International Development Committee

Oral evidence: Sub-Committee on the Work of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, Report on DFID’s Contribution to improving nutrition, HC 684
Wednesday 15 October 2014

Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 15 October 2014.

Watch the meeting: Wednesday 15 October

Members present: Fabian Hamilton (Chair); Fiona Bruce; Sir Maclolm Bruce; Jeremy Lefroy; Fiona O’Donnell 

Questions 1-66

Witnesses: Mark Foster, Lead Commissioner, ICAI, and Steve Jones, Team Leader, ICAI gave evidence 

Q1   Chair: Good morning and welcome to this sitting of the ICAI Sub‑Committee.  It is good to see you both.  We are discussing DFID’s Contribution to Improving Nutrition, the report that you published in July.  It is your report No. 36—that is pretty good.  It is largely a positive report, and you give DFID credit for their strategic leadership on nutrition.  I wondered what aspects of DFID’s approach to nutrition you thought they needed to improve.

Mark Foster: Yes, as you say, overall our reflections were positive about the fact that DFID has responded to pressure from this Committee with regard to stepping up the investment in the nutrition space.  We have seen a strong effect, particularly as it relates to the catalysation of global initiatives and the broader donor community around the topic.  On the ground, what we saw from our time in India and in Zambia was a seriousness of focus in the offices there around this area, and application of more skills to it.  In terms of the programming spooling up, getting going and starting to have a real impact in this area, however, clearly it is still early days.

              Things that struck us were perhaps around how balanced the interventions are at the moment between the nutrition-specific interventions in areas like deworming or a particular vitamin A intervention, and the nutrition-sensitive interventions around broader issues such as agriculture or the quality of the health system that someone is operating in, and how that all comes together in an integrated and co-located series of interventions.  The biggest area of focus for DFID going forward is more coherent nutritional integrated plans in specific countries that bring together the right nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions to really make a difference.

Q2   Chair: You criticise DFID’s selection of delivery partners, and you suggest that they should look beyond UNICEF.  You have expressed concern about DFID and UNICEF in the past, and I wondered if you could tell us about the relationship in this particular instance over this particular report.

Mark Foster: A relationship with any multilateral agency—UNICEF included—is always very dependent upon the individual capacity in country around a particular area.  In this particular case, we saw UNICEF relating to the WASH programming in Zambia.  It was a nutrition-sensitive intervention around the improvement in hygiene that also leads to, hopefully, a reduction in stunting because of this issue of tropical enteropathy.  What we saw was that UNICEF were very slow to mobilise around that area, and our feeling was that we had seen that in a few places, where, perhaps, if DFID had been more thoughtful about their partners, they could have moved forward faster on that particular aspect.  Steve, I do not know if you want to add anything to that commentary.

Steve Jones: That was absolutely right in the case of Zambia.  UNICEF have lots of strengths in global public goods and in standards in nutrition.  There are things that UNICEF do very well.  We felt that, in the Zambia case, and also in the India case, project management was not their strongest card in those two projects.  One of the things in both was around monitoring and evaluation.  Although the extension of the UNICEF programme in India for an extra three years was partly in order for them to get on top of measuring and evaluating things better, we did not really feel that they had done that.  We did not see evidence of their improved capacity.  There was no real strong evaluation done at the end of programme.  In both those cases, we felt that alternatives could and perhaps should have been considered.  It is not to say “Don’t use UNICEF,” but to look at them and compare them to others before you make the decision.

Q3   Fiona Bruce: You gave DFID an amber-red rating for impact, and said that DFID’s monitoring of its nutrition work was weak.  You said that figures give the wrong incentive, since they do not encourage a focus on quality or outcomes.  You have criticised the use of reach indicators in previous reports.  Should DFID drop their use?

Mark Foster: First of all, we understand why there are reach indicators.  It is because, at the end of the day, it is very important that there is an ability for DFID to be able to show the overall impact of their spend more broadly to its stakeholders.  Where we get concerned is when it starts to drive some of the incentives of programmes on the ground and, in particular, in an area like this that requires sustained interventions.  In other words, if it is going to make a difference to the nutrition of a child, you have to do multiple interventions around vitamin A and multiple interventions around deworming, and continue that process going forward.  The fact that you have touched someone once in, for example, a health week, and counted them—reached—is not really making a difference to the underlying issue of whether their nutrition is being improved, or whether they are likely to be less stunted.

The key thing for us around all this is that the imperative around reducing stunting is very clear.  There is a body of knowledge around the relationship between stunting and cognitive ability which, in the end, is an underlying driver of economic impact for these people and the quality of their lives.  Making sure that enough of the interventions are of a high enough quality and sustained enough to make sure that they really will make a difference to stunting, which is the driver of this whole process, is where these reach indicators can become inappropriate.

Steve Jones: On that one, the reach indicator of numbers of people reached is incredibly low-level.  It is, in log framework terms, between an activity and an output.  What we are really interested in is whether we are seeing a trajectory of change towards impacts on stunting, and reach is a very initial stage of that.  In other areas, we also suggested that there should be a greater focus on intermediate outcomes: what is the result of doing a project?  If you train somebody, what is the impact of that in terms of mothers’ capacity to understand breastfeeding better, and then the results of that on children’s nutrition and health?  It is really having a focus on slightly higher-level things.  Reach focuses at the most basic level.  If you look at the overall DRF indicators, they are quite variable.  Some of them are quite high-level but, in the case of the nutrition one, it is a very low-level indicator.

Mark Foster:  We saw some specific examples.  I remember back to a particular programme we were looking at, which was being mobilised in a district in Zambia, where what it led them towards doing was having a lot of training interventions.  Many of the interventions around this were bringing people together to train them, and our feeling was that, while that was an important component, it was unbalancing the programme.

Q4   Fiona Bruce: I have two further questions, which I will put together, if I may.  You mentioned a number of achievements across the projects you visited in India and Zambia being over-reported by DFID.  How widespread was that over-reporting?  What should DFID do to ensure that results reported by partners are reliable?  Is the system strong enough here, bearing in mind the ambitions to move towards a payment-by-results mode?

Mark Foster: Steve, do you want to pick up on that particular issue?

Steve Jones: In many ways, we also note in the report a number of strengths of DFID on monitoring and evaluation.  Evaluation is quite strong and the use of evidence is very strong.  There were good examples in some countries of developing monitoring systems as delivery plans, which were good in Yemen and other countries.  In a couple of cases, we did note that there were indications that results were being over-reported.  As we talked about also in the AgResearch report that I was involved in before, there is a need for more third‑party validation of results.  In our view—in that particular case—DFID needed, in a sense, not to take what they were given without checking that it was right.  I do not think it is a big change but, if that were done and if everybody knew that it was being looked at, it would produce better results.

Mark Foster:  The important thing I would add to that is that the triangulation that gave us this evidence came from talking to beneficiaries.  It was our very widespread beneficiary work that we did in talking to people on the ground.  What came out of that was that people who were supposed to have had the right number of vitamin A opportunities had not had them.  We found evidence of latrines that were supposed to be there, but were not in all the places they were supposed to be.  If we had a wider point here, it would be around continuing to encourage DFID to use beneficiaries in a structured fashion to triangulate the feedback they are getting from their delivery partners.

Q5   Sir Malcolm Bruce: You mentioned, Mark, that this programme was partly as a result of this Committee’s work.  In fact, I was invited to launch the nutrition programme in the last Parliament in response to that.  I welcome the fact that you have a follow-up report as to what the impact was, but I just wondered if I could pick up on the fact that India is the single biggest programme, from any way I can read it.  That is how it should be, because the information we had was, as I recall it, that the poverty-nutrition coefficient was not functioning in India like it does in other places—in other words, although poverty was falling, levels of malnutrition were not.  I wondered, then, whether you are able to assess: the extent to which DFID’s programme was effectively tackling that; the implications of the fact that we are ending the programme, which I am not sure was the right thing to do, given its importance; and how that money and learning might effectively be redeployed and where.

Mark Foster: I will make a couple of general points and then pass over to Steve.  First of all, it is clear that India is an important area for targeting, given the facts on the ground.  It is also clear that, as we have found in other cases, because DFID were able to piggyback through a Government programme that was on the ground already in India, they were able to add these nutrition-specific interventions into a structure that meant they could be relatively effective, relatively quickly, in that structure.  That does raise questions, as you move out of that model, when more of the interventions will be around technical assistance going forward, as to how you really make sure that the full leverage effect that we have been having in the past is carried through in what is, as you say, a long-term issue, not a short-term issue.  In terms of the children and mothers who have been helped so far, we need to keep that going.  Whether or not that is going to be sustained by the Indian Government is another question.

Q6   Sir Malcolm Bruce: I am not sure whether the factors in India apply elsewhere; in other words, whether there are things we have learned in India that we could usefully take with the money to existing, continuing partners.

Steve Jones: I think DFID colleagues later might be able to answer that more specifically.  We saw some evidence that the lessons that were coming out of the very strong investment on nutrition-specific programmes in India are feeding into the development of nutrition-specific programmes in Africa.  One of the points we make is that it seemed a bit unbalanced: Africa had nutrition-sensitive; India had nutrition-specific.  Africa’s nutrition‑specific programmes are, however, growing quite considerably, and there will certainly be a read-across to that.

              One of the issues was around the types of interventions: the use of zinc, iron and folate.  We recognise that, maybe in some cases, DFID programmes were not doing all the things that the evidence says they could be doing, and DFID has responded to that very adequately in the recommendation on that.

              What you refer to, Sir Malcolm, is what they call the South Asian enigma of high malnutrition with declining poverty rates.  There is a lot of disagreement about what the causes of that are.  A lot of it is to do with gender relations.  We cannot say necessarily that the DFID programme will have affected those, but it has certainly involved women much more in the programme, and we were generally quite positive about the work that had been done.

Q7   Fiona O’Donnell: You have suggested that DFID is slow in scaling up and reflecting strategic priorities, that it persists with interventions that are not effective, and that it is not sufficiently responsive in its decision making.  Coming back to what you were saying about the need for a long-term strategy and that the reach data does not necessarily give us the most accurate picture, what are the priorities for DFID regarding new ways of programming, and how should they change their working practices to be able to be more agile and flexible?

Mark Foster: The first thing, which I touched on earlier, with regard to being more effective is around having a coherent, overall set of interventions.  All the Lancet research, etc. shows that there are multiple interventions required to move the ball forward on stunting, so it is very important that DFID, as they think about programming in this space, feel they are covering the bases around those different kinds of interventions.  It is therefore necessary therefore to have more holistic programmes that are touching these different aspects.  Those are more complex to mobilise, and some of the challenge that they face is that, because you are trying to involve multiple ministries in these countries to move something forward, it does take time.  It is always going to be a balancing act for DFID between having a good sense of the overall landscape, hopefully, and then picking and working with departments and ministries on the ground to move individual pieces of this forward more effectively.

It is then about the feedback loops in learning about what is working and what is not working being more effective.  There were some very interesting results that we saw, for example, from the cash transfer work they had done in Zambia, and I would say, overall, the fact that they applied things called “nutrition audits” over their programmes—looking at their entire current programming, and working out what was already nutritionally beneficial and where they could insert more nutritional impact—was very good.  We would encourage more of that, because that is the way that they will keep all of these balls moving forward in this complex, multidimensional area.

Steve Jones: On the point you made about some things continuing to be done when the evidence was, perhaps, against them, the important thing is that it was some.  There were a couple of places where that could have been learned more quickly and they could have stopped doing them, but there were not that many of those.

Q8   Jeremy Lefroy: Firstly, to follow up, you mentioned Zambia and the cash transfer scheme, which we saw when we visited a couple of years ago.  I just wondered whether you had looked at the maize-subsidy programme that they have in Zambia—it consumes an awful lot of the Government budget—if that was still going on and whether it was still an issue, because it seemed that a lot of resources were consumed in subsidising maize, which we saw then rotted or got sent to Zimbabwe, rather than those funds being used for nutrition in their own country.

Mark Foster: We did discuss maize-subsidy issues with some of the ministers we met on the ground in Zambia.  Clearly, the role of maize in the mix and the quality of nutrition is a big challenge, and there are some big countervailing trends around that in the economy of the country that are quite hard for anyone to break through.  What we saw was a greater awareness of it, and quite a lot of the interventions that DFID were helping with were around trying to make sure that there was more diversity in people’s diets and trying to create more opportunity for the subsidy work not to over-wash what was happening on the rest of the work.

Q9   Jeremy Lefroy: Is the subsidy still in place?

Mark Foster: It is still in place.

Steve Jones: It is still in place.  I know DFID is concerned about it.  It is working with analysis and with other donors to try to challenge it, but I think it is still in place.

Mark Foster: We met the Vice President and talked to him about that, and it is something that he very much has his eye on.

Q10   Jeremy Lefroy: We talked with him about it two years ago and he had his eye on it then, so it is slow progress.

Mark Foster: Yes, exactly.

Q11   Jeremy Lefroy: Understood.  I realise this is very much concerned with nutrition but slightly tangential to the report.  You highlight a mismatch in DFID’s approach between a grand ambition to use the private sector—I wondered where you thought the private sector could assist; I would be interested in ideas on that—and an absence of grounded evidence of what works or is the best way to engage, or even a coherent theory of change.  Is that fair and, if so, what should DFID do about it?

Mark Foster: There is a wider discussion going on right now in DFID around its overall leverage of the private sector generally, across all its programming, and that is a very important debate that we are looking at as well from a number of other angles.  In this particular case, there clearly is a role that we see for the private sector to play its part, even at the level of being able to add these micronutrients into products that they are already selling.  We can see the use of supply chains, as per the ColaLife model, to get some of the important nutritional interventions to far-flung, remote and vulnerable communities.  We saw a very interesting example in Zambia of a private conglomerate around maize and seed, which was working quite well to tackle the issue of diversity of seeds and diversity of crops using women in villages as a sales force to go out and encourage other small farmers to use the right kinds of crops to diversity.

There are different ways we could imagine the private sector—both the local private sector and the multinational private sector—engaging.  Clearly, the private sector has played quite a big role in the recent summits that have taken place.  The question is: are their feet being held to the fire around some of the commitments that are being made there as much as with the commitments that are being asked of the donor community around this?  How can the private sector really step up to play its part in an ethical way?

Steve Jones: One of the points in Zambia that was pointed out to us was that the private sector there really has to see a clear opportunity that is financially viable for it to become involved.  One company that was mentioned to us was Zambeef—a very good company that is quite capable of perhaps moving into this space, but it has a shortage of management.  Will it use its management on something that is not necessarily going to give the company as much profit as the other things it does?  It is a question of working closely with it to identify how the public-private partnership around some of these interventions can be made to work.  That is probably the emphasis that is needed now.

Mark Foster:  One of the things that hold the private sector back from engaging in these kinds of development issues is the clarity of the platforms that they can come to work on.  I would suggest that a national nutrition strategy in some of these countries is a very natural platform for the private sector to engage in, and they should do more.

Q12   Jeremy Lefroy: When you talk about the private sector, are you also including the NGO sector, churches and so on?  In Zambia, particularly, I think they run pretty much 50% of the entire health system in a fairly integrated manner.  Clearly, for a lot of nutrition work, particularly in education, or in going into schools and doing deworming, it is not necessarily the private sector that is going to do that, but it may be organisations, NGOs and churches.

Mark Foster:  I completely agree.  In fact, we spent quite a bit of time in one of our roundtables with some of the faith-based organisations that are particularly engaging around this nutritional activity.  In fact, DFID has acted quite effectively as a convenor of a group of these organisations to be part of the next wave of nutrition education, media and advice in the country.  It is really important that those channels are absolutely leveraged.

Q13   Jeremy Lefroy: Following that a little, I remember a programme that my wife ran in Tanzania nearly 20 years ago which was engaged in deworming in schools and had a very significant effect locally.  This seems to be something that has been very broadly known for decades, and it is very simple and fairly cheap, so why do you think it is not being done at 100% across all these countries?

Steve Jones:  It is part of the DFID programmes in all the countries that we saw and the other programmes that we looked at.  Deworming and vitamin A supplementation was something DFID was doing almost routinely through its programmes.

Q14   Jeremy Lefroy: I do not, however, understand why the Governments themselves are not doing it.

Steve Jones:  They do this in support of Government programmes.

Q15   Jeremy Lefroy: Is it being done right across the board, at 100% of all schools?

Steve Jones: I think the intention in Zambia certainly is that.  I would have to go back and check.  To the extent that we found, it was happening throughout the Government programme.

Mark Foster: My memory is that they had an aspiration to get to that 100% coverage but, frankly, they were still quite a long way off that, and a number of the programmes that were being rolled out by the DFID-funded scale-up work in Zambia were about more and more districts having a coherent programme around this.  It is surprising that some of these more basic interventions are not more broadly already out there on the ground.  To some extent, part of the challenge for this area is: do you push ahead with a number of the simpler, more basic interventions, recognising that they are only going to be part of the overall nutrition solution?  Moving forward with all of it, as I touched on in my earlier comments, is very complicated, and this is one of those areas where trying to find the right balance between simple and effective but only partial interventions versus covering all the bases works in the programme design.

Q16   Jeremy Lefroy: Finally, commentators such as the World Development Movement have highlighted the risks posed by the multinational private sector for local farmers, and I have seen some evidence of that in certain places.  Do you think this is a significant risk: the idea that multinational companies can, by taking over large areas of land, worsen the food security and, potentially, nutrition situation in a particular area, particularly if they are growing cash crops?

Mark Foster:  This goes back to what the right way of engaging with the private sector is.  If the private sector is engaging purely on a commercial basis, those risks are probably quite high.  If the private sector is engaging around a topic like nutrition, the chances are that those unintended consequences or, indeed, collateral consequences could be avoided by the way you go about doing it.  I know that the more enlightened players that are trying to work in this space see that as one of the reasons why they want to work in this way in this area.  Clearly, the risk is absolutely there, and I think that it is about having strong enough structures in country to make sure that, when multinationals do engage, they are coming in with this full set of the implications their actions are going to have.

Q17   Jeremy Lefroy: Did you come across any programmes in which DFID was involved, directly or indirectly, where this was very much being considered—where, on the one hand, you had, say, proposals for investment for crops that would provide substantial employment and substantial export revenues, all of which is important but, on the other hand, there might be the risk of damaging local food security and, hence, nutrition—and were safeguards therefore being put in place?  Do DFID or organisations such as AECF, which will perhaps finance some of these programmes, take that into account when assessing the programme, or do they simply look at it as a business case without looking at the broader implications for the local area?

Mark Foster:  My overall feeling on that is that, from what we saw, it is not yet the case that the multinationals are engaged enough in this area for that risk to be very widespread and seen yet.

Q18   Jeremy Lefroy: What I am saying is that, irrespective of a particular nutrition-sensitive or nutrition-specific programme, there are projects on a large scale that may be financed directly through DFID or CDC, or indirectly through AECF, which has other partners involved, and which may potentially have an impact on nutrition in quite a large area.  They are not nutrition projects but agriculture-based projects.  Are DFID or its partners that it is co-financing with looking, as part of the evaluation of the business case, at the impact on nutrition or food security in that area?

Mark Foster: I would say that I do not have any evidence specifically around the interventions that are funded by those particular routes that you have talked about in this particular area.  We have seen, quite widespread, what I would call some fairly strong “do no harm” principles applied by DFID in its business-case development and thinking through the collateral impacts.  This is an area, though, where the e-learning programmes are now rolling out around nutrition and the nutrition advisers that need to be put in place.  The more of that that goes on, the more likely it is that there will be the kinds of skills on the ground to spot the kinds of risks that you are talking about.  The biggest thing that we raised in our report was that there were not enough of these nutrition-aware advisers on the ground, which can then make sure the whole office gets it around some of the risks that you are talking about, and also make sure that the programmes are taking full advantage of the chance to improve nutrition wherever they can.

Jeremy Lefroy: I think, Chair, we can perhaps raise that with DFID.  It is slightly out of the scope of this report, but I think it is important.

Chair: You can do that in our next session. 

Q19   Fiona O’Donnell: This is perhaps also outside the scope.  Sticking with the private sector, but not in terms of specifically engaging in nutrition, I wanted to ask whether you looked at all at the broader private sector, and food and drink.  One of the things that we see everywhere we go is growth in terms of breweries, sugary soft drinks and confectionery.  A lot of that is aspirational, and I just wonder about people’s incomes rising but nutrition falling.  When you are hosted by a family, they often see it as a treat to give you some long-life, packaged confectionery, rather than the bananas or whatever they are growing.  In terms of the work that we are doing in education, is that going to be enough so that we do not end up importing Western diseases such as diabetes?

Steve Jones: I think the diseases are already there, regrettably.  There is what is now being referred to as the “double burden” of over-nutrition and under-nutrition within the same countries.  It is certainly visible in India and in Africa.  If you compare the richer people in towns and cities with rural people, that sharp divide is there, so there is certainly work to be done around education and working with the private sector on these things.

Q20   Fiona O’Donnell: DFID is funding projects in which women are out selling Coca-Cola, which is great and I understand gives them some income, but is it the right product for them to be selling in their communities?

Mark Foster: That is where nutritional awareness on the ground is very important.  Also, if you are doing a programme around nutritional education to improve the mix and nutritional content of food, that educational channel can be used to broaden out and pick up the topics that you are talking about.

Chair: Mark Foster, Steve Jones, thank you very much indeed.  That was very helpful. 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Nick Dyer, DG Policy and Global Programmes, DFID, Tony Burdon, Head, Growth and Resilience Department, DFID, and Anna Taylor, Senior Nutrition Advisor, Growth and Resilience Department, DFID, gave evidence.

Q21   Chair: Thank you very much indeed for coming this morning to this ICAI Sub‑Committee of the International Development Committee.  As you know—you have been listening, I think—we are discussing ICAI’s DFID’s Contribution to Improving Nutrition report.  I wonder if I could just kick off, and then various Members will chip in with their questions.  ICAI praised many aspects of your nutrition work, so I wondered what has galvanised the success and what lessons you are applying to other sectors.

Nick Dyer: Let me just start by saying how pleased we are with this report, because there is and has been a completely neglected crisis of under-nutrition.  The recognition that we have grasped this and made progress over the last four years is a good testament to a whole range of people who have raised this issue.  Why has this galvanised?  I can think of a number of things: pressure from outside; recognition, including from the IDC, about the importance of this issue; and a growing evidence base that shows us what the problem is and how to address it.  I think the two Lancet series in 2008 and 2013 have been very influential.  Another is taking advantage of global moments, where we can make a big push on this agenda.  We used the Olympics in 2012.

Chair: Yes, I was going to ask you about that.

Nick Dyer: We also used the G7 in 2013.  There was also pressure from a whole range of people using the Scaling Up Nutrition agenda, from NGOs to the private sector and other donors.  The combination of those things together has put the momentum behind this.  The UK Government have recognised that and, I think this report shows, responded to it.

Q22   Chair: Is it sustainable?  You mentioned the Olympics and the G7 meeting, which are events and circumstances that really help, but can we carry on in this way?  Is it sustainable?

Nick Dyer: I think you sustain it in a number of ways.  Will it be sustained in events?  I think yes.  We are in consultation with the Brazilians about using their Olympics in Rio in 2016 to have a similar nutrition focus, as well as with the Japanese for their Olympics in 2020, so there will be an ongoing focus in these areas.  You sustain it through reporting, keeping our feet to the fire.  We have our first global nutrition report coming out in November, which will set out whether people are living up to their commitments.  You sustain it through your own delivery, but also by creating incentives for others to step up and deliver.  One of the things that we announced at the Nutrition for Growth summit was the catalytic funding and match funding: if others step up, we will put additional resources into it.  We think a combination of keeping global attention on it, reporting against our commitments, improving our own delivery and creating incentives will go some way to sustaining the delivery.

Q23   Chair: We helped to secure international commitments of £15.2 billion, and I wondered how far those commitments have already been met and how DFID intends to track the implementation of those commitments.

Nick Dyer: We have agreed to have a global nutrition report.  The first one is going to come out at the international conference on nutrition later next month.  It is in preparation now and we are just finalising the details.  I think the broad conclusion of that report will probably tell us that there are still some data gaps that we need to fill and that there has been some progress that we need to learn from.  Broadly, however, the commitments made by the range of people at the Nutrition for Growth event—the private sector, civil society, Governments and donors—are broadly on track.  This is, however, the first of a series of commitments and tracking that we are going to have to do to make sure that we do stay on track.

Q24   Fiona Bruce: Good morning, gentlemen and lady.  I have quite a number of questions on the amber-red assessment relating in particular to monitoring.  ICAI say in their report: “DFID should improve the monitoring of its programmes and ensure that results are not over-reported.”  If you can just bear with me so that I can remind us of, in particular, the amber-red assessment on impact, the report says: “DFID has designed high-quality and appropriate evaluations to assess impact.  Monitoring is less effective.  Some projects do not monitor adequately short-term results and some results have been over-estimated.  We are disappointed that some of DFID’s oldest projects cannot yet demonstrate results.  We are concerned that reporting against corporate ‘reach’ targets can set inappropriate incentives for project management.”

My first question relates, then, to the over-reporting of results and what you have done to improve the checks about validating the performance of data, particularly from partners, in the light of this report.

Anna Taylor: There are a number of issues here.  In terms of the ongoing monitoring of programmes, there is the annual review process that we go through for all our projects to review monitoring against the log frame that is agreed at the beginning.  We clearly need to go further in response to the report in checking up on the results from our partners.  In a number of countries, we are also putting in place third-party validation of monitoring.  This is happening in, for example, Yemen, where the British Council is initiating third-party validation of monitoring across a number of sectors, not just nutrition.  Similarly, in Somalia, we are working to create a web-based platform for real-time tracking using mobile phones and GPS to provide an independent view of progress and also to identify hotspots and where action needs to be taken.

We are also doing quite a lot of work with others to try to establish standardised indicators for coverage and some of the big gaps, which are going to be highlighted in the global nutrition work and which the ICAI report also picked up on in terms of lack of data in this area.  We are doing quite a lot of work with others to standardise that.

Q25   Fiona Bruce: Are you also going to strengthen your learning bases across the different projects?

Anna Taylor: Yes.  We have a virtual group of nutrition leads across countries, who meet on a monthly basis to share experience.  During that monthly meeting, we tend to review a published article that has come out around evidence, and we have countries talking about their own experience.  It is a mix of experience-sharing and learning around the evidence base.  That is our main forum for doing that.

Q26   Fiona Bruce: Can I then move on to the reach figures?  Looking again at the report, ICAI “found that ‘reach’ calculations are often based on unverified assumptions…Furthermore, ‘reach’ figures are not appropriate for project management.  They do not provide incentives for staff to achieve outcomes or spend money wisely…Calculating ‘reach’ has risks as well as benefits, which need to be considered.”  I wondered if you could tell us how you have considered this in the light of this report, and how you can better measure the immediate impact of projects.

Anna Taylor: In the quarterly exercise where the reach figures are reported, we have an independent technical review of the figures that are reported by country officers.  This is a chance to challenge the figures and to understand and unpick the assumptions that have been made.  We also fully recognise that the reach figures are not an expression of our impact, and we have put a lot of other investments in place to track impact.  For example, we are investing in about 50 impact evaluations across the nutrition portfolio, which are going to give us much better information about whether we are really improving the coverage of programmes and reducing stunting levels among children.  I think those two routes are our principal mechanisms for progressing on this.

Q27   Fiona Bruce: We look forward to hearing of that later.  Lastly, focusing on nutrition, in your management response you suggested you were developing new evaluation methods for nutrition.  Is there anything that you have not already told us that you would like to tell the Committee in terms of what you plan to do differently on nutrition?

Anna Taylor: As I said, we have all these impact evaluations, and I think the process that we went through with the ICAI team prompted us to take a closer look at the coherence of that portfolio of investments.  We now have an external group of experts on evaluation who are looking with us across the portfolio to see where there are real gaps and where we should be fostering this learning between countries using the evaluation data.  That is something new, and the first meeting of those experts will happen next month.

Q28   Fiona O’Donnell: Good morning.  You agreed with ICAI’s recommendation that you should make a long-term commitment to global nutrition.  They recommended 15 years, but you have made a commitment for only five years, until 2020.  I am not sure who is going to answer, which is why I am darting back and forth, but I just wondered why you made that decision for a shorter commitment.

Nick Dyer: We had a lot of conversation around this, and I think it is a delicate balance between setting a time that it is long enough to have an impact, but not so long that people disengage.  If you set really long time frames, it is quite easy for people to make commitments that they do not think they are ever going to sustain.  That was why we chose 2020.  It was also complementary to the family planning commitment we made the year before, which was also 2020.  It was also a milestone along the path to the World Health Organisation targets, which are in 2025.  It is a combination of those issues.

Q29   Fiona O’Donnell: Why do you think there were delays—and ICAI were very fair—in some project implementation and scaling-up of nutrition projects?  What are the lessons to learn here?  Do you think that, in general, you should be scaling up more quickly when something is working well?

Tony Burdon: It is a mix of things.  Moving from a low base quickly means getting the right staff in place, with the right kinds of skills.  We have invested a lot in an e-learning course for staff.  We made a decision at that time not to have dedicated nutrition advisers, because nutrition is a cross-sectoral issue, whether it is water and sanitation, or health.  We wanted a range of advisers to have skills in nutrition, so getting that in place took time.  The process of designing programmes, engaging with Government partners, getting approval and then going into delivery and contracting, whether through UNICEF or others, or working with Government, all takes time.

DFID has done a lot this year to try to reduce the processes that we have to get programmes approved while still maintaining proper control, scrutiny and quality.  We are doing a lot of work right now on having senior officers responsible for a project who are empowered to make rapid decisions and act quickly while, at the same time, achieving quality.  We are investing a lot in the training of staff across DFID in programme management and making sure our skills across the organisation are at the highest level.  It is a range of getting all that in place that led to the slow build-up, but now we have the momentum across a whole range of programming, so we have a good platform for going ahead.

Q30   Fiona O’Donnell: You mentioned, Tony, sometimes waiting for a project to be signed off.  In terms of the budget, are some of these at the stage where the Secretary of State herself has to sign them off?  If so, how long does it usually take to get the Department to sign off?

Tony Burdon: It can vary.  There is a process if there are questions to be asked or if we have issues around working with the private sector, where we want more scrutiny and we want to check on conflicts of interest and so on.  It varies.  Approval can sometimes be very quick.

Q31   Fiona O’Donnell: Is “very quick” a couple of weeks?

Tony Burdon: A couple of weeks.

Q32   Fiona O’Donnell: What is the longest that you would wait?

Nick Dyer: Some projects can take quite some months to design and get approval from the Government.

Q33   Fiona O’Donnell: It is just to have an idea.  ICAI also commented on the Department working in silos in your nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific projects.  In your response, you say that you are now addressing that.  Could you give us a bit more detail about how you are doing that, please?

Tony Burdon: One of the failings of nutrition globally has been that it has been in silos.  It has been a health-led issue and neglected when we are talking about agriculture and the right kind of food.  I think the insight, really, was that we need to work across sectors.  In an organisation like DFID, we need to make that happen.  We have varied where we have placed nutrition in DFID.  What we have now is a director leading a cross-DFID platform for acting on nutrition.  I head up the growth and resilience department.  Agriculture and economic growth is in my department, so I will be focusing on private sector issues and agriculture.  Nutrition teams in our human development department will be working on health.  All of us come together against an agreed work plan to make sure that we are acting across all the different areas.  We have one focal point on nutrition who will be doing the same at country level to make sure that the different programmes, whether on agriculture or on health, are coherent together.

Fiona O’Donnell: Certain issues like water insecurity, especially for small-scale farmers, which are sometimes the result of economic growth and development, and multinationals, have a huge impact on communities and their ability to grow their crops. 

Q34   Jeremy Lefroy: ICAI mentioned the lack of either a coherent theory of change or relevant evaluations about how the private sector tackles undernutrition.  Given that both the private sector department and nutrition are key priorities for DFID, why is more not being done on this and how are you responding to their finding?

Tony Burdon: We are acting on it.  We have a lot of activity across the board on the private sector.  In the end, I think the Nutrition for Growth summit got 50 commitments from private sector business on nutrition and on their work forces.  Then we have programmes: we are working with the Clinton Health Access Initiative on how we can work with the private sector on producing complementary foods so that we can drive down prices.  In India, we are working with an Indian dairy co‑operative on ready-to-use therapeutic foods.  We have an AgResults platform that gives prizes for agriculture technology, whether it is bio-fortified foods or aflatoxin.  There is a range of initiatives there, but I think we do not have a coherent enough overview of all of that work.  What we plan to do is that when we refresh our nutrition strategy, which finishes next year, we will include an overall strategy on how we engage with the private sector and its role in improving nutrition.

Nick Dyer: At the United Nations General Assembly, I went to the business group, who were part of Scaling Up Nutrition.  People like Paul Polman from Unilever were there, and he said four things that I thought were quite interesting: first, that this is a growth issue and the private sector needs to understand; secondly, that the time frame that many in the community use—the first 1,000 days—is not the same time frame that businesses use, so there is a challenge in terms of the time frames; thirdly, that they recognise that they need to get their own house in order in terms of giving the messages to employers, and you can reach literally millions of people through that; and, fourthly, the absolute imperative of building it into the business decision so that this is not just an add-on.  They have to build it into their value-chain decisions and their investment decisions.  They recognise that they need to do this and that there is real value in doing it, but the time frames and the options are not quite right for them just yet.

Q35   Jeremy Lefroy: Did they also recognise that, in most of the countries we are dealing with, formal employees are very limited in number?  It is the informal contacts you have, as you say, through the supply chain, through suppliers and through farmers, who are far more numerous.  Did any of them take up that challenge of working with a much broader set of people than just their own employees?

Tony Burdon: On agriculture value chains, how we get smallholder farmers involved in that value chain is really key.  For lots of companies—whether in cocoa, maize or cassava—because of their business model and the fact that there are lots of producers who are not involved in that market, if you can make sure that they are, it is good not only for the market and the company, but for those farmers.  It raises their incomes.  We are working with companies on exploring on how we might maximise incomes for female farmers as well in that value chain.  There is a lot more to do there, but there are lots of companies interested in maximising the value chain.

Q36   Jeremy Lefroy: Could I just take up the question I raised with the previous panel about whether you include in the scope of your work the investments that are made either directly by DFID or indirectly in partnership with others into large-scale agricultural businesses and, indeed, whether you do any work with CDC, which now has, partly as a result of our work, an increased emphasis on investment in agriculture, to ensure that it considers the impact on local nutrition of these large-scale projects?

Tony Burdon: We are doing a review now of all our private sector department programmes to look at whether any of them are engaged in nutrition or, if they are engaged in agriculture, what more they can do.  At Nutrition for Growth, one of our commitments was that, in the nutrition-sensitive areas, we would increase the spread of spend.  For instance, if we are working on a water and sanitation programme, how do we maximise the nutrition-sensitive component of that programme?  Across DFID we are trying to do that.  With the private sector department, we are doing the same.  With IDS, we are working on tools around how the private sector can make sure it does no harm in these investments.  We are engaged with the Committee for Food Security, a UN Committee that pulls together the private sector, NGOs and Governments, on the principles for responsible agriculture investment.  Those are near to being agreed and will be quite powerful in binding companies to making sure they meet those principles of doing no harm, in the way the voluntary principles on the guidelines on land that we got commitments to last year at the G8 are being used by responsible businesses as well to avoid land grabbing and all those issues.

Q37   Jeremy Lefroy: What about CDC?  Are you working with CDC on that?

Tony Burdon: Yes, we are.  We are engaging with the CDC team.  There is quite a lot of work ongoing now with CDC around its programming, as you are aware, so this is part of the discussion.

Q38   Fiona Bruce: Very briefly, as you have partly answered my question: I know that ICAI is concerned that DFID’s pace in working with the private sector is not, perhaps, at the speed it should be, and it did a report on this particular subject quite recently, which we reviewed.  Have you had a look at that?  I wondered whether there are any points from there that you feel are helpful for your work.  One of the main questions that I wanted to ask, which, as I said, you have partly touched on, is: how are you learning from other private sector projects—nutrition or not—that DFID are undertaking?  Clearly, a lot of lessons need to be learned as quickly as possible about engaging with the private sector by DFID.

Tony Burdon: DFID has restructured recently to create an economic development directorate.  What that has done is pulled some bits of DFID more closely together working on economic development.  Now, on the private sector side, we are getting more organised engagement across DFID on our approach.  The Secretary of State committed to scaling up our economic development work by £1.8 billion in the next financial year, and we need to do that in a coherent and organised way.  We have an economic development strategic framework.  There is a lot there that is organising ourselves more coherently around economic development and the private sector’s role in that, so how we improve the enabling environment and how we work more closely with companies so that we create more jobs, raise the incomes of poor people and end poverty.

Q39   Fiona Bruce: What I am looking for is, in view of the amount of money going into this and the priority that the Secretary of State has put on it, an indication that you are really looking at it—ICAI’s report was, in substantial part, amber-red on engagement with the private sector—with a sense of urgency.

Tony Burdon: There is a huge sense of urgency and pressure to deliver.

Q40   Sir Malcolm Bruce: A couple of things.  First of all, can I pursue the issue of India?  It links to other things.  My understanding of India—and anywhere, indeed—is that it is not just about having people eat nutritious food or having nutrition supplements; it is understanding the need to do it, even when they are accessible.  For example, in India, we were told that it is normal for women to diet or to restrict their food intake when they are pregnant in order to have small babies, without always understanding the consequences of that.  A lot of your resource has gone into India, for reasons which are perfectly understandable, but, first of all, to what extent do you feel you have tackled that public health education, communication and understanding rather than just delivering nutrition?  Secondly, what have you learned from the fact that that programme is going to be phased out?  That is a lot of money that will need to be redeployed.  Are there lessons to be learned elsewhere from experiences in India, or are there simply different needs?

Nick Dyer: I will ask Anna to add to this, but I will kick off.  Clearly, a great amount of the burden of undernutrition is in India, but Ministers have also made the decision that they are going to withdraw our financial support to India from 2015.  The good news is that the global hunger report that has just come out suggests that the stunting rate in India has come down by about 13%, so progress is now starting to happen in India, which breaks this real problem that growth has been going up but nutrition has been staying the same.  At last, we are starting to see some progress in India, and I think one of the challenges for us is to learn—and learn quickly—what the result of that is.

As we transition our programme, we will be looking for private investment opportunities in India, and also technical assistance.  DFID has been invited on to the technical committee of the Government of India to design their new nutrition strategy and action plan.  I cannot predict what our future programme will be but, clearly, technical assistance in the nutrition area is one potential area for that.  I can imagine that we will still stay engaged.  We are looking at private investment opportunities with groups looking at uplifting nutrition products in India as well.  We will stay engaged both at the policy level and, potentially, the intervention level, but through different mechanisms.  The key question is how we learn from the good progress that they are making.  Anna, do you want to add to that?

Anna Taylor: Yes, just a couple of points.  One of the things that we can take elsewhere from our experience in India is the work that we have done at the state level to try to link Government investments in health, nutrition, and water and sanitation, and get a much more coherent approach across those three areas, because of the synergistic effects between the three of them.  I think the area where the Indian experience is harder to translate is within the context of Integrated Child Development Services, which is the biggest nutrition programme in the world and is unique, really, to India.  Of course, in terms of the role of front-line workers and what they can achieve in supporting mothers to change behaviour and uptake key services, we can definitely learn from our investments to support those workers and translate that elsewhere.

Q41   Sir Malcolm Bruce: Briefly, because we are running out of time, may I pick up on ICAI’s criticism, really, that you do not necessarily reach the most vulnerable?  It was talking about herding communities or migratory, pastoral communities. What are you doing to address that?  You say that you do not have special nutrition advisers, generally speaking, so how are you addressing the need for skills across your offices to ensure that nutrition becomes something that everybody is engaged in?

Anna Taylor: An exercise that we have recently kicked off in several country offices is what we call a spatial mapping exercise.  It looks at the overlay of areas of highest need versus where the investments are going on—not just DFID’s investments but also those of others—to try to throw up where there are critical gaps.  In India specifically, we have done an exercise to look at the issues highlighted by ICAI around the tribal populations that are specifically flagged up.

In terms of the capacity question, we have now identified focal points for nutrition across 80% of our country offices.  As you know, these would not necessarily be dedicated nutrition advisers, but they might be health advisers or livelihood advisers who are taking responsibility for getting an overview of nutrition across the portfolio and helping to drive integration.  We are continuing the audit process, which is something that ICAI reviewed positively, and we are just about to start an audit in Mozambique.  It has also come up in South Sudan, where we are also likely to do one.  That process is ongoing, and it is quite important for building the capacity of advisers as well as for identifying where there are opportunities to get this good mix of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive programmes.

Other ways of doing it are through continuing professional development of advisers, and we are working quite closely across several of our professional cadres—livelihood advisers, humanitarian advisers, health advisers and social development advisers—to make sure that, through ongoing training and development of those cadres, nutrition is a strong element of either training opportunities or other learning opportunities that are created within those cadres.  It is a mix.

Q42   Sir Malcolm Bruce: So you would have a wider range of nutrition understanding than you would if you had specialist advisers.  That should be the outcome of that.

Anna Taylor: That is the intention, yes, exactly.

Chair: Tony Burdon, Nick Dyer, Anna Taylor, thank you very much indeed.  That was very helpful.

Examination of Witness

Witness: Richard Calvert, DG Finance and Corporate Performance, DFID, gave evidence.

In the absence of the Chair, Sir Malcolm Bruce was called to the Chair.

Q43   Chair: Good morning, Richard.  Thank you very much for coming in.  Would you just formally introduce yourself for the record?

Richard Calvert: Richard Calvert, Director General for Finance and Corporate Performance at DFID.

Q44   Chair: Thank you very much.  We have a fairly short amount of time, so we must be brisk, although it is important.  First of all, there are aspects of Michael Moore’s Bill and then, secondly, the process of renewing ICAI.  On Michael Moore’s Bill, I know the Government are supporting the basic part of the Bill, but he has this schedule for an independent international development office, which sounds awfully like something like ICAI.  Indeed, in the debate in the House, I took the same view, but I wanted to ask if you think that, logically, ICAI would be that body and, if so, whether that is the case.  There does not seem to be a case for having an international development office and an independent commission so, first of all, is that your view?

Richard Calvert: Firstly, yes, if you look at the schedule in the description of what an independent international development office would do and what ICAI does, it is basically the same remit, with a little bit of difference at the margins.  I think our assumption is that it is essentially the same job.  Of course, Mr Swayne did say in the Second Reading debate that the Government did feel that the current arrangements for independent scrutiny were working well, and indicated that we would expect this to be debated and looked at in Committee.  The starting point, however, is certainly that these are essentially doing the same job.

Chair: That is what we want to tease out, really.

Q45   Fiona O'Donnell: You have probably answered my question, Richard, but I will just check.  Would there be any changes that ICAI would need to make to take on that mandate?

Richard Calvert: Clearly, it depends, to some extent, on what exactly the final wording of the Bill is and what provision it makes in this area.  I think the basic mandate of independent evaluation supervised by a board of commissioners is the same, and I think the schedule also gives the same focus on impact and value for money.  If you looked at the precise wording of the schedule alongside the precise remit of ICAI, there are a few words that are different.  There is a little bit of difference in the governance structure.  Whether that would mean that ICAI could simply continue precisely as it is at the moment or whether it would need some change depends very much on how the final wording of the schedule ends up.

Q46   Fiona Bruce: Have you any views on the creation of a new statutory body akin to the National Audit Office?  I do not know whether you heard Graham Ward’s comments earlier; he was in approval of that.

Richard Calvert: I did not.

Q47   Fiona Bruce: Do you have any comments on the advantages and disadvantages, and do you think that would strengthen the independence of mind of ICAI, or is that already there sufficiently?  Finally, I have a reservation about the cost.  Could you comment on those factors?

Richard Calvert: Just to go back to the debate, the Government’s position, which Mr Swayne set out, is that the current arrangements work well.  ICAI has functioned very effectively as an independent scrutiny body without having a statutory base.  I think the starting point is that we have something that is working well and it is not obvious, therefore, what extra value is.  The point about value for money is a very good one, and certainly we would want to look at that very closely.  We think we get good value for money from ICAI.  We deliberately set it up with quite a lean structure.  We are proposing a few adjustments in that as part of the transition to phase 2, but there would certainly be risks that a statutory body might involve some more cost or more elaborate structures.

Q48   Jeremy Lefroy: Does the progress of the Bill affect the current ICAI chief commissioner recruitment process, given that the mandate may change?

Richard Calvert: It is a very fair question and we have looked at the timetable at the moment for transition.  I think the position that we are taking is that it is important to press ahead with the transition on the current timetable.  In previous discussions with the Committee, we have recognised that it is a big transition: there is a lot of change of commissioners and contractors, and some changes in the secretariat.  Managing that smoothly, in a way that does not disrupt the flow of ICAI’s business through 2015, is important.  We believe that we should press ahead on the current timetable.  Clearly we have to keep an eye on what happens with the Bill and we do not yet know what the timetable will be.  Mr Moore will largely drive the passage of the Bill.  It would be ideal to have clarity on that as soon as we can, but we think it is important just to go ahead with the transition on current plans for the time being.

              Chair: You and Desmond Swayne have said that this is a matter for debate within the Committee; I think we just wanted to explore it.  Fiona Bruce’s question is really the crucial one: the extent to which making it a statutory body strengthens its independence and effectiveness, as well as its role in securing that the Government keeps to the 0.7%, assuming the rest of the Bill becomes law.  I guess that is the centrepiece of the debate, which we will hear more about, so thank you for answering those questions.

Perhaps we could move on to the process of selecting the new commissioner—and, indeed, the new commissioners.  I am going to ask Fiona Bruce to take the first question.

Q49   Fiona Bruce: The panel shortlisted four candidates for interview and put all four forward to the Secretary of State as appointable.  Do you have a view on whether it might have been better to recommend an individual candidate, to have put forward fewer candidates to the Secretary of State, or to have ranked them?

Richard Calvert: We are very much in the hands of the process set out by the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments—OCPA—and it is a process that applies across Government for public appointments.  The process is designed to give Secretaries of State a set of candidates who are considered to be appointable, and the Secretary of State then has a view.  The process does not involve a ranking of appointable candidates; it is designed to make sure that any candidates who go forward to a Secretary of State have been assessed by a panel, under the supervision of OCPA, as meeting the criteria for the post.  The process does not, however, allow the panel to do a formal ranking.

Q50   Fiona Bruce: So does the process recommend that a number of candidates are put forward to the Secretary of State, or could you have limited it to one?

Richard Calvert: It could have been anywhere from nought upwards.  The panel is charged with assessing whether candidates who apply for a post are appointable and meet the criteria.  We had a number of applications, we shortlisted and we interviewed, and then we had a number of candidates who, at the end of that, we considered to be appointable.  If, at the interview stage, the panel had concluded that any of those were not appointable, they would not have gone forward.  If the panel had concluded that no one was appointable, the process would have been rerun.  It is about assessing whether candidates get above the bar.

Q51   Fiona Bruce: Was the panel unanimous in putting forward all four candidates?

Richard Calvert: Yes.  Without betraying the confidence of the panel too much, I think it was in agreement at all stages of the process.  It is important to say that the OCPA assessor, who chairs the panel, is there to ensure the process is properly run.  We also had the strong endorsement of the OCPA assessor for how the panel operated.

Q52   Fiona Bruce: Finally, I presume you did not express a preference when you put forward all four names.

Richard Calvert: That is correct.

Q53   Fiona Bruce: Did you have one, though?  Is that something you would like to answer, or would you prefer not to?

Richard Calvert: I think we did not—even informally—in the panel, say, “If it was our choice, how would we rank them?” because we knew that was not our job, so we did not go through that process, even off the record.

Q54   Jeremy Lefroy: Could I ask how the panel tested for conflicts of interest?

Richard Calvert: The application process asked all candidates to set out any potential conflicts of interest.  If there were any that the panel had concerns about, we would raise those at the interview process.  Also, the Secretary of State would have information on any potential conflicts of interest and would take a view on that.  It is an important part of the process and, in the selection criteria, the ability genuinely to demonstrate independence is one of the key criteria for this post, and all the commissioner posts with ICAI.

Q55   Jeremy Lefroy: Were there any concerns about possible conflicts of interest about the person whom the Secretary of State eventually chose, given her background?

Richard Calvert: No.  That was something that, as a panel, we looked at, and I know the Secretary of State also looked at it.  It is important to recognise that, when we went into this chief commissioner recruitment process, the Government’s view, the triennial review’s view and the Committee’s view was that we were looking for a chief commissioner who had more experience in international development.  Going forward, we felt that a stronger understanding of international development was an important part of the skill set of the new commissioner.  In doing that, we recognised that someone who has more experience of international development in a UK context is quite likely to have had some dealings with DFID, one way or another.  It is quite hard not to have done, whether you are working in the UK or not.  A number of the candidates had had some sort of dealings with DFID, one way or another, through their career.

From an independence point of view, the key thing is what the nature of that is and how any potential conflicts are managed.  Most candidates for senior public appointments have a range of outside interests.  As long as they are really clear and any potential conflicts are managed, it should be possible to combine some involvement in, or some potential links with, DFID with independence.  In the case of the preferred candidate, however, those links are relatively remote.

Q56   Jeremy Lefroy: You were saying that you think it is possible to combine some links with DFID with—

Richard Calvert: Yes, if someone has had a career that has involved some links with DFID over the last 20 or 30 years, certainly that does not preclude them from operating in an independent way.  It is an issue that, as a Committee, I imagine you will raise in the scrutiny hearing but, certainly, as a panel—and I know I can speak for the Secretary of State—we were very confident that the Secretary of State’s preferred candidate will be an absolutely strong candidate in terms of independence.  We had no doubts about that.

Q57   Chair: We understand that the Secretary of State had pre-appointment conversations with the candidates, which is provided for, but can you say why you were present at those rather than the chair of the panel, which would have been normal?

Richard Calvert: The chair of the panel would normally have been there.  For personal reasons, he was not able to be there on the day, but he sent one of his colleagues who was also a member of the OCPA panel, fully briefed by him and on his behalf.

Q58   Chair: There were two of you there.

Richard Calvert: We were both in the room, yes.

Q59   Chair: So that was all agreed with—

Richard Calvert: That is the proper process.  OCPA is present at every stage of the process, including the final interviews.

Q60   Chair: We understand that the Secretary of State asked at least one candidate, in the context of discussing independence, whether ICAI could work more collaboratively with DFID—this is a quote, I think—“sharing ICAI recommendations with DFID before they were finalised”.  Is this something that every candidate was asked or was it only one candidate?

Richard Calvert: The questioning of candidates was consistent.  I think the question was looking at how DFID makes sure that it learns as much as possible from ICAI.  What we are interested in, as a Department, is not just what ICAI says, but whether we, as a Department, improve as a result of that.  The ability to operate in a way that maintains an effective relationship with the Department, as, indeed, the current commissioners have done, is an important part of that.

Q61   Chair: You can, however, understand our concern as to the extent to which ICAI remains an arm’s length assessor, if you like, of DFID as opposed to a collaborative partner.  Independence is important.

Richard Calvert: I am not sure what the source of those words is.

Chair: I do not know either, by the way.

Richard Calvert: The discussions were not minuted word for word.  I certainly did not take from it any questioning of the independence of ICAI; to be honest, absolutely the opposite.  I think that has been clear throughout the process.

Q62   Chair: Just a final point in terms of the outgoing commissioners, the triennial review last December recommended that DFID should decide what limitations regarding future appointments or employment should be placed for current commissioners, if any.  Has any decision been made on that?

Richard Calvert: No, I do not believe that decisions have been made, but I would be very happy to share them with the Committee or discuss them with the Committee.

Q63   Chair: There are two aspects to that: one is that there is a lot of experience that has been gained by those commissioners, but one would not want them to be unreasonably restricted at the same time.  We do not want the process to be compromised.

Richard Calvert: I accept both those points.  I do not think, at the moment, we have resolved that.  I do not think it has become an immediately pressing question.

Q64   Chair: It will become so, I suppose, if the commissioners are looking to their future.

Richard Calvert: Exactly.  We are ready to have that discussion and we will pick it up with the commissioners.

Q65   Jeremy Lefroy: Should that not be in place now?  If people are considering putting their names forward but do not know whether they are going to be restricted in employment for two years post finishing a job, that makes it harder to recruit people, because there is a considerable element of uncertainty.

Richard Calvert: We did say, with both the current commissioners and—it is our intention—with the current recruitment, that commissioners should not be reappointed into their same roles, so we do expect commissioners not to continue simply as ICAI commissioners.  It is a fair point to say we should be clear with the commissioners.  It is not something that, to be honest, we have been pressed on by the commissioners recently, but I agree it is something that we ought to resolve.  It has not felt like a pressing issue so far, but we should be clear about it.

Q66   Chair: It is an important point.  From the Committee’s point of view, when ICAI was started, it would be fair to say that we were a little sceptical about people being brought in who had no development experience.  Indeed, for the first 12 or 18 months, we were not sure that—perhaps you could not have expected it—ICAI was performing particularly well, but I think we would take a very different view now.  We think it has been a huge learning curve.  We have some concerns that all that expertise is being let go and that you have restricted continuity.  We worry that ICAI will go backwards rather than forwards, because of the recruitment process.  All the commissioners are going and we are bringing somebody in who has a completely different background.

Richard Calvert: It is partly why we are keen to keep the process moving quite quickly over the next few months.  Our transition timetable is set up on the basis that we have the first half of 2015 to have essentially some transition parallel running.  If the chief commissioner appointment is confirmed in November, we will have a chief commissioner in place.  We are going to be kicking off the commissioner recruitment in the next few weeks.  We would hope to be in a position to appoint commissioners by early 2015.  Partly, that is so that, although the current commissioners continue in their roles through to May-June time, there is an opportunity to make sure that they can spend enough time with the current commissioners to make the transition smooth.  Similarly, on the contractor side, we are looking to have an overlap of the contractor function.  On the secretariat side, we have agreed a strengthening of secretariat staffing.  Some of the recruitment of that will also kick off in the next few weeks to make sure that, on the secretariat side, there is some continuity as well as some additional capacity.

Chair: Speaking as somebody who is not standing at the next election, I hope there will be some members of this Committee who will also be reappointed in the next Parliament, because I think that degree of continuity, from the Committee’s point of view, is important.

Jeremy Lefroy: And re-elected.

Chair: Yes, absolutely—elected, precisely so.  Nevertheless, I trust the experience and expertise that exists here will secure re-election for those who wish to pursue it.  Does anybody have any other questions?  No.  Can I say thank you very much?  That session has really been helpful to give us some insight.  It has probably given you some steer as to the sort of questions we are likely to be asking, too.  Thank you very much.

              Oral evidence: The Work of the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, HC 684                            21