Oral evidence: Sub-Committee on the Work of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact Reports- Child Mortality in Kenya; and Rapid Review of DFID’s Humanitarian Response to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, HC 405Wednesday 25 June 2014
Oral evidence, 25 June 2014.
Witnesses
Lisa Phillips, Head of DFID Kenya, Rachel Turner, Director, East & Central Africa, and Julia Watson, Senior Economic Adviser, Human Development Department, DFID, gave evidence.
Chair
Sorry for the slight delay. Would you like to introduce yourselves as our next Panel?
Rachel Turner
Thank you. I will start; I am Rachel Turner, the Director for East African in DFID, so I cover eight countries in the region including Kenya. I am based here in London.
Lisa Phillips
I am Lisa Phillips, the Head of the DFID office in Kenya.
Julia Watson
I am Julia Watson, a senior economic adviser working on health systems in DFID in London.
Chair
Lovely. Thank you very much for coming this morning. You accepted partially, I think, all three of ICAI’s recommendations in their recent report. Have you got any comments on the overall evaluation in terms of what it covered, the process and so on?
Rachel Turner
Yes, a couple of points to kick off with. We thought this report was very helpful both in Kenya and in headquarters. Personally I very much enjoyed this report, and it gave me a lot of good pointers for challenging my team as well. Overall we thought it was a thorough and balanced report. A couple of points: I think the timing was particularly helpful for us. We had just designed a new neonatal programme, so it was particularly helpful to have that coincidence of timing and the validation of that programme, but also some good ideas for the team to pick up and think about as they worked forward. The points that the report focused on in terms of how we interact with the Global Fund and the vertical funds absolutely reflect the kind of challenges that our teams everywhere are trying to work through and that are very important for us. In Kenya, we also lead all the donor partners in health, so these were wider issues that are being worked through by the whole international health community in Kenya. To that extent they were helpful. The point that I would make around that is that it can sometimes be a little bit easy to put health systems in a box that is slightly separate from commodities and the flow of commodities. The way commodities flow through a system is absolutely central to the robustness of that health system, so it is really important to see the commodity flow and the vertical piece as integral to building a robust health system. Maybe we can talk some more about that. To that end, the reforms that the Global Fund and GAVI have been making just about some of the simple things that they need to do in terms of visibility of financing, for example, are still fundamental to strengthening a health system, regardless of whether they are doing the technical advisory work. I was just going to say one thing about the challenges around working outwith a Government’s financial systems. The point for me, as a Director, that is very useful about this report is that, although this is the situation we are in in Kenya, as we think ahead about our evolving relationships with countries as they get better off, these are exactly the set of challenges that we need to think through. As we move, we hope as countries themselves take on financing burdens, we move away from a financing relationship to technical and expertise‑based relationships. These are the challenges we are grappling with, so it was very helpful also in that regard.
Jeremy Lefroy
Thank you very much, and good morning. There is obviously the question of direct financing of the Kenyan Government, which the UK does not do at the moment yet. At the same time, we are working with organisations such as the Global Fund or others who might be working directly with the Kenyan Government. Does that give DFID any particular problems in respect of governance?
Rachel Turner
The report raises the question of inconsistency.
Jeremy Lefroy
It may be inconsistent and that may be, if you like, ideologically a problem, but is that practically a problem?
Rachel Turner
Our decision has been taken in the round. I think you know our conditionality policy and our partnership principles policy; our decisions were those taken by an assessment in the round of the Government’s commitment to tackling fiduciary and anti-corruption concerns. It was not specifically about the health sector. The implications of that practically are that we expect, as members of the Global Fund and GAVI, for them to have strong fiduciary systems specifically focused on the health sector. In terms of coherence, we would not necessarily expect the Global Fund and GAVI to have those same broad partnership principles that we have in thinking about how we relate to partner Governments. They are there; they have a specific mandate that requires them to focus on the health sector.
Jeremy Lefroy
So that is not a problem, provided that you are content with the assessment and risk management of the Global Fund and other partners who are operating in a slightly different way.
Rachel Turner
It is not, but we definitely expect them to be all over the risks in the health sector, and continue to make those points both at the board level but also in‑country. We certainly would expect in Kenya that the fiduciary risks are ones that they are focused on. Particularly with the move to devolution and the introduction of new fiduciary and fiscal systems, it is very important that they stay alive to those risks in that sector.
Jeremy Lefroy
Thank you. A lot of the health care in Kenya is delivered outside the Government system. There is a tendency to describe anything outside the Government system as the private sector, which is of course misleading, because a lot of health care is delivered by the faith‑based sector or other sectors, which are not for profit but they are not part of the Government. What is DFID’s relationship with those particular sectors in health, which are very important in Kenya? How much work do you do through it?
Lisa Phillips
We certainly work through some of the NGOs and multilaterals to deliver services at the county level. For example, I visited several clinics that we have provided funds or bed nets to. Now those clinics are within communities. They are not strictly in a Government system, but they do charge. So that is the way that we interact with the non-Government side of things.
Rachel Turner
We have worked on the overall financing. We are advising the Government on Kenya’s overall approach to financing, including the way in which charges, for example, are handled by those parts of the system that are outwith the absolute core. We are absolutely at the heart of that difficult set of relationships between the core of the public sector offer and, as you say, this periphery of non‑Government that is still part of the system, and parts of the system that do charge and are involved in the financial relationship.
Jeremy Lefroy
As a matter of information, what sort of percentage of health care is delivered in Kenya outside the state system?
Rachel Turner
Do you know?
Lisa Phillips
No.
Rachel Turner
We will follow up on that.
Jeremy Lefroy
If you could, that would be very helpful. Given that DFID in other countries—for instance, Myanmar/Burma—does reasonably extensive work outside the specifically Government‑run sector, what learning is there between DFID offices on this particular subject?
Rachel Turner
I will ask Julia, who is in our central policy team, to answer.
Julia Watson
There are various mechanisms for health advisers, particularly, in different countries to learn from each other, ranging from weekly health adviser meetings, twice-weekly VCs across all of the Africa health advisers and annual events where we bring them together to share evidence. We share knowledge in various different ways. As Ms Elliott said earlier, that works well across different countries. Of course, health advisers move. It is purely coincidental, but the advisers who were in Zimbabwe and in Burma at the time of those reports are now both in Kenya. They bring that experience from one country to another. There is a series of mechanisms.
Jeremy Lefroy
Could I just raise, if I may, Chair, one question that I raised with the ICAI panel before? This is the question of the overall health funding within Kenya, where you have almost as much coming in through ODA, and a very substantial part of that comes in through USAID and is specifically directed at HIV/AIDS. I raise the question there of whether DFID is engaging, first, with the Government in terms of increasing its proportion of public expenditure on health, which is far below the Abuja Declaration, to which I imagine Kenya is a signatory, and, secondly, whether it is engaging with USAID on the impact of a considerable amount of money going into one particular, very important sector, HIV/AIDS, and the potential distortion that has on the health system. We heard from the previous Panel that there were potentially cases of commodities unused that were being funded out of that particular programme. That is money that could have been used in other programmes that were essential for other people.
Lisa Phillips
The Government has just produced its budget—in fact, a couple of weeks ago—but it is for the central allocation. What we have seen there is that the allocation, centrally, has actually remained about the same as last year. It is about 4% or so, which is obviously quite low. What we do not know yet, though, is the allocation at the county level, but we are very keen and we are going to follow up to make sure we know what the total is.
Jeremy Lefroy
Typically, what has the county level been in the past?
Lisa Phillips
Because devolution only took place last July, there is no historical data.
Rachel Turner
This is one of our fundamental concerns around devolution, which is why we are very closely involved with it. We said in the report or to the commissioners that we have seconded somebody to work specifically on devolution and some of the fiscal aspects of devolution with the World Bank, who have a significant programme on this issue. One of our concerns is that with devolution the resulting pattern of expenditure is not one that is so centrally directed. Of course, there are many benefits. It is a hot issue that is discussed internationally. There are many benefits, of course, to taking your fiscal decision‑making powers down to the local level. Whether health emerges as a priority from that is something that is still being worked through at county level. This is devolution; this is not decentralisation of health budgets. It might well be that other priorities emerge. Through our leadership of the donor group, we are absolutely closely involved in that conversation with Government. That is one of the issues right on the priority agenda of that international donor group: continuing to have that narrative. However, we agree with you that it is a concern. In the health system, with such a significant amount of money coming in, there is a wider concern about how Governments readjust their budgets to that. However, that is the reality of the politics of the budget process we are living in. Certainly, however, it is a priority to lobby and focus on it.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
I have one general and one specific question. We have had this problem in other places where we do not always get a full picture of what DFID is spending in a country, because you have bilateral programmes, central programmes and others. ICAI said that, in fact, DFID in Kenya was not aware of everything that DFID was doing in Kenya. We had a similar problem, having just come back from Liberia and Sierra Leone. The memo we got from DFID did not tell us about some of the things DFID were doing. We only found out when we were in‑country. How can we take a strategic view if we do not have all the information about what the whole of the Department is doing?
Rachel Turner
That is a good question, Sir Malcolm. The Secretary of State is very focused on this issue at the moment. We have a new strand of work looking at our management information systems, putting in new systems and requiring all our central partners to commit to investing in that system so that we have a better knowledge. Sectorally, we have a pretty good idea of the East Africa region that I cover. We get occasional pockets where we are unaware of a programme being run in‑country. The issue for me that is really important is that the central funds themselves have decision‑making rules that make sense. It is absolutely important that the central funds themselves are making allocative decisions about where to work in robust and rigorous ways. At the centre, we are engaging a lot more now in what those decision‑making rules are. Personally, I am slightly less worried about whether Lisa knows about a research project in Kenya; I am more worried about making sure that the decision to do a research project in Kenya was absolutely the right decision and the right place to make it. That is part of the answer.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
We are not complaining that there are different programmes and some are run from London and some are run in‑country. We understand there might be reasons for that. However, there are two things. One is the simple political statement: surely we should be telling the people and the Government of Kenya the maximum amount we are engaging in. We found that in Sierra Leone and Liberia. We do not even know what the total figure is, but it is about twice what the bilateral programme says it is, when you look at what we are doing. That is first political point: surely we should have everything collated.
Rachel Turner
We absolutely agree.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
The second point is—you have partly answered it—that surely you have to be sure that your country director is aware of anything to ensure anything they are planning to do is consistent with it or complementary to it. If they do not know, there is a danger that will not happen.
Rachel Turner
Yes, absolutely—and specifically in the high‑profile sectors. There are some sectors—research, for example—where maybe that is less of an issue, and maybe you need a coherent approach to research. However, fundamentally, having “no surprises” is really important for the officers in‑country.
Lisa Phillips
What we do know is that, for Kenya, we are one of the biggest recipients of the other‑than‑DFID Kenya programmes, i.e. the centrally funded programmes. I would say we have pretty good visibility now of what they all are. There would be pockets, I agree, but, for example, for our new maternal and newborn health programme, which covers a number of counties, we were asked about a proposal to do something similar by another bit of DFID. We were able to say, “Do not cover these counties. This is the approach. Cover this county and we will keep an eye on it from our end.”
Sir Malcolm Bruce
The other thing is the more specific one, which you will have heard before. The concentration on outcomes and measurable effects, it is suggested, occasionally means that you do not necessarily get the best overall impact. It is much easier to say, “We have delivered so many bed nets,” or, “We have achieved so much,” but you do not necessarily look at what is making the biggest impact on the people who are benefiting from the service. Do you need to refine that? In a sense, it is a criticism you always knew you were going to get right from the beginning. This sort of output has been going now for four years. Are you in a better position or should you be in a better position to refine that so that it is not just about numbers but about quality?
Rachel Turner
There are two points there. One is the quality point and one is the process and the systems point. Both the numbers and the quality are really about the end result. We feel very clear that the focus on the end result and end impact remains the right one. We were moving from a world in which we had a focus on institutional strengthening and systems with metrics that measured some of those issues or metrics that were just input based. However, the focus on, “What is the end impact on communities?” is the right one. We do agree there is more work to be done on the quality piece as well as the actual access piece. That is something that, particularly in the health sector, and also in primary education now, across the portfolio we have some very good work on.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
You mentioned earlier on that you have in fact introduced a neonatal programme, because the report obviously highlighted the fact that this is a growing problem. Was it fortuitous that you had already addressed this or was the interaction of the programme part of it?
Rachel Turner
No, they had been working on it for a year or so.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
In other words, it was an emerging issue that you were addressing.
Rachel Turner
Yes.
Lisa Phillips
Yes. Newborn health, as the ICAI team said, has been a neglected area across Kenya, certainly. It was a response to that.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
Is this programme in place or is it in the process of—
Lisa Phillips
It has just started. It will provide birth attendants at births.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
It is that sort of traditional support.
Lisa Phillips
Yes.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
Just to go back to quality and quantity, the danger, people say, is that you go for low-hanging fruit or the easy statistics. However, if the objective is strengthening the system, you need to have several different indicators, do you not? I wonder to what extent you ask the beneficiaries about what they are expecting from the system and the extent to which you can respond to it. In other words, whether it is driven by the needs expressed by the patients and the public as opposed to an externally determined set of targets.
Rachel Turner
On the beneficiary point, the report was very helpful in focusing both on beneficiary involvement in design as well as beneficiary monitoring and the ex post views from beneficiaries. In Kenya, I am confident that the team are in a very good place in terms of involving beneficiaries in our annual reviews and our ongoing monitoring. The challenge on design was a well taken one that we are reflecting on and are beginning to build more centrally. DFID are getting much clearer guidance and a lot more support now from central teams on involving beneficiaries in design. The other thing in Kenya is that we have been working with the Government on their own systems for listening to patients. That has to be the right way to go: we are creating those sustainable feedback loops between beneficiaries that the Government systems themselves are listening and responding to. That remains our end objective: to insert a beneficiary feedback loop right into the heart of the Government system. We have to be a little bit careful of sucking that out ourselves and not building the Government’s approach.
Fiona O'Donnell
Can I ask, Lisa, about how then beneficiaries have been involved in the design of maternity services? How have you done that?
Lisa Phillips
During the design, there were several visits out to the areas where the programme will work. We talked not only to the people who were there but to people in the community that perhaps were not accessing services. This is something the ICAI team picked up.
Fiona O'Donnell
If I could follow up on Jeremy’s questions about the Global Fund, the question is in two parts. The first part is that DFID does not fund the Kenyan Government directly. Is there not an inconsistency in giving money to the Global Fund, which does? Secondly, ICAI said in its report that there is still a risk of fraud. You spoke about all the work that has been going on. Are you satisfied? How are you keeping the pace of reform with the Global Fund? How are you having oversight to make sure fraud is not occurring in terms of the Global Fund?
Rachel Turner
On the first point about whether there is any inconsistency, I tried to answer that before. Our partnership principles assessments are these broad assessments where we look at Governments’ commitment overall. We do not necessarily specifically look sector by sector, but we look at Governments’ overall commitment. In Kenya, our assessment remains that the overall commitment to anti-corruption measures and to fiduciary systems, stemming back from a large fraud that happened a few years ago, is not yet sufficient for us, as DFID, to be putting money through Government systems. That is a broad assessment. It is not fed specifically by an assessment of the health sector. That goes to the way DFID has set up these partnership principles. You have seen our policies on conditionality and how they work. We might have a fraud in the port or in the education sector, for example, which would still lead us to say, broadly, we are not willing to have that kind of relationship with the Government. The Global Fund and GAVI have different partnership principles. Their partnership principles are in the health sector and what they are looking for is genuine commitment and robust applications of strategies and policies in those sectors. We do require and expect the global funds to have strong fiduciary standards and to be scrutinising the specific health sector risks, following the money in the health sector and following the commodities. Of course, a lot of what they deliver is commodity rather than financial. That is important. There are different risks.
Fiona O'Donnell
I am conscious of time. What is DFID doing to ensure there is something in it in terms of delays in spending money and fraud?
Rachel Turner
The work we have been doing with GAVI and the Global Fund over the last few years has been to strengthen their central organs of control. There has been a significant piece of work with the Inspector General in the Global Fund. For example, we have now required the Global Fund to put their audits on the website in a much timelier manner than they had been before. We are tackling that centrally and that is absolutely right. They have to be centrally accountable for those fiduciary standards. I am sorry that was a long answer.
Fiona O'Donnell
That is all right.
Chair
I am sorry we have so little time. The final question is from Fiona Bruce.
Fiona Bruce
This is, again, about the devolution of our systems through to country level. Could you give us an update on that, including anything you have not already mentioned? Also, what steps are you taking to address the risk to your track record of supporting child health care that this change might pose?
Lisa Phillips
The update on devolution is that it is still challenging. We are helping by providing funding for training of people at the county level, i.e. county officials but also parliamentary‑type training. We are very much in touch with the counties that we focus on. We track through how the whole process is going. Obviously, it does not just affect the health programmes.
Chair
Thank you very much indeed, Lisa Phillips, Rachel Turner and Julia Watson, for attending our Panel this morning. That was extremely helpful and interesting. May we have our next Panel, please? Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses
George Turkington, Head of Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department (CHASE), and Dylan Winder, Head of Humanitarian Response, CHASE, DFID, gave evidence.
Chair
Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you very much for your patience and thank you for attending this morning. Could you kindly introduce yourselves, please?
George Turkington
My name is George Turkington. I am the Deputy Director in DFID responsible for the Conflict, Humanitarian and Security Department, CHASE.
Dylan Winder
My name is Dylan Winder. I am Head of Humanitarian Response in CHASE and I oversaw most of the Philippines response.
Chair
Thank you very much for being here. What do you think are the lessons from the Philippines for DFID’s response to other humanitarian crises?
George Turkington
There are a number of lessons. One of the lessons is that once we have the transformative agenda with the UN and there is progress being made with that, clearly we need to keep working with the UN to continue to improve its performance. Whilst DFID responded quickly to this response, there are lessons to be learned about how we make sure that we get the right number of people in place quickly enough to manage the response. The thing that was really strongly underlined for me was that we place a high value on continuous learning. That stood us well in the Philippines and the report really emphasised the benefit of that and the need for us to continue to prioritise that.
Chair
Thank you for that, George. Can you tell us about any key innovations in this response that actually helped to make it such a success? You made a direct £5 million contribution to kick‑start the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal. Is this something you would do again in another setting?
George Turkington
This goes back to the key lessons that we learned from the HERR process, which were very valuable. The lessons we learned from the HERR basically were implemented very quickly. The Rapid Response Facility is an important part of our response. The fact that we were able to initiate that within 24 hours was critically important. It allowed NGOs to get on and start planning their response to the emergency. We continue to use that facility. Dylan, you may wish to add something.
Dylan Winder
I would add something about the Disasters Emergency Committee funding. We felt that—and we were assured by the DEC themselves—it had played a stimulating role in attracting other funding, particularly because of the sort of quality assurance of having that UK Government stamp on it. The DEC are at the moment doing a public perception survey, which hopefully will have some research that will provide some more evidence to that and that will help us make decisions in the future. However, we need to do that on a case‑by‑case basis.
Chair
In the first six weeks, DFID managed to bring more non‑food items into the Philippines than the United Nations itself. I wonder whether you were successful in getting food aid as well as non‑food items into the country, too.
George Turkington
We normally would not concentrate on food aid, because there are specialised agencies like the World Food Programme within the UN system who would focus on that. We are very proud of the fact that we managed to mobilise so many NFIs, non‑food items, very quickly for this response. That is partly because we do keep strategic reserves both in Dubai and the UK. It is also because we have good commercial links with suppliers of air transport, for example. However, it was critically because in this response—this is one of the things we would want to build on—the cross‑Whitehall response was really important. We had a seamless integrated operation with the Ministry of Defence. Their assets were basically a critical enabler for us in making sure we had the size of response to the NFI situation that we had. That was very swift and very good.
Dylan Winder
Can I perhaps add something on the food issue as well? The Filipinos themselves are very resilient. They recovered very quickly from the shock—there is a lot of long‑term support needed still—and markets started functioning. A lot of our funding interventions went through cash programming, which is often much more appropriate in that kind of environment.
Jeremy Lefroy
The ICAI report says that DFID responded well to the Humanitarian Emergency Response Review of 2011. I wondered if you could flesh out a little bit how DFID had, since 2011, incorporated the recommendations into its planning.
George Turkington
Yes. I will actually turn to Dylan on that, because he has been involved for some time in the Department working on that set of issues.
Dylan Winder
First of all, it was a fundamental change for us. It really enabled us to pre‑plan much more effectively; we built our staff capacity; we also introduced a Rapid Response Facility, which allowed us to fund within the critical 72‑hour window; we built our relationships with other Government Departments, including the MOD; we put in place a global risk register, which enables us to highlight around the world in advance where the risks are likely to be so we are better able to monitor. It also helped us focus much more on the resilience agenda, i.e. to link the whole humanitarian piece with development and look at that longer term planning. A lot of those innovations came from the HERR and, also, links to the private sector. A lot of the stockpile stuff we have done has been working with businesses, looking at what innovation is out there: for example, sending out solar fridges to help cold‑chain stocking. There are a great number of things that have happened over the last three years that have really come together in this response.
Jeremy Lefroy
I would imagine you have already begun your learning from the Philippines for the future. Are there any specific things you can mention there?
Dylan Winder
Yes, absolutely. The ICAI review itself was really fundamental to that learning. We learnt that doing a very quick, rapid review is really important. Certainly, there were some issues for us. There was an endorsement of the fact we had sent out a team before the typhoon had hit, but we maybe should have sent a slightly bigger team, particularly given our lead role in influencing the UN. There were also issues around making sure we embed the resilience from the beginning. We did look at livelihoods issues, shelter issues and stuff for the longer term. The way in which we worked with our regional department to dovetail the humanitarian with the political from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and then the longer term reconstruction was a really good lesson. Finally, there was the UN co-ordination bit. It was the first Level 3 that the UN had run, which is their highest level of emergency. We have been really learning how that went, how we can engage in that and how we can then use that knowledge to influence the UN to perform better.
George Turkington
To add one other thing to that, what was quite fortuitous, in a way, was the TRIPLEX training that we did in the months before. We took a bunch of people from across DFID and, with some other Whitehall partners, ran through drills on what would happen in an emergency and all the rest of it. Dylan led that process. It really was very insightful in terms of how we could continue to improve. The value of that was really underlined, certainly, for me. That is something we will continue to do.
Jeremy Lefroy
ICAI were slightly less positive about the UN’s emergency co-ordination. I wonder why there has not been so much progress since the HERR in the UN’s response. Have they taken any notice of what DFID has been doing? How are you working with them to ensure that that response can perhaps be accelerated a little?
George Turkington
It would be unfair to say that there was no or little progress in the UN system on the reform agenda. There has been progress and some valuable progress. For example, they have initiated an L3 response for disasters like the Philippines. The Philippines was the first one, basically, that was initiated under the L3 response mechanism. It does mean that the UN does pay attention to surge capacity, getting good people on the ground quickly and looking at how they can reinforce the cluster system across the range of needs. There is progress being made. We have to recognise that, given the number of ongoing emergencies at the moment that the UN has to deal with, including Syria, the system is stretched. However, that reform process continues to make reasonable progress. We still have a way to go on some of those critical things: getting good quality people on the ground quickly; making sure there is an appropriate surge; making sure that the leader of the cluster systems—for example, on health, water and sanitation—are really properly plugged into and plan with Government. We continue to give that a strong focus in DFID. In fact, we will host the UN with the top 10 donor directors in London in July. Looking at this transformative agenda and the progress that has been made will be a strong feature of that discussion. The Philippines will focus quite heavily—as will Sudan and one other country.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
Just following up on that, it is good to hear that the UN has improved. If you look at the HERR, it seems that, what was directed at DFID, DFID as a single agency has been able to respond to by definition; a UK review telling the United Nations what to do is going to have more limited appeal, but it is good to hear that there has been some progress. David Miliband has come up with a list of goals, which, as he puts it, would tackle fatigue and fragmentation within the community. Have you got a view about those? Is that a helpful contribution?
George Turkington
It is a helpful contribution. Médecins Sans Frontières have just published a report that continues to identify some of the challenges the UN system faces in terms of surge capacity, quality of staff and so on. Yes, there is a real, active debate in the humanitarian system about how we can build and continue to strengthen systems so that they are appropriate to 21st‑century needs. UN reform is a difficult process and we have to be realistic about it. However, we do want to make sure we continue to learn those lessons and we continue to think about the agenda beyond the transformative agenda to tackle issues like building better preparedness, making sure that countries become resilient and that countries that are able to can manage those situations themselves. It is possible to do that. If you look at the fantastic work that has been done in Bangladesh over a couple of decades in terms of flood‑preparedness, flood resistance and mortality rates, it does show you that this can be done. India was affected by typhoon in autumn last year and the mortality rate had come down since the last typhoon in the same region.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
You were in Pakistan. The point that Paddy Ashdown made was that those places that had had disasters were better equipped at coping with them. The real trick is to try to ensure that people who have not had disasters nevertheless get the benefit of the learning of those places that have, although maybe it is always going to be slightly different if it is the first time you have to deal with it—the Philippines being a case in point, where it is not the first time they have had to deal with it.
George Turkington
That is an excellent point, Sir Malcolm. The key point there is promoting learning across countries that basically have built their capacity to those countries that have the potential to do it but have not quite achieved that yet. There was capacity in the Philippines. They were used to having this type of event. In fact, before the typhoon they had an earthquake to deal with, another typhoon to deal with and they had conflict in part of the islands. Typhoon Haiyan was basically such a significant event—the strongest winds ever to hit land—the systems were completely overrun and overwhelmed. That is when the international community does need to step in and do what we do.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
ICAI also picked up—this is a point that has been made a number of times—that the UN agencies do not seem to prioritise women and girls early enough in the process. They said it was disappointing. To what extent can DFID help do that? The other suggestion is DFID, by monitoring what is going on with other agencies, can actually help co-ordination—assuming that the agencies appreciate being monitored by DFID. How much can we improve the co-ordination and the activity of the international agencies by our leadership?
George Turkington
Again, that is a really critical issue. The system at the moment basically waits to find evidence that bad things are happening to women and girls. We know from history that bad things will be happening, so we need to get on and deal with that as a matter of priority and urgency from the outset. At the highest levels—the Secretary of State—DFID is strongly committed to this agenda. In fact, just before the Philippines, she hosted the Call to Action in London for action on violence against women and girls in humanitarian contexts. We had all the top donors there, the top UN agencies. They have made commitments to sign up to the call to action, and that allowed the Secretary of State, basically, to speak to the UN system immediately about the Philippines and prioritise that situation. Recently, we have had the Foreign Secretary hosting the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative in London.
Sir Malcolm Bruce
I accept all of that; we accept all of that. The problem very often is that we still do find—whether it is a camp or some kind of refugee or emergency situation—that there are not lit, safe toilets; there are not safe places for women and girls to go. Time after time, however, we are told that should be a high priority built into the system right at the start of the crisis. Yet it appears it still does not happen—or it does not happen quickly enough.
George Turkington
That is right: there is still work to be done there. It is a priority for us. We prioritised this in the Philippines. We allocated £3 million of the response to deal with that set of issues. DFID in its logistic stocks will be increasing the amount of stock that we level to cover an increase from 38,000 beneficiaries to 75,000. An absolute priority for us is to look at those stocks to make sure that they are gender‑appropriate and they do cater for the needs of women in those situations. That is a very practical measure that DFID is doing, but there is more work to be done across the international system to make sure that this issue is absolutely recognised and prioritised. As I say, we are working very closely with a number of other donor partners—in particular, the US. In respect of the Call to Action that we held in London, we have now passed the baton to the US, who will hold a similar event in the margins of the UN General Assembly in September. We have strong commitment to the Call to Action and the need to do something about this. That event will focus on accountability mechanisms and how the system is going to hold itself accountable for actually making progress on this agenda. It is something that really is a top priority. I am not going to pretend that it is perfect yet; it is not. However, the issue is definitely recognised and it is a top priority for us.
Fiona Bruce
I wondered how you would assess the reliability of different donor partners, UN NGOs and other donors, bearing in mind they will be so critical to enable you to sustain your support in the Philippines without an in‑country office. How are you approaching that?
George Turkington
The first point I would make there is, of course, that DFID is not without representation—through the Ambassador in the Philippines. His sound counsel and advice throughout this response was really important. The second thing I would say is that we did deploy quickly. We had three people on the ground very quickly. That team soon increased to 16 people within the first week. They are our eyes and ears on the ground. The third thing I would say is that this is one of the benefits of the RRF, the Rapid Response Facility. We do pre‑qualify the NGOs under the RRF. We have discussions with those NGOs about their capabilities and capacity. We look at their financial management systems and so on and so forth. The fourth thing I would say is that we are basically working with partners under the RRF that we trust, but also partners in the UN system that we trust. We are very careful to make sure that the UN has capacity on the ground with its local partners—and that those are reliable—to make sure the assistance we provide, via NGOs and the UN, is getting to people who need it most and making an impact. There is a complex layer of capacity that we have to deal with in respect of that issue.
Dylan Winder
Perhaps I could add, very briefly, that any longer term support that we provide would be through a multi‑donor trust fund with the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank. Obviously, we are important shareholders of those, so we have a governance process with those organisations anyway. We do have a UK executive board member sitting in Manila, who is very aware of these issues and is looking at that within the Asian Development Bank.
Fiona Bruce
Secondly, ICAI made the point that, given the increase in the frequency of extreme weather events, you are likely to find these situations where you have no in‑country office. How are you preparing for this more widely?
Dylan Winder
One of the key issues is the risk register that we have, which includes natural and conflict hazards. We now have a secondee in my team who is from the Met Office, who is already looking at the El Niño effect this year. We have developed our deployability capacity so that we are able to much more effectively put people on the ground and run our own platform. Of course, the relationships we have with the embassies and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office—particularly the Crisis Management Department in the FCO—is now much stronger than it used to be. We would obviously use those platforms as a kind of first route.
Chair
Do you have any further comments?
George Turkington
It is worth me saying at the end that—because you started with lessons—an important lesson for us was to make sure we do a light-touch review very quickly into a response. We have certainly taken that on board, because we are currently doing that for the Iraq work that we are currently involved in. This was a really critical lesson that we learned from the ICAI review. This ICAI review was a really positive experience for us. It was timely and the way their team interacted with my team, who were still under pressure in the midst of this response, was really good. It was very constructive. As I say, we learnt two or three really important lessons that we will take forward.
Chair
Thank you for that. The Chief Commissioner is listening very carefully at the back of the room.
George Turkington
I am sure he is.
Chair
George Turkington and Dylan Winder, thank you very much indeed for your evidence this morning. It was extremely helpful. That concludes the business of this ICAI Sub‑Committee. Thank you for your attendance, ladies and gentlemen. Oral evidence: The Work of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, HC 405 21