Andrew Mitchell keynote speech
The following is a transcript of Andrew Mitchell's keynote speech and Q&A session at the Bond Annual Conference and AGM 2010 at King's Fund on 4 November 2010. You can also watch a video of his speech below.
Anna Feuchtwang, Bond Chair:
Secretary of State, from day one you have made a great many changes to the UK’s development policy agenda and the way that DFID works. You’ve brought a fresh focus and commitment to ensuring that DFID’s work makes real and lasting impact. And emphasis on demonstrating that international development makes a difference.
And as you know, a good number of us, our organisations here, have also been given a lot of priority to this agenda. And we’re working with DFID’s support through the Bond Effectiveness Programme to prove and improve our effectiveness as well.
We particularly welcome the leadership that you, the Chancellor and the Prime Minister have shown in maintaining the commitment to the 0.7% GNI 2013 target. Against the backdrop of what we all know are very difficult public spending cuts.
We share your concern that there is an urgent need to prove to the UK public that this commitment will make a real difference. You have praised the UK’s "brilliant NGOs" many times. And we’re really grateful for that, thank you. And we look forward to hearing more from you on the role of civil society. And your vision for our relationship with DFID and the government in the years ahead.
This is going to be particularly helpful for us today because later on today we’re going to be approving, I hope, and discussing Bond’s new strategy and what we plan to accomplish in the next five years. We believe that the UK NGOs and DFID, working constructively, successfully and productively together is the key to the UK playing its full part in rising to the development challenges we all face.
And we share an ambition with you which is for the UK to increase even further the global leadership that you’ve shown already to have real influence both in Europe and at the G20 level and beyond. So Secretary of State thank you very much for being with us this morning and we look forward to hearing from you.
Rt Hon Andrew Mitchell, Secretary of State for International Development:
Well good morning everybody and it’s great to be back to another Bond Annual General Meeting. As you said I woke up every morning in opposition throughout the five years that I shadowed this job. Hoping that I might one day have a chance to do it for real. And for me to be your Secretary of State is very much a dream come true and I’m delighted to be standing here today.
What I think is a historic moment for development really that we have now scheduled the spending limits over the next four years which say that we will reach 0.7% of gross national income Britain’s pledged to the poorest in the world that we have made from 2013. And I do think that this is an extraordinary moment. Many of us are passionately committed to this agenda. Probably everyone in this room has campaigned vigorously for the rich world to meet its commitments to the poorest in the world. And I think this is a fantastic day.
And I want to pay a very special tribute which I hope every single person in this room will agree with to the Prime Minister and to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Who at an incredibly difficult time in our national finances, our national economy as we wrestle with the deficit and also the national debt we have made it clear that we will not balance the books on the backs of the poorest people in the world.
I am deeply proud of the coalition Government for doing that. I notice all around the world other governments admire and respect Britain for its leadership in this. And I think everyone who has campaigned for this in civic society can take real pleasure from what our Prime Minister and our Chancellor of the Exchequer have done.
And you know there’s a streak of character in Britain amongst all of us. A deep generosity to those less fortunate than ourselves. I saw it during the dreadful events earlier this year in the Pakistan floods where people were caught in the most desperate circumstances that I have ever seen in Pakistan.
The response to the disaster’s Emergency Committee Appeal in Britain made me really proud to be British. Britain led the world in the response standing shoulder to shoulder with Pakistan in its hour of need at that time.
And I think that this commitment says something about our values. Not only as a coalition government, but also as a people and what we really care about. Now there are of course two key reasons why we have stood by this pledge. One is moral and the other is national interest.
And it will of course bring the development community under very great scrutiny. I was surprised and dismayed to see the attack on all four of my directors general in DFID for their salaries. And there was an attack on me I think over the weekend in one of the papers.
We will be subject to very great scrutiny now in the way we spend tax payers money and the way we spend those who support our charities as well. And I want to address that point as well. But let me be clear about the case we put to the British public, those who are sceptical about this.
The first part of this case is that it is morally right to stand by these commitments. In a hundred years time people will look back on our generations in much the same way as we look back on the slave trade today with a mixture of incredulity and astonishment that that was allowed in those days.
And they will marvel at the fact that 25,000 people will die today needlessly from disease which we have a power to prevent. That 4,000 people will die today from Malaria, of whom 75% will be children under five. That there are today babies who die from a lack of food, from malnutrition, that is sacrilege.
And we will be looked at in a hundred years time and we will be judged by those who are to come for the way in which we respond. Because our generations for the first time have a capacity to make a real difference to these colossal discrepancies of wealth and opportunity which exists in our world today.
So let no one be in any doubt at all about the moral case. And indeed the Prime Minister makes it clear that the moral case is enough for him. But it is also of course in our national interest that we should tackle these causes of dysfunctionality and fragility and conflict upstream when you can focus on the causes of this. And where it is much less expensive as well than dealing with them when they’ve burst out in to violence and dysfunctionality and disorder later on when you have to cope with the symptoms. So it is both a moral case and a national interest case.
All of Britain’s development budget actually contributes to our national interest. And a proportion of it, and I’m going to talk about this in a moment contributes to our national security very directly as well.
If we are to maintain support for this budget amongst the British public then we have to demonstrate beyond doubt that a hundred pence of hard earned tax payers money delivers a pound of development value. And I want to make four points about the changes we are making to Britain’s development policies and Britain’s development programme.
And the first is that if I was to go on television tonight and announce £20 million for Ethiopia the reaction from many people in Britain would be one of irritation and annoyance. That is because in the past we have been operating in the development space in a very benign climate. But now it is a cold climate and we to do in the future for the quality of British aid what perhaps in the past has been done for the quantity of British aid.
So if I was to go on television and say that as a result of Britain’s tax payers’ commitment to development we’re going to get another 20,000 in to school in Ethiopia, then there is a debate to be had with the public. And if I then say, and you don’t have to trust me as a politician or a minister that this aid is being well spent, it is being independently evaluated, non politicians are saying this money is being well spent. Then you can have a debate with the sceptics about first why we’re doing it and secondly about the effectiveness of what we’re doing.
And those are the two huge changes that we are making to the way Britain delivers its development. Firstly because there is now an absolute focus on results. That it was what we look at. This is a very big change for the department, around the world in the different offices in the past people have looked at their budget and have bid for some more. That doesn’t happen anymore now. So what you now get is people looking at how many girls they can get in to school.
To how many people you can get clean water and sanitation? Can you get basic health care and education to the people at the end of the track in our world who don’t have it? And this makes for an internal market of results. It means that one office will talk to another office and say “How is it that you can get girls in to school in your country for £55 a year, we can’t get it below £65?"
And we’re looking at those results. This is an absolutely critical change in the way we do everything. And next year I hope to be able to publish with your support in cooperation and consultation with all of you Britain’s offer to the poor world. In a way that’s not done through being a White Paper but a set of statistics. A set of results which show people why this development budget is so important. And why we’re having such a colossal impact across the world.
We have announced the setting up of the independent commission for aid impact, ICAI. We will be appointing the commissioners shortly. We’ve appointed the chief commissioner and this will look each year at a variety of both programmes and projects around the world. Reporting not to me but to parliament, to the International Development Select Committee on the results of development.
And of course this is quite a sophisticated and complicated process. It’s not only about value for money it’s also about the long term nature of development. But we need to bring together those two strands of evaluation. We can do that and we must have the self confidence both to, knowing that we do this stuff well, self confidence to allow independent people to evaluate what we do. And if we get it wrong we must take it on the chin and put it right. We are good at this sort of stuff and we want everyone to see the results of that.
The third area I want to emphasise for change is the way in which the government now looks at issues of national security, through the National Security Council. On that council sit the Defence Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, chaired by the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and the DFID Secretary.
And this is a very big change in the way we do these things in this country. It now means that on issues of defence and security DFID and development have a seat at the top table. And in the National Security Council discussion of Britain’s security, how you make life safer for all of us.
Instead of having one of these rather limited discussions between the Department of Defence and Number 10 on whether you should put your money in to submarines or tanks, whether you are more secure as a result of building up the army or the navy. You can have a much more holistic and sensible discussion about whether or not our security is enhanced by submarines or tanks or training the police in Afghanistan, building up government structures in the Yemen or getting girls in to school in the Horn of Africa.
And that’s a much better discussion as everyone in this room knows about how you build up security in a divided and conflicted world. And what this has shown the development community, I believe is first of all that we have a seat at the top table in all these discussions.
But also that the intellectual firepower of a department like mine can flow around Whitehall informing decisions of the government as a whole. And move a very long way from the paranoia which sometimes in the past has affected the development establishment in Britain that someone’s going to come and do something unpleasant to us or our budget.
Those days I submit to you have now gone. And the importance of focusing on these conflicted areas, absolutely clear the reason why I argued on the National Security Council that we should increase from about 24% the amount of our development budget we spend in conflicted areas to around 30% over the period of this spending review. Is because if you ignore the people who live in these conflicted areas then they lose out twice over. Once because they are poor and secondly because they’re living in difficult conflicted areas as well.
And the reality remains that none of these conflicted states are going to reach any of the Millennium Development Goals as things stand. And if you look at the 34 countries that are furthest away from reaching these goals, 22 of them are either in conflict or have just emerged from conflict. So the development community focusing on difficult, conflicted areas justifying the fact that it is more expensive to work in these areas than in steady state countries. Compare for example getting children in to school in Rwanda on the one hand with getting them in to school in the DRC next door.
Working on these difficult areas is absolutely in our national interests and absolutely in the interests of a pro poverty agenda designed to help the poorest people in the world. And also let me make this other point about conflict too. Which is that if you are caught in a conflict it doesn’t matter how much access you have to all the other areas of development, money, wealth creation and so forth. For as long the conflict continues you’re going to remain poor and miserable and frightened and angry. So that is the third area I wanted to mention.
And the fourth area relates to something which we often used to discuss when we met in opposition. And that is just as it is conflict which condemns people to remain miserable and in poverty. And an area too in which women particularly bear the brunt of poverty and dysfunctionality. So it is through wealth creation that people have the ability to lift themselves out of poverty.
And I think that configuring or reconfiguring as we have said we will do, all of the wealth creation efforts that we make in the Department for International Development in to one division so that we can really focus on that. Having a root and branch look at CDC which had become too much a development financing institution which has lost it’s development to DNA, it’s just become a fund of funds now. Trying to get it back in to the middle where it incorporates sound financial DNA and development DNA is a very important part of what we want to do.
We want to put wealth creation as well as women and girls at the centre of what we do in development. Because we understand how important wealth creation is across all the different development agendas. I spent 24 hours with a very poor family in Atukkal in Ethiopia about 3 hours from Addis a month or so ago. And the remarkable lesson I learnt on that occasion was that the family with whom I stayed who were grindingly poor had actually managed to get those four key things amongst the MDGs that we all talk about.
They’d got clean water for the first time in the last 15 months 7 minutes from their home. Meaning that they didn’t have to walk for an hour every morning to get clean water. They had basic pit latrines serving a family of a grandmother, a mother and a father of eight children. Six of the eight children were able to go to school 15 minutes away. Thanks not least to Action Aid for their work on that. And there was a health centre within 15 minutes of the family’s home.
But they were grindingly poor and as I looked at this family and particularly these children. Who reminded me so much of my own children I thought to myself “What is it that will translate and transform their generation from their parents generation?” Now the answer to me was clearly firstly education. That was the critical thing that now they have these other basic factors of life. Having access to education for those children was fundamental.
And the other aspect that seemed to me to be critical was the access to wealth creation. Up the road were farmers were joining together to go and sell their beans in to Addis and more widely than that. Wealth was beginning to flow in to the local community. And that was a very powerful lesson that I learnt about the importance of wealth creation. And indeed the importance of free and fair trade which the Prime Minister has made a particular point of championing during the time he has been in government.
Let me draw these initial remarks to a close having dealt with those four big changes. By just addressing the question that you raised at the beginning about our work with Britain’s brilliant NGOs. In the five years that I’ve shadowed this job I’ve had the opportunity to see all around the world the work that Britain’s NGOs do. I saw it graphically recently in the work that was going on in the aftermath of the floods in Pakistan.
But I’d seen it everywhere. I remember particularly seeing the work that rugged Brits were doing in Laos and Cambodia. Particularly in Laos where a charity had been started to cope with the appalling damage to kids playing in jungle areas in Laos when they step on cluster bombs left by the American B52s. Who dumped their bombs on the way out of Vietnam when they were flying back. And these cluster bombs still main two or three children every week in Laos.
And the way in which a prosthetic limbs factory had been set up. And training Laosians to tackle this and having a way of reaching these children straight away and giving them a new chance in life. And chance that was destroyed by their experiences with these ghastly weapons.
So I’m absolutely devoted to the work that NGOs do and I want to enhance it in a way that is consistent with what I have set out already. And that is why we will be setting up what we will call the Global Poverty Action Fund. It embraces the concept of the big society that all of you are part of. And the way in which it will operate is to support the results which are achieved by charities and NGOs.
And I submit to you that it is an extremely good deal for the British tax payer that if by increasing the funding which you yourselves raise. By increasing that funding and increasing thereby the results which you are achieving. Then the British tax payer is piggybacking on the back of your development success at an extremely good deal for the British tax payer as a result.
And we will make the mechanisms, we’ve been consulting with you about how the Global Poverty Action Fund should work. We have listened carefully to your advice. We will set up a mechanism which delivers what I have described. We will try and make sure that it is simple and effective. And in my judgment increasingly we will see the tax payers support for British charities and development, NGOs increasingly focused through this mechanism of supporting the results which you are achieving.
And with that I think we’ll command very strong support and agreement from the tax payer. And give Britain’s charities and NGOs an ability to do even more than they are already doing.
On the match funding point we have decided that in terms of completely new and innovative ideas there won’t be a requirement for matched funding. But we will look for a combination of charity money and tax payers’ money to be combined in much of the work that GPAF, this Global Poverty Action Fund, does. In order to command support that we really are using tax payers money to achieve specific results in a non speculative way.
Thank you once again for the tremendous support that you have given to the passionate cause of our age. To doing something about these colossal discrepancies of opportunity and wealth which exists in our world. And which I have tried to describe. I look forward enormously to working with all of you down the coming months and hopefully years.
One of the great advantages of course of being in opposition, there aren’t many advantages to being in opposition. But one of the advantages in doing a job like this is you do have a chance in slow time to really focus on issues. And get to know the people both care about these issues and also have great expertise on them.
That’s why looking around this room I see many people whom I have bumped in to over the last five years. Hugely enjoyed working with and I very much look forward to that continuing from here as well. Thank you.
Anna Feuchtwang:
Secretary of State thank you very much you’ve kindly agreed to answer some questions from the floor as well and I’d like to ask Caroline Nursey to ask the first question.
Caroline thank you.
Caroline Nursey, Director, BBC World Service Trust:
Secretary of State you talked about accountability and in other fora you've talked more explicitly about accountability relating to the MDGs. As have many of us here. And I think we all think it’s very important be it for Secretary General’s Report or the EU Peer Review.
What is your thinking about how we as Bond members and the British government could work together to strengthen those accountability mechanisms? Maybe through the G20 and other occasions to make sure that citizens are able to hold their governments to account for documenting what was greed at the summit in September and then for delivering against that?
Andrew Mitchell:
Well it is a very important agenda that you sketch out. Let me give you some sort of thoughts and ideas about how we do that. When I was in New York at the Summit. It was my first big summit at the UN I was very conscious of Britain’s leadership. In development terms we are a super power and it’s very important that we ensure that that leadership position continues and reinforces all the accountability points that you make.
It’s one of the reasons why the Prime Minister, both at the G8 and at the earlier G20 meeting made it very clear that this was an absolutely top priority for Britain and he put a particular emphasis on addressing issues of maternal mortality. Particularly MDG 5 which is of course the most off track of all the MDGs.
In terms of accountability, building up the capacity of civil society in the poor countries to hold their leaders to account is fundamental to development. But also making sure that leaders of rich countries, who make these pledges stand by these commitments.
And it is a rich irony that the only one of the leaders who was there at Gleneagles who signed in front of the television cameras the solemn promises and commitments to increasing aid and development support for Africa. The only one who is still there is Berlusconi from Italy. Which, of course has woefully gone back on the commitments and promises which the Italian government made.
And I can’t, I’m afraid replicate the splendid language used by Sir Bob Geldof in addressing this particular issue. But it is a fact that we do expect Italian civil society to stand by the promises that their politicians made on their behalf. And hold those politicians accountable.
So the first thing that you can do in response to your question is to talk to your Italian counterparts and other Southern European Counterparts and make this point to them. That it’s no good after trying to make sure on behalf of the poorest people in the world that their leaders are held to account for the commitments that they have made and signed up to if you have a member of the G8 who doesn’t stand up for and abide by the commitments that he has made. So that’s the first answer.
Secondly in terms of trying to make sure that other leaders of the donor and developed world stand by these commitments. The Prime Minister I think does in a very subtle way, points out the importance of people doing what they have committed to do. He argues the results case, that there are very good reasons why this is not just about putting more and more money on the table. It is about getting more and more children in to school. And getting clean water to those who don’t have it and so forth.
So I think that’s very important too. We mustn’t be smug about this in Britain but we must make clear the passion that informs our decision to do this, why it is the right thing to do and try and carry other leaders with us. We are pulling together all the commitments that were made at the summit in a Secretary General paper. Which will be publicly available so that people can see what the world signed up to there.
There will be a sort of annual monitoring through the United Nations. But Raj Shah the administrator of USAID and I have agreed that in each of the remaining years before the MDGs should be completed, all five of those years, for each of the eight MDGs every year we will produce a table which will show which countries have introduced the best practice to achieve the best results for meeting each of those eight Millennium Development goals.
This is not a finger pointing exercise. It’s about disseminating best practice, showing who is making progress and inspiring others to make progress. And delivering to everyone the learning in the previous year of what works and what doesn’t work. And that will be our particular contribution together with the Americans in respect of all eight of the MDGs. We’ve asked ODI in London and CGD in Washington to come up with the right metric for describing that and that work is going well.
Martin Drewry, Director, Health Poverty Action:
Thank you and thanks for your passionate commitment. It’s good to be with other kindred spirits in that regard. My question is I’d like to put two different approaches to you that NGOs can adopt in their development work. And ask which you favour?
And deliberately caricaturing too, I know it’s more complicated and things aren’t either one or the other. But one approach is that we go in there and we deliver services independent of the state services that are already there. And in one sense it’s quite tempting for us to do that because it’s quite easy for us to demonstrate a job well done. But the danger is that it undermines those services and actually increases fragility rather than decreases it.
The other approach is a capacity building approach where we undertake activities to build the capacity of the services that are already there. And also build the capacity of civil society to hold those services to account, increase accountability and strengthen governance.
My question is that it seems to me that maybe that latter approach resonates with the concept of a big society. But that’s what I wanted to ask you about. Which of those approaches which, as I say are caricatured do you favour? And how does that relate to the concept of the big society in overseas development work?
Andrew Mitchell:
Well I think they both relate in different ways to the big society. But let me come directly to your question which is that both approaches are absolutely relevant in some circumstances. And the example I would give you, let’s stay with Rwanda and the DRC for the purpose of your question. The answer I would give you is that all of us understand in development terms that if you can use direct budget support it is much the best way of doing development.
If you are able to trust a government that your money will be well spent in an accountable way that is utterly transparent which is the key. Then using budget support is the best way to get development outcomes, much the best way to reach these Millennium Development goals.
The trouble is that I think in the past we’ve done a bit too much of it. And the danger of course is that scandals about miss-spent British tax payers’ money at a time when we are under colossal scrutiny will undermine and damage the whole case for development. And therefore I will be taking in the Bilateral Aid Review a tougher line on direct budget support.
And there’s then a sort of, a matrix of desirable ways of doing it. You can’t do direct budget support, maybe you can sectoral budget support. If you can’t do sectoral budget support then maybe you can find ways of building up non government mechanisms in those countries. And if you can’t do that you’ll have to do it yourself, your first point in your caricature.
So in DRC we’re very much at one end of the scale, your first point. In Rwanda where there are clearly difficulties nevertheless we know that the money is well spent. They are a very, very good development partner and you can basically use direct budget support. So it’s not really either or and that is the approach that I would take.
Dominic White, Head of Government Partnerships Team, WWF:
Thank you. Secretary of State as you know, NGOs have a huge range of interactions, relationships, engaging with the private sector. And today in the new Bond strategy we are committing to scale up our efforts in that regard.
You’ve just established the new private sector department in DFID. And so the question is really how do you see the linkages between these two initiatives developing our common goal of improving the impact of the private sector on development?
Andrew Mitchell:
Well I think it goes back to the point I made in my remarks which is that we need to absolutely understand the importance of the work of the private sector and development. And I think it’s one of the areas that enables us to talk in terms of a British policy towards development and not a labour or conservative or a liberal democrat policy. Which I think is, it’s very important to me, I think it’s very important to all of you that we should, where we can dispense with artificial dividing lines and party politics. And focus on what is a British strong commitment and very strong passion.
So the work of the private sector, the work of wealth creation which was I think on the left regarded with some suspicion in the past. After all I would argue it would not be possible for any NGO to put up a poster, which has happened 10 years ago arguing that free trade is slavery. I think that would be to almost commit intellectual suicide to do that.
So I think the point about the importance of wealth creation, go back to my, the 24 hours I spent with that very poor family in the Atukkal in Ethiopia, the importance of wealth creation I think is understood. Now how do you drive this forward?
First of all you want to encourage a society where entrepreneurs are cherished and not derided. You want a rule of law which ensures that people’s investments are treated properly. An independent judiciary so that investors know that if they invest money they will be treated fairly as a result of that. Encouraging microfinance, encouraging freeing up the trading systems.
One of the things that the Prime Minister has talked about the G20 is trying to make sure that we remove these structural rigidities which stop people being able to get their goods to market and these one stop border posts in Africa which you mentioned when at the Canadian Summit.
These are things that are very important. So focusing on ways of enabling people themselves to trade, jobs. You know any society which encourages jobs is going to prosper economically. Championing those things, the importance of economic growth that is the way we all combine together to give people the opportunities which I described in my remarks.
Kirsty Smith, Director, Methodist Relief Development Fund:
Secretary of State we welcome the government’s development policy review process. As I’m sure you’re familiar the sector has played a very significant role in consultation and policy dialogue. And I’d welcome your thoughts on how you see the role of NGOs and helping form and implement improved development policy with this government?
Andrew Mitchell:
Well I think we do work closely together. DFID is not of course a well upholstered NGO. It is a department of state in the government. And I’m always very insistent with officials that they should talk and consult before we make decisions. And that is happening in countries where we are building up through the Bilateral Aid Review our programmes going forward. Well there are discussions going on and if any of you are having any difficulty holding those discussions you must let us know.
But those discussions are going on as we try to build up the results we want to achieve in the country. And of course that is quite a sophisticated discussion because not only are you looking at what you can do you’re looking at what you should do. And whether we should be doing it ourselves, through the government, through a multi lateral agency or through an NGO or a charity. So there is quite an important discussion to be had on that.
And then in addition to that of course there’s little point in us putting our tax payers funds in to a particular sector if that sector’s very well covered off by the Americans or the Canadians or the Swedes or something. So that is the nature of the discussion that we are having at the moment. And it’s one which we want to involve all those in civil society in making sure we get the right conclusions to.
In general in the UK the point I would make to, I sometimes tease friends of mine in the NGO community that if in Somalia tomorrow we were to abolish poverty, give everyone free A levels and ensure that everyone had a pension of four times the national average wage by the time they reach the age of 55 a press release for an NGO might say “We welcome the British government success in this but…”
And the point I want to make to you all is at a time of quite extraordinary difficulty where, you know you’re all as aware as I am of the scale of the government’s difficulties in addressing across all these difficult areas where there’s higher education today but it’s Child Benefit before, it’s Housing Benefit. All these incredibly difficult areas where we’re trying to do the right thing, not because we want to do it but because we have to do it. Nevertheless we have stood by our commitments to the poorest in the world. We made it clear that these are the values of Britain and the values of the coalition government.
And what I would as at this difficult time, you only have to pick up a copy of the Daily Mail to see the very, very strong attack, the fact that there is a visceral hatred in some parts of the country to our standing by these commitments and making it clear that we’re not going to balance the books in the way I described in my opening remarks.
But that means that all of us now need to champion this agenda and explain why we have made these commitments. Explain the morality behind it. Explain also the national interest behind it. And go out and argue the case. And I see this across the country because the letters columns in local papers are flooded with people saying charity begins at home, why are we doing this?
You know you need to get out and answer those letters. And you do, because I can see each week that people are coming back. And explain that charity does begin at home but it doesn’t end there. And make it clear to people why we stand with such passion behind these commitments. And why we’re determined to pursue this policy. And you are the people who can help us to get that message across because you’re involved in this every day. And you hear these arguments at the bus stop or on the train. And you can help us to make sure that we get our case across.
Christine Allen, Executive Director, Progressio:
Thank you, thank you Minister. You’ve spoken with a huge amount of passion about women and girls at the centre of the government’s development policy. And we really commend that and we note particularly the options for women’s choice and various works going on.
The focus of that has tended to be around health and education particularly. Could you explore what DFID’s work is going to do around enabling gender equality across wider areas, like the governance and accountability and also in economic reforms. What’s the role of gender equality there?
Andrew Mitchell:
Well these things are all quite closely related. If I think to myself what is it that, what are the key ingredients to bring greater stability in the Horn of Africa? Where of course women and children bear the brunt of the dysfunctionality which is there.
If I look for example at Afghanistan and if there is reconciliation at some point, if at some point we’re a very, very, very long way from it. You know that the Taliban were to come back and be reincorporated in to local society. What is the best defence against them once again those dreadful policies against the interests completely of women, of seeping back in to society.
And the answer of course is getting girls in to school. There are two million girls in school now in Afghanistan who wouldn’t be there but for the international aid effort. Those girls will themselves have children in due time. We know from all research that they will have children much later. They will have fewer children. They will have leadership roles in their own communities. They will start to be elected in to government. That’s already happening in Afghanistan and that is the best possible investment in development terms in achieving precisely what you’ve described.
But let me just mention one particular way in which we are determined to help as well. And that is that I think it is a scandal that only 23% of women in sub Saharan Africa have access to contraception today. And we are going to tackle this head on. In every single programme we have anywhere in sub Saharan Africa and indeed in South Asia where this is important, or where there is a lack of availability we are going to focus on extending choice to women over whether and when they have children.
And this is going to happen everywhere. It’s a core commitment in every programme we have along with the commitment to fight Malaria where the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made clear that we will spend very substantial sums of money in pursuit of the result that we require on Malaria. I mentioned in my remarks so many, particularly children die of Malaria every day. If four children on the Isle of Wight died of Malaria today it would be a front page story in practically every single newspaper in Europe. And it would be the lead item on all our televisions.
And yet today 4,000 people, 3,000 under the age of five will die from Malaria. So in terms of those two things Malaria and particularly extending the choice to women over whether and when they have children. I think that is a very fundamental way of advancing the objective which you set out to.
Phil Vernon, Director of Programmes, International Alert:
Secretary of State, DFID is rightly committed to working in conflict affected in fragile states and you’ve repeated that today. Helping to build not only prosperity but the institutions which people need for a responsive governance. This is by nature a work which is expert work and it’s labour intensive work. Needing not just DFID’s funds but also a sustained engagement, HMG at country level.
Given the announcement that DFID’s admin budget apparently is going to be cut which we take to mean personnel cuts, how will you ensure that this work achieves what it sets out to achieve and does no harm?
Andrew Mitchell:
Well you’re completely right about your analysis. If you look for example at a country that’s been in the news recently like Yemen. That the challenge there is not actually finding the money, there’s lots of money available for Yemen. It’s translating money in to results on the ground. Building up government structures and so forth.
And as you rightly say we’re good at doing that. And DFID can be the sort of servant of the international donor community in wiring that together through our experience with multi donor funds and making those funds effective on the ground. So you’re entirely right in your analysis. We must, like every other department in Whitehall take the - make a contribution to reducing expenditure on our admin. And it’s happening in the department now, it’s extremely painful. And the uncertainty that it’s caused is destabilising. I recognise all of that and as I say we’re not doing this because we want to do it. We’re doing it because we have to do it.
And DFID cannot be excepted from that process that every other department in Whitehall is going through. However we cannot have a situation where an increased expenditure is not properly governed. And that just leads to tipping money in to multi lateral agencies or not properly following the achievements that that money must make.
And therefore it is likely, in a carefully controlled way that the programme of personnel that we require will increase over the coming years. And that must be the right thing to do. We cannot go on hiring consultants who are much more expensive than our own staff by definition. And who also, if you’ll pardon the expression are more difficult to control in terms of what they’re producing.
So in terms of programme expenditure we are going to need additional people. And for the focus that we have now on tackling conflict and on wealth creation. That too will mean some additions to the DNA of the department. And require some additional people or some retraining as well to cater for those needs too.
So there is a difference between the approach that we must make on the admin budget and the approach that we’re making in terms of programme.
Andy Egan, Director, People and Planet:
Yes, Secretary of State in the past you have rightfully opposed any UK aid money being used for fossil fuel extraction. Can you assure us that any UK aid money channelled through the World Bank will also not be used to subsidise fossil fuel projects?
Andrew Mitchell:
You’re thinking particularly of the South African coal project. Yes by the time we were in power there wasn’t much we could do about that. I have set out our approach to this quite clearly. And it is a complex approach. But we are deeply conscious of the need to ensure that the world stands by its climate commitments. And we’re obviously hoping that good progress will be made at Cancun.
If we don’t get everything we want we hope that progress towards new mechanisms for raising the finance, new international mechanisms for raising the finance that support for that will gather in its intensity. And the British government is very strongly behind that. And of course we’ve made clear our strong support for the fast start approach.
And for those of you who are interested in this I should point out that although the coalition government has never said anything about a 10% limit from the IDA budget spent on climate change. If you look at the settlement hat I’ve agreed with the Treasury although there will be an increasing amount of funding for climate change work. It will never rise in fact during the whole of this spending above 7.5%. And in fact only reaches 7.5% by the end of the spending round.
So I can’t tell you that Britain will veto expenditure on the World Bank at this point. What I can tell you is that Britain is a very powerful voice on the World Bank. We are by far the largest of the IDA donors at the moment. We have great influence on the World Bank. I’m seeking on your behalf and on behalf of the government to exercise that influence through my role as a governor on the bank. And we’re very much alive to these issues.
Anna Feuchtwang:
Secretary of State, thank you very much for all the time you’ve spent here. I think we’ll take away a lot from you speech, particularly your passion that we share with you. And you set out very clearly the four key areas for DFID. I think I’ll particularly remember ‘rugged Brits’ and ‘well upholstered NGOs’. It creates a fantastic image. Thank you very much indeed.
