The proposed Foreign Office and DFID merger

There are arguments for and against the merger of the Department for International Development and the Foreign Office, which the Prime Minister has announced.

I do think it is important to stress what is not happening: the DFID budget is not being cut and the work the existing department does is not being stopped or downgraded.

The government says that, quote, "The new department won’t roll back on our commitments to International Development including spending 0.7 per cent of GNI on development."

Work will begin immediately on the merger. The new department – the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office – will be established in early September and will be led by the Foreign Secretary. The Foreign Secretary will be empowered to make decisions on aid spending in line with the UK’s priorities overseas.

For me the judgement on whether this is a success will be whether aid is directed more effectively to those people and countries who really need it, and will not mean taxes paid by the poor people in a rich country going to the rich people in a poor country.

Comments

Gary Bullivant said…
From personal experience, this is likely to be seen as a positive step by many recipient states. It was widely perceived by those in the know where I was that DFID grants were directed in response to the needs of the FCO and SIS, just as it was for the much bigger USAID budget, the State Department and the CIA. At least now there will be less pretence.
12:02 am
Chris Whiteside said…
You may well have a point.

It is distinctly possible that the main change in practice will be that Britain will be doing openly what both Britain and most, if not all, other aid donor countries have always done anyway.
8:06 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
A very good piece on why both the FO and DFID have been less successful than they should by Matthew Syed in this weekend's Sunday Times, which I will probably post on.
1:23 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nick Herbert on his visit to flood hit areas of Cumbria

Please note that the post below was published more than ten year ago on 21st November 2009 Nick Herbert MP, shadow cabinet member for the Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, was in Cumbria this morning to see the areas affected by the flooding. He writes on Conservative Home about his visit. Here is an extract. I’ve been in Cumbria today to see the areas affected by the floods. I arrived early in Keswick where I met officials from the Environment Agency. Although the river levels had fallen considerably and homes were no longer flooded, the damage to homes had been done. And the water which had got into houses wasn’t just from the river – it was foul water which had risen from the drains. I talked to fire crews who were pumping flood water back into the river, and discovered that they were from Tyne & Wear and Lancashire. They had been called in at an hours’ notice and had been working on the scene ever since, staying at a local hotel. You cannot fail to be impressed by the
Read more

Quotes of the day 19th August 2020

Image
"Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise."  ( Cato the Elder , who lived 234 BC - 149 BC, quoted in "Lives" by Plutarch.) There is a similar saying by Germany's Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck: Benjamin Franklin is supposed to have put the same saying in a more humorous form: "Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders." See also this thread on the "Quote Investigator" website . Let us all be wise and learn from the events of the last few days.
Read more

Quote of the day 24th July 2020

I was moved to put the passage below forward as a quote today when I saw a horrible post on twitter from someone writing that it was "excellent" that someone who took a different view from her about Brexit had died. I won't write which way round it was so that all the Remain supporters can assume the post was from a Brexit fanatic welcoming the death of a remainer and all the Leavers can assume it was a Remainiac welcoming one less Brexiteer. There's been plenty of nasty stuff on both sides but if you catch anyone of your own viewpoint  posting something like that who might listen to you, please do call them out on it - and point out that they're giving everyone on your side of the argument a bad name. Anyway, here's the quote from John Donne.
Read more