in other Government Department…”

“The UK’s soft power has been a consideration throughout all of this. Development is a crucial part of our foreign policy as well as being a purpose in itself. As you will know, the whole purpose behind the overseas development is around the moral purpose, around UK values, but it is also in the UK national interest. It…”

“Thank you very much, Chair, for having us, and thank you to the Committee as well. We have here Baroness Chapman, our Development Minister, from whom I know you will have heard before, Nick Dyer, who is our Second Permanent Under-Secretary and Melinda Bohannon, who is the Director-General who covers development as well…”

“Part of what we have been doing with BII has been building up its capital so that it can then sustainably invest and continue to do so. Nick or Melinda can confirm the figures, but I think we are talking about it continuing to invest very much at current levels going forward, although it will need less new FCDO capital…”

“We have done a partial review in the process of making these decisions. We have had to do an assessment of which organisations have the biggest impact and also which we can influence by contributing where we have the greatest influence. I think that probably some of these further questions we will also be assessing as …”

“Thank you very much.”

“May I add one thing about the way the shifts apply to some things? If you take the fragile and conflict-affected states, somewhere like Sudan, for example, when you cannot work with a Government in the same way because of the scale and nature of the conflict, in a country like that you might be working directly with lo…”

“No. It was just about the withdrawing from the traditional bilateral funding, the donations funding, because there are areas for BII funding and that also includes some of the climate investment, particularly some of the climate finance as well, which will also continue.”

“There is a mix of issues here. Some of it is that we are still prioritising the fragile and conflict-affected states for funding and continuing to fund support for refugees in country or in the region as well, which is hugely important. I suppose this goes back to the point I was making about us better linking issues a…”

“Yes.”

“I would say it has to be development combined with policy interventions. I think development on its own will not help if you have particular local conflicts that erupt, different problems with corruption or things that can provoke, state to state rivalries and conflicts, and so on. It has to be an interaction between t…”

“Different bits of the ISF funding are being picked up by different Departments and by different budgets. Just say again which area of the ISF you are interested in.”

“I am going to turn to Nick and Melinda on this one because different bits of the ISF are being funded in different places.”

“The reason I am going to pass this to Nick is because I think the detail of the staffing decisions within the FCDO needs ultimately to be done by the Permanent Secretaries. In terms of the overview we maintain on it, we are clear that we need to maintain skills, and we need to make sure that have proper equalities impa…”

“We had to make that difficult decision initially and it is affecting the funding for the next three years, but we have deliberately set out three years of funding and three-year agreements that allow people to plan, and that is now clear and announced. Don’t get me wrong. I still think we need to go further on defence …”

“We will do that as swiftly as possible. Ultimately, they of course will be published as part of the annual report. We want to do it significantly before that.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“It would be very easy, faced with the kinds of reductions we have had to make, and the difficult decision to increase defence spending—would be simply to step back. That decision on defence was taken over a year ago, and we then had to implement it and still put together the best possible programme going forward. It wo…”

“I will pass to Nick on the detail of that.”