The Department for International Development (DfID) must be kept separate from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office if Britain is to help end extreme poverty and retain its reputation and influence overseas, MPs have warned.
The cross-party international development committee warned that reorganising the aid effort could impair the effectiveness of Britain’s £15.2bn aid budget, which includes tackling the coronavirus pandemic.
The case for keeping an independent, aid-giving department with a cabinet level minister leading its work was “imperative”, said the committee.
More than a quarter of aid is now spent in departments outside DfID, and as a result “accountability for spending aid well appears to have been eroded”, the committee said in its interim report into the effectiveness of UK aid.
The MPs’ warnings follow reports that the government plans to merge DfID with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Some see the current review of defence, policy and development, which has been paused as Whitehall focuses on Covid-19, as a precursor to such a merger.
They warned of a “significant risk” that other departments will rebadge day-to-day spending as aid and “push the boundaries of what counts as aid”. They urged the government to put measures in place to ensure there is no return to tied aid.
Between 2014 and 2019, the share of aid spending outside DfID increased from £1.6bn (14%), to £4.1bn (27%).
The focus of Britain’s aid budget has also shifted towards middle-income countries, the committee said. Transparency remained a “huge problem”, it added, noting that the ministerial group charged with reviewing overseas development aid (ODA) spending across Whitehall had not met since 2018.
The International Development Committee chairperson, Sarah Champion MP, said: “We have heard glowing reviews of DfID’s work helping the world’s poorest, and it is clear that it stands head and shoulders above other ODA-spending departments.
“We are not convinced that all ODA programmes administered outside of DfID are properly targeted towards poverty reduction or the most vulnerable. Given the enormity of the UK’s aid budget, it is particularly shocking that transparency remains a huge problem that government departments are failing to grapple.”
She added: “We urge ministers to recognise DfID’s world-leading reputation, commit to its continuation as a standalone department and to get a grip on oversight for government ODA.”
Last month, the international development secretary, Anne Marie Trevelyan, told MPs that the impact of coronavirus threatened to undo 30 years of international development work, with a bleak outlook for the world’s poorest.
Stephanie Draper, CEO of Bond, the UK network for NGOs, said: “Bond has been calling for increased oversight by DfID of aid spending by other departments and cross-departmental funds for some time now, so we fully support the IDC’s call for stronger transparency, accountability and DfID oversight of UK aid, to ensure it meets its primary purpose of contributing to poverty reduction and sustainable development.”
