Oral evidence: Parliamentary Strengthening, HC 704Tuesday 25 November 2014
Oral evidence, 25 November 2014.
Witnesses
Rt Hon Desmond Swayne MP, Minister of State, Department for International Development, Jonathan Hargreaves, Head of Governance, Open Societies and Anti‑Corruption Department, DFID, Shiona Ruhemann, Senior Adviser, Open Societies and Anti‑Corruption Department, DFID, and Rob Fenn, Head of the Human Rights and Democracy Department, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, gave evidence.
Chair
Good morning, Minister, and welcome to what is your first appearance in front of our Committee, so thank you for coming along this morning.
Mr Swayne
Was there a choice?
Chair
No.
Hugh Bayley
I was most impressed to see the Minister listening in to our other evidence; we do not often see that.
Chair
Courtesy is a characteristic of this Committee.
Hugh Bayley
And the Minister.
Chair
Indeed. We know who you are, but I wonder, for the record, if you could introduce your colleagues and their roles.
Mr Swayne
Comrades, introduce yourselves.
Jonathan Hargreaves
Thank you, Minister. Thank you, Chair. I am Jonathan Hargreaves; I am Head of the Governance, Open Societies and Anti‑Corruption Department in the Policy Division in DFID.
Shiona Ruhemann
I am Shiona Ruhemann in Jonathan’s Department, and I lead the policy team that is responsible at the centre for supporting political governance.
Rob Fenn
Good morning. I am Rob Fenn, the Head of the Human Rights and Democracy Department in the Foreign Office, FCO.
Chair
That is also helpful, because clearly there is a lot of co‑operation and co‑ordination between the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and DFID. In the DFID submission, you say only a small part of what you spend goes into parliamentary strengthening. You elaborate on that and say that it is small but perfectly formed. Not quite that, but what you say is that it does not necessarily cost a lot of money. However, you spend a lot more, for example, on elections or supporting elections than you spend on the parliamentary strengthening between elections. Our view is it is fine to ensure that elections work, but once people have been elected they also need support as well, so do you think you have the balance right? Do you really think that elections are twice as important for good governance as effective, functioning Parliaments?
Mr Swayne
Elections are an awful lot more expensive; that is undoubtedly the case, so that would certainly account for much of the extra spend. I do think that the status and importance and trust and all the things that are important about Parliament stem largely from people trusting the process by which they were elected, so I would not want to diminish in any way the important role of some of those more technical aspects, like elections. However, I am prejudiced; I am a Member of a Parliament. I do believe that overwhelmingly the most important thing is the Parliament. It is vitally important. A properly working Parliament informs so many other expectations within a society about what they can expect from their government. We are putting enormous diplomatic resources into securing, for the post‑2015 agenda, the importance of governance in institutions, the rule of law, all of which, I believe, stem ultimately from a strong, functioning Parliament. I have no doubt that the most important element is the Parliament. Whether you would measure that in terms of money spent I am less troubled by. I want us to spend the right amount of money, but it certainly need not be the most amount of money.
Chair
We accept it is not just about money, but I suppose what we are going to tease out is whether we are doing it on the cheap and, in fact, what needs to be done requires perhaps a bit more resource. I do not think any of us are suggesting it requires a huge amount more resource, but maybe some more resource. The other problem is you do not appear to know exactly what you do spend on parliamentary strengthening. You could not give us a proper analysis of where the parliamentary dimension was in some of the projects or what the staff time was that was attributable to it. Indeed, this is not just DFID. Other people have said, “How do you measure effectiveness?” and the tendency was to do it in a tick-box way—“We have had so many meetings and so many visits and so many seminars”—rather than, “We have some kind of measurable way of showing that we have contributed towards making the Parliaments more effective.” Just on that point, people will sometimes say, “Even when things go pear‑shaped you hang in there, because sometimes Parliaments go through a trough or there is coup or a crisis, but you need to be there so that, at the other side of it, you have maintained continuity.” I have heard people say that, for example, about Iraq and possibly even Egypt, although that is perhaps more difficult. I just wonder whether you would accept that.
Mr Swayne
On the first point, we spent £22.5 million in 2013 and 2014. I had spotted the difficulty that you clearly have about how you know exactly what you have spent, because the only way that we could get that figure of £22.5 million, as I understand it, is by going to each of our country teams and saying, “Exactly how much have you spent?” Many of the projects do span Parliament and other aspects of governance, and it is quite difficult, certainly with accounting codes, to determine precisely how much has been spent on any particular element. I appreciate that is a problem, but it is one that we have to wrestle with. The third point that you made just escapes me. What was it again?
Chair
It was really more about effectiveness; how you measure the effectiveness of what you spend.
Mr Swayne
I recall when Mr Bayley was questioning my predecessor in February on precisely this issue when you were doing your inquiry on Burma, Sir Alan referred to this as “the mushy end” of what we do. It is very difficult to measure the impact that you may have made, particularly in a short timescale, and you have to be alive to that. Yes, you do have to hang in there, but you have to be very careful when you come up with the projects in the first place. The main effort must be into the contextual analysis that you do beforehand, so that you can work out what are the goals, are they realistic, are they achievable and will you get buy‑in or, indeed, ownership from the Parliaments that you are attempting to assist? An investment in that end of the project will be much better at yielding some results. However, I can understand entirely the belief that if we are measuring it by the number of seminars we have held on X, Y and Z, you have something that is definable and measureable, but how do you measure an effective Parliament? The CPA has a good list of things that you would want to achieve, but how do you get milestones along the way? I come back ultimately to what Sir Alan said; it is the mushy end and we have to use a great deal of judgment and intuition, and that judgment and intuition is best placed in people who have experience of elected institutions—people like us.
Shiona Ruhemann
You asked about when things go pear‑shaped and staying in and not bailing. We see that a lot in our programmes. For example, in Bangladesh there is no functioning opposition following the elections this year, and so DFID has shifted its support to the secretariat and pulled away from the political parties, because there are all kinds of problems in doing that. However, it is ready to scale back in and re‑engage when the situation changes, so we see our country offices coping with those pear‑shaped situations quite often. On the question about low spend, Kenya is quite a good example. It was mentioned by Crispin Poyser and how the House of Commons was supportive there. It was pretty low spend but very political work around the constitution and election reform and has had quite a big impact around a new constitution. Again, the money is not very significant, but the impact in change in Parliament has been very clear.
Hugh Bayley
I should probably just repeat that some years ago I was the chair of the Westminster Foundation. During that time, my impression was that the Foreign Office was better—I might say better at mushiness—at dealing with difficult political issues than DFID. One of the reasons for this may be that DFID inevitably needs a strong partnership with the government of the day if it is going to deliver a health or an education or a water and sanitation programme, and it is sometimes quite difficult when another Department of the British Government is funding the opposition. I remember Museveni shouting, “Why is the British Government supporting the opposition, who are trying to undermine the government’s programmes?” How can DFID operate effectively in parliamentary strengthening when it offends a government? In Ethiopia you have, in development terms, a good government, a partner you want, but a ruling party that is highly intolerant of the opposition having any real leverage on policy in the country. Might it make sense for you to pass a grant of whatever you are going to spend, £1 million a year, to the Foreign Office to manage?
Mr Swayne
My prejudice tells me that you should be right—that, hey, I am a politician and am quite prepared to get my hands dirty and get involved in the politics, and these are civil servants and they would naturally be reluctant to do so and will have all sorts of prejudices that are different from mine. However, in fact, I have not come across any evidence to support my prejudice, in that we do get involved with political parties. You have drawn attention particularly to what we are doing in Uganda. In Uganda, we fund the Office of the Leader of the Opposition. With respect to working with the Foreign Office, the two Departments work very closely together in these issues. I have certainly not experienced any tension or difficulty there, so that expertise is brought in, but I will let the civil servants defend themselves.
Jonathan Hargreaves
Chair, if I may, it is an interesting point. There are three things to say. One is that DFID has been making an effort over the last few years, in particular, to be thinking more politically in everything we do, not just when we are dealing with governance issues, but also in how we try to achieve results across the board. Most people see us as the market leader as a donor in being able to think and work politically. I was reading recently a study by ODI called Politically smart, locally led development, which is an interesting read, where they talk about three big examples of where we have been able to do that. The fact that they are pointing to these examples suggests that we have some way to go. Going back to your earlier point about measurement, there are some difficult things in there about how you measure success in that messy, mushy, politically difficult arena. However, we think that we are becoming, as a donor, one of the market leaders in this area. We train all of our governance advisers across the world to engage in good political economy analysis in all of the work they do and we apply that analysis before we move into interventions. Does that mean that we end up working a lot more with political parties or with politicians? Sometimes, but not necessarily. Sometimes that politically smart analysis may lead us not to work with them because, for various reasons, we think that we may be able to get a better governance result through some other means. However, would we do that analysis that would help us to work that out? Absolutely. On the second point—and I may bring in Rob Fenn from the Foreign Office here, if I may—I have certainly never worked in a country where we do not do this absolutely hand in glove with the Foreign Office. It would be a misrepresentation to suggest that we are somehow over here and our Foreign Office colleagues are over there. I had the honour of being with you in Jerusalem, for example, where I hope you felt that DFID and FCO worked absolutely together on the politics as well as on the development. Similarly, when I worked in Somalia, we would sit together and do that analysis absolutely together. The idea that we are doing this separately is a bit of a misrepresentation, if I may say. The third thing I might just add, if I may, is that we do a lot of work that is quite politically exposed and risky. We do quite a lot of work on political party strengthening, not just with the Westminster Foundation, although that is great, but in other examples. In Uganda, Tanzania, Bangladesh, for instance, we have programmes that do carry on between elections and work with Parliaments and parties, but, if I may, I will ask Rob to add the Foreign Office perspective.
Rob Fenn
Thank you. Mr Chairman, colleagues, I am very happy to confirm this rumour that the FCO and DFID work very closely together. I have been in the Foreign Office since 1983, and in those days there really was a different culture, a different approach, sometimes a physically separated office in whichever country we are talking about. During those years, the whole concept of sustainable development has come forward, and that has convinced the Foreign Office that if we are going to advance our own interests in the rule of law and human rights and political influence in whatever country we are talking about, we do have to tap into our DFID colleagues’ understanding of the long term, of the development process. Similarly, for any Ambassador or High Commissioner, it is now his or her genuine instinct to feel that they are representing the whole of Government in that country, and in this area of sustainable development they will lean equally on their political analysts and on their DFID colleagues, who are, in some countries, rather more numerous than their Foreign Office colleagues. There is absolutely no sense that the head of post is there representing the Foreign Office separately or primus inter pares. I have been in innumerable meetings where a political analysis comes from a DFID colleague and a developmental one from the head of chancery. We have learned this lesson quite a long time ago now. It is just about how well we can walk that talk all around the world; we certainly try.
Hugh Bayley
Can I say you make a convincing argument that on the 90% or whatever percentage it is—perhaps higher than 90%—of work where you both have an office in the country and you both share objectives you work closely together, and I am sure that is the case. However, the Foreign Office, of course, has many more posts than DFID. It will pursue British Government goals for getting improvements in governance in countries where there is not a DFID programme, and sometimes these will be quite controversial politically. I am drawing from experience many years ago, and these are programmes from long ago, but I remember some work being done to fund civil society bodies in Belarus, which the government of the day was not warm to. I can think of work with people who were close to the Muslim Brotherhood in some North African countries. I find it difficult to believe that DFID would be the right sponsoring Department for work of that kind, so are there some things that the Foreign Office is better at doing and that you ought to take the lead on? If so, how should that be funded when your Department’s funding is being so squeezed?
Mr Swayne
I am quite happy to deal with your question directly. My answer to that is, as the DFID Minister, I would need some persuading about the details of the projects to which you are referring. I do not know the detail, but again it comes down to the analysis that was done as to what precisely it is that we are trying to achieve, is it realistic and do we have buy‑in.
Hugh Bayley
Could I just ask, Minister, would you be consulted on a democracy‑building project in a country in which, probably for very good reasons—perhaps a middle-income country—there was no DFID programme?
Mr Swayne
No. If we are not going to spend any money and we do not have a programme, I would not expect to be consulted. I certainly have not been so far.
Hugh Bayley
On Hong Kong, for instance. If the Foreign Office wanted to do some work on democracy‑building in Hong Kong, that would be fine, but it would not be a joint DFID operation.
Mr Swayne
It has not happened yet, but my immediate reaction would be why are we involved in a country that does not qualify for overseas development aid?
Shiona Ruhemann
Could I return to the Uganda example you gave? That is a very good illustration of a lot of the issues. The Foreign Office sits on that steering committee as well as DFID, so it shows how closely involved we are in the programming. As you suggested, it is an intensely political programme and it also shows that politics is not avoided but dealt with very squarely, and strengthening the Office of the Opposition is included. One reason that that is possible is because the UK is in that with eight other donors. It is not just the UK supporting the opposition, but there is strength and safety in numbers and there are various other very sensitive things, like strengthening the human rights committee to scrutinise the anti‑homosexuality bill, which is an incredibly sensitive area of legislation, so it is a very good example. Also on the politics, the How to note that we have developed is completely founded on political economy analysis in which, as Jonathan said, we are seen to be the market leader internationally and it is very much challenging apolitical approaches, disembodied training or capacity‑building that is not dealing with underlying politics.
Rob Fenn
We are talking about parliamentary strengthening and democratisation as the context for that, and I can imagine plenty of examples of how, even though an ambassador or a Foreign Office programme in country X does not have a DFID presence formally, the sort of analysis that they call London to provide to them would certainly cause me or the regional director or the responsible Minister in the Foreign Office to think very positively about consulting DFID. The generic expertise around democratisation is quite widely dispersed in Whitehall. It does not involve solely DFID and FCO. We have many colleagues in the Ministry of Justice and in the Home Office. This whole area of overseas security and justice assistance is so delicate and involves a lot of difficult political judgments but also a lot of technical know‑how, and in areas like that our instinct is to work across Whitehall. On democratisation, the more I work and will have to work in helping WFD, for example, to implement the review, when it is finalised and laid, it will be in very close co‑operation with DFID, where a lot of the expertise on democratisation does reside.
Hugh Bayley
Thank you. I have one further question, which is very clearly directed at you and your Department, Minister. When we travel as a Committee to developing countries, it has frequently occurred to me that we, that is to say the UK and your Department, could gain considerably in the job of monitoring the impact of, say, an education programme or a health programme if we worked with the health committee or the education committee of a Parliament, who obviously look very closely at their governance policies and programmes in the way that our Select Committees do. I know Jeremy Lefroy, with the work he does with the parliamentary Network on the World Bank, is very keen to encourage dialogue between national Parliaments and donors. Would it make sense to build into, say, the education work in Tanzania a strand that says, “And a small part of our funding will go behind strengthening the capacity of the education committee of the Tanzanian Parliament to scrutinise what is happening in districts, regions, towns and villages”, so that the Government of Tanzania is better informed about how DFID’s budget support is being spent and how its education‑specific funding is being spent and, indeed, so that DFID offices could learn more about the impact of their work?
Mr Swayne
That is a very interesting idea. One of the ways we get into parliamentary strengthening is through the Select Committee system, through strengthening mainly public accounts committees and financial management, but we have certainly been doing health committee work and education committee work. As to whether when we are doing a project specifically on education, as we are more and more in Lebanon and Jordan, we should be investing in their parliamentary process, that strikes me as a very good idea. Of course, it comes back to the contextual analysis: getting exactly what we are trying to achieve and what we are going to do. But building in a consideration of that sort strikes me as a very useful thing to do.
Shiona Ruhemann
Could I just add that that does happen in practice? There is a programme in South Africa that was working with a health committee, a high‑performing programme, and it is a good example of the difficulty of disaggregating parliamentary work, because often a sectoral programme will link up with a sectoral committee, and then it is hard for us to check it. You had other comments on PACs, I think.
Jonathan Hargreaves
I was simply going to add to what the Minister said about that approach and particularly with public accounts committees, where we support many throughout the world, again often not badged as parliamentary strengthening but badged as public finance management, trying to deliver the whole range of the accountability chain, as it were. Very often, such as in Bangladesh, Nepal, Tajikistan, we have done work with public accounts committees as part of that wider public financial management approach, so your point is very well taken. No doubt there is more that we can do through a sectoral lens, but it is very much part of our thinking.
Fiona Bruce
Forgive me; this is a really mushy question. I want to ask how you work together with regard to what you might call conflict resolution; I would rather call it conflict prevention. The Minister talked about how you need to have a strong, functioning Parliament in which people have confidence. For people to have confidence in their elected assembly, they need to engage. In order for them to engage, civil society needs to work together and different groups in civil society need to talk together. It seems to me that if we can work on that end we can prevent, perhaps, the fallout from groups becoming warring factions, becoming conflicted, so that DFID has to spend a great deal more money on food and refugee camps and so forth. Just to give a specific example, because someone asked for an example, in the Central African Republic I remember, it is probably a year ago now, a Muslim leader and a Catholic leader getting together and saying, “Please, somebody help us try to help our communities to live together more peaceably.” How much work are you doing together on that kind of conflict prevention so that, in fact, you save DFID having to do a lot more work later when trouble breaks out?
Mr Swayne
If we take specifically Uganda, much of the emphasis has been on getting the political parties to be less confrontational and to work together. In terms of taking that beyond Parliament and out to civil society and different institutions, there is a huge amount of effort. Immediately Pakistan and the AAWAZ project springs to mind, but perhaps you can elaborate on that.
Shiona Ruhemann
In Pakistan, the AAWAZ project, a voice and accountability programme, is a very good example of exactly what you are talking about: another political systems approach where Parliament, civil society and media are all working together. It is working in 4,500 villages on exactly these kinds of issues: strengthening service delivery and operating caucuses around legislation, with some real impact on changing laws and requirements. For instance, 33% of members of decision‑making bodies now have to be women. That is a very significant achievement. There is similar work in Afghanistan, trying to improve citizen satisfaction with elected bodies.
Fiona Bruce
With the Home Secretary saying today that global security is heightened more than ever, I wonder whether this is not something that DFID should be looking at as a greater priority than it is. The Foreign Office certainly seems to have picked up on this in the last year or two and now challenges governments, but often I feel DFID has the resources to do something about it.
Mr Swayne
Our target is to move to 30% of our spend being in those conflicted states and we are going to be driven by the National Security Council’s priorities and the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund, so I would say this is going to be an increasing emphasis of what we do.
Chair
Iraq seems to be a very good example, where the failure of the political system has got us into this mess. Obviously the Americans have been putting pressure on them to put their political and parliamentary system in order. My understanding is we are involved in that too, but that is through the Foreign Office, I guess.
Rob Fenn
Indeed, yes. In Iraq, a lot of problems were stored up by the dysfunctional and wholly sectarian previous Government in Iraq and we are now trying to help the new Government reach out to the whole of the population.
Chair
That is a point for the Minister, I suppose, because Iraq may not be a priority.
Mr Swayne
Exactly. Our spend in Iraq is humanitarian, because it is a middle-income country.
Chair
If there was a funding issue here, it would be in DFID’s interest to support the Foreign Office as well.
Mr Swayne
Only if we could pass it off as overseas development aid, which is dependent upon the nature of the country. Undoubtedly, so much poverty arises out of conflicted states.
Chair
The humanitarian budget classifies as aid, so, logically—yes.
Mr Swayne
Yes, but it would be difficult. For example, we are spending significant sums of money in Lebanon and Jordan, which we would never ordinarily do in these middle-income countries, but we are able to do so because of the consequences of conflict, in order to prevent greater conflict. There is a feedback loop.
Shiona Ruhemann
FCO and DFID are working very closely on it. DFID is investing a lot in basic services, meeting people’s expectations and security injustice—basic accountability for security sectors. Parliaments again might not be the front end of that, but they are part of that picture.
Jeremy Lefroy
When we were in Sierra Leone, we asked Parliamentarians whether they were aware of DFID projects in their constituencies and they said absolutely not; they do not get information. They would tend to come across them by chance. In this country, from a number of organisations, not least organisations like the National Lottery, we are told in advance what is going on in our constituencies. Would it not be one way of getting Parliamentarians more informed and more involved in development in their own constituencies if DFID was to say to Parliamentarians, “We are working on this with the government in your constituency”?
Mr Swayne
Yes, and I thought we did. We scored second out of all others in terms of transparency on the International Aid Transparency Index. Perhaps we need to do more to inform those people, but everywhere I go in those countries where we are spending a great deal of money on municipal projects, in order to get the buy‑in of the host communities for the refugees that they are having to support, we shout about it. Perhaps we need to do more to make sure that they hear it.
Chair
We will move on to a series of questions about how you commission parliamentary strengthening.
Pauline Latham
Good morning. We have received criticism about how DFID commissions projects, your choice of large suppliers and lack of competition, largely excluding Westminster institutions. How can DFID improve its commissioning of parliamentary strengthening projects?
Mr Swayne
I just wonder if we are looking at the wrong end of the telescope here. When I was in business, if we lost a contract or we failed to get a bid, we would go back and think about what it was we had done wrong. We would not turn round and say it was the customer who was wrong—the customer was prejudiced. I do not think we do. The way we work is that we do the in‑country analysis of exactly what it is we want to achieve, what is realistic, how we are going to go about it, and then we go shopping to see what is available. It is not a question of there being prejudice. Look, I have never bought a foreign car. If I have a prejudice it is for what is available here. Admittedly, I have not been on any of these shopping trips recently; I have only just come into the Department. However, in terms of what we spend, in terms of that criticism, if we take 2012-13, of the £22.5 million that we spend, £3 million was spent in the UK public sector, WFD and the Arab Partnership, £5 million on private contractors, both UK and overseas, £5 million on the multinationals, which is effectively the World Bank and UNDP, and £9.5 million on NGOs, often local NGOs or international NGOs. If we look at UNDP, which much of the criticism has focussed on, we spent £2 million solely on projects managed by UNDP and £1.5 million on projects where they are jointly involved. I can understand there being a prejudice, but I would hate to spoil it with facts.
Pauline Latham
DFID apparently seems to prefer large, low-maintenance projects because of the low management cost. However, does parliamentary strengthening not need a different approach with higher management costs, because Parliaments require intensive brokering and co‑ordinating between different stakeholders?
Mr Swayne
I can understand anyone wanting to have a large, low-cost project to manage rather than lots of little ones. It is very difficult to manage lots of little projects, but do not imagine for one moment that when we take on a big organisation like UNDP, because of its ability to manage lots of different donors within one project, that we say we have put it in that box and have pushed it over there. We are deeply involved in the management of those projects, and I would draw to your attention specifically what we have been doing in Afghanistan, where we have gone back and said, “No, we want you to hire people this way, more short‑term experts rather than long‑term employees.” We manage the costs, we call them in and we call the shots, so I do not think that is true. Do you want to add anything to that?
Shiona Ruhemann
It is not an either/or. What we need often is a very large organisation that can manage multiple donors, multiple inputs, has presence, has the relationships with government and other parties, and has a track record. That is why we go to big organisations, not to reduce our transactional involvement, which is very intense and ongoing. Through them, the smaller parties are brought in. We have lots of examples of that. For instance, in DRC, UNDP was selected for all of the above reasons and they managed to lock in and build up and scale up WFD’s initiatives around training and WFD’s work with the MPs. They took that to scale, so you have both working together. On the point that you mentioned about this area of work requiring a lot of co‑ordination, Uganda is an excellent example of that. There is a big Danish‑managed programme but everybody leads it jointly; there are eight donors in there, so the co‑ordination is working through that programme and, again, WFD’s investments are being scaled up through that. It is not either/or.
Pauline Latham
Going back to the US companies, we are told that a large proportion of British taxpayer funds used to strengthen Parliaments do go to US companies or other internationals with little expertise in Parliament. How do you feel you could respond to that?
Mr Swayne
I do not think it is true and I gave you the figures a moment ago. I do not think it is borne out by the facts. I can think of one or two US organisations that come to mind, but my perception is that that is not what we have done. As I say, we go in, we decide what it is we need and then we go to the market. Are you aware of any prejudice for a US preference?
Shiona Ruhemann
No. Seven out of 37 have been primarily US contracted and that is entirely on credibility, and there is a business case that makes that case and that is transparent and publicly available, so all of that has to be justified through a business case.
Mr Swayne
So, there are 37 current projects, of which seven are with US organisations.
Jonathan Hargreaves
Of course, they are not fully implemented by those US organisations. As Shiona was saying earlier, we use them as the managing agent because we trust in their processes and their ability to manage things, but very often drawing on either local or other international sources of expertise. We contract somebody that we feel confident can do the management, but draw on a huge range of providers, including very often UK providers, within that.
Shiona Ruhemann
They can also often be very strong technically.
Pauline Latham
Would it be possible for you to give us a list of the top 10 suppliers for your parliamentary strengthening with the amounts awarded to them, please?
Mr Swayne
What, now?
Pauline Latham
No, not now, but maybe tomorrow—unless you do know it off the top of your head.
Jonathan Hargreaves
Over what time period?
Pauline Latham
Probably the last financial year.
Chair
We have a table that our adviser has done of an analysis of your own submission of the top 10 programmes over the last few years, and they are almost totally devoid of British content. Given we are discussing the Westminster Foundation and the Westminster brand, the American model is as competitive as it is, it would appear, because it is very well resourced by Congress and others. Is there not a chicken-and-egg situation here that you are going to buy foreign because we have not encouraged the development of a sufficient capacity within the UK?
Mr Swayne
I would say that that is for the Westminster Foundation and I sat and listened to their evidence and thought that was very encouraging—the plans that they have to make themselves more marketable. But hold on a minute. We have this UNDP project running in Afghanistan, but they are subcontracting bits to the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, so I do not think it is a zero‑sum game by any stretch of the imagination.
Chair
Maybe we can get a bit more information on that, because obviously what we have is just the heads-up. We do not know what the subcontracting arrangements are. If in the process of making the list you are able to give us any elaboration of that, it would be helpful.
Sir Peter Luff
I still do not sense that British content is high enough. This is an important soft-power opportunity for the UK and I do not think the British element is there in sufficient detail. Apart from WFD, which is a big “apart from”, of course I accept, only three of the parliamentary strengthening projects funded by DFID in 2013-14 had a Westminster provider involved. It would be great to have more Westminster providers involved, it really would. They have an important and unique contribution to make in this programme that I do not think is being made. I suspect it is because your field offices do not really know how to involve them.
Mr Swayne
The best thing we do, the champagne of this, is the political party work that the Westminster Foundation for Democracy does. I am an absolute advocate of that, but I would be very wary of introducing, despite my own prejudice and my never having bought a foreign car, we have moved away from using international development aid to provide opportunities for our own commercial undertakings to profit. In other words, if you are going to provide some poor country with the finance to build a bridge, it is done on the assumption that a British company will build the bridge. What is the difference, in principle, I would ask, of saying that, because we need to do X, Y and Z to strengthen a Parliament, we are going to go for the particular British option irrespective of other things that might affect that decision? There is no policy imposed from the centre. These decisions are all made at the country level after an analysis of the needs in the country.
Sir Peter Luff
Is not the lack of awareness of the British option part of the problem?
Jonathan Hargreaves
The Minister is absolutely right that the first priority has to be focussed on what outcome we are trying to achieve, and we owe it to the taxpayer to focus on that above all. I was listening, as the Minister was, very carefully to what Anthony Smith said earlier in terms of the plans to improve the Westminster offer overall through the improvements to the offer of WFD itself, which we very much welcome, and we are looking forward to seeing the outcome of the Triennial Review and the response to that come through, and what kind of improved offer by WFD itself may emerge. That is very encouraging for us, but we are also interested in whether it is possible to link up better with other UK‑based organisations and provide a more united and combined offer. That will be tremendously interesting to people in country offices who are looking for the best providers. We do need providers who can provide, as we have discussed, both long‑term and flexible provision of assistance. That is just the reality of the kind of work that we need to do and the kind of work that we think is going to be effective. If there is a stronger offer coming from the UK that is able to provide that, then I think you are absolutely right, Sir Peter; that will be satisfying both a development outcome and possibly the more diplomatic win that is potentially there. Therefore, if we can get to a situation where we can satisfy both of those at the same time through having a stronger offer, that is fantastic.
Sir Peter Luff
Last week, Charles Chauvel of UNDP told us that they would like to make better use of Westminster organisations in their programmes. There is a willingness to make this happen. Can you specify that larger suppliers should look more keenly at the options and look at Westminster‑based organisations? Are you able to do that?
Mr Swayne
From my own point of view, I would certainly want to point them in that direction. I wonder if they have to be pointed, because they have already been doing it.
Sir Peter Luff
UNDP seems to think you need to do more.
Mr Swayne
They have been using the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Now, was that because we pointed them in the right direction? I suspect not. They are quite able to compete.
Chair
There is a mercenary element that comes in, because what some of the subcontractors complain about is that UNDP top‑slices a great big management fee, which leaves them with a rather less interesting and less well-funded programme. That is where either a requirement as part of a contract or a way of having subdivided contracts so that they can be managed has been a point that has been made to us.
Mr Swayne
If the arrangements are driven by our analysis of what is needed, and let us say we decide that we need a large organisation to be able to manage multiple donors, I do not think that precludes us from saying “and we particularly recommend” or “we specify”, even, that a particular donor for a particular element ought to be X because of its outstanding expertise in this field. Is that right?
Shiona Ruhemann
Yes. On the management fees, they are really pressed on them and increasingly through the memorandum of understanding we are really bearing down and bearing down. The How to note is an answer to a lot of things. It sets out a lot of the suppliers, and we can really elaborate that and make sure that tells a very clear story about the different options. On UNDP, I would say Charles Chauvel is in a fantastic position himself to make more use of Westminster. He does not need to come to us to do that.
Fiona Bruce
Just continuing on WFD, you have partly answered this question, but we are interested to know what role you see for WFD in the future, its relationship with DFID, how DFID would work with it and how it would work with other Westminster institutions. Can I also just refer you back to Anthony Smith’s evidence, on behalf of WFD, when he did say that he felt that perhaps annual budgets in a single country in the thousands could be more appropriate than these big budgets and proportionately could provide better quality results? He also commented on the potential benefit of having perhaps a pot of money for small, flexible projects that could respond to particular political circumstances that could arise at relatively short notice. I would be very interested in your comments on his views there.
Mr Swayne
Specifically on flexibility, flexibility is built into each project from the start so that those opportunities can be taken account of when they arise. If there is no programme, however, in a particular country, then clearly a business case has to be made. The lead time will be longer because it is going to have to come to the Minister to approve, and I cannot see any way around that, but I was impressed by the evidence that was given and I certainly want to see Westminster Foundation for Democracy working in that way.
Shiona Ruhemann
On flexibility, programmes increasingly are very clear about the objectives of what they are trying to do in terms of oversight or representation. That is very firm, and then there is a lot of flexibility under that in terms of the activities, which is able to respond to a very volatile and changing situation. Some programmes, like Uganda, have built in a very fast approval process for its partners, so they can quickly respond to opportunities that come up.
Fiona Bruce
On the specific point on DFID working with WFD and maybe WFD with other organisations, do you have any comments there?
Jonathan Hargreaves
As you know, with the Foreign Office, of course, we have been the main funder of the WFD over the years and will be looking forward to talking to Anthony and his colleagues about the next tranche of funding for that. Certainly we will look very favourably on extending that support into the future, and I expect we would do that in some shape or form together with the Foreign Office. The reviews that we have done and that the Triennial Review has done have, as Anthony has already articulated, shown some of the areas where we think the WFD can do even better. We think that they can be more focussed, and that there can be a better bringing together of the parliamentary and the political party work. We think that it will be possible to show greater impact and to have greater skills to bring to bear and, as Anthony also said, to bring in evidence from what works in this domain as a stronger foundation for their work. Therefore, we are very optimistic that WFD will be able to do an even better job in the future. As to the question of working more closely with others, we have heard this morning Anthony talking about the possibility of revitalising the Westminster Consortium in some way. That is, of course, up to WFD and those partners, and it is very helpful that there is that conversation going on. We think that that would be a positive development. Anything that enables us to draw the full impact from the excellent resources that we have around the UK, both in Westminster and elsewhere, and package those in a way that enables it to access more funding, to have better skills, better knowledge, better evidence and to provide the better offer that I was talking about earlier can only be really positive, and we are very happy to play our part in that kind of conversation to help that along.
Jeremy Lefroy
We have received criticism of the way that DFID monitors the performance of contractors like the UNDP, for instance, in ACAI’s 2012 report on DFID’s electoral support through UNDP. It says that the UNDP has demonstrated an ability to deliver technically sound assistance but design processes are often rushed and budgets unrealistic. It does not have a strong culture of cost control and tends to support over‑complex solutions. I wondered what you have been doing to ensure that things are improving in the UNDP programmes delivered under this category.
Mr Swayne
The fact is that we do lay down the law and we do get involved and we do roll up our shirtsleeves, as we have in Afghanistan with respect to UNDP’s costs and secured significant savings. At the last Multilateral Aid Review, UNDP scored well in terms of value for money, but we do have reservations about the way that they evaluate results and, as a consequence, the Secretary of State called them in and laid down what it was that we wanted to achieve. We are active in getting improvements and pushing these operations in the right direction.
Shiona Ruhemann
You will see this in Tanzania, which is a good example again of a UNDP programme that scored a B. After two Bs you have to take action. Pre‑emptively they called in the country team and they had a performance improvement plan, and at the next annual review scored an A. We see a lot of pre‑emptive programme management. DRC is another example where there was an in‑depth management review before the programme started. That was using UK skills, PricewaterhouseCoopers UK. That created a very detailed results framework, a set of benchmarks, and funds were frozen when there were concerns about delivery, which was not in Parliament but in elections. We see a lot of DFID programmes being really on the case with UNDP as well as the MAR work at the centre and pushing centrally for the UNDP to have baselines and key performance indicators, etc.
Jeremy Lefroy
What about the EU? That is one of the main multilateral delivery partners, and we were told last week about the poor performance of EU parliamentary strengthening projects giving out large contracts to Brussels‑based private companies with little knowledge of Parliaments, which is often required to be spent in short timescales. If that is true, it appears to me to be something that needs looking at.
Mr Swayne
That is the question that I was about to answer a couple of minutes ago before I stopped myself. I was summoned before the European Scrutiny Committee to deal with our reservations about the way that the EU measures its results. We have a large agenda and we are pushing it in the right direction. With respect to the specifics of it handing out contracts on governance, I am going to parry that. Are we aware of any such criticisms?
Shiona Ruhemann
No, we are not. In a similar process of pushing the EU on its effectiveness, we got 20 DFID secondments into the EU to make sure that it is delivering.
Chair
The evidence we got was from the Clerk of the Assemblée Nationale, who gave a fairly graphic account of what he thought was really just appalling bureaucracy costing an awful lot of money and buying pretty well second‑rate stuff.
Jeremy Lefroy
This is the French criticising the EU, we have to point out.
Jonathan Hargreaves
It is worth examining the evidence behind that. I would also say that of course there is something of an industry around accessing EU funds and some people are extremely good at it and invest an enormous amount in it. Our UK Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels is there to help with that. They have an EU aid project team, which is there specifically in order to help British contractors and no doubt public sector bodies too, if relevant, access EU funding, and that is absolutely as it should be, given the amount of UK money that makes up a part of that. Therefore, given the ability to invest resource in finding out how to access that, there are ways to be able to do that.
Mr Swayne
I would jump at any opportunity to criticise the EU, but I confess to having not found that many opportunities in this particular role. They do score quite highly and are internationally well thought of, but I would certainly be interested in the evidence that you have.
Chair
Have a look at the evidence; it does suggest that something could be done. I just wondered if I could briefly ask you about the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund and how this is going to affect the outcome. I know it is not entirely clear at the moment how it is going to operate, but it has been suggested to us that the focus is more on conflict than stability. That implies that instead of investing on the points that Fiona Bruce was saying about working with Parliamentarians even in conflict situations to try to work through, the focus may go away from that. I quoted Iraq as a particular example, but my guess is that that would still be true of the DRC or Somalia or what have you. However dysfunctional, the ultimate objective has to be to have some accountability and some functioning Parliament, so it would be a little concerning if the focus was moving away from that within this new fund. Is there anything you are able to say about that?
Mr Swayne
I would certainly be alive to any such possibility. My focus is that we should be working to preserve stability so that we do not have conflict, and I am certain that that will be the focus of the National Security Council. Yes, there are countries that are in conflict and what can we do to stabilise them, but equally there are many countries that are on the brink of conflict where we have to work to preserve stability. Is there anything that you can add?
Jonathan Hargreaves
That is absolutely right. Of course, it is for the NSC to prioritise which countries they want to particularly focus on, but within that, having done that, we are able to provide advice to those implementing the CSSF strategies in how best to tackle the kinds of issues they want to tackle. We have done something called a “Thematic Information Paper” specifically on supporting inclusive political systems, which is designed to inform officials who are developing CSSF strategies overall, drawing heavily on our draft How to note. We are trying to make it as easy as possible for people who do not necessarily spend their entire day job thinking about how to support political systems to be able to think about what we know about what is likely to work in that. We are very aware of your concern, Chair, and are trying to make sure that there are things in place to help people through that.
Chair
Certainly the practitioners say to us that working for the long term and working through reversals and downsizes is important. In other words, they are saying if you are trying to work through a conflict situation to post‑conflict or conflict prevention, you have to think in terms of 10 or 15 years or even generational, so it is whether it is trying to help the political process to lead them out of conflict or help to stabilise the situation so it does not drop back into conflict. Given the timescales, the budgets and elections and everything else domestically here, is it possible to work to those longer term horizons? With no criticism whatsoever of the likes of the IPU and the CPA, they do not usually have the capacity to think of a five‑year project. It tends to be relatively short term.
Mr Swayne
That is why we have multi‑year, long‑term commitment, big projects and are criticised: “Why have you got so many big projects that last many years instead of being more nimble and being able to get quick wins?” You have to get a balance between the two.
Shiona Ruhemann
That is very much long‑term horizons in everyone’s mind. You have a length of a programme, but people are thinking beyond that where they are tackling regime change politics or personality politics and trying to shift that to the politics of alternative policies. That is a big task and, in some contexts, it is fairly predictable what the election is going to deliver in 2021, so all of our programmes are thinking in long‑term horizons.
Fiona Bruce
The question of the possibility of a cross‑Government strategy with a pipeline of projects was referred to in the earlier question session. This could perhaps co‑ordinate practice between Departments and help smaller bodies plan. In our earlier evidence session, Anthony Smith said that there is not an obvious “centre of gravity” for applications or perhaps a more formal stopping point for this work is an idea to take away. I wondered what you thought of that, having heard his evidence.
Mr Swayne
It is horses for courses at the moment. There is no central strategy other than it is, for each country where we are working, for us to analyse the political economy, see what we need to achieve, what is realistic in going about how to achieve it and then going to it. Since I believe Parliaments are the most important thing, which is why I sought to be a Member of one, my prejudice would be to say you must always, whenever you work in a country, have a parliamentary programme. The danger of that would be that you would end up with a tick-box mentality; you would end up doing something just to do it. Equally, there are places where you cannot work with a Parliament, because of the nature of that Parliament or the nature of the country and you have to find other ways of getting at other institutions in civil society. Beyond that, what strategy could one have?
Jonathan Hargreaves
Maybe our colleague from the Foreign Office would also like to say something about this. I tend to agree very much with what Anthony Smith said earlier—that a grandiose strategy expressing our big picture aims in the world on democracy probably is not going to serve a particular function. However, is there space for a conversation, particularly with WFD and its collaborators, about how HMG sees its role, how that might respond to HMG priorities, either geographically or thematically, and how we can work better together to make sure that that offer is known and taken up? Yes, that is certainly something that we can work on together.
Rob Fenn
I would simply add the slight caveat that the review as a whole is before Foreign Office Ministers at the moment. However, I, too, listened very carefully to what Anthony said this morning and, of course, have facilitated his access to senior officials in the Foreign Office and the travels he has already embarked upon to see some of our more critical posts—his customers, as it were. Whether or not it ends up being called a strategy we definitely do have to leave on one side, but we can easily see that what WFD needs is a really effective, real‑time relationship with the Foreign Office and its networks. Therefore, we are already, for example, helping WFD, Anthony and his team, draw up their strategy, which is very important work, immediately to do what they can do in light of the emerging findings from the review. I think they need access to regional directors at the right time in the planning cycle of the Foreign Office itself. We need to make sure that, for example, when country business plans are crystallising, there is good communication between WFD and those regional experts in the Foreign Office about the opportunities, both the short‑term and the long‑term trends. I would say—and this comment does hark back a little bit to the British brand that you were probing earlier—there are two clear opportunities over the next few months to raise the profile. One is when the review is laid we can use that to raise the profile of WFD itself right around the Foreign Office network, so that it becomes more instinctively the first resort of the British representatives around the world. We have this fantastic, unique organisation, which they need to think of first, not solely, and what was said also around the idea of a Westminster Consortium is very interesting. There are other horses for courses, as the Minister says, but there is only one non‑departmental public body of the Foreign Office in this area, and that is WFD and it is our flagship. The second big opportunity, more nebulous but quite interesting, is next year's Magna Carta celebrations, which I think are going to raise the profile of the British brand. What the Palace of Westminster is doing is going to be extremely empowering for the Foreign Office itself in our soft power and public diplomacy, and we are certainly already planning to make sure that WFD benefits from that, as it were, benign and interesting context.
Shiona Ruhemann
If I understood Anthony correctly, he was talking about something quite practical and operational, and a lot of that thinking across FCO and DFID has been done through the How to note, which is agreeing an overall approach. Just to close off an earlier issue about DFID and FCO overlapping in a certain number of countries and then the rest is left to FCO, the How to note sets out an approach across all of the countries, and through WFD we are also working jointly in countries where DFID may not have a presence but, through WFD, we have a common approach to how we do that.
Fiona Bruce
You talked about a joint approach on strategy, Mr Fenn. I am interested in the fact that the Triennial Review recommends that FCO and DFID should develop a joint approach on impact assessment on evaluating and monitoring programmes, because the differences in the way that you are monitoring projects are, apparently, causing problems for some Westminster organisations. I wonder if you could let us know how you respond to that, and perhaps the DFID representatives as well, on the joint strategy on impact assessment.
Rob Fenn
We certainly do, in the Foreign Office, regard DFID as the centre of excellence in Whitehall when it comes to monitoring impact and evaluating how projects work. So, in an informal way, our first resort is to talk to DFID about how to evaluate our impact when it comes to programmes and projects. In my own Department, we have a programme fund, which is mainly there to promote the six thematic human rights priorities that the Foreign Office has, but there are two additional priorities. One is the work around sexual violence in war zones, which has become another priority for our fund. The last is democratisation itself. Our work on running, as it were, FCO projects on democratisation, which is over and above the grant in aid given to WFD, is very much part of the Foreign Office’s overall attempt to do projects better and to be professional about programme management. A lot of that expertise has leached into the Foreign Office from DFID down the years, and we are now much less apologetic and timid about saying we can do projects and we can evaluate them. Certainly I would hope that my Department’s fund stands that test. The last thing I would say is that the Triennial Review process itself is part of the evaluation. That is why the Cabinet Office imposes this discipline on us, so we will, of course, study very carefully—and Foreign Office Ministers are doing that right now—how WFD has scored and, like my DFID colleagues here, we are very encouraged by what we are hearing from the new CEO and from the WFD board.
Chair
Sir Peter Luff, I am sure you will want to pick up on the Magna Carta references.
Sir Peter Luff
As Co‑Chair of the Speakers’—and that is both of them—Advisory Group for the 2015 Anniversaries, of which Sir Malcolm is also a member, I must welcome Mr Fenn’s comments about Magna Carta unreservedly and think what a good point he makes. I also emphasise it is the 750th anniversary of the De Montfort Parliament as well next year.
Chair
As a supplement to that, our report will be published in time for the 4 February CPA conference on that event and, indeed, we will be presenting our report at that conference.
Sir Peter Luff
I will go back and rethink whether we are doing enough work to exploit this particular aspect of our celebrations next year. Thank you for that, Mr Fenn, very much indeed. On the subject of implementing lessons, we have heard that everyone knows what needs to be done; it just does not get done for some reason. Do you think you are learning the right lessons about parliamentary strengthening?
Mr Swayne
Certainly the projects that have been recently working I have very good impressions of. Clearly things go wrong. With the project in Bangladesh the decision by the Opposition not to contest the election rather buggered the project, but other than that, in particular, I would draw attention to the work that has been done in Uganda and there are other high spots. I think it is going well. I have been in the Department too short a time to have learned any lessons.
Sir Peter Luff
Let us help you. Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace gave a very detailed account of the kinds of lessons that are not being learned by donors generally, not just British donors.
Jonathan Hargreaves
We certainly found that evidence extremely interesting too, and she makes a good point that a lot of work has been done in hoovering up the lessons from around the place and that new primary research on learning those lessons probably would be of limited value. The big game is in making sure that they are applied, absolutely. We do that, as you know, chiefly through our network of governance advisers and the tools with which we provide them. In process terms, our draft How to note, which we are hoping to have your advice on before we finalise it, is the place in which we have tried to bring together those lessons, and we invite all of our experts and offices around the world to draw on those. We also gather them from time to time, as we did last week, where we had a specific session, including some of the people who gave evidence to you, on helping those advisers to think through what we know and what we could do better on parliamentary strengthening. We certainly have good mechanisms in place for learning and sharing lessons. The fact is that the challenge that Rachel lays down is a tough one: find the places where Parliaments have really and visibly become significantly better at providing oversight and helping citizens to have their views and needs taken into account, and then work out how that happened. There are good examples of that around the place, and I do agree that to work out the political economy, to come back to that word, of how that happened and then to bring that back into our lesson learning would be a very valuable thing. However, in terms of the lessons about where donors have done well and not so well, we have learned those. The issue is to apply them, both in designing programmes, which is primarily our job, and also to help our various implementers, not least WFD and perhaps its colleagues in the UK, to draw on that evidence and apply it when they are implementing.
Shiona Ruhemann
Just to reinforce that, Rachel put the lessons very succinctly. She has boiled them down to four lessons and in all of the programmes that are active right now the leads are very aware of those and are definitely trying very hard to apply them. For example, co‑ordination is one of the four and the need to be working in concert with other donors, but several others we have been talking about and everyone is grappling with those.
Sir Peter Luff
What we have heard as well, when we took evidence from the ODI, was that the wrong incentives are in place for donors in general. They want money out of the door quickly, to achieve quick results. Do you think you have the right incentives in place for your staff to make the right decisions?
Mr Swayne
Every project has reviews throughout the year, but the culmination is the annual review, and if a project is not performing, the officers have to take steps to get it back on track.
Sir Peter Luff
Are they performing against the right criteria?
Mr Swayne
I do not perceive the problem in that way. The system is working reasonably well.
Jonathan Hargreaves
It is an art not a science designing the dreaded logframes, as one of your witnesses called them last week and, absolutely, we are getting it wrong if we are providing incentives for ourselves that tend to short‑term, activity‑based results or at least that can only be a part of monitoring performance. We need certainly to be very smart about the kinds of results in terms of outcomes and what is really changing with regard to the objectives that we are setting ourselves about responsiveness and accountability. No one says that is easy. We have some good input from USAID, for example, who are sharing the same kind of thinking that we are on how to do this better. The piece of work I mentioned earlier by ODI on being more politically smart and locally led also makes the point that we need to find ways of building in both attention to what outcomes we are trying to achieve and also enough flexibility to be able to change and adapt as we go along, as things become difficult, as we hit difficult territory. Our new Smart Rules in DFID help us with that quite a lot. It is giving us a lot more flexibility to be able to focus on what we are trying to achieve in the end, how we manage the risk of getting there and to be able to adapt as we go along to being able to make sure that we adapt to circumstances and to events, so that we can get to the end goal but not necessarily by the most direct route. Our quite big emphasis on better delivery over the last few months is helping us to be more adaptive and flexible.
Mr Swayne
It comes back again to the key to the How to note: the importance of the initial analysis of what is achievable and how we go about achieving it. That must be the guard against absurd measurements of how many seminars you have held and how many training courses or, indeed, measuring the output at the end of that process by saying how more effective the Parliament has become by how many more laws it has passed or how many more parliamentary questions have been put down. These things are difficult to measure, but they are measurable and we have to be much smarter about it.
Sir Peter Luff
Talking about measuring things, how do you measure the skills of your staff in this area?
Mr Swayne
I can measure the staff, because we have 120 governance officers, of which 86 are deployed in‑country, of which 25 have been employed locally because of their expertise. They are all required to have a thorough understanding of governance issues. We provide an online library of the latest evidence and learning abilities. We have just had the professional development conference, one of the sessions of which was largely based around your own findings in Burma. We are alive to the need to keep our people up to speed all the time. However, what they do not have is what we have in this room here: that direct experience of having been a Member of Parliament, being involved and that is a key element of the mix.
Sir Peter Luff
Well anticipated, Minister. My next question precisely is what can you do about that? How can you improve their understanding of Parliament effectively?
Mr Swayne
Well, you have this Committee as part of that and you have Ministers in DFID with their political experience and their political nous. I heard the exchanges that took place in the session beforehand in terms of whether there should be a board. I am all for seeking advice about particular projects and getting input from Members of Parliament who have expertise. Inevitably, whatever their experience and knowledge of a political economy, for people who have not done it—been an MP—I can see the advantage of having that available to you. However, I would not formalise it on a board because, equally, Members of Parliament will not always have the expertise and knowledge of a particular situation.
Sir Peter Luff
If you think a board does not address the strengths and qualities of your governance advisers, how do you get them to feel what Parliament really is?
Shiona Ruhemann
None of them have been elected; I think that is true. The advisers have not been elected. However, to get through the door either as a governance adviser or a social development adviser you are tested on your social and political analysis, and a lot of people work directly with political systems. The majority would have first‑hand experience in overseas countries and some of us, including me, have worked in this Parliament. I was not elected, but I was an adviser to a frontbench MP, so a lot of us know a lot about the House of Commons as well. You do not even get through the door if you do not have that experience.
Chair
Just one final question: there is a huge turnover of MPs in some countries, but the biggest problem in many of the countries that we operate in is endemic corruption. It seems to me that there are two approaches to that. One is to see MPs and Parliamentarians as part of the corruption process. The other is to see them as part of the solution, which is giving them more information, making the system more accountable, giving them the capacity to confront their own ministers and also to relate properly to their constituents in ways that can clean it up. Is that not something we should be aspiring to achieve? All of us have this problem of MPs saying, “Wherever I go, my constituents say they want money for weddings, funerals, hospitals, schools.” Our retort to that is, “It is not your job as an MP to do that, but unfortunately that is the perception. Your job is to fight for a system that delivers it for you and not to be part of the process that, in order to deliver that, you have to have your own network of bribes to fund your re‑election.” Is all that not absolutely central to what parliamentary strengthening is all about and changing the culture? Otherwise if Parliaments go on operating like that, they will never, ever deliver proper democratic accountability.
Mr Swayne
That is absolutely right and a good and well-functioning Parliament operates to civilise the people they represent to change those attitudes about, “Your job is to provide X, Y and Z”—that sort of politics. We do an awful lot of work, and part of it is in the mechanics of strengthening scrutiny, the investment we put into public accounts committees and financial management, but it goes much beyond that into expectations of civil society. Again, I go back to the AAWAZ project that we have running and the project in Pakistan particularly, where you have communities working at community level to educate them as to what their legitimate expectations are of their representatives, both locally and at parliamentary level. Do you want to add anything to that?
Shiona Ruhemann
Nigeria is another very good example of that. That is exactly the approach that we are trying to work with, and the How to note is all about that. Rachel Kleinfeld’s paper is about that. The lessons that we have all drawn and drawn and drawn are about understanding the context, the informal institutions, the incentives and working on the basis of a very strong understanding of that.
Chair
Can I give you a piece of homework, Minister? In response to Jeremy Lefroy’s question, you said that DFID is highly rated for transparency. I can say that the Committee’s experience does not quite bear that out. Generally speaking, we find MPs and, indeed, other institutions in countries say they have little or no idea what donors, including the UK, are doing—people who perhaps ought to and ought to be given that knowledge. It may be partly their fault, but it must also be partly ours. I just wondered if you could check on that.
Mr Swayne
Certainly. We have just been through the process of what we call challenge meetings, where every team for which I am responsible has to review their programmes with me, and the question I ask, which is the question I ask every time a submission is put to me, is: how is this badged? How will people know that this comes from the United Kingdom? It is absolutely vital. We have to sell it to our constituents, so that they will support international development aid, because they know that it is making a difference. If the people we are helping do not know that it is from us and it is making a difference, clearly that is something we have to address.
Chair
It helps MPs to ask their Ministers what they are doing with the money; I think that is the point. The second thing, which is not directly relevant to this, is we found a contrasting situation in Liberia. DFID went out of its way to think of every conceivable bit of spending that was attributable to Liberia to give them the maximum total. In Sierra Leone, they did the exact opposite and held back quite significant chunks of spending, which they did not add into the total and which we only found out afterwards. It is really helpful, I would say, for everybody to know what the bilateral programme is and what our contributions to the multilateral programmes are and, frankly, certainly for the Parliamentarians in those countries to be fully informed, because they waste an awful lot of time and energy just questioning who is doing what and why.
Shiona Ruhemann
Can I just reinforce what the Minister said earlier? We are number two on the International Aid Transparency Index.
Chair
It does not say a lot for the rest if that is the case.
Shiona Ruhemann
The USA is number 31. They may not know where to access it, but the information is getting out.
Mr Swayne
I take the point though.
Chair
It is a serious point, because we just do not feel that that information is there. If you agree with that point, Minister, the better informed people are, the more transformational parliamentary strengthening can become. Thank you very much. We have covered a lot of ground. I guess we have to declare a vested interest, as Parliamentarians, in that role. I do not think we are suggesting that the Government should spend huge amounts more money or huge amounts of money on it, but we do think there is more that can be done and, if you are making longer term commitments, it probably does require more money than is currently being put in. Ad hoc arrangements are all very well, but sometimes you have to make a commitment for the longer term. The role of WFD is interesting, coming from every direction. One way or another, it seems to me to be crucial to provide that connecting link that can raise the game and ensure smaller institutions, who do a very good niche job but complain all the time that getting in on the game is quite difficult, find it more accessible. That will be reflected in our report eventually. Thank you very much indeed. Oral evidence: Parliamentary Strengthening, HC 704 6