29
Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy
Oral evidence: Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF)
Monday 22 May 2023
4.25 pm
Members present: Margaret Beckett MP (The Chair); Lord Ashton of Hyde; Lord Butler of Brockwell; Sarah Champion MP; Lord Dannatt; Mr Tobias Ellwood MP; Baroness Fall; Richard Graham MP; Alicia Kearns MP; Stephen McPartland MP; Lord Reid; Lord Robathan; Viscount Stansgate; Bob Stewart MP; Lord Strasburger.
Evidence Session No. 1 Heard in Public Questions 1 - 28
Witnesses
I: Baroness Neville-Rolfe DBE CMG, Minister of State, Cabinet Office; Ben Merrick, Director, Joint Funds Unit, National Security Secretariat, Cabinet Office; Naomi Penia, Head of Integrated Security Fund Implementation, Cabinet Office.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe, Ben Merrick and Naomi Penia.
Q1 The Chair: Welcome and thank you very much for giving evidence to us today. For the benefit of observers, this is our annual evidence session on the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund. We are the only committee with an official scrutiny role on what is an important cross-government fund. This is a hybrid meeting, so some members are joining us on video. I am sorry that we have kept you waiting for a minute or so while we sorted it out.
What would you say has been the impact of the Integrated Review and Refresh on the overarching objectives of the CSSF?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Thank you for having us here today. It is great to be here. I want to apologise on behalf of our senior responsible owner, Sarah MacIntosh, who cannot be with us because of an unavoidable personal commitment, but we wanted to respect your timetable. I have with me Ben Merrick, who is known to many of you and who is our very experienced head of the Joint Funds Unit, and Naomi Penia, who is also from the unit. I hope we will be able to answer your questions.
I was delighted to take over this portfolio in November. I used to be the non-executive chair of Crown Agents before resigning on my appointment to the Cabinet Office last year. I have not been involved in particular contracts in either role, but it heightens my passion and interest in the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund and, indeed, in the new UK Integrated Security Fund that replaces it.
You are interested in the strategic approach to the fund and the impact of the Integrated Review and Refresh, which is very useful and which identified four trends that are shaping the strategic environment: shifts in the distribution of global power; interstate systemic competition over the nature of the international order; rapid technological change, which we have all seen; and worsening transnational challenges. These have all accelerated since the first Integrated Review and things have become more multi-polar and fragmented.
One way in which the Government are meeting these challenges is by broadening the mandate of the CSSF and building on its strengths to deliver integrated value-for-money programming in the UK and overseas. The new fund was announced in the review, and expanding its remit and offering HMG a strengthened means of delivering on our priorities can make a big difference.
Ben Merrick: I will just add a few points to what the Minister said. The key fund-level outcomes of the CSSF will very much continue the emphasis on conflict, stability, state threats, transnational threats and women, peace and security. As the Minister says, the Integrated Review and Refresh looked to broaden the objectives to cover supporting domestic national security by seeking areas for greater join-up and through greater linkage between overseas and domestic work. That will be taken forward with the Minister’s direction as we go through. That was a particular aspect of the Integrated Review and Refresh in its implications for the fund as well as work on the new economic deterrence initiative.
The Chair: Thank you. That is helpful. It strikes me that before this fund there was a conflict prevention budget and fund—I cannot remember what it was called—which was set up with the idea of maintaining and, indeed building on, that approach but doing it in a much more explicitly cross-departmental way. From what you are saying, I wonder whether the fund is rather moving away from activities that try to build peace and prevent conflict and moving towards something that has more emphasis on hard security in particular. Maybe it is silly to place too much emphasis on a name, but the fact that it will become an Integrated Security Fund instead makes me wonder to what extent we are moving away from the original intention not so many years ago.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Let me see if I can reassure you a bit, because it is the obvious question.
We have added in the economic deterrence initiative and the extra £50 million—I think it is £25 million each year over two years—and that will help us with sanctions. We have certainly, as you would have expected, allocated more money to eastern Europe and central Asia, obviously partly as a result of the Ukraine conflict, and because more is being done on cyber and dealing with the media and so on. However, the fund continues to have portfolios in other areas, as you can see from the report, and we very much see ourselves as covering conflict, security and stability. In a sense, our next job, now that the integrated fund has been set up, is to have a process for ensuring that it covers the right areas, bearing in mind the point that you have made.
The Chair: You say that it has been set up. I am not aware of the date when it is supposed to commence.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We are in the process of setting it up. We have set the budgets for the current year under the CSSF, and the work that is ongoing in the team is to work out exactly what changes will take place in the integrated fund, which makes this hearing very timely. I envisage having a meeting of the interested Ministers before the summer break on the basis of advice from the team as to the direction of travel, making sure that in the countries and in the themes we are continuing to do the things that we need to do but also adjusting to the slightly different circumstances that we find ourselves in.
The Chair: We may come back to that.
Alicia Kearns: You mentioned that the central Asia spend has gone up, but central Asia is not listed as a specific regional area in the whole CSSF allocation. How much has central Asia gone up, given that it is currently thrown in with eastern Europe?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I said eastern Europe and central Asia, because, as you say, they are together, but I think it includes things like work in Georgia and other countries surrounding Russia, which are obviously important. Can you help, Ben?
Ben Merrick: Yes. I am afraid I do not have the exact figure for central Asia, but we can certainly come back to you on that. The overall portfolio is, as you say, eastern Europe and central Asia, particularly of course the work in Ukraine. We are conscious that the impact of Russia’s activity is felt regionally, which is why we are keen to support that portfolio in particular, as you can imagine.
Q2 Alicia Kearns: I ask, because I returned from central Asia last week. The issues in central Asia are in no way the same as those in eastern Europe. I recognise that we have EECAD as an institution—I think that is an error in itself—but it would be helpful to break it down, because the issues are completely different and we should not be seeing central Asia as essentially just Russia’s backyard. Their issues are entirely different.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We will certainly see what we can do. That is a helpful comment on the strategy that we are now looking at. Of course, the Russian backyard—Georgia and so on—matters, but as you say, they have their own issues and challenges in conflict and security.
Ben Merrick: It is extremely helpful to have your immediate experience of that. If there are particular sorts of advice and experience that you can share with us, we would very much value it.
Alicia Kearns: Hold this space for our report.
Ben Merrick: I will add to the previous question that was put to the Minister. I think you were asking about the name of the Integrated Security Fund. As you say, sometimes capturing everything in one shortish name is a bit tricky but certainly the emphasis on conflict and stability will very much continue. Conflict reduction and prevention remain very important in the work we are doing. It is the integration point that we are especially keen to emphasise.
Q3 Lord Dannatt: I think you have already touched on the question that I wanted to ask, which is rather more general. Historically, the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund seems to have adopted a high-risk appetite towards the activities that you fund. It seems perhaps that you are now moving to funding less-risky projects as well, or perhaps instead. If that is true, what has been the impact of increased pressures on the public purse, including obviously high inflation?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: One thing I welcome about the fund, coming as you probably know from a commercial background, is that it gives the opportunity to act fast and to invest in higher-risk projects. Certainly, going forward, your point is completely taken. We pivoted very rapidly to find I think £25 million for Ukraine, and because we are now more joined up we are doing more work on things like cyber. However, we need to make sure that the projects we have are high-ambition and potentially high-risk projects, and that we learn from them.
Lord Dannatt: Of course, if you do pivot towards a high-risk area and Ukraine pops up almost out of nowhere, the pot is finite, so something else has to be given up to make space.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Well, it has, and you can see the cross-cutting themes from our annual report. It is always difficult to make choices, but we will choose things that are risky, we will choose things where you can move on, and we will choose things where we can have a market and a world-leading approach, because that can sometimes translate into allies doing things that we are doing and therefore into getting more impact. So much of this now is about international relations and joining up.
Ben Merrick: The Minister is exactly right that high risk remains a key principle, along with integration and the catalytic effect of the fund as well as agility. That enables us to operate in difficult areas and to try things out and adapt. Ideally, once we have been able to prove that certain things work well we can look potentially to baselining them into departmental budgets over time, but we very much seek to continue the high-risk element. As the Minister says, often we have to take difficult decisions as to where the priorities will lie, but that very much flows from NSC decisions and things like the Integrated Review and Refresh.
Lord Dannatt: It is good to hear that the appetite is still there for high risk, high return, high impact.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: And the occasional failure, but learning from that and moving on.
Lord Dannatt: That is life.
Q4 Mr Tobias Ellwood: I am just looking through this list here for Afghanistan. Forgive me if I have missed it. Do we give any money to Afghanistan now?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We continue to give some. It has obviously run down.
Ben Merrick: The amount has been reduced considerably as a result of the situation that you are well aware of. We continue to work, particularly on issues around women, peace and security. To Lord Dannatt’s point about high risk, that is very much a high-risk area, but it is something that we are keen to ensure we can support. Obviously, there is a number of sensitivities there, so it is difficult to go into detail.
Mr Tobias Ellwood: One of the British NGOs that we can be most proud of is the HALO Trust. I think you would agree with that. It continues to do critical work in Afghanistan and does so with the blessing of the Taliban, yet you have cut its budget quite ruthlessly. Given what happened in Afghanistan, with us cutting and running and leaving 40 million people to their own devices and in the hands of the very insurgency that we went in to defeat, could you please reconsider improving the amount of support that you provide to the HALO Trust? It is now having to go to other nations, overseas nations, to provide the very support to continue its programmes, not just in Afghanistan but in other parts of the world.
I focus on Afghanistan, because I think we have a moral duty to continue to provide that support, particularly for an organisation that is doing de-mining, as the HALO Trust is. Perhaps you could write to the committee and say how much you were giving to the HALO Trust, how much you are giving now, and whether you would be willing to reconsider and improve your funding for this important organisation.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: In view of your raising it, of course we will look at it and we will write. One thing we are trying to do is get others to help in areas that we have pioneered. It is good to know that the HALO Trust is getting some money from other sources.
Mr Tobias Ellwood: It does not have enough money to deliver its programmes, so it is having to cut back. With respect, thinking that it might be able to get funds from elsewhere is no reason to cut its funding. Please speak to General Cowan about this. He is very vexed and feels that he is not getting the necessary support from the British Government.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I hear what you say.
Ben Merrick: I am very happy to come back in writing with the detail. We work closely with other parts of government, including the Foreign Office in its Global Mine Action Programme, which has certainly covered a number of areas. I confess that I am not aware of the detail in relation to Afghanistan, but I will take that away and come back to you with our response.
Mr Tobias Ellwood: Thank you.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We will look at the mine issue perhaps more broadly in the work we are doing in the year ahead, because it is clearly a very important part of conflict and security.
Q5 Lord Butler of Brockwell: Before I start on my main line of questioning, could I ask in relation to the last set of questions what you mean by risk? Is the risk that schemes do not work and the money is wasted? Is that what you mean by high risk?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Ben, with your long experience, perhaps you could comment on it over the period that we have been running this fund and how that ambition might change.
Ben Merrick: Certainly, for us, risk has a number of different elements. We have different areas of risk appetite. We have a very low appetite for things like threat to life or fiduciary risk, but we look to take high risk where we may try things out that may not succeed, or where there may be reputational aspects or potentially some political risk in engaging with overseas Governments.
Any situation will always be relative to the local context, so we need to understand what it looks like to do things in a calculated and responsible fashion but, yes, there are areas where we can try to do things differently. The Minister referred to the support we gave very quickly to the Ukrainian armed forces at the start of the invasion. I mentioned a little earlier the support for women, peace and security in Afghanistan.
Some of these things are about the risk of programmes or projects not working out as we might intend, but I would be very happy to provide further detail in writing if that would be useful.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: There is obviously a risk in speed and in moving to do something quickly. Whitehall is not always that quick to take on new projects, so that is a risk. There is also a risk with location. I talked to Ben about where we might go to see the work of the fund and he discouraged me from going to some areas because they are high-risk, dangerous areas where you do not want Ministers to be attacked.
Lord Butler of Brockwell: You do not want to lose your Minister.
Ben Merrick: No. One success story is the work we have been able to do in Somalia. Clearly there are a number of operational risks there, but the way we want to operate means that we can see improvements, such as in the way local forces have responded to the human rights training we have given them, dealing with terrorism situations and so on.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We do not want to leave these countries out. That is my point. If their need is great, we can get good results.
Q6 Lord Butler of Brockwell: I want to ask about the Government’s arrangements for managing the fund. You have taken over responsibility for the fund, which I understand means that you are responsible for the Government’s co-ordination of the fund. Is the fund on the Cabinet Office vote?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Ben Merrick reports in to the security side of the Cabinet Office.
Ben Merrick: Yes. Essentially, we have a settlement from Treasury in the spending review. I think that sits for technical-handling purposes on the Foreign Office baseline, but it is very much a cross-government approach. When portfolios are allocated and so on, the money goes to various different government departments, but, yes, the funds come directly from Treasury in the spending review settlement.
Lord Butler of Brockwell: But who is the accounting officer for it?
Ben Merrick: The Minister is the overarching Minister. Sarah MacIntosh is the senior responsible owner for the fund. As for how money is spent—for example, in the Foreign Office, where there are particular projects and programmes—it will be the relevant departmental accounting officer, so Sir Philip Barton in the case of the Foreign Office-delivered aspects this year.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: That is the biggest part of the expenditure, as you will see from the report.
Q7 Lord Butler of Brockwell: Now I want to get on to how you decide how the fund should be allocated. Over the years, we have been told about different arrangements, which have changed quite a lot, such as how it is allocated different ministerial fora. Baroness Neville-Rolfe referred a few moments ago to having meetings with the responsible Ministers, which sounds rather like an ad hoc arrangement. Is there any ministerial collective arrangement for deciding how these funds should be allocated to achieve the collective aims of the Government?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: The National Security Council is responsible overall, as it was for the Integrated Review. That is chaired by the Prime Minister. There is a sub-committee chaired by the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. You are right that any meeting I have on the fund is an ad hoc minuted meeting of interested Ministers, but at the end of the process when we put our proposals for write around, that goes round the National Security Council circulation of Ministers, obviously adding in any extra Ministers needed as a result of the work going wider than that, and to the various senior people involved so that they can comment and come back.
This year, we managed to agree it without a meeting, but with the change to the integrated fund I felt it would be right to have a meeting of interested Ministers up front to talk about the principles and themes before we got too far into individual programme development in departments.
Lord Butler of Brockwell: So you might have a collective meeting for that purpose, or ad hoc meetings, and the result is a programme that you would clear throughout the Government by a write round. Is that right
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Yes, if there is a dispute. In the normal way with write rounds you occasionally have meetings,[1] but I do not think that that has been necessary on this programme. It is a popular programme, and Ministers make comments, although it obviously would not be right for me to say who or about what. That is the way we move things forward.
Ben Merrick: On how prioritisations and allocations are made, if it would be helpful to you, as you might imagine it very much flows from NSC and overall ministerial direction. At the moment, of course, the Integrated Review and Integrated Review Refresh very much drive the overarching strategic direction for the fund, and we work closely with the Integrated Review teams as they put it together to ensure that we can align and adjust.
With the original Integrated Review, for example, we established the state threats portfolio and the cyber portfolio off the back of it, but, as the Minister says, we very much then seek steers from departments as to the broad direction. Once we have worked through the detailed proposals, we put them to Ministers to ensure that they are content with the balance across different portfolios. Obviously in-year, or from time to time, there will be significant changes, such as the war in Ukraine, and we can then revert to Ministers to see whether they want to adjust directions or put particular emphasis on certain areas.
Q8 Stephen McPartland: The annual report for 2021 covers the first year. The ODA budget was reduced from 0.7% to 0.5% and the fund seems to have been reduced by more than 40%. We wonder how you manage the reduction in your funding.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Ben, do you want to talk a bit about the approach, because I was not there? I think the Government have said that in certain circumstances we will go back to 0.7%, but clearly we had to move quickly to live within our means without jeopardising any programme by running it down too fast.
Ben Merrick: Thank you very much for the question. The difficult decisions that need to be made on strategic requirements and supply on the fiscal side are a constant challenge. The key thing at whatever point we are operating is to be clear on the strategic imperatives, the most important areas to be thinking about, and to think through which areas will be particularly effective at delivering and achieving value for money. To take a recent example, when we looked at the allocations for the current financial year, we very much looked at how different portfolios had been performing over time.
We also look to see whether there is scope for baselining particular portfolios and the sorts of areas where they may have been continuing with certain programmes for quite some time, particularly with the sorts of reductions that you mentioned. Some of the programmes that needed to be reduced were to do with Sudan and South Sudan, which we will come to later. The FCDO was able to take on some work on peacebuilding and that sort of work.
So it is partly the CSSF—or the Integrated Security Fund in future—but it is also the broader way in which government can operate and address some of these issues. It is very much evidence-led, as much as it can be, in understanding the nature of the challenges and what is possible, especially the areas where we are able to fulfil the fund’s four key principles and bring out the unique selling points of the fund.
Stephen McPartland: When you were making difficult decisions, how did you go about deciding which programme or country would get support? Also, building on Lord Butler’s point, what cross-departmental oversight was there? How did departments decide to support or not support?
Ben Merrick: Often these sorts of things happen at strategic times and in-year. A key part of it is the cross-government approach that we take, certainly at official level, to make sure that the broad portfolio boards are able to set out the implications and that departments can raise concerns. Part of this is understanding the highest priority areas in particular portfolios and where they can have particular effect.
Linked to this is a point I should have mentioned about the strategic review of the CSSF, which we referred to in last year’s session, which came from the regional Integrated Review. That certainly focused attention, as you can imagine, on conflict, stability and security and away from some of longer-term economic development sides of things. Part of that was about ensuring that the different areas of the fund were able to focus on what would be most in line with that.
Q9 Lord Strasburger: The 40% was a very big cut in the budget. Could you give us a clue as to which projects were the biggest losers?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Are we talking about in the current year?
Ben Merrick: This is in the context of this particular annual report.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Ben has already mentioned the current-year annual report. We allocated more to eastern Europe and to cyber. We kept counterterrorism broadly constant. I suppose the portfolios that were deprioritised were more in the Middle East and north Africa, and to some extent across Africa, but we tried to maintain some of the cross-cutting thematic work on counterinformation, on gender and on cyber, which affect a lot of different countries.
Ben Merrick: Building on the Minister’s answer, you are absolutely right that these are very difficult decisions and it was essentially about relative prioritisation. The particular areas I will highlight in response to your question were, as the Minister mentioned, the Middle East and north Africa. The portfolio drew down in particular the programmes in Algeria and Morocco and the Africa portfolio. I mentioned just now some of the reductions on Sudan, South Sudan and Ethiopia. Again, part of that was about looking across the span of how government was investing to see whether there were other areas that might be able to cover some of it.
Lord Strasburger: Could you to write to us with a list of the major losers?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Of course, yes. We can show you the drift of spending in different areas, which is what you need. One has to look at it in the round as well. We are very fortunate that in some places the FCDO has other programmes, now obviously all under one roof, and other capacities. I am sure that at working level that is also taken into account. You want to make sure that the programmes you are supporting are ambitious and will produce good value for money. We will probably come on to discuss evaluation, which, for me, is also very important.
Ben Merrick: As the Minister says, sometimes programmes stop and sometimes they evolve. Sometimes, of course, that relates to the amount of funding but also, potentially, the situation on the ground. We will certainly be happy to come back to you in writing on that.
Q10 Richard Graham: I ought to declare an interest as Chair of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which is a non-departmental government body that benefits from some CSSF funding as well as losing one or two things, such as a good project in MENA. I thank the Cabinet Office for the continued funding for an important programme in the southern part of the Philippines, the Bangsamoro Parliament in the historically troubled part of Mindanao. This project supports peace there. It mentors legislators and encourages more female participation in civil society and politics, so it does lots of good things, and in a country of growing bilateral and regional strategic importance I very much hope that you will all be able to confirm that this project will last the course.
Perhaps, Minister, I could tease you out by saying that were any other south-east Asian country to suffer similar types of issues, I hope you would look carefully and supportively at the possibility of using CSSF funds to support and overcome that. Lastly, you would be very welcome as a visitor to Bangsamoro, as one or two others from the House of Lords have been. I think they found it very worthwhile.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Thank you very much for that. I talked to Ben about the Philippines project. It is an important one and obviously one that seems to be producing the goods. The Pacific tilt is part of the strategy in the Integrated Review and Refresh for lots of reasons, and that is a good example. Even though all the ASEAN countries that you and I used to work on together are not mentioned, some of the benefits of the fund comes through to them through the work that we do on disinformation, cyber and so on. I did something on cyber in Singapore in the autumn. We are very keen to join up some of these dots, because we think this can make quite a difference to conflict and security and teaching people how to head off conflicts.
Ben Merrick: Thank you very much, Mr Graham, for highlighting that. It was one of our important case studies in the annual report and it continues to be. This comes back to the Chair’s earlier questions about conflict and stability. This is very much the sort of work that is helpful to continue, because it is that longer-term demonstration. The Westminster Foundation for Democracy has done a lot of very good work, including in the Balkans, for example. The Minister was in Bosnia-Herzegovina recently to see some of those sorts of things. South-east Asia in particular is, as you say, a key area for us, so it is good to see the work we have been able to do with your organisation.
Richard Graham: The work the WFD does in the Balkans is another good example of CSSF funding in an area that could go horribly wrong still. I am very conscious of the fact that, with a joined-up effort between the Cabinet Office, the FCDO and the MoD, and even our Prime Minister’s trade envoy, who participated in a WFD event over the weekend there, we can all together, I hope, try to hold that rather troubled country and region together. I am grateful for your support there as well.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: My conclusion from going to Sarajevo—there is a very good new ambassador there now, Julian Reilly—is that this work needs to be joined up. I saw the judges and visited young people. I went to see the army, which has had training under CSSF, which was absolutely brilliant. They were spending our money on quarters for the women soldiers where the women would be separated from the men so that the sorts of problems they had been having would be reduced. We did a seminar on cyber. All these different aspects, plus engaging civil society in Sarajevo, which is such a difficult place, were coming through in individual programmes, and for quite small sums of money in some cases, but making quite an important difference, and very helpful in soft power. I am not sure that soft power is one of my objectives, but it is certainly one of my wider objectives.
Ben Merrick: It was certainly a very useful visit. As you say, the region has a very important part in what the UK has done in recent years on the implications for European stability. Clearly, as you say, the political situation is very challenging, so it was very good to see the range of sorts of things even in just the day that the Minister and I were there together. Whether it is state issues, serious and organised crime or the defence performance that we are supporting, this is a very good area where we can bring the Government as a whole together to support them.
Q11 Lord Robathan: I should declare, since it has already been mentioned, a sort of interest in that I was chair of the HALO Trust for some years 15 or more years ago, and I repeat what Mr Ellwood said, which is that it does excellent work. I should also say that I was on the DfID Committee for six years before all the reorganisation, and briefly Shadow Minister. I saw some excellent work being done by hard-working, well-motivated people on the ground, spending taxpayers’ money.
I also learned about fungibility. For those who do not know about fungibility, it is when you give the Government £1 million and they spend it on education, and then they take a £1 million out of their education budget and spend on Mercedes motor cars or aircraft or whatever it may be. We saw that. We also saw some pretty corrupt spending that was wasteful of taxpayers’ money and not to the benefit of the people who we were meant to be helping.
I mention that, because my question goes to this. In the early days of the coalition Government, the then Secretary of State, Andrew Mitchell, set up a commission or something to evaluate and monitor the way international aid was spent. I do not know what has happened in the reorganisation. Could somebody tell me how the taxpayers’ money that is spent by your organisation is evaluated? Are the results evaluated? How is taxpayers’ money monitored, and does it still exist?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I hope this answers your question. Monitoring, evaluation and learning—we call it MEL, and we have added data analytics to that—are a very important part of the programme. Each year, each programme is reviewed, and there is also a review at the end of each programme. I think we learned from criticism passed in this committee that maybe we were not looking sufficiently at the impact. If you work in overseas development, the impact report each year is one of the most important things, because you are looking to see whether you have succeeded in your objectives, that the money has not gone wrong and that the safeguarding and so on has been okay. We have that part of the programme. It costs some money, but it gives robust evidence that you can learn from.
Fraud, corruption and cyber is a wider point, and it is very much part of our international work in the Cabinet Office, to be honest, to try to root that out. When public money is being spent, it will be a lot less effective if you lose 5% or 10% to fraud and corruption. Work on fraud is one of my other hats and they fit together quite well. Ben, do you know about Andrew Mitchell’s commission?
Ben Merrick: I can add a few points, if that would be helpful. I am sure you will be familiar with the Independent Commission for Aid Impact, which is external to government.
Lord Robathan: That was the one.
Ben Merrick: Exactly. We work closely with ICAI, which is an extremely important organisation, getting external advice on scrutiny of what we do, something that I am very keen to encourage and that is why I very much welcome advice and so on from the committee today. That is the external aspect of how we do things.
Also, as the Minister said, there is a lot of internal monitoring, evaluation and learning. Even then, we have people from other parts of government who do annual reviews. We have a lot of deployable civilian experts to draw on who can look fairly objectively, even though they are in a different part of government, at the sorts of work that is being achieved, where there are successes and where there are things we need to do differently. As you say, that is very important.
Finally, I come back to a point that I raised earlier on risk. Although we certainly take risks in how we deliver things, fiduciary risk is definitely something that we have a low appetite for, so ensuring that we do not the diversion you mention is a key aspect. It is also very much part of our commercial framework to ensure that our deliverers have scrutiny of that side of things as a key part of how they operate.
Q12 Alicia Kearns: In 2022-23, you have allocated £13.6 million for what you are calling international state threats. It is not a lot of money, but can you talk me through what that looks like, what effect you are trying to achieve overall—based on the conversation we have just had about effect and not outtakes or outputs—and where that will be geographically focused?
Ben Merrick: Thank you very much for the question. On overall allocation, some is specifically for the state threat portfolio, as you say, and some is part of the geographical portfolio, which may well be able to do programmes that can have a benefit in relation to state threats. We are seeking to do even more on that front to draw them together. The Government have done a lot of work on countering state threats objectives, and the strategy is due to be launched soon. Certainly there are key issues such as understanding the nature of the challenge and thinking about the ways in which the UK can engage and use its specific advantages. That is an important element. I am afraid I do not have details of the specific breakdown to hand, but I would be happy to look at that and come back to you with more detail, if that would be helpful.
Alicia Kearns: Can you give a rough steer on the thematics first as geography?
Ben Merrick: On state threats or just on how we operate in general?
Alicia Kearns: On the international state threats pot of £13.6 million.
Ben Merrick: I do not have that particular figure to hand, I am afraid. We certainly look at the ways in which states operate, which is increasingly hybrid. Quite a few will operate, as the Minister said, through disinformation and cyber issues, even using non-state people such as terrorists or serious organised criminals. We seek to link to the other portfolios. All this will be delivered ultimately in particular geographies and regions, of course. I do not have a specific answer for you now, but I am happy to come back to you with more detail on that.
Alicia Kearns: It surprises me that you have created this specific pot, because lots of counter hostile state work should already be being done in individual geographies. I worry that it sounds at this point that you cannot tell me why it has been created. Is it to create regional programmes—for example, post-Afghanistan, working across central Asia? Is it for research to understand the threat that you touched on?
Naomi Penia: I was going to come in on the broader numbers perspective, but it is better that we write to you so that we are absolutely exact. Broadly speaking, the majority is going to state threats, but, as you said, there was already ongoing activity through the geographic portfolios.
On the overarching ambition of a central thematic portfolio versus a geographic portfolio, a geographic portfolio will be very targeted, making sure that we are adapting to a very specific context, whereas the thematic programme is trying to achieve overarching objectives that work across many geographies but also to learn lessons that can feed into the geographic portfolios.
Alicia Kearns: Every CSSF programme should feed into learnings across any geography, so is it to create regional programmes on countering state threats?
Ben Merrick: Yes. A lot of it will be about understanding the nature of the challenge globally represented by state threats, but also—
Alicia Kearns: Is that not what JTAC does, and the CTD?
Ben Merrick: Yes. It would draw on some of those things, but some of this is experimenting with different approaches to how we can respond to the nature of those threats. As you say, ultimately we would then look to have those sorts of things either in particular geographies or baselined in particular departments.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: But you are right. This is one reason why we are trying to integrate work a bit more closely. I sit on some of these other committees with other hats on, and it is clear that there is work being done in various security set-ups—the democracy taskforce;[2] a lot of the work that Tom Tugendhat, the Security Minister, is doing—and it is important that that is joined up across the piece and is effective. You are right that some of it needs to be geographic. As Ben has said, there will be particular areas where you can have a programme, experiment and learn whether it is working, but there is a lot of work going on here and we need to make sure that it is joined up.
Alicia Kearns: I am less concerned about the way in which you choose to. I am just concerned that there is a deep lack of clarity about why this pot has been created. As you say, you will write to us on it. I had assumed that it was focused on China, because in the CSSF spend there has been a significant uplift—£32 million—on Ukraine, but otherwise, there is almost zero spend. We have underspent significantly on south Asia. That is because of Afghanistan. Fine. On Asia-Pacific, we are spending only £9.3 million. Is this essentially to do with China? Is that why it has been created?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I think it is China, Russia and Iran, primarily. We can give you more briefing by letter or informally, if that is helpful.
Alicia Kearns: Going further on China, we are supposedly undertaking a tilt to the Indo-Pacific, but there has been barely any increase. Our increase in Asia-Pacific spend is £9.1 million to £9.3 million, and, as I say, south Asia has declined significantly. How does the CSSF budget in any way marry with the overall focus of the Integrated Review and the Refresh, which was a tilt to the Indo-Pacific, apart from this £13 million that we cannot even say is definite?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: The answer has to be that it is work in progress. I have made clear that that is important. We have obviously had to concentrate a lot on Ukraine and Russia, which I am sure was important. It was speedy and agile, but clearly, as you say, there are threats from these other countries. That is why we have highlighted this work on state threats, and I am sure its priority will increase as we go forward.
Alicia Kearns: I am concerned that we are this far into the Indo-Pacific tilt without any substantial CSSF matching. £13.6 million is not enough. I used to run CSSF programmes. I know how this process works. I have sat bidding. I have seen that the write around process is a nightmare; it is slow and lethargic, and it does not work as fast as it should. The £13.6 million could make its way to fund only two projects.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Thank you for your comments. Of course, we have now set up the integrated fund, which will allow us to focus on the prime threats to our country. Once we have reached our conclusions, I look forward to coming to talk to the committee.
Alicia Kearns: I will come back to the integrated fund, but there is clearly an absence of thinking here on the CSSF and the Indo-Pacific tilt.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I know. Your point is noted.
Ben Merrick: You are absolutely right about focusing on the region of the Indo-Pacific. The work on state threats also covers other geographies under the influence of China or Russia, such as in Africa and South America. We looked at this globally. As the Minister said, we are happy to come to you with more on that.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I think this shows the tensions with a certain pot. You have to try to move forward, but we note the importance. I already referenced the important tilt to the Indo-Pacific.
Q13 Mr Tobias Ellwood: Leading on from those important questions from Alicia, can you share with the committee the type of work? You mentioned China, Russia and Iran. They are the obvious ones where there are clear threats from states as opposed to non-state actors. Can you give examples of what this £13 million is spent on?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Are we able to do that in the public domain?
Ben Merrick: Some of these things are inevitably somewhat sensitive, but we would be happy to share some of them with the committee.
Mr Tobias Ellwood: In a non-classified way, this is taxpayers’ money. It is £13 million. Is it going to agencies? Is that why you cannot talk about it?
Ben Merrick: It is not so much that. It is just that, in particular aspects of it, we need to avoid doing anything that would create any other sensitivities. I say that partly because I do not have the detail to hand of the specifics of what it is going on, unfortunately. You are absolutely right. We are very conscious of the public money aspect to it. I am happy to come back with more detail, as we mentioned to Ms Kearns just now.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: The two or three things referenced in our annual report, which is public, include counter-disinformation and media development programmes. That is working with journalists, because clearly that is a very important thing to do. It includes cyber, which I have referenced as being an area where we have—
Mr Tobias Ellwood: Forgive me, but cyber has its own budget?
Ben Merrick: I think it is separate.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: For some of the cyber we have local programmes in the CSSF.
Ben Merrick: Yes. I apologise. I do not have the details to hand, but I am happy to provide further information on that breakdown.
Mr Tobias Ellwood: Surely this steers what you do here. If you are able to counter a state threat and you are successful, it has an impact on how much money you spend in other areas. It would be helpful for the committee to understand what is happening here.
Q14 Lord Ashton of Hyde: Can we move on to the money that you say rapidly pivoted to Ukraine when you committed £32 million, which Ms Kearns already talked about? How much of that funding was actually dispersed? Can you give examples of where it was spent?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: On Ukraine, we were lucky because we were already there with the Orbital training programme, I think it is called, for the Ukraine military. That was fortunate, so work could continue. Funnily enough, there was also work on the railways to help with the disastrous effect of early action. We have done work on law enforcement, on disinformation, and on a partnership fund, which was set up with the US, Sweden, Norway and other countries to help, and we have worked with civil society in lots of different ways. There is a long list of different things. The UK led the Ukraine effort and got ahead, so the fund helped in lots of different ways.
Lord Ashton of Hyde: What did it all add up to?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: The total is about £32 million.
Ben Merrick: Is your question about the figure or the impact?
Lord Ashton of Hyde: Both.
Ben Merrick: I should have it to hand. I do not have the exact number for the money that went in. On the impact, it enabled our immediate support to the Ukrainian armed forces and others to give the swift help that they needed—equipment, medical kits and so on. I would particularly bring out the cybersecurity support that we were able to set up very quickly to help the Ukrainian Government to deal with Russian cyberattacks. That was instrumental to ensuring that they were able to withstand what was happening. There are a number of different areas where we have been able to support the Ukrainian Government and civil society. Certainly at an early stage we enabled some of the organisations that we had already been working with to use some of their funding for humanitarian purposes in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. We have been able to be flexible in a number of different areas so that people in Ukraine could make the most of what they had.
Q15 Lord Ashton of Hyde: That is helpful. Perhaps you could let us know how much of the commitment you have actually managed to disperse.
One of the benefits of this is that you were able to rapidly pivot to that, as you said. The flexibility of the fund is one of the benefits. Given that you have allocated most of the fund, other areas have to be deprioritised quickly. What have you deprioritised to accommodate this spending?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I think we have already promised to write to you about that.
Lord Ashton of Hyde: It is slightly different. I think you have promised to write to us about the fact that the overall funding had been reduced, and therefore various programmes had to be reduced. This is slightly different, as far as I understand it. At the last minute, in response to an unexpected event, you have allocated an extra £32 million to that. Given that you were at 99% in funding, you would have had to deprioritise something else.
Ben Merrick: As you will be aware, as well as the discretionary portfolios that we deal with, we also cover the UK’s non-discretionary peacekeeping expenditure so that we can balance and achieve proper financial management through the year. We look at underspend in UK-UA and across the different portfolios. If there are underspends on the peacekeeping side, we may look at whether we can repurpose that. I think we mentioned at the session last year that although the situation in Afghanistan was very unfortunate, as a result some of the funding that had been set aside for that was no longer needed, so we were able to repurpose it quickly to support the work in Ukraine, as the Minister said.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We promise to write on various aspects of the programme where we do not have the information to hand and perhaps set out the key areas that were very helpful in Ukraine that included things on women relating to sexual violence and so on. There are different aspects of things that this fund has been useful for and which has therefore been carried forward in the Integrated Review.
Lord Ashton of Hyde: I am not suggesting in any way that that money was not well spent or that we should not have helped Ukraine. It is just about the mechanism that allows you to do that.
Ben Merrick: On that point, you will be aware of the rapid response mechanism that we have. Throughout the year we keep a close eye on the nature of potential upcoming challenges and whether there are flexibilities in the fund if we need to adapt very quickly. That is ongoing work for the unit.
Q16 Lord Robathan: Can I leap from eastern Europe to sub-Saharan Africa, where overseas development aid spending by your organisation declined by 44%. In 2019-20, we were at £61.3 million, and in 2021-22 we went to £34.4 million. What sorts of programmes were you forced to stop or suspend as a result of this reduction? What assessment have you made of the impact that might have? That is big and broad enough, I think.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Do you want to help the committee, Naomi?
Naomi Penia: Yes. We referred to it earlier. It was Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia and some work in Nigeria on gender.
Ben Merrick: To build on that, we mentioned earlier that some of this is about CSSF spending and some is about broader government spending. For example, some work on peacebuilding in Sudan could be covered by the FCDO in its work.
Lord Robathan: I went to Sudan 15 years or more ago and the ambassador was called Makepeace—I do not know if you came across him—which amused the Sudanese enormously. It did not quite work.
I will get back to my evaluation. I know somebody else will tease out other questions about Sudan, but in our programmes in Sudan, which you closed earlier, as you just said, who evaluated whether the programmes had prevented conflict, increased stability, or indeed increased security? When I went some 15 years ago, there were exactly the same problems on the ground, although the players, the warlords, were different.
Ben Merrick: I confess that I do not know the answer to your question. I am happy to come back to you and we can investigate the evaluation process that took place with Foreign Office and other colleagues.
Q17 Sarah Champion: The International Development Committee had a moving session last week on Sudan with some of the big organisations there, like the World Food Programme. I was quite startled to hear that Saferworld’s funding to work with civil society through the CSSF fund was removed two years ago. I was concerned that the voice of civil society that we as a country had rightly been supporting with this fund was largely ignored and its communication channels had been weakened by all the cuts. Have you done any analysis on the removal of the funding to Sudan and whether that was a contributory factor in the UN and the international community being caught off guard?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I do not think we have done any recent reappraisal. We would have done a review under the process that I described to you at the time. In light of what has happened in Sudan, it would be good to look back at that as part of our work this year, so thank you for raising it. We had a long and large evacuation out of Sudan, which you probably discussed as well, but I agree with you that looking at the underlying problems, the state threats and whether we correctly forecast would be a good exercise.
Sarah Champion: When that exercise has been done, would it be possible for this committee to see the findings? We are interested to see whether there is a correlation, which a lot of the big agencies were making.
Ben Merrick: Thank you for that. We are aware of the session you had last week, which was fundamental. I have been discussing this with Foreign Office colleagues and, as I mentioned earlier, when the CSSF programme closed a few years ago, a fair amount of the peacebuilding work continued. As you say, the importance of engaging with civil society is recognised. I do not know all the details, but the embassy is very aware that that needed to continue. We have been looking at this and will engage with the Foreign Office and come back to you with more detail on it, but I want to reassure you that the Foreign Office has been continuing with peacebuilding work. Clearly, many people were caught by surprise with what happened, the willingness of the two forces to attack the capital, the challenges of political engagement and so on. We need to continue looking at that.
Q18 Sarah Champion: I notice from the figures that we got late on Friday that Egypt has been cut by two-thirds. Has any analysis been done on the impact of the conflict in Sudan as it rolls out into other countries? Egypt, of course, has a lot of Sudanese refugees.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Perhaps we can take that point away as well. The Sudanese thing was quite sudden and recent, but we want to reassure you that we were not asleep to it. We were very aware of the importance of it. The Egypt question is a good one.
Ben Merrick: The team have been focusing on the ceasefire and the diplomatic way forward, as you can imagine, but we have already been in touch with them to say that we need to consider the broader and longer-term implications. As you say, the regional aspect will also be important.
Q19 Viscount Stansgate: Good afternoon, Minister. I want to probe a bit more about Sudan, which incidentally is not a separate title on the list of budgetary cuts. The Sudan transitional programme notes that the “achievement of outcomes was affected by the decision to close the programme one year early”. The programme itself had spent nearly £2.595 million. We know from recent developments that an estimated 18.3 million people are in need and 936,000 people have been displaced in the recent past. Do you now consider that it was a mistake to close the Sudan programme a year early?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I think we have agreed to look back at the decisions taken and to take a view on that. I explained at the beginning how difficult running this fund is, because there is a lot of demand, and you have to look ahead and think about where there will be risks. Fewer commentators were worried about Sudan than some of the other areas that we were able to help with the fund.
Viscount Stansgate: That is fair enough. You will review it in the light of what we have all seen. By the way, I notice that the Archbishop of Canterbury has a Question about this on Wednesday so you might want to bear that in mind. He was granted a Question today.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I would not want to say that a lot of work was not being done. Minister Mitchell has been very much engaged on the Sudan issue. Obviously, I am not the Foreign Office Minister. I am the Minister trying to convene and make sure that we are prioritising the right projects for expenditure.
Viscount Stansgate: In the light of what we have seen, how do you expect the CSSF programme to be pivoted to adapt to the situation that we now find and perhaps to restart funding that has been cut?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: The answer, as I have already said, is that we are now looking at the programme ahead. As part of that review, you look at the threats that have become apparent in the preceding period, consult the experts and try to work out what programmes you can do. I know this is not entirely popular, but you also look at what else is being done in different parts of government and the FCDO, for example, and in the other bits of the aid budget. I can assure you that Sudan is very much in our minds, and it has been a challenge to which the FCDO, the MoD and others have risen very well.
Ben Merrick: I mentioned the obvious focus in the short and medium term on the ceasefire and conditions on the ground, but the CSSF team is thinking through the sorts of things that might be possible or might be particularly value-adding, and working with international community colleagues, because we need to do this in conjunction with others on the things that will be effective. We will also engage with NGO colleagues for their thoughts on what might be most effective. I do not yet have the answer to that, but it is very active in looking at the possibilities.
Viscount Stansgate: Tell me more precisely what you mean by value-added.
Ben Merrick: There are some areas where taking the sort of integrated high-risk approach that we have taken can have particular benefits in the sorts of things we are trying to achieve. There may be others where the political or the security situation might not enable us to operate. My point is that where we can achieve particular impacts with the CSSF, it is definitely worth us looking at that. If we think that, for whatever reason—political, military or otherwise—it is not going to work, that will be important as well.
Viscount Stansgate: That is the type of assessment and reassessment that you will be making now.
Ben Merrick: Yes, and going forward, in relation to the sorts of options there might be, what might be effective, or where we may need to look to others to take things forward.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: The point made by the previous speaker was important: that we need to engage in civil society in some of these difficult and challenging areas. It is an advantage of this fund that we can do that.
Q20 Mr Tobias Ellwood: Thank you. Sorry to stress this, but I am concerned that there is no Sudan strategy. You have come here and been prompted by us and have agreed to do a reappraisal, and it is great that we have managed to succeed and call that out, but that should have been done automatically when, as has been hinted, you pulled funds from Sudan. You do not need to be an Africa specialist to realise that when al-Bashir, the dictator, departed in 2019 and the two generals, Hemedti and al-Burhan, were developing strengths, that this was potentially going to go bad. Now that it has done so, separate to the actual evacuation there needs to be a much greater strategy by the international community to provide the stabilisation. Britain could do that. We are great at leading on these things if we dare to step forward.
I simply ask, please, can you provide details to the committee of what we will do? I fear that Sudan will become another Afghanistan, another Somalia, another Libya, another Yemen, if we do not step forward and do something now. As I stress, I am concerned that we did not recognise what was going to happen and now do not have a plan for Britain to step forward and use its mighty soft power, our convening power, to lean into something that otherwise will spread to other parts of east Africa.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Yes, and we need to build up with allies so it is not just us. I take your point, but the convening power seems to me to be one of our strengths in this whole portfolio. I take that point. As I said, it is not that it is not on our agenda. Of course it is on our agenda, but it is early days to get decisions.
Ben Merrick: It is useful to have the committee’s focus on this. We have particularly been working with the FCDO, which is leading on the diplomatic side of things, but on the question of thinking through what might be possible after that, we do not have firm options yet, but we are already pushing ahead with it.
Q21 Alicia Kearns: The CSSF’s spend for Middle East and north Africa has plummeted from £209 million in 2017-18 to only £90 million. What impact has this had on our ability to have effect and to show meaningful interest in the Middle East and north Africa?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: You raised your concern about north Africa with my predecessor last year, I think. Can we add to what has happened in that period, Ben?
Ben Merrick: The overall reductions in the size of the fund are issues that you are well aware of and we are seeking how best to manage that over time. Inevitably, there are things that we have had to draw down from and some programmes that we have not been able to continue with, as we discussed, but we are seeking to push ahead with areas that will be particularly value-adding, to come back to the phrase I used earlier on. But, ultimately we have resource constraints, so we have to manage with those as best we can.
Alicia Kearns: I understand the operational need and the process, but what impact has it had? Have you felt that we have less diplomatic access in the region? Has there been an increase in migration from north Africa from us dealing with it? Has gender parity decreased? What are the meaningful impacts that we have seen?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Unless you know the answer, we should agree to consult our colleagues in FCDO on that matter and come back to you.
Q22 Alicia Kearns: I ask, because this goes back to analysis and evaluation. If we are making cuts, we have to evaluate not just the programmes that we run, but where we meaningfully decide to withdraw funding because of necessity. What impact does that have? We should be doing gap analysis and not just the impact of actual evaluation.
To run into some of the specifics briefly, do we think that we have a sufficient focus on the Middle East peace process? We have essentially halved the funding there and yet we are the closest we have been to war in a very long time with a true outbreak of mass atrocities.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We are doing a lot of work on that.
Ben Merrick: Yes, we are focusing on it. As you say, it is a challenging and difficult situation to operate in at the moment. We are seeking to engage with all the parties. I think Lord Ahmad was there a few months ago in Palestine, for example. We are seeking to take that forward within the overall resource constraints that we have. Inevitably, there is a series of challenges that we face in a number of these areas.
Alicia Kearns: Do we think that halving it has impacted on things having got worse? Was that the right decision?
Ben Merrick: I do not know the details on that particular aspect, but again, as the Minister says, I can come back on the implications of it.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We have some material here on some of the things we are still doing. As you say, we have halved the thing, but if you halve you obviously try to keep the things that are most important and most effective, so that can be helpful. When we write to you about north Africa, I will be interested to see what is happening on Israel and Palestine. I would not want to say that they are not important areas, because they really are.
Q23 Alicia Kearns: The Afghanistan underspend was—forgive me, I do not have it in front of me—minus 105% of the spend that we expected. Did that all directly go across to eastern Europe, or did we think about relocating to new places so that we could continue to manage threats? For example, we do not have a post in Syria but we make sure that significant funding is run out of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. It looks from this that we essentially cut and run—to go to Tobias’s point earlier—rather than investing. In central Asia, where I have just come from, we invested in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, places where we will see Islamic extremism being stoked but also where we see drug flows, particularly Tajikistan going across the border. Am I right that we have just cut and put it across to eastern Europe and then forgotten the way Afghanistan continues to impact on us?
Ben Merrick: I would not say that we have cut and run. We were conscious of the priority in Ukraine at the time and the operation imperative, but, yes, we are seeking to see what is achievable in Afghanistan and in the region. As I said at the beginning, it is helpful having your steer from your visit to central Asia recently, so I am happy to take that away and see what more might be possible.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I agree. Especially if you are talking about drugs and things, this links in with taking a more national plus international approach to these things. We had a difficult time. We had the ODA cuts, which I will not complain about because that was a broad thing, we had the demands from Ukraine, we had Covid-19. Remember, we had to recycle some of the money to help in places like the Overseas Territories. These things are not entirely easy, but your point is well made.
Alicia Kearns: They are not entirely easy, but the point I will make is that the threat from Afghanistan increased as a result of the withdrawal, and counterterrorism remains one of our foremost concerns for national security. Perhaps “cut and run” is unfair. Perhaps it is frozen in fear, frozen by not knowing what to do. It looks to me like we have gone, “Do you know what, Afghanistan’s too difficult, so rather than invest around with our neighbours and work through them and do CSSF programming there, we’ll just have an empty box”. It would be helpful to understand what we are doing with CSSF and Afghanistan.
I do not see anything in the Middle East list that suggests that we are doing anything about the Daesh camps in northern Syria and northern Iraq, which to me are probably the greatest threat to our security long term; I am thinking of the Daesh cubs and people being held. Am I wrong? Is some CSSF work being done, or is this in a different box?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Do you know, Naomi?
Naomi Penia: I do not.
Ben Merrick: I thought we were, but I will check on that particular point and come back. On your previous question about Afghanistan, I was in Pakistan a few months ago, and certainly work on regional security is being undertaken. Some of the potential dialogues that are being looked at are seeking to see whether there are ways to address some of the challenges in the region. But I absolutely I take your point about thinking more broadly on some of the things that might be possible for Afghanistan.
Q24 Alicia Kearns: Okay. Finally, on Iraq and Syria camps, please do write to us about what you are doing.
What have we identified overall as our core capabilities or strengths when it comes to the CSSF? Going back at least eight years, it used to be border security, security investment, accountabilities, justice and accountability, Diplo capacity building or media freedoms. Those are the big buckets where we said, “You know what, this is what we do really well through CSSF as well as CT”. What is it now? If you were asked to give a big picture to the Government about why they should set up a CSSF fund, what would you say is UK plc that comes out through it?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: The nature of the fund is very important. It is agile, even though you cannot do things immediately. It is integrated. It is high-risk, as we said at the beginning, and you can do some work in one area which can help you in another. You might well be able to do some work in the gaps that you have identified, Ms Kearns, as a result of the existing programme. We have set out the headings. Conflict and security remain extremely important. We have discussed state threats. There are transnational threats now, which have increased, so there is more demand for the sort of things that we are doing. We have not discussed it, but the effect of peacekeeping on women issues and gender issues is also important to us.
Ben Merrick: As the Minister said, the four key principles of the fund are the unique selling point: our ability to work with a range of elements in a country; the ability to combine ODA and non-ODA funding; to look across the different spans, whether it is government or civil society, and so on. You talked about some of our key capabilities. There are a number of strands that we can do, whether it is things with the armed forces of a country, the rule of law, the security sector, organisations, or the ability of women’s organisations to support. There are a lot of different technical aspects, particularly the way we are able to use the Crown Prosecution Service, for example, to support prosecutions in a country, or judges or people from HMRC or the National Crime Agency to support the way these illicit issues are tackled, and so on. Being able to draw on expert support from a lot of different areas of UK Government has been a particular—
Alicia Kearns: It sounds like you are saying security, accountability and women. Those are our three buckets where we excel.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Of the list that you mentioned, media is very important. We have lots of programmes that are looking at that, and policing. We are looking now at the themes for the integrated fund. That is a useful conversation, if I am allowed to say that, because we have been debating what you prioritise and what you do not prioritise. What is clear to me is that this fund, with not very much money in public expenditure terms, has achieved quite a lot by being flexible and innovative. Innovation is a principle that I would add to your list.
Alicia Kearns: I agree. The CSSF is fundamental. It is vital. That is why we need to know where it works and where it does not. We should be able to say, “When we do CSSF programmes in these topics, damn right we do good work”. If we do not know which ones we do well in, we will end up investing in helping to save a fish, as we did back in 2015, which should never have come out of CSSF funding. We need to make sure that we are really focused on what we do. The Canadians can do something else, the Americans will do something else. Nobody does accountability like us. So let us make sure we know what is ours, because we can let partners pick up other areas where we are not as good.
Ben Merrick: I completely agree. I was going to pick up, for example, the work the Minister saw in Bosnia on cybersecurity and supporting technical expertise or work on tackling disinformation. As you say, we work with partners sometimes so that they can pick up some of these things. The work on disinformation is very much about working with a coalition across Europe and elsewhere. But, yes, if there are things that others can cover better or in a different way than we can, we look to achieve that.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We have the chapeau, I think, of the Integrated Review Refresh, which helps us in general direction. Not everybody will support every aspect of that, but it is important to have a sense of ambition and where you are going on these things, and, as you said earlier, there are some places where you need to have a shift. We need to make sure that that shift takes place and that the programmes that we shift into are successful. That is what we are determined to do.
Q25 Lord Butler of Brockwell: I am not clear that this is a fund in the normal sense of the word. What I understand by fund is that there is a sum of money allocated by the Treasury that you then divide to the various programmes we have been talking about. Let me test it by asking this. We are now in the financial year 2023-24. The financial year has begun. What is the size of the fund in this year?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Can we share that figure?
Ben Merrick: Yes, I think we can.
Lord Butler of Brockwell: You are spending it, so I hope we can.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We are, I know.
Ben Merrick: There is no problem with that.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: The numbers we have relate to the previous year, because that is what we were giving evidence on.
Naomi Penia: Just under £900 million, right?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Yes, it is in the £800 millions. Just under £900 million, yes.
Lord Butler of Brockwell: You may not be able to tell us now what it is, but there is a set number.
Ben Merrick: Yes, it is part of the spending review Treasury settlement to the fund.
Lord Butler of Brockwell: But you cannot tell us what it is.
Ben Merrick: I do not have the exact number, unfortunately, but we should have it in the planning meeting.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: We will send you that number, but that is the order and, remember, we have added in these new areas. We are approaching £1 billion if you add all those things together.
Ben Merrick: There is an overarching settlement for the fund and it is allocated across the different portfolios that we mentioned. I also mentioned the non-discretionary peacekeeping work, for example. We need to balance through the year depending on what some of the requirements of that may be.
Q26 Sarah Champion: Yemen was cut by 50%, and as a consequence the women peacekeeping group was cut. You have spoken about the importance of women peacekeeping. I am glad you recognise the importance of the CSSF fund. It is strategically important on so many different levels. Are you making the argument to the Treasury, FCDO, Defence and so on to keep and increase this fund, and is it being heard to?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Obviously, I am the Minister for the fund, and I was pleased that it has been retained and not further cut back as part of the spending review. In time, if we do a good job, we hope that this fund can expand.
Sarah Champion: I would argue that historically you have been doing an amazing job. Today, we are highlighting some of the consequences of removing that funding. Are you making that argument to government?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: At the moment, the fund for the year has been given. We have had an allocation for the current year, but we have the opportunity because we will be looking at the new integrated fund and setting out what that should embrace. That is our opportunity to set out these areas of strength, which many of you have helpfully highlighted today.
Ben Merrick: The Minister and we in the unit make the point across government, particularly to the Treasury, of the value of the fund, particularly as we look towards the next spending review, whenever exactly that occurs; hence the point about monitoring and evaluation to show the sorts of impacts that are possible. I mentioned domestic national security. We will look to make an ambitious bid on that side as well. So, yes, you are right about the importance of that.
Q27 Baroness Fall: Listening to this discussion, it seems to me that the fund was set up at a time when the Government were trying to bring holistic centralised thinking to security. We set up the National Security Council for the first time, the idea being that there is a crisis contingency budget and pot at the centre not run elsewhere. Now that DfID is merged with the FCO, to what extent do the fund’s actual objectives need a rethink? Alicia Kearns made this point well earlier. It seems to me that we have the crisis bit of this pot, which rightly runs after issues like Ukraine, but then it leaves behind Afghanistan and Sudan, which should not be left behind.
Is there a case for rethinking this pot in a way that keeps its strengths, its agility and responsiveness to crisis, but makes sure it is more joined up in some of these longer-term programmes so that we are not dropping balls between this fund and what is now a joined-up effort by DfID and FCDO?
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I could not have put it better myself. You have the opportunity and the tension of trying to do the longer term and do enough in the programmes for that, but have some of the pot, including the peacekeeping pot, well enough resourced to be able to move with agility when you get a particular crisis. You summarised it very well.
Ben Merrick: On your point about the merger of the Foreign Office and DfID, clearly that new department is a large stakeholder in what we do. The key aspect, as the Minister brought out when we went to Bosnia and Herzegovina, was the cross-government nature of this—the way in which we worked with the Ministry of Defence, the Home Office, the National Crime Agency and other elements of the Government. Even if the budgets are smaller in some other areas, the work they do together is very important. This flows from overarching government strategy; hence the point of the Cabinet Office in bringing things together. It is worth bringing that point back as well.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: That is a very good point indeed. Of course, some of these other departments have quite big budgets of their own, so if we can engage them in projects on things like terrorism, crime or drugs, some of the things that people have mentioned, that can mean that the UK plc effort is enhanced, because their effort and their resources improve the programme, even though they do not necessarily appear in the budget that Lord Butler was rightly trying to identify. Thank you.
Q28 The Chair: I know we have asked you to write to us about a number of things or you volunteered to, which is very helpful. Could you include in that writing an indication of the total amount of programming for the CSSF that has been baselined now to other departments? That would be helpful.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Yes.
The Chair: Secondly, I bear in mind and I understand completely the observations you have made; you are clearly in all sorts of discussions about the Integrated Security Fund, which is fine. But one thing that you could perhaps tell us, if you will, is whether there are other existing government funds that will be merged into it other than the CSSF.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: The answer is that the integrated fund will also include the economic deterrence fund and one or two other smaller funds.
Ben Merrick: Yes, and the national cyber programme, which is a domestic programme. We are working closely with Treasury to see if there are other areas where there might also be potential, but it is particularly the national cyber programme at the moment.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: I think the thinking centrally was that we have what they thought was a good way of looking at things across departments and debating where the money should be spent. If it just sat in the individual departments, you would not get the extra point that I mentioned whereby, if the Home Office is involved as well as two or three other departments, with the Cabinet Office as a convenor, you can get better value for money. That is why they have tried to put these things together and give us this fund.[3] It is quite a responsibility, and I am afraid I do not have all the answers, but we are trying to work towards a good, revised strategy, which I hope you will support in the fullness of time.
The Chair: One other observation is that we understand that there is some anxiety among those who work with the fund about whether the new fund will have high transaction costs in the move from the CSSF to it, particularly if there had to be a duplication of rebidding on programmes that had already been under discussion for the forthcoming year. You could perhaps bear that in mind when you are having your discussions about the Integrated Security Fund, and we look forward to hearing from you about it at a future date.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe: Thank you for making that point. Fellow Peers will know that I am a great fan of reducing bureaucracy and making things simpler and better, so your challenge is a good point on which to end. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, and thank you all for coming to give evidence.
[1] Witness correction: if there are disputes on the write rounds, a meeting will take place
[2] Witness correction: this should have been described as the Defending Democracy taskforce
[3] Witness correction: the Cabinet Office was given leadership of the fund, rather than given the fund itself