Oral evidence: Sub-Committee on the Work of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact’s Report: DFID’s Approach to Anti-Corruption and its Impact on the Poor, HC 864Wednesday 10 December 2014
Oral evidence, 10 December 2014.
Witnesses
Richard Calvert, Director General, Finance and Corporate Performance, DFID, Liz Ditchburn, Director, Policy and Global Issues, Department for International Development, and Phil Mason, Senior Anti‑Corruption Adviser, gave evidence.
Chair
Good morning. Welcome. Again, we know who you are but, for the record, we would be grateful if you could introduce yourselves.
Richard Calvert
I am Richard Calvert, Director General for Finance and Corporate Performance.
Liz Ditchburn
Liz Ditchburn, Policy Director for DFID.
Phil Mason
Phil Mason, Senior Anti‑Corruption Adviser.
Chair
Obviously you were sitting in on the previous evidence session, so you know what was being addressed. Perhaps I could just ask you what your general reaction is. I think it would be fair to say that, of all the ICAI reports, this is probably one of the ones that would cause you the greatest reaction and difficulty. Perhaps I could just ask you first of all how you have reacted to it. What do you feel about the impact of it?
Richard Calvert
The first thing to say is corruption is a huge challenge for all of us, and a huge brake on progress in reducing poverty, so the issue is an incredibly important one. It is also an incredibly complex one. In some of the reaction to the report, we have seen that it is difficult to dip into this area without provoking some strong reactions. In the kind of study that ICAI has undertaken, it is impossible to do a comprehensive analysis, either of the whole of DFID’s work in this area or indeed of the whole landscape. I do not think that ICAI would pretend that the report has attempted to do that. From our perspective, what it has done is provided us with a challenge on how we are approaching this area. Corruption has been a huge issue for us for many years, and tackling corruption at all levels has been a big issue for us. For us, the report targets some particular areas. From our perspective, we would probably say there is a broader picture of DFID activity on anti‑corruption that we would highlight. The report perhaps underplays some of the work we do internationally, some of the work we do in seeking to tackle the root causes of corruption and some of the work we do in the UK to tackle corruption. Obviously we have understood this morning from the evidence that, from ICAI’s perspective, a lot of that work is implicitly endorsed. What their report is doing is challenging us to do more in specific areas. That is something that we broadly accept. There is more to do in this area. There are also aspects of the report that certainly confirm things we would understand ourselves. It is clear that the strength of the evidence base around tackling corruption is not as strong as it should be. That is not a DFID‑specific issue; it is an issue in the international community and all donors would recognise that. It is also fair to say that we would accept that tackling corruption is not, even within HMG, just a DFID issue; it is an issue for the Government as a whole. We have been looking to work in a more cross‑Government way, both in partner countries and here in the UK. The Government has been strengthening its co‑ordination and joined‑up nature of its activities in tackling corruption. There are some really important and useful challenges in the report. From our perspective, there is much that we do in this area that the report does not particularly address. The fact that we have partially accepted the recommendations shows that, across all the areas addressed by the report, we believe there are some important points and some things that we should respond to seriously. Equally, there are some areas where we feel the analysis probably does not give us a simple straightforward menu for action in the way that perhaps it might.
Chair
I do not know whether this is a fair question, but do you accept that, where you are working with local agencies, whether it is local government agencies or public agencies, in countries where this kind of whether corruption, lack of transparency or petty bribery is endemic, maybe you do not do enough, when you are running those programmes, to build into it some requirement? You could almost be saying to your partners, “This has to be different, if we are your partner, than would be the norm”. You cannot be everywhere if you are operating in a country like Nigeria. That is the implication, it seems to me, from ICAI: that you need to build into your support mechanisms both commitments from your partners and some kind of follow‑through, that says it is time we began to get through to people that you do not have to pay a bribe. Jeremy Lefroy’s point is that the people who are actually delivering the programme need to get paid on time.
Richard Calvert
We would accept that that is incredibly important, but we would not accept that that is new for us. Building in strong systems around accountability and ensuring that funds get through to where they are needed is a core part of our business and should be a core part of our business across all of our service delivery. I will perhaps let my colleagues say a little bit more about that. What we would not accept is the implication that our focus on tackling institutional corruption and tackling corruption at an international level has meant that we do not think about corruption and the impact of corruption at a local level. The ICAI work does, to some extent, acknowledge that, but we would say that, actually, it should be a core part of our service delivery work.
Liz Ditchburn
If I can add and maybe complement on the initial question as to our reaction, one of my reflections, having thought a lot about this over the last few months, is that we think we are working in three ways and that all of those ways are inter‑dependent and need to add up to a coherent whole. That includes the work that we do in countries, it includes the work that we do here in the UK, and it includes the work that we do internationally. We conceive of that as an integrated package. There are interdependencies within that. We need to take that as a whole. Particularly because the report is interested in the balance and the ways in which we do more of one thing or more of another, that whole is also very important. It feels to us, in terms of responding to the report, that the report took a rather different starting point, which is to say that we are interested in the impact on the poor, so let us look at what is happening in countries. I suppose we would say that the totality of our work, in countries, the UK and internationally, we have to look at all of that through the lens of how it impacts on the poor. The legitimate challenge and the reflection that we, as an organisation, are going through and thinking about is whether we can show better how all of those activities do indeed impact on the poor. We know some things about how they might impact, but the report challenges us to do even more to follow that through. For example, if we are talking about recovered stolen assets, we need to follow through and we will be following through where those resources go. Do they go back to the countries? Are they used in ways that impact on the poor? We would say that all of those things can and should impact on the poor. That is the lens that we put to everything that we do; it is not just about what we do within country. There is a sort of difference of world view almost that is implicit in the report. We absolutely agree that everything that we do needs to impact on the poor. You know our poverty reduction mandate; everything that we are doing is applied in that way. The report is challenging us to think about that again to make sure that we are doing the right things that can impact on the poor. What we disagree on is what the best way of achieving that is.
Fiona O'Donnell
This is the question I want to ask about, Liz. You identify the approach that ICAI took in terms of impact on the poor, but why is corruption, as experienced by the poor, not discussed in your theory of change? If we have this integrated approach, why is that not part of it?
Liz Ditchburn
It is in our theory of change. Our theory of change talks about three things that we need to do to reduce corruption. One is to reduce the opportunities for corruption. That takes us, in terms of the evidence that we see, to a lot of work around systems strengthening. For example, all of the work that has been described in the report and from DFID’s perspective on public financial management, on the kind of sector‑specific opportunities to strengthen systems, is one set of things around opportunities. Incentives, changing the incentives, so looking at the kind of scrutiny that we can apply through transparency, is also a set of actions that we take, and then sanctions. That is law enforcement, prosecution and pursuit, all the way through to recovery and return of assets.
Fiona O'Donnell
I get the triangular approach. I am just still not seeing where this will impact on the poor as part of that framework.
Liz Ditchburn
All of those things apply to it as experienced by individuals as well. That way of thinking about the world, in terms of opportunities, incentives and sanctions, applies.
Fiona O'Donnell
It is that trickle‑down hope that things will benefit the poor, rather than actually having that at the core of your framework.
Liz Ditchburn
No. For example, in something like service delivery in a health programme or an education programme, it is absolutely integral to that. Giving people information about school budgets enables them to hold people to account to identify where procurement has paid more for textbooks than it should do. That is working on opportunities and incentives, and it is directly impacting people in terms of their experience of that school. Maybe Phil might want to say more about how the theory of change absolutely comes down to the impact on the poor.
Fiona O'Donnell
I am just conscious that we have a lot of questions and there is another part to this, which maybe, Phil, you might want to come in on. You touched on this as well, Liz: the challenges of actually measuring the impact on the poor. Are there any ways in which you feel that DFID can improve the way that it measures that, so that you have the evidence, so that we do not get another ICAI report like this?
Phil Mason
Measurement is an extremely difficult aspect of corruption, given the secrecy in which corruption happens. It is always going to be problematic. It is not like health status, where you can measure the health status of someone. All donors would recognise that. One of the areas that we have been trying to think about is trying to get some statistics that are actually what you might call directionally unambiguous. In other words, when the number goes up, you know that that actually is a positive trend. One of the problems we have with measurement is that, if you are looking at, for example, the number of prosecutions an anti‑corruption commission has done, does a bigger number, if it doubles the number of prosecutions, mean it is actually getting twice as good at tackling corruption or is it just that more corruption has been surfaced? Trying to find a way in which you can find a number that really gets to the heart of whether you are improving on the baseline or not is our problem. The U4 and ourselves did do an evidence map in the paper that attempted to try to show what the evidence base looks like, and it is patchy, because context matters. Every single context changes the way in which some of the interventions will work or be more successful, so it is a problem, but we are on to it possibly more than many other donors are.
Fiona O'Donnell
You would have heard me asking ICAI about their 2011 report. I just wondered from your side why DFID is focusing more on fraud rather than corruption. Why is there not a balance?
Richard Calvert
I do not think we would say that we are focusing more on counter‑fraud than corruption. The 2011 report was a really important challenge to the way we thought about fraud in the organisation. We have seen a real step change in the way the organisation has thought about protecting its funds, the work we have done on local strategies, on building a much more systematic approach to due diligence and strengthening our counter‑fraud capacity. We have seen a real step change since 2011. Our work on anti‑corruption has actually been an important part of the Department’s work for many years. The 2011 ICAI report was not so much a challenge around that area of our work. We have seen the anti‑corruption work scale up over the last few years, as with many other things, but the difference is on counter‑fraud work we had a real challenge to our approach in 2011, which we responded very significantly to. The anti‑corruption work has been more of a steady expansion.
Phil Mason
We had for example, by 2006, introduced the UK‑funded police units, which we saw as an integral part, as Liz said, of the kind of work that the UK has to do here to protect poor people in developing countries, when the money gets stolen from their country and ends up in the UK. That was early work that was quite innovative.
Fiona O'Donnell
Are you talking to the Treasury about the sharing of tax information? Other countries have announced pilots; we have not done that yet. How is that work progressing?
Phil Mason
It is certainly progressing. We are funding quite a lot of the OECD’s collective global work on all of this. The beneficiary ownership and the automatic tax information exchange agreements are exactly the kinds of areas that DFID is promoting as part of the settlement, as it were.
Fiona O'Donnell
Is there a pilot planned?
Phil Mason
I do not know the details about whether there is a pilot or not, but we are helping, through funding developing countries, ensuring that developing countries can benefit from the openness that this new regime is going to allow.
Jeremy Lefroy
On many occasions, DFID is actually either directly or indirectly responsible for delivering often quite large‑scale programmes to the poor, whether in health or education. Those programmes will always run the risk of petty corruption. One is then faced with the problem that, if you have come across that corruption, do you close the programme with a direct impact on the very people who we are helping or who we are trying to support? How do you deal with that? I have seen recently one example that brought about a real conflict between the need clearly to deal with corruption, absolutely, and, on the other hand, the very valuable service that is being provided to extremely marginalised and poor people, which is then taken away, because of the problems with corruption?
Richard Calvert
We have an overall approach of zero tolerance to fraud in relation to UK funds. In a number of countries, albeit reluctantly, we have closed programmes where we felt that UK funds were at risk of being used for purposes for which they were not intended.
Jeremy Lefroy
If I could just intervene there, when that happens, how do you assess the really direct impact on the poorest from a programme being closed, which is perhaps not an additional programme but an essential programme, perhaps part of an overall government strategy?
Richard Calvert
As with all these situations, it depends on the context. If we are putting funds through government systems and we no longer judge that the government systems are a secure route, then we can look at alternative channels. We can look to work through NGOs or through alternative routes. If it is a non‑government delivery channel, again, the judgment is whether the weakness is with the delivery channel and if there is an alternative way to achieve the same purpose. What you cannot avoid is potentially some impact. If programmes stop, there can be consequences, but what we would look to do is find an alternative route of getting to the same purpose.
Liz Ditchburn
That analysis of putting everything into the round is clearly what we have to do. The report invites us, as we accept in recommendation 3, to consider the huge opportunity that these service delivery programmes represent for also strengthening systems and for building in work that is around anti‑corruption. Again, we really believe that that opportunity exists and we often take it up. We will look to make sure that we are always taking it up where we can. That direct experience of poor people in their engagement with service delivery, we believe, is a really critical opportunity to do things like strengthening budget accountability, making more information available and building exactly the kinds of very basic, on‑the‑ground, often simple, but potentially quite powerful, things. Again, where we perhaps differ from ICAI is in saying that, yes, we should exploit all of those opportunities but, actually, in terms of the whole package, some of the other work we do is very important for that context too. For example, if people in a country see members of their elites being prosecuted in the UK and assets being returned, we think that that is also an incredibly powerful signal, which impacts on how people then feel able to challenge within their own more local circumstances. We see an interaction between all of these different levels.
Chair
Can I move on to the Nepal section of the report? According to the ICAI report—this is the Local Government and Community Development Programme, run through the Government and funded by DFID—citizens needed to pay bribes to government officials or to forge documentation in order to receive funds. Apparently, they are saying, DFID was aware that government officials were producing false documentation or documentation falsely promising compliance, and aware that funds released late in the financial year created difficulties for beneficiaries. There was media coverage about these and there were negative consequences for the poor. That does not seem to be very satisfactory. If your objective is to do no harm, you are actually compliant, if that is true, in actually doing something that is exactly that: it is pushing people into corruption.
Liz Ditchburn
The biggest point that ICAI makes here is on the idea that we might have developed some innovative ways of supporting citizens, so citizens being able to claim their entitlements more effectively without having to pay bribes, for example. We have developed these innovative and effective ways of doing that, but we have not followed them through into government programmes. That is the picture that we do not recognise, so we are really glad that ICAI has recognised that innovative work, both in LGCDP—sorry, I am only remembering the acronyms. I cannot remember all the long names underneath them, but there are these two programmes in Nepal that have really developed these innovative ways. Indeed, the whole aim of the programme is to take that learning, build it into government systems and improve the government systems through the block grants. Our money does not go into that block grant system directly, but we do want to influence it. We think that that is indeed what we are doing. The learning from the innovation is being taken up by Government. We are also strengthening government systems even more at the systemic level, in terms of overall systems across Government, but we just do not recognise this picture of not taking the learning and building it into government systems.
Chair
When they say that you were aware that government officials were producing false documentation, is that true or not true?
Liz Ditchburn
The office is aware that there have been accusations around corruption within the block grants system. Explicitly on compliance relating to donor funding, I am not aware.
Chair
If they were aware, what did they do about it, and should they not have done something about it?
Richard Calvert
If we believed there was a threat to DFID funds, then clearly we would be in a situation—
Chair
That is not the point. The point here is not the threat to DFID funds. It is the fact that poor people are having to pay bribes in order to get access to the funds. In terms of the British taxpayer, you can argue that the funds are delivering the programme in all those things, but in terms of the beneficiaries, namely the poor, it is at a cost of endemic corruption.
Richard Calvert
The strategy that Liz is describing and certainly which our office would recognise is that of course we recognise this corruption in the country and corruption in aspects of government funding. The work that we were involved in was seeking to take some of the lessons of ways to strengthen local accountability and broaden that out into wider government systems. From our perspective, we do not regard what we are doing as breaching any sort of do‑no‑harm principle; in fact, rather the opposite, we are looking to embed local accountability in wider government programmes beyond those that are directly donor‑funded.
Chair
Is there an opportunity here, given these questions were being asked in the Nepalese parliament, for you perhaps to revisit the programme and bring in some additional practice? Indeed, are you planning to do that? If we get there in February, are we going to be given that opportunity?
Liz Ditchburn
We believe that the approach we are taking of having developed this innovative work and making sure that that innovative work is taken up in broader government systems is the right approach. I understand that the second phase of this programme has started fairly recently, so we think that this is a really critical time for us to be very close to that. A large number of people were trained. The numbers I have are 4,000 community activists and over 400,000 local people supported through that process to better be able to claim these entitlements, without risk of corruption. What we will want to do now is make sure how many of those people who have been trained are now working within the new government phase. That is an area that we want to follow up. It is a question of following that very closely at this stage. We cannot yet say that those people who have been trained are not involved. We cannot yet say that those people who have been trained all are involved. It is the question that we will be very close to and will be monitoring as part of this phase, as it kicks in.
Fiona Bruce
Turning now to Nigeria, there DFID staff told ICAI that model police stations have reduced corruption. Do you now accept that, as ICAI found, they have made no difference and that the perception of corruption is increasing? We have also heard and understand that the Justice For All programme’s own perception survey showed very poor trust in the police. Should your staff not have known that corruption was not being ameliorated? Even if they did not make changes at that time, what lessons has DFID now learned from the ICAI report on this issue and what changes will be made as a result?
Richard Calvert
What this shows, and we have alluded to this a couple of times, are the challenges of having really good data on what is working and what is not working. In a country like Nigeria, a huge country much of it very remote, the experience of different people in different parts of the country is going to vary. ICAI has used some of its local survey methodology in a way that challenges us on what we understand about the impact of that programme. I do not think that either ICAI would claim or we would recognise that that is a comprehensive picture of the impact of that programme across Nigeria. On the other hand, it underlines the difficulty that Phil has referred to as well of having really strong systems for gathering data. Local accountability is a key part of all our service delivery programmes in Nigeria. Getting better and more comprehensive data on that is and has been a priority for us.
Liz Ditchburn
I think ICAI would recognise that they are not presenting that particular piece of survey data as a full conclusion that nothing is changing. What ICAI is doing, which we agree with, is saying that we should all look at whatever information is available to us. We use all that information to reach a conclusion. We are just finalising the latest annual review of that programme, and that will give the full picture, taking into account all of the data that we can access.
Fiona Bruce
Have you actually looked again at the systems that you are using? You talked, Mr Calvert, about really strong systems and getting better data. Are you going to improve your systems and your data collection, and will that be in this report, in the light of ICAI’s report?
Richard Calvert
There are things we want to do at project level, but there are also important things we want to do centrally and with other donors. As Liz says, the team is looking at this project now. We will certainly be looking at how they can get a strong picture of impact in future, but it also comes back to the challenge of developing a stronger research base to find ways in which we can improve measurement of corruption, particularly at a local level, which is something that we and other donors are committed to doing more. There are aspects of our work on corruption that are much easier to measure. It is much easier to measure some of the work, for example, that we are doing with tax or revenue authorities to stop payment of salaries to ghost workers or to identify stolen assets reclaimed. Those aspects are relatively straightforward to get some quantitative data on. It is much harder at a local level, particularly in remote areas.
Fiona Bruce
Can I ask on a separate point that obviously so much corruption results from a lack of the rule of law and poor legal systems? How much of your efforts are spent on improving legal systems within countries, right from the micro to the macro level? Can I give you a very pertinent example? The Committee has just returned from Tanzania and we were told, at local level, that whilst ivory poachers are caught—they may even be taken to court—prosecutions are rarely followed through. We were told by a lawyer who is working in the country that one of the problems is that the laws generally there are unclear. Often one has to advise on custom or practice. We heard from businessmen who said that the problem is that we have an unpredictable Government, often imposing regulations at short notice. We heard people saying that much of this ivory poaching is not only condoned, but there is involvement at the highest Government level or those connected with Government. There is macro to micro there. It is a real issue about having clear legislation and having that enforced. It is a real issue that affects the poorest because, if the ivory disappears at the current rate from that part of the world, the tourist industry will go and, with that, will go the wellbeing of an awful lot of people who rely on it. What kind of approach will you take to tackle that and strengthen the systems involved to stamp out that corruption?
Richard Calvert
It underlines very well the top‑to‑bottom nature of the response to corruption, but Phil.
Phil Mason
Tanzania is a very good example, in fact, of how DFID has learned some of the lessons of the evidence mapping, which argues around the inter‑dependencies of some of our interventions. One can spend years working to support a police force but, if you do not reform the judiciary, then all of that is not terribly useful. In fact in Tanzania, the strengthening of Tanzania’s anti‑corruption action project does precisely this: it is a set of interventions that addresses six parts of that chain. It helps to work with the anti‑corruption commission and the prevention of corruption bureau. It works with the director of public prosecutions. It works with the financial intelligence unit. It works with the police, it works with the judiciary and it works with the national audit office. The whole point of all of that is that precisely the weaknesses in the system, for example the intelligence about ivory poaching—if you just get that but you do not reform the police or the judiciary, then it is not going to work. The Tanzania office took the view that, if we are going to help Tanzania sort these problems, it cannot be a set of interventions in one agency; it has to be this menu. This six‑office menu is the model to go. It is one of the few in our programme that attempts to draw the threads between the chain.
Fiona Bruce
Unfortunately, things are getting worse, not better, are they not?
Phil Mason
The more you address corruption, sometimes more corruption then ends up coming through the courts and the police system. It can appear that corruption is getting worse because, actually, more is coming to light. One has to be very careful about judging the trajectory of a country’s performance.
Fiona Bruce
I do not want to take up any more time, but I am speaking specifically regarding the ivory trade. Things are getting far worse. Do you have a 10‑to‑15‑year plan to address that? As you have just said, this is something that needs to be tackled over time.
Phil Mason
The programme in Tanzania is innovative, in a sense that it stitches together action across the whole suite of offices. I would be fairly confident that, if that were showing success, it would continue into a multi‑year programme. All we know about transition and transformation on anti‑corruption is that it is a long haul. Some of the studies have shown, particularly in European history in the 19th century, that this is a 40‑year activity to stitch together.
Fiona Bruce
In terms of recommendation 2, for example, you would accept that ICAI’s recommendation applies to such work.
Phil Mason
The long term is absolutely vital, yes.
Liz Ditchburn
What we are saying in our response to recommendation 2 is that, as we refresh these strategies which, as Richard said, were a really important response by the organisation to the previous ICAI report—those strategies were very much part of our response to the previous report—as we refresh them now and, over the course of 2015, we will be continuing to reflect, then we will look at this question. We all agree that tackling corruption is a long‑term challenge. What we want to look at in those strategies, as we refresh them, is how we can use a longer‑term timeframe more effectively and how we can express that in the strategies in a way that makes sense.
Jeremy Lefroy
ICAI says that evidence of effectiveness of anti‑corruption interventions is weak in terms of quality and quantity. Is it not an essential part of your work and a condition of providing assistance that you know whether what you do is effective?
Richard Calvert
It is, and we have acknowledged already that some of the methodology underpinning good tracking of the impact of anti‑corruption is not there. It is not strong. It is not a DFID‑specific issue. Within the international community, it is hard to track corruption really effectively and Phil has set out some of the reasons for that. It is also an area though that, with other donors, we want to invest more in. It is an important part of our research priorities. We would expect to do more in that area, but that is not to say that we do not attempt to monitor the impact of programmes already. Clearly we do but, in terms of some of the methodological bases for that, there is room to improve there. We think that that is a fair observation from ICAI.
Jeremy Lefroy
We understand that you have commissioned some work on this since 2011 and the last report. Can you share any of that with us?
Phil Mason
I can share the action that is going ahead. There were two pieces of work. There is the evidence mapping work in 2012, which our resource centre, U4, did with our research team, which attempted to set out what the literature did say about what works and what does not work, and that came up with the very clear picture that Richard describes. There are no silver bullets and golden bullets in all of this. The second piece of work, which again we have asked U4 and ODI to look at, is some of the impacts of corruption on the poor. This will certainly help inform the redevelopment of programmes to get back down to the grassroots. That is imminent; it is being finished off at the moment and should be out, I would hope, in the first quarter of next year.
Jeremy Lefroy
What sort of impact do you think that will have on DFID programming?
Phil Mason
It will be core, in addition to the kind of day-to-day work that they can get from the U4, in terms of practical knowledge and experience of examples of what has worked. This will hopefully set the frame for some of the issues that we have to think about when we are reprogramming.
Jeremy Lefroy
Your management response says that you have “developed a rigorous portfolio of monitoring and evaluation, including using beneficiary feedback, which [is] used to improve current or future programming … including anti‑corruption”. Do you accept there must be some shortcomings, as ICAI saw no evidence of feedback being used to evaluate the impact of anti‑corruption activity or to correct existing programmes?
Phil Mason
We accept that there are always new ways in which one can monitor the feedback from beneficiaries. We are very interested in looking at clever ways in which you can maximise the anti‑corruption effects. That may well be through citizens monitoring their budgets locally. It may well be through just getting a decent national audit office to do its work properly. Sometimes, the kind of work that the randomised control trial evidence starts to show is that you can get both those outcomes, depending on the context. A good national audit office that is predictable and actually does its work achieves a higher anti‑corruption impact than citizen monitoring, but it only works if you can absolutely guarantee that the national audit office will turn up and do the audit.
Richard Calvert
What we have seen across DFID as a whole, as the Committee knows, is a big investment in evaluation and in moving from a position, some years ago, where we essentially had a semi‑independent evaluation unit to a position now where we expect country teams to embed a strong evaluation programme across their programmes and take ownership of that. Some of that will be long‑term impact evaluation; some of it will be shorter term. That gives us a much stronger base, albeit some of that will take some years to deliver results, but it gives us a much stronger evidence base to understand the impact of what we are doing.
Liz Ditchburn
The only other comment I would make is, as this Committee knows, beneficiary feedback is something that ICAI has been very strong on from its beginning. The NAO has also been encouraging us. Over the last three years, we have been challenged very much to build beneficiary feedback far more systematically into our programmes. That is what we are doing, but it is a work in progress. We have developed a lot of tools and we have a clear requirement for all annual reviews to show how they have or have not used beneficiary feedback. We are in the process of taking all that forward, rather than being able to say, “We did that 10 years ago and here is the evidence.”
Jeremy Lefroy
We certainly saw, in our visit to Tanzania recently, evidence of the impact of a good public accounts committee, which has perhaps received some support from the UK in the past or the present when, as a result of their report, Parliament voted for certain Ministers and senior officials to be sacked, as a result of IPTL, the power station corruption scandal. What we also found was that citizens were glued to the television throughout the broadcast proceedings of that parliamentary session everywhere, I think we would say. People were talking to us not quite in the street but, when they knew we were Members of Parliament, they were saying that it was very important that this kind of work goes on. That was encouraging.
Chair
We were all spoken to individually by the hotel staff. The line I got was: “Our Government is stealing our money. What’s your Government going to do about it?” I guess that it is a good citizens’ revolt, but they want some results too, I think. Thank you very much. We want to ask briefly some questions on the private sector, so thank you. When we do go to Nepal, you can be forewarned that we will obviously want to have a look at these programmes, talk to some of the beneficiaries and see whether things have changed or, indeed, what they have to say about it. Oral evidence: The Work of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, HC 864 2