BLAIR’S BRITAIN, 1997–2007
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the role of the Prime Minister and Chancellor below.
The attempt to spread influence was backed up by a conscious policy of
publishing policy papers to develop and promote new ideas. Already in
1997, the first White Paper set out a clear message that elimination of
poverty was to be the headline goal of the policy. A further White Paper in
10 DFID, Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the 21st Century, Cm. 3789 (London:
HMSO, 1997), para. 1.23.
11 ‘Peer Review of the United Kingdom’, p. 6.
2000,12 the product of Clare Short’s experience of the anti-globalisation
backlash at the failed WTO meeting in Seattle the previous year, set out
how development policies could make globalisation work for the poor.
And this tradition was maintained in a third White Paper in 200613 that
looked similarly at governance. These White Papers, and the stream
of more detailed policy documents that were published, contrasted
starkly with the absence of any such high-level government-wide policy
papers under the Conservatives. DFID also invested heavily in development education, in collaboration with the Department for Education and
Employment, and began a series of regional events around the UK to
build support at local level.
The clear – almost relentless – focus on the reduction and eventual elimination of poverty as the raison d’être of the British aid programme was
locked in by the International Development and Cooperation Act of 2002.14
By this measure, parliament made it illegal for the aid programme to be
used for any purpose other than poverty reduction and humanitarian relief
(there is a modest exception that recognises the government’s particular
responsibilities for the Dependent Territories, where other objectives are
also permitted). This is a thoroughgoing measure: for example, it makes the
tying of aid to British goods and services illegal. One response was the
establishment in 2002 of a ‘Global Opportunities Fund’ at the FCO, which
provides some £60 million a year for activities that assist the UK’s overseas
objectives but which fall outside the purpose of reducing poverty.
A further change was in the resources devoted to Britain’s aid programme. Here, as elsewhere, the retention of the previous government’s
spending ceilings for 1997/8 and 1998/9 meant that aid increases only
showed up gradually. Indeed, the UK’s aid reached its lowest ever level as
a percentage of GNI as late as 1999. But each public spending round saw
DFID at or near the top of the table of percentage increases. Figure 25.1
shows how this translated into a notable rise in the UK’s official development assistance as a percentage of GNI. This climbed steadily above the
average for the major Western donors of the OECD’s Development
Assistance Committee (which is pulled down by low US performance on
this measure) and in 2006 also, for the first time, exceeded the level of the
mid-point member of the DAC.
12 DFID, Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work for the Poor, Cm. 5006
(London: HMSO, 2000).
13 DFID, Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work for the Poor, Cm. 6876
(London: TSO, 2006).
14 International Development and Cooperation Act (London: HMSO, 2002).
0.60
0.52
0.50
0.47
0.47
DAC average
country effort
0.44
0.44
0.47
0.46
0.42
0.41
0.41
0.40
0.40
0.39
0.39
0.39
0.38
0.38
0.40
0.34
United
0.36
0.33
0.31
0.31
Kingdom
0.34
0.30
0.29
0.31
0.27
0.27
0.32
0.32
0.31
0.30
0.30
0.26
0.29
0.24
0.26
ODA as % of GNI
0.26
0.25
0.25
0.23
0.23
0.20
0.22
0.22
0.22
0.22
DAC average
0.10
0.00
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
Figure 25.1. UK official development assistance (ODA) compared to the average of
OECD/DAC (as percentage of GNI, 1992–2006)
Source: OECD/DAC
Figure 25.2 compares the UK’s aid with the levels of the other ‘top five’
OECD donors. The UK’s total aid rose from 2000 onwards to levels comparable to those of France or Germany, from a position of little more than
half their weight when the Labour government assumed office. In 2005,
the UK’s aid, for the first time, exceeded that of both France and
Germany, and in 2006 it rose even above that of Japan.
One more change was that DFID increasingly played a role in the promotion of more coherent policies towards developing countries, something noted, for example, in successive reports by the DAC. Key areas
of collaboration included debt (with the Treasury), the new Doha
‘Development’ Round of trade talks (with the DTI), security and development (with the FCO, the MOD and indeed No. 10), and environment
(with DEFRA and its predecessors). The Secretary of State was consulted
on arms export licensing decisions, the first time that a development
agency in the UK had been given such a role. The successive White Papers
cemented these cross-government policies. In contrast to the arguments
that had taken place over the first White Paper, DFID’s proposal for the
second one, on globalisation, won swift support from across Whitehall.
ODA (2005 USD
billion)
30
25
20
United
France
States
15
Japan
10
Germany
5
United Kingdom
0
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
Figure 25.2. Net ODA from ‘top five’ DAC donors, 1992–2006
Source: OECD/DAC.
This more ‘joined-up’ approach was backed up by some interesting
innovations at the administrative level. Joint targets with departments
such as the Treasury and the FCO were agreed in the Public Service
Agr
eements that accompanied each spending round.15 Based on experience in the Sierra Leone crisis of 1998–2000 in particular, which had
underlined the need for closely coordinated policies, ‘conflict pools’ were
set up for Africa and for the rest of the world, under which DFID, FCO and
MOD had to sit together with the Cabinet Office and the Treasury to agree
on strategies toward conflict-prone states, following which each department received back money from the ‘pool’ to finance its part in the strategy.
A joint FCO/DFID unit was set up to handle the difficult situation in the
Sudan. And in 2004 a special cross-departmental unit comprising staff
from the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and
DFID was set up to promote joint working in specific conflict situations.
How successful and effective have the changes been?
Where development problems were susceptible to additional resources,
sensibly applied, the Blair years saw some very positive results for British
15 See, for example, DFID, Public Service Agreement 2005–2008 (London: Department for
International Development, 2005).
aid. Countries such as Ghana, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania and
Uganda, in all of which the UK was a major donor, experienced rapid
growth and poverty reduction during the Blair government. While in
some cases these countries were building on a longer track record of
progress, it seems reasonable to suppose that increased British aid was
one element in the progress that they recorded. It also seems clear that
DFID’s role as a major funder of both Rwanda and Uganda enabled its
Secretaries of State to be effective in defusing some potentially serious
disputes between the two countries. And clearly, Britain’s deployment of
military, political and development assets in Sierra Leone went far in
transforming the prospects of that tragic country.
The readiness of the UK to underwrite the development programmes
of these and other countries with more flexible forms of finance, notably
general support for their budgets, and to encourage other donors to do
likewise, gave the central agencies in such countries the ability to shape
their own development path to a greater extent than would have been the
case with a more traditional project-by-project approach. This approach
involved some risks: a donor offering such support is very vulnerable to
any poor decision that the leaders of the country in question may take.
Successive ministers were ready to take such risks for the wider benefits,
though pulling back where problems arose (as in Uganda in 2005 when
President Museveni re-wrote the Constitution to enable him to secure a
third term, or in Ethiopia in 2006 when the government cracked down
harshly on the Opposition: in each case Hilary Benn reacted by reallocating unrestricted budget support to more closely defined ends, while
maintaining the overall flow of resources).
Internationally, the UK was effective in promoting its development
agenda in the various groups and institutions of which it was a member.
A particularly good example in the later part of the period was the
European Union. From a traditionally sceptical position on the quality of
EC aid and on the value of the Brussels process, the UK began to appreciate the value of European Commission pressure on EU laggards (well
illustrated by the Commission’s role in encouraging major commitments
in the context of the Monterrey Conference) and found the EC a very significant ally in promoting the concept of general budget support.
In 2004, the new EC Development Commissioner, Louis Michel, began
to argue for an EU-wide development policy. One might have predicted
that this would have either proved hopelessly ambitious (previous strategies had in practice merely bound the Commission itself) or ended up as
a verbose and ineffective document of little significance or interest to
Britain. In fact, the UK Presidency managed to get agreement in
November 2005 to a policy statement16 that did bind member states as
well as the Commission, and seems to be regarded as a very influential
point of reference, not least for the many new member states now developing programmes of their own. A separate policy paper on Africa17 was
endorsed a month later, also under the UK Presidency. Taken together
with the unexpected success of the EU in agreeing in May of the same year
on aid targets for all its members for 2010 and indeed 2015,18 this showed
that the UK could work effectively with an EU-wide agenda in the development arena.
One element in the new European Union Strategy is renewed commitment to coherent policies towards developing countries, a legal requirement since the Maastricht Treaty of 1991 but one often overlooked.
DFID, in contrast to the Ministry of Overseas Development and the
Overseas Development Administration, seems to have had some influence on the wider set of policies in both the UK and in the EU. This has
been in part because it has invested more heavily in policy-relevant
research and in staff who were seen as credible interlocutors by their
Whitehall colleagues. But it is also significantly because other departments can increasingly see that many of their agendas, from trade negotiations to climate change, require the active support of developing
countries. DFID has therefore managed to position itself as in many cases
assisting the achievement of the objectives of other departments. Clear
examples include a positive stance on ‘aid for trade’, in other words for
using aid to meet developing-country concerns about lack of competitiveness, a willingness to put substantial resources into conflict-prone
states such as Sierra Leone or the Democratic Republic of Congo, and
market-friendly interventions in the health sector, such as an Advance
Market Commitment19 to stimulate research into treatment of diseases of
the poor. In each of these cases – trade, conflict and global health – DFID
can claim to have had some influence on the policy approach of the UK
government as a whole.
DFID can also claim some genuine success in its own departmental
management, drawing on the exceptional degree of commitment of its
staff at all levels. Year in and year out, it is, with the Treasury, at the top of
the departments of choice in the home civil service for fast-stream
16 ‘European Union Development Policy: The “European Consensus” ’, Official Journal C
46/0, 24 February 2006.
17 European Union Strategy for Africa, 24 May 2005.
18 Council of the European Union, 24 May 2005.
19 The Independent, 10 February 2007.
entrants. Under Sir John Vereker’s successor, Sir Suma Chakrabarti, it
has pushed the boundaries in recruiting top-level staff from outside, not
least from the World Bank, and significantly improved the gender balance
of its senior staff. Staff surveys show that it has developed an enviable
reputation in Whitehall as a department with well-respected top management and in particular a strong sense of direction. This is due not least
to a well-thought-out system of objective-set
ting at all levels, drawing
on Public Service Agreements with the Treasury that have linked the
purpose of the department closely to progress against the Millennium
Development Goals, and cascading down into the ‘Delivery Plans’ of each
director, and so to the objectives of departments and individual members
of staff. And in 2007 DFID was the top-rated department in the series of
‘Capability Reviews’20 of Government Departments carried out under
the leadership of the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell.
Where relevant, why was more not achieved?
Not everything worked smoothly, however. Within the aid programme
itself, the implications of 9/11 posed some very difficult issues, both of
country priorities and of how DFID could work in areas where security
was a major issue. The invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq put these problems into stark relief.
The public expenditure round of 2002 had set DFID an objective of
providing 90% of all its aid by the year 2006 for countries classified by the
World Bank as ‘low-income’. While Afghanistan fell into this category,
Iraq did not, and hence the build-up of a large programme in Iraq set a
major problem for the department. Rather than sacrifice the 90% target,
a brave decision was made to cut bilateral aid to some eight other middleincome countries to accommodate the rising expenditure on Iraq. This
had the benefit of reducing the UK’s extremely numerous set of programmes (important, as civil service numbers were to be cut back by
Treasury decree), but at the cost of cutting relationships and activities at
short notice.
Within both Iraq and Afghanistan, DFID found itself operating in a
very taxing environment, where traditional approaches (for example,
an incremental and participatory approach to development activities,
maximum use of host-country systems) were either impossible or
20 Capability Review of the Department for International Development, Cabinet Office,
March 2007.
severely constrained by security problems on the one hand and very
weak institutions on the other. Although some positive experience
had been gained in such environments as Bosnia and Kosovo, it proved
very difficult to manage effective programmes or to find an easy relationship with the military, who were of course anxious to see very fast
results.
Other areas where DFID found it difficult to influence other government departments effectively included migration policy, although the
National Health Service did agree guidelines in 2001 against hiring staff