Labour has urged the government to rethink its plan to merge the Department of International Development (DfID) with the Foreign Office, a move described by DfID’s first permanent secretary as “an act of wanton institutional vandalism”.
Preet Kaur Gill, the new shadow international development secretary, also warned that massive UK overseas aid cuts were being forced through in secrecy that went far beyond those justified by the fall in UK growth.
John Vereker, the permanent secretary at the time of the creation of DfID as an independent department in 1997, described the proposed merger as vandalism. “It is hard to see how destroying one of the few remaining internationally admired instruments of British soft power, alongside the Commonwealth itself, is going to help bring coherence to the three Ds of the much vaunted Global Britain: Defence, Development and Diplomacy,” he said.
“The government appears to have sacrificed what the OECD [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] once described as the best development agency in the world in fruitless pursuit of short-term political and commercial self-interest. Accountability will be weakened, specialist skills and systems will be lost, poor people in developing countries will suffer, and a DfID-shaped hole will be exposed to Chinese influence peddlers and Russian mischief-makers.
“Mixing aid and short-term self-interest is always a recipe for disaster.”
Gill claimed few decisions had been greeted so critically, pointing out that three former prime ministers had condemned the merger.
In the final day before parliament rose, the foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, in a letter to the international development select committee, announced £2.9bn in cuts to the 2020 overseas aid programme of £15.9bn, citing the collapse in growth caused by coronavirus. He said the UK would still meet its statutory commitment to spend 0.7% of Gross National Income on overseas aid.
But Gill pointed out that the Office for Budget Responsibility was predicting only a 9% fall in GDP, and the £3bn planned cuts are a much bigger reduction to the official development assistance budget. “The question is, why are they cutting the budget by 20% or so? Either they are hiding the fact that the economic situation is going to be substantially worse than they are making out, or this is just another excuse to meet the 0.7% target, but still prop up spending by other departments.”
Nearly 30% of the overseas aid budget is no longer spent by DfID, but by other government departments.
Gill said the reforms were being pushed through with no consultation, and accused the outgoing international development secretary, Anne-Marie Trevelyan, of being in hiding as her department was dismantled around her by the Foreign Office and Downing Street. “This is a takeover, not a merger, that will weaken our influence,” she said. She accused the government of spending £50m “in the midst of a pandemic that has not yet peaked to fix something that is not broken. It shows where this government’s priorities lie, and it is not with the world’s poorest.
“There are two very different departments with very different skills and responsibilities. Ambassadors meet governments and look at business and the British national interest. Development is about assisting the poorest and making a difference because it is our moral duty to do so. What will be the hierarchy of decision-making in-country, and what is the report-back mechanism to London?
“There has been no opportunity to feed into what the new department would look like. We need to know what kind of mechanism for accountability and scrutiny will exist. They very fact that Raab sneaked out £3bn of cuts the day before parliament went into recess shows they are going to evade scrutiny. It’s a massive concern that there is going to be no independent voice for development in the cabinet.
“There is no clarity on the role of the independent spending body ICAEI, on a select committee, or a separate accounting officer.”
Dismissing suggestions that the so-called “red wall” seats want to see the back of the aid budget, she said: “I am convinced the British public do want to show global solidarity. A third of the Yemeni population do not have access to healthcare. In South Sudan, a population of 11m only has 24 ICU beds. Nearly 3m people do not have access to wash facilities, and in the absence of a vaccine, that is so important.”
Gill, the first female Sikh MP, insisted she wanted to stay in her post for the long haul.
She accepted that some cuts were necessary. “We are in the middle of an economic crisis, so there will be cuts, but they cannot be from life-saving programs that DfID is providing,” she said.
