The Case For Protecting the Department for International Development By Sofia Cotterill, PPE student at Brasenose College Why the merger of DFID and the FCO spells disaster for the impact of British Foreign Policy Described as one of Britain’s ‘crown jewels’1, The Department for International Development (DFID) was created as a stand-alone department of the civil service by the first Blair government in 1997, with the aim of promoting sustainable development and eliminating world poverty.
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Since its creation, the department has gained a positive reputation as ‘one of the most effective and transparent aid agencies globally’2, aiming to ensure that the UK meets its legal commitment to spend 0.7% of national income on aid in a way that minimises corruption and guarantees that there is at least a partial barrier dividing the deliverance of aid and the promotion of Britain’s self-interests. However, Boris Johnson’s assumption to the role of prime minister in July 2019 and his subsequent victory in last December’s General Election has placed the future of the department under severe risk. Indeed, Johnson’s recent track record has revealed his deep-rooted animosity for DFID, declaring in January 2019 that its existence separate from the Foreign and Commonwealth office (FCO) leads to ‘inevitable waste’3, a statement that was quickly followed in February by his composition of a foreword giving support to a report calling for the merger of DFID into the FCO. Don’t get me wrong there are grave, far reaching, inexcusable flaws with Britain’s current aid system. The actions of DFID can in no way excuse our country’s often abhorrent foreign policy decisions and indeed, they are often part of problem. Britain’s callous and hypocritical arms sales made to Saudi Arabia are not offset in the slightest by DFID’s provision of aid in Yemen and it would be ludicrous to think
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that our pivotal role in the collapse of Libya can simply be plastered over using the aid budget. But take DFID away and we will just be left with the arms sales and the bombing and that, frankly, will help no-one. DFID was created following scandals highlighting the dire misuse of British aid by the government including, perhaps most infamously, the 1993 Pergau Dam Affair. At the time, the aid budget was managed by the Overseas Development Administration (ODA), a department of the FCO - an arrangement that allowed Margaret Thatcher and her foreign secretary Douglas Hurd to spend £234 million of aid money building the Pergau Dam in Malaysia. This project was carefully calculated and closely linked to the Malaysian army’s subsequent purchase of over £1 billion worth of arms from British companies. The project was undertaken against the advice of senior civil servants and declared illegal in 1994.
The impact of a merger of DFID and the FCO would greatly undermine any integrity that the UK aid budget currently has, threatening to allow a return to the days of the Pergau Dam affair, where the aid budget was used as a tool to ‘plug budget holes in other departments’, and aid was seen purely as an investment to be made in Britain’s own self-centred interests. Although at present DFID and the FCO still retain separate secretary of states, we are already seeing the beginnings of a soft merger of the departments, marked by the appointment of a joint ministerial team in February of this year. In February 2019, Boris Johnson declared that the expenditure of foreign aid should be ‘more in line with Britain’s political, commercial and diplomatic interests’4, a clear warning sign of his ambition to shamelessly turn British aid into a
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