The future of DFID's programme in India
The future of DFID's programme in India

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2011-06-14

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 9780215560032

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The test of whether the UK should continue to give aid to India is whether that aid makes a distinctive contribution to poverty reduction. The Government of India has primary responsibility for this and has already reduced poverty levels from 60 percent in 1981 to 42 percent in 2005. But whilst the economy is growing there are large pockets of poverty that still remain. The DFID plans to change some of its programme, focusing primarily on three of the poorest states, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa, also changing the sectors it prioritises and putting 50 percent of its budget through the private sector by 2015.The Committee supports the focus on the poorest states but provided it is supported by the Government of India. They recommend supporting in particular sanitation, malnutrition, maternal and child health and social exclusion. The Committee supports the Government's aim to forge a new enhanced partnership with India with its mutual benefits from cooperation in trade and investment but the DFID must ensure UK Government policies help protect the poorest and reduce inequalities. The Committee assuming that over the next four years as India continues to grow at current rates it will have increased its capacity to tackle poverty and meet the millennium development goals. DFID should continue to provide technical assistance where requested but the funding mechanism should change by 2015.

HC 741 - Appointment of the Chief Commissioner of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact
HC 741 - Appointment of the Chief Commissioner of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact

Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 36

ISBN-13: 0215080750

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The Chief Commissioner of ICAI has a crucial role in scrutinising aid spending by the UK Government and reporting to Parliament through the International Development Committee. The Committee are pleased to endorse the appointment of Dr Alison Evans to this post, but recommend that at least one of the existing Commissioners be reappointed for a further term to ensure continuity, and that one of the Commissioners be an audit professional. The selection process used resulted in an unranked list of four candidates deemed "appointable" being presented to the Secretary of State for consideration. This puts too much power in the hands of the Secretary of State for an independent scrutiny post and threatens to undermine the candidate in the eyes of the public who may assume that the candidate most sympathetic to DFID was chosen. The Committee recommend that panels for ICAI Commissioner appointments should be invited to rank candidates or otherwise advise the Secretary of State as they see fit. In the longer term, it is recommended that the Committee be able to choose the Chief Commissioner from the list of candidates.

Global food security
Global food security

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: Stationery Office

Published: 2013-06-04

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9780215058751

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The International Development Committee calls for concerted action to curb food wastage in the UK and for expansion of DFID's bilateral nutrition programmes with a particular focus on pregnancy and early years, as part of wider efforts to improve global food security. There is scope for the Government to launch a national consumer campaign to reduce domestic food waste, also setting national targets to curb food waste within the UK food production and retail sectors. Agriculturally-produced biofuels are having a major detrimental impact on global food security by driving higher and more volatile food prices. EU targets requiring 10 per cent of transport energy to be drawn from renewable sources by 2020 are likely to cause dramatic food price increases, and the Government should revise its domestic Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation to specifically exclude agriculturally-produced biofuels. Looking at the impact of rising world population, the Committee praises DFID's significant efforts to meet the considerable unmet need for contraception in many developing nations and urges the UK government to maintain a keen focus on women's reproductive rights within its development assistance programmes. MPs also flag the longer term barriers to development posed by systematic undernutrition. The Committee expresses concern that large corporations are buying up large areas of land in many developing countries previously farmed by smallholders. UK-domiciled corporations should be required to be transparent about land deals. Lastly, MPs focus on the key role that smallholder farmers will play in feeding a growing global population and in reducing rural poverty.

House of Commons - International Development Committee: Implications for Development in the Event of Scotland Becoming and Independent Country - HC 692
House of Commons - International Development Committee: Implications for Development in the Event of Scotland Becoming and Independent Country - HC 692

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2013-12-19

Total Pages: 68

ISBN-13: 9780215065865

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The UK's aid programme, much of which is delivered from Scotland, is genuinely transformational. The UK provided £8.7 billion of aid in 2012/13, but it is the quality of this aid - not just its quantity - which sets the UK apart. As part of the UK, Scotland makes a tremendous contribution to all this. If Scotland were to become an independent country, its development agency would inevitably be a much smaller player. From 2013 onwards, the UK Government plans to spend 0.7% of Gross National Income on Official Development Assistance. If Scotland were to become independent, the UK's overall GNI - and the amount of money it spends on ODA - would fall. "Scotland has 8.3% of the UK's population share, so we estimate that the UK's ODA would fall by around 8.3%, or £1 billion. DFID's work - either its bilateral programmes or its funding to multilateral organisations - would inevitably then be subject to cuts. MPs are also concerned that during any transitional period, the restructuring of DFID and the setup of an independent Scottish development agency would divert management attention towards restructuring and away from frontline delivery by both agencies. In addition, a significant proportion of DFID's workforce is based at its Scottish office in East Kilbride, including a number of senior staff. By contrast, the number of jobs available with an independent Scottish development agency is likely to be relatively few (or the new Scottish development agency would be heavily overstaffed). The impact on jobs would therefore be substantial.

House of Commons - International Development Committee: The Independent Commission for Aid Impact's Annual Report 2012-13: Volume I - HC 566
House of Commons - International Development Committee: The Independent Commission for Aid Impact's Annual Report 2012-13: Volume I - HC 566

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 56

ISBN-13: 9780215062840

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The Independent Commission on Aid Impact (ICAI) was established in May 2011 with a strategic aim to provide independent scrutiny of UK aid spending, to promote the delivery of value for money for British taxpayers and the maximisation of the impact of aid. ICAI reports directly to Parliament through the International Development Committee, which established a sub-Committee on the work of ICAI in October 2012. This has worked well, and has helped foster closer working arrangements that promote the sharing of ideas between IDC inquires and the evaluations that ICAI undertakes. ICAI's Annual Report 2012-13 was generally well-received, as was the Commission's overall performance over the past year. The Annual Report published ICAI's budget for the first time and another excellent innovation was a section following up recommendations made in ICAI's Year 1 reports. ICAI should include a more detailed assessment of the impact of UK aid, including overarching lessons for DFID and should do more to promote lesson-learning across evaluations. This could be done by seminars and outreach events following each evaluation, which would help improve knowledge dissemination, both to DFID and the wider development community. A clear message this year was that DFID must think more strategically about its management of large contracts, especially those with multilateral agencies, nongovernmental organisations and contractors. This seems a fundamental criticism of the Department given the significance of these relationships. DFID should pay closer attention to how it selects external agencies as implementing bodies, and how much it pays for their services.

EU development assistance
EU development assistance

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2012-04-27

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 9780215043948

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The UK spends approximately £1.23 billion each year on aid through the European Union, approximately 16% of the UK's total aid budget. Only 46% of this aid, however, goes to low income countries - a figure that MPs say is 'unacceptable'. Instead middle income countries bordering Europe are benefiting. Turkey has consistently been in the top five recipients of European Commission aid (223 million euros in 2010) as has Serbia (euros 218 million in 2010). The Committee is calling on the UK Government to press for funding to be diverted, away from higher middle income countries bordering Europe, to give greater help to the poorest people in the world. In order to make this happen, the MPs say Ministers must challenge and change the definition of Official Development Assistance (ODA). It appears to be being used as a way of fudging the figures to help other European countries meet the target for 0.7% of GDP to be given as aid. The Committee recognises that there are a number of advantages to giving aid through the EU but identifies a number of problems with the way EU Development Assistance works. Overall, the European Commission has improved its performance over the last decade and has recently proposed further improvements to development policy in An Agenda for Change. The Committee supports a number of these proposed changes, but it does have concerns that conditionality should not hurt the poor for the sins of their governments

HC 248 - UK Support for Humanitarian Relief in the Middle East
HC 248 - UK Support for Humanitarian Relief in the Middle East

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2014-07-02

Total Pages: 40

ISBN-13: 0215073320

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Humanitarian relief to the Middle East is critical to long term stability in the region so the UK can be proud that it has already committed £600 million in humanitarian assistance to the grave refugee crisis that has arisen from the Syrian civil war and is currently the second-largest bilateral donor to that relief effort. It is lamentable that some other European nations have so manifestly failed to pull their weight in the Syrian refugee crisis and the UK should do more to secure significant contributions from other large EU nations. The overwhelming emphasis of UK funded humanitarian relief should be to help refugees remain in their own region, so that they have the potential to return home when this becomes possible. The bulk of humanitarian effort in the region should shift away from a focus on refugee camps to providing support for the majority of Syrian refugees who are currently residing in towns and villages in Lebanon or Jordan. This is something many donors remain reluctant to do; the UK must lead the way. To that end the DFID should use national plans as the basis for its assistance to Lebanon and Jordan, as well as launching a medium-term development programme in Jordan. A clear priority must be given to the urgent provision of education for Syrian refugee children to avoid the risk of a lost generation. The Committee also calls on DFID to become far more transparent about how much contingency funding it sets aside for responses to new humanitarian crises going forward.

Disability and Development - HC 947
Disability and Development - HC 947

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2014-04-10

Total Pages: 78

ISBN-13: 021507078X

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Disabled people in developing countries are the poorest of the poor: if we are serious about tackling extreme poverty, our development work has to target them. So while it's good the UK government has brought disability on to the agenda for global development goals (1) - DfID must now lead by example and make effort to ensure the needs of disabled people become a clear and sustained priority going forward within its own development programmes. Despite enormous global advances in education and health since the turn of the millennium, disabled people continue to be excluded from the most basic of services. The Committee calls for DfID to: produce a disability strategy; appoint a larger team responsible for disability; and strengthen reporting processes; show much more ambition in its work with disabled people by targeting them and their needs explicitly; give disabled people a central role in its work; and promote attention to the needs of disabled people including making it an explicit requirement that funding reaches disabled people, especially in disaster and conflict situations where they are amongst the most at risk

Against Caste in British Law
Against Caste in British Law

Author: Prakash Shah

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-10-01

Total Pages: 142

ISBN-13: 1137571195

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This book discusses the salience of the caste question in UK law. It provides the background to how the caste provision came into the Equality Act 2010 and how it was reinforced in 2013, and analyses the various interests that played a role in getting caste into law.

South Sudan
South Sudan

Author: Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: International Development Committee

Publisher: The Stationery Office

Published: 2012-04-12

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 9780215043733

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The Republic of South Sudan gained independence from the Republic of Sudan on 9 July 2011, following civil wars that began in 1955 and left more than two million dead. Challenges faced by the new government are daunting with some of the worst social indicators globally. The Department for International Development has quickly established and scaled up a full office in Juba and developed a four-year development and humanitarian aid programme amounting to some £360 million making South Sudan one of the largest recipients of UK bilateral aid. Regrettably, the delivery of DFID's programme is already at risk before it has properly begun with the humanitarian crisis created by the loss of South Sudan's oil revenue, combined with the increasing number of returnees and refugees arriving in the country and ongoing inter-tribal violence. The South Sudan government has introduced austerity measures to cope with the loss of 98% of its income but the UK, and other donors, cannot bankroll South Sudan through this austerity period. DFID has already re-focussed its development programmes away from long-term development towards supporting the most vulnerable people and saving lives. Overall, the Committee believes that DFID's programme is diverse and challenging, although it is too early to judge its success. There have been well-documented difficulties with both World Bank and UN administered pooled funds in South Sudan and there is concern at channelling aid through them. The emphasis that DFID gives to the equality of girls and women in its programme is welcomed and, despite the pressures and uncertainties this should be maintained