The full details of the investigation into aid contractor Adam Smith International in Syria by the BBC’s Panorama are yet to air. But the BBC is claiming that funds meant for the world’s poorest have ended up in the pockets of an extremist group. Adam Smith International strongly denies the allegations contained in the programme and in a separate Times story.
The biggest cause for concern would be how the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) – the two bodies responsible for the project funding a civilian police force – might have allowed this to happen. We urgently need to know exactly when FCO ministers knew of any problems in the project, what their response might have been and if they have identified challenges in other programmes.
We should be in no doubt that when it is spent properly, Britain’s aid budget achieves remarkable results. It makes the world safer and fairer, helps to eradicate poverty and disease, makes millions of lives better, and shows the world that Britain stands for something. The Department for International Development (DfID), responsible for the majority of the aid budget, has world-class standards developed over two decades of experience. It is able to ensure that aid is transparent and effective, and that fraud is prevented and managed properly.
But since launching its new aid strategy in 2015, this government has actively sought to “securitise” aid and to increase the use of large private contractors. The government’s strategy explicitly set out to divert our development budget away from DfID and towards other government departments, including the FCO, via the CSSF – with far lower transparency, effectiveness and fraud prevention standards. New figures released last month shows that 26% of aid funds are now spent outside DfID. In August I wrote to then-secretary of state Priti Patel, recommending seven steps to get a grip on the cross-government aid spending chaos – all of which were ignored.
The Panorama allegations are so alarming precisely because they concern the government’s direction of travel, and exactly the kind of aid project it has pushed to have more of. Unfortunately, the allegations are also likely only the tip of the iceberg. The CSSF operates with very little transparency in 70 countries, including many with questionable human rights records, such as Bahrain, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Yemen. In August, the Guardian reported that through the CSSF, the UK government was funding Egyptian juvenile detention services accused of human rights violations. In April, parliament’s joint committee on the national security strategy – responsible for oversight of the fund – had even warned that so little information was available, it was neither able to measure the fund’s impact nor to exercise proper parliamentary scrutiny over it.
That must now change. The government must now open up its books on the CSSF and prove that money flowing through it is eradicating poverty rather than violating human rights. That requires a full independent forensic investigation and line-by-line budget review of the fund. The public deserve to understand the full scale of the problem.
• Kate Osamor is the shadow secretary of state for international development
