Oral evidence: The Work of the Minister of State for Africa, HC 900
Tuesday 12 March 2019
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 12 March 2019.
Members present: Tom Tugendhat (Chair); Ian Austin; Chris Bryant; Ann Clwyd; Mike Gapes; Stephen Gethins; Ian Murray; Mr Bob Seely; and Royston Smith.
Questions 98-154
Witnesses
I: Harriett Baldwin, Minister of State for Africa; Julia Longbottom, Director, Consular Services, Foreign and Commonwealth Office; and Harriet Mathews, Director Africa, Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Witnesses: Harriett Baldwin MP, Julia Longbottom and Harriet Mathews.
Chair: Welcome to this morning’s session. Minister, thank you very much for coming before us. We are going to start straight into the Africa strategy. Bob, you wanted to begin.
Q98 Mr Seely: Thank you, Chairman. Good morning, Minister. The Foreign Secretary has, in correspondence, referred us to an Africa strategy and we recently received a copy of the FCO’s new approach to Africa. We want to clarify that that is the Africa strategy that the Foreign Secretary referred to, and that they are one and the same thing.
Harriett Baldwin: Yes. It is very exciting that the Prime Minister was able to go to Africa last year and launch, in her speech in Cape Town, our new long-term approach to Africa. I have sent the Committee summarised bullet points from that. As the Committee will appreciate, it is not one of those strategy documents that gets printed. It is a living, breathing part of the way that across Whitehall and eight different Departments we are implementing our new approach to Africa. I am sure that the Committee has been sent a copy of the key bullet points.
Q99 Chair: Could you send the whole document?
Harriett Baldwin: There is not a document per se. When I say the new approach to Africa, the key things that I would draw the Committee’s attention to are the bullet points that I summarised and the speech that the Prime Minister made in Africa.
Q100 Chair: So the 10 bullet points in the speech is the strategy.
Harriett Baldwin: And there were internal PowerPoint presentations and documents at the NSC and things like that, but there is not a published strategy document per se.
Q101 Mr Seely: So when you talk about an Africa strategy you are talking about a work in progress and you have got some headlines.
Harriett Baldwin: The new approach to Africa is the framework that we are working across Government with other Departments to underpin the approach that we are taking over the next decade.
Q102 Mr Seely: Yes, but you haven’t got a detailed Africa strategy. What you have got is 10 key messages currently and a speech.
Harriett Baldwin: And something that is working, living and breathing. It is not our intention to publish a crystal document. It is our intention to use that approach to inform Government policy.
Q103 Mr Seely: What do you mean by “a crystal document”? Is there going to be a detailed Africa strategy or will it just be some key messages and a headline? The reason I ask, by way of background, is that I remember in an earlier session Sir Simon McDonald saying that the Foreign Office was going to come up with a substantive statement on what Global Britain was in the first quarter of this year, and we have got two weeks until the end of March. We haven’t done very much thinking on Global Britain. I and others wrote the study about it and others have done some work on it, but the more detail we can have on a comprehensive strategy the better. That is why I am asking if there is a strategy or just some headlines.
Harriett Baldwin: I tried to answer that just now. This is a combined approach across Government. It is not a published document per se in the way that, for example, within the Department for International Development we will publish our global education strategy as a published document. It is a way for us all to work across Whitehall around a new approach to Africa, the key points of which were outlined in the Prime Minister’s speech. In terms of thematic shifts, it involves shifts towards prosperity, the Sahel, demography, security and tackling climate change.
Q104 Mr Seely: Are you confident that the 10 messages that at the moment is the Africa strategy are adequate for a Government approach to a varied continent of 54 countries? Which are the most important key messages?
Harriett Baldwin: The key shift in terms of what is different in the new approach to Africa from what we were doing previously is that there is more of an emphasis on prosperity. One of the big announcements that the Prime Minister made was that we will host a UK-Africa investment summit. Another example of a key shift is that we will do more to work with our bilateral friends to deal with the effects of climate change in Africa. Last week we had an event around renewable energy for African Energy Ministers.
We will do more to work with our friends in Africa around taking advantage of the demographic opportunities in Africa. For example, when the Prime Minister was in Africa she announced more funding for modern methods of family planning across Africa. These are some examples of the way that it all knits together under those five themes. In addition, of course, there is security and the Sahel.
Q105 Mr Seely: Two more questions on this. First, can you tell us a little more about the joint Africa unit? What is the lead agency and how many people will work in the unit? How does it fit into integrated Government?
Harriett Baldwin: The joint Africa unit has been established. Part of the shift, as the Committee will be aware, in our new approach to Africa is that we are opening new embassies and posts. We are recruiting the largest uplift in UK staff, working both from here and predominantly, of course, across Africa on those five shifts. That is a process of increasing the number of people, which obviously has to be led by a particular unit. The people will be across a range of Departments, whether that is working on the prosperity side of things within the Department for International Trade, or working on the shift in terms of the climate focus within the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and so on. The joint Africa unit is located in the Foreign Office.
Harriet Mathews: It has just moved.
Harriett Baldwin: It is a joint unit. On the administrative wiring, Harriet, you are probably better at talking through exactly the reporting structures.
Harriet Mathews: The joint unit incorporates people from across the different Departments and goes beyond, reaching out to eight. It is headed by a senior officer from the Foreign Office, and it has predominantly Foreign Office and DFID staff, but reaches out elsewhere. It was based in the Foreign Office; it now has a space in DFID, partly because of rewiring as we expanded a joint unit on the Sahel, which is another element of the Africa strategy, led by DFID.
Q106 Mr Seely: Finally, I just want to double-check this. I am not trying to be difficult, but you call it an Africa strategy. For a business, a large organisation or a military, “strategy” implies big overall goals, but lots of detail to support that. Strategy is a very substantive thing, and thus far the Government have produced effectively a bunch of bullet points. You are saying that that is a strategy.
Harriett Baldwin: I am saying that the new approach to Africa is a very forward-looking piece of work that was done across Whitehall, and involves the shifts across the five areas that I mentioned. Obviously, within those five areas, there will be specific working documents—for example, with the Sahel, where we have the joint Sahel unit. We have joined the G5 Sahel; we have deployed Chinooks to Gao in Mali. Within a shift in terms of the Sahel—
Q107 Mr Seely: You are giving me a list of things that you have done. That is not a strategy.
Harriett Baldwin: No, but you were asking, “What are the measurable things that we are doing differently?” I think that is effectively what you are saying.
Q108 Mr Seely: No, Minister, I was asking whether you understood the idea of strategy being a very substantive thing, and more than just a list of bullet points. That is the point I am making.
Harriett Baldwin: Well, I am saying it is a new approach to Africa, which involves five major shifts in what we are doing now, and those shifts are measurable things. Obviously, there is a lot of ongoing implementation work around what those specific actions are.
Q109 Mr Seely: And that is a strategy?
Harriett Baldwin: That is how I would define the new approach that we are taking: shifting and increasing our focus in terms of prosperity, tackling climate change, demographic shifts, increasing our presence in the Sahel, and increasing our security role. I sense that is not what you would call a strategy, so I look forward to reading the report.
Mr Seely: I use the traditional definition.
Chair: Ann, did you want to come in?
Q110 Ann Clwyd: Yes, thank you. I listened to part of the debate last night on FGM, which was very interesting. I brought in the original Act in 2003, so I am very interested in how it is working out, both in this country and in other countries. I think you pledged £50 million towards getting rid of FGM in Africa, and I wondered if you could talk a bit about that. Where is it going to be spent, over what time period will it be spent, and will it also be used to encourage civil society to work with people to stamp out FGM?
Harriett Baldwin: I appreciate the question. With my DFID hat on, I am obviously very proud that we made this very significant—the most significant, I think—contribution to funding African-led movements to tackle female genital mutilation. With your expertise, you will be aware that the way it works with these movements is that you have to go with the grain of what is happening in-country. That can happen in two major ways in-country. Obviously, there is a legislative path whereby what is permitted can be made clear in legislation, and we are working with various Governments who want to put this in legislation, but as the Committee will be aware, we have had legislation for many, many years in this country.
The practice doesn’t stop just because you legislate for that. I think that more crucial is the work with civil society, and it has to go with the grain of what civil society in particular countries is doing. Whether it’s in Sudan, in Somalia, in Senegal in west Africa or in other countries, we will go with the grain of what is happening on the ground with civil society and some of the African-led movements, because that is the way that what is essentially a cultural practice can shift.
Q111 Ann Clwyd: Over what period will this happen? Do you have a goal or a time by which you will have eradicated FGM in Africa?
Harriett Baldwin: There are some good statistics on the progress that has already been made, but with, first of all, the demographic shift in terms of the growing populations, this is an enormous challenge. In some countries, cultural change is happening faster than it is in others. This is a very difficult thing to measure in practice, but I can certainly share with the Committee the metrics that we have had so far for the number of community groups and African-led movements that we have worked with and that have managed to reach out with some of the messaging, training and engagement—for example, with midwives—which is leading to a shift and change on the ground. But it is a very big challenge, and I think it would be very difficult to pin a date on when we think that the African-led movements will succeed in eradicating the practice.
Q112 Ann Clwyd: Could I briefly ask about repatriation costs? The FCO recently agreed not to require victims of forced marriage to take out a loan to cover the costs of repatriation. What about other abuses carried out abroad, such as FGM? Would that be included?
Harriett Baldwin: The Times did a really good investigation that came out in January. I take full responsibility for not having even asked the question whether we were charging victims of what are now crimes in the UK—I should say that there is a civil process that you could attach the charges to in the UK. It never even occurred to me to ask the question whether we were effectively claiming back money for repatriation from the victims.
The Committee will be aware that we acted very swiftly when that was brought to light by the Times investigation, and we have been able to ensure that, going forward, anyone over the age of 18—obviously, under-18s would never have been affected—would not have that in the case of forced marriage, but we took steps in terms of working with the Home Office on FGM as well. We also retrospectively were able to get rid of—cancel—those charges.
Julia, do you want to update the Committee a bit more on the detail? I thought it was a very good example of The Times bringing to Ministers’ attention something where we had literally not even thought to ask whether it was happening, and it was.
Q113 Chair: The decision had been made to charge women about a year earlier. Do you remember when the FCO decided not to charge under-18s? I believe I am right in saying—correct me if I’m wrong, Ms Longbottom—that at the same time the civil service advised Ministers that a range of things could be charged for. What was the outcome of that?
Harriett Baldwin: I will bring in Julia in a minute, but my understanding is that there had been a review in 2013.
Q114 Chair: Forgive me; there was a review in 2018, when minors were removed from charging. What other recommendations went forward at that time?
Julia Longbottom: The change in 2018 was that we raised the age of minors from 16 to 18; we had never charged under-16s.
Q115 Chair: No, I know what the change was; I’m asking what the recommendation was in other areas.
Julia Longbottom: It was that, in general, there are other ways to help victims to pay those costs, including using the forced marriage protection order, where the perpetrator can be required to cover the costs. We try to do that with the Home Office, and with the police and others, wherever we can. It was in the rare cases where we couldn’t do that that we were still charging adults—or rather not charging, but loaning them money and asking them to pay it back. That is what we have now cancelled.
Q116 Chair: Indeed, but when that went forward—when the minors were removed from the charging scheme—was there no recommendation to remove—
Julia Longbottom: Not at that time, no.
Harriett Baldwin: But I am happy to take full responsibility in front of the Committee for the fact that I did not even ask this question. As soon as it was brought to my attention, with the Foreign Secretary’s support and the Home Secretary’s support, we were able to make these changes, and I am very grateful—
Chair: The Foreign Secretary made the change very quickly.
Q117 Stephen Gethins: Thank you, Minister, for coming along today. First, can you outline some of the successes but also some of the challenges you face in promoting democratic values in Africa?
Harriett Baldwin: Specifically around democratic values?
Q118 Stephen Gethins: Yes, about the spread of democracy, and transitions and good governance.
Harriett Baldwin: I would not be in this job, and I think that most of us as politicians would not be in our jobs, if we did not believe that democratic values were one of the foundations for progress and development in societies. That is a thread that runs through the work we do around the world and, obviously, in Africa. Looking back at the last 12 months, I think it is the first time we can say that all the countries in West Africa—Harriet, you can correct me if I am getting my facts wrong here—have had elections and have democratically elected Governments. There has been a peaceful transition of power for the first time in some of those West African countries.
One of our foreign policy objectives in terms of democracy last year in Africa was to ensure that free and fair elections were held in Zimbabwe. They did take place, on 30 July, I think, and I am sure the Committee will want to ask about what happened post election. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, one of our foreign policy objectives was that the Saint Sylvester accord that called for elections during 2018 should take place and that President Kabila would not stand as a candidate. Those things occurred.
There have obviously been challenges, with some of the issues around the election outcomes in countries, but we have worked closely not only in country but through the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which is an important organisation. Colleagues will be aware of some of the work that is done here through Parliament and the links with parliamentarians to spread democracy, which we see as the key way in which citizens can express views as to what kind of Government they want. Harriet wants to elaborate.
Harriet Mathews: The definition of West Africa is important, so maybe say Anglophone West Africa, because there are countries such as Burkina Faso and others where we have not engaged and haven’t seen those transitions. One of the real successes we have seen is the engagement of civil society in things like parallel voter tabulation, which means that you can have a real sense of what the real results were and that you have greater engagement from the communities.
Q119 Stephen Gethins: Can I just ask a follow-up question? You are right, Minister, to raise Zimbabwe, and I will ask about that in just a moment. Where do you or your colleagues see your key tools? What has been the role of the FCO in some of the areas you are outlining for success, be it in Anglophone West Africa or in the DRC, which you have also highlighted? Where do you think the FCO brings added value to that, over and above the Westminster Foundation, which obviously does excellent work in a number of these countries?
Harriett Baldwin: The Committee will have seen that we announced last month, I think, the UK-African Union strategic dialogue, which includes working with the African Union in terms of our support for election observers. The UK provides election observers to a range of different organisations, and that is an important part of the value-added. Harriet mentioned the funding of the tabulations of the vote, where we can work with civil society to come up with something that gives us an idea of the BBC exit poll equivalent in different countries.
In terms of strengthening institutions, last year we provided funding in Nigeria and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to work with and strengthen the expertise of their election commissions. There are a range of different ways in which we can bring our experience of democracy in the UK to bear. Harriet, what would you add?
Harriet Mathews: First, there is bringing the international community together, so that there is a coherent, joined-up response. If you look at Nigeria as a recent example, it is actually having some quite hard incentives to stop violence. There we were very explicit, and the US and others were as well, about potential visa bans for those inciting violence. There was private pressure and engagement, but there were also some quite clear messages and consequences.
Q120 Stephen Gethins: Finally—I am mindful of time—could you update us on Zimbabwe, just to follow up on your remarks? How has UK policy towards Zimbabwe changed in the light of the Government’s crackdown against protesters? In particular, I wonder if you can highlight any work around crackdowns and internet blackouts, and what the FCO is doing to counter them. That might be helpful too.
Harriett Baldwin: As you know, UK policy post Mugabe was to encourage a path towards international re-engagement by the new Government in Zimbabwe. We encouraged them to hold elections as soon as possible to get that legitimacy, and we did the parallel vote tabulation exercise in Zimbabwe, working through our embassy there. That confirmed the outcome of President Mnangagwa being elected, so we believe that he was legitimately elected. Obviously, issues were highlighted in some of the election observation reports, but we certainly thought it was a big improvement on the 2013 and 2008 elections. Secondly, the parliamentary elections were broadly in line with those tabulations.
It was all going very well until 1 August, when security forces cracked down on civil society and protesters were killed. The President organised an international committee to come up with recommendations. Similarly, post the fuel protest in January, there was a really disproportionate crackdown by security forces, which was so severe that I summoned the Zimbabwe ambassador. Again, through post and through my conversations with the Foreign Minister there, we made sure that we registered, very loudly, the fact that that was a completely disproportionate response to the protests.
There is an ongoing programme of work with civil society in Zimbabwe. There have been a wide range of well-documented human rights abuses that we believe are credible. We are now looking to the Government of Zimbabwe to follow through on what it has said it will do with deeds, rather than just words, in terms of fully investigating what went wrong.
Q121 Chair: In Sudan, we have seen similar. Is the FCO responding in the same way?
Harriett Baldwin: Yes, indeed. Harriet, you summoned the Sudanese ambassador last week, did you not?
Harriet Mathews: I did.
Q122 Royston Smith: Talking of Sudan, can I ask about migration, Minister? We have seen lots of large-scale migration from places such as Somalia and South Sudan. Part of the selling point, if you like, of international development money is that we can stabilise some places where it is better for people to be where they are, rather than where they are trying to get to because of where they are. What are we doing to help in those countries where there is a particular issue and the conflict seems to be never-ending?
Harriett Baldwin: That is a very broad question, but if we focus on the specifics around migration, I think the Committee would be particularly interested in what we are doing to tackle illegal migration. It is on illegal migration, and particularly the criminal networks that benefit from illegal migration, where we feel that it is very important to work with our African partners. It forms a part of what was in the strategic partnership that we announced with the African Union.
We are working in 17 different source, transit and destination countries across Europe and Africa on tackling illegal migration. There is no question that this is a crime and the kind of people who traffic drugs, wildlife and all sorts of illicit substances also traffic people. There is that important illegal element.
In terms of the other elements, the UK’s offer in terms of working with Africa is incredibly important around inward investment and job creation. The demographic characteristic of Africa is such that so many young people who are looking for an opportunity in life need jobs in their local economies to be able to fulfil those aspirations. Some estimates by the World Bank suggest that there are 18 million young people looking for jobs in African economies coming out every year.
A key part of our strategy or approach is to make sure that we are not only attracting our own direct inward investment through our development organisations—particularly CDC but also the Private Infrastructure Development Group and others—but using the UK’s role as a key hub in terms of investment flows, to encourage more inward investment into African economies and, where there are barriers to that, working with the relevant Governments to try to improve the ease of doing business or the issues that get raised. There is a whole strand of work around that.
Specifically around illegal migration we are doing a whole range of different programmes and different work. You mentioned Somalia, and we are working to make sure that young people in Somalia are identified when they are at risk of being trafficked. We are also working, for example, in Mali where young women have been trafficked from Nigeria and rescued on that route, to help them to reintegrate back into family life in Nigeria.
There is such a wide range of different activities that we do around this. I think there was a total of more than £800 million-worth of programming last year alone in terms of working with different partner countries on tackling illegal migration and the sources of migration, and on rescuing, returning and repatriating people who have been trafficked illegally.
Q123 Royston Smith: That is the economic issue, and the illegal trafficking issue—not just of people, but of drugs and other things. What about stability and security in those countries? We are not just talking about economic migrants. Some people are fleeing countries that are unsafe for them. What are we doing in that context?
Harriett Baldwin: We are doing an enormous amount, both with refugees and with internally displaced people. As the Committee will be aware, it is UK policy to support those refugees and internally displaced people as close as possible to where they fled from, and to provide both the humanitarian assistance and the development assistance that will allow them in due course to return. We do an enormous range of things through DFID that will help with people who have fled violence.
Separately, there is the work that we are doing to support peace and security. I mentioned that one of the key tilts of our new approach to Africa is to increase our focus in that area—whether that is by implementing what was set out in the strategic defence review in 2015 about increasing the UK peacekeeping effort, or by increasing the amount by which we support peacekeeping efforts. Something like 85% of all UN peacekeepers are located in sub-Saharan Africa. The UK is the third largest funder of those peacekeeping missions. We will be working in a range of peacekeeping situations, to try to deliver some semblance of security on the ground in some very troubled areas.
[In the absence of the Chair, Mike Gapes was called to the Chair.]
Q124 Chair: Sorry, Minister, we have a slight change. May I go on to the issue of the BBC World Service? As you are probably aware, this Committee used to monitor the FCO’s support for the World Service, and then the funding of the World Service changed and became the responsibility of the BBC, rather than the specific funding that used to come through the FCO. We have continued to keep to the promise we made at that time to keep a close eye on what was happening with the World Service, even though the DCMS Committee now has responsibility for all things BBC. I understand that the World Service now broadcasts in 12 African regional languages, to—I am told—105.6 million Africans. That does not include the people who speak Arabic in Africa, who will be broadcast to in addition to that. What is your assessment of how broadcasting in different African languages is helping the UK Government to achieve their objectives, and how do you measure that?
Harriett Baldwin: I am really glad that the Committee still looks at it, because it is an important part of the work of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Six new African languages were added last year to our broadcasting via the BBC. Working with our colleagues in the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, we are exploring ways to increase the BBC’s international reach. By the way, it is already the most listened to international station across Africa. It is very popular, but we want it to be even more popular.
We are investing £291 million in the World 2020 programme, to enable the World Service to go through its largest expansion in over 70 years. The BBC now has offices in Lagos and Nairobi, and, as I said, it added six more languages in Africa over the last 12 months. That is an important part of its work. I also think that BBC Learning English should be of great interest to the Committee. I think the English language is an underestimated element of our soft power.
There is an enormous appetite to learn English across Africa. Radio is a great platform to widen access to learning English, which is a great aspiration for lots of young people in Africa. For example, in Mozambique, which I visited recently, the BBC is working with Radio Mozambique to deliver some English language teaching within Mozambique. This is an ambitious programme, which is going well. It should be an important part of what the Committee focuses on.
Q125 Chair: Several months ago, we took evidence on the British overseas territories. At that time there was an issue around the inability of BBC World Service staff to get to Ascension Island, where there is a major transmitter. Are you able to tell us whether that issue has been resolved?
Harriett Baldwin: Despite my copious binder, I do not have anything on the transmitter on Ascension Island. I am looking to my colleagues for help, but we may need to follow up on that.
Chair: We raised it with them at that time, and nobody seemed to have any idea how the problem would be resolved. It was to do with the inability of people to travel there, which meant that they could not provide the relief and staffing—
Harriett Baldwin: To actually transmit from the transmitter.
Q126 Chair: You have said that you are funding additional services. I understand that three of those are languages for Ethiopia and Eritrea and three are languages for Nigeria. Do you have any plans for further expansion in Africa, specifically? Would there be specific funding from the FCO to assist the BBC World Service in other parts of Africa?
Harriett Baldwin: We added Amharic, Tigrinya, Oromo, Igbo—
Q127 Chair: I understand that: Afaan Oromoo, Amharic and Tigrinya. Then Igbo, Pidgin and Yoruba.
Harriett Baldwin: That’s right. I do not know whether languages are to be added in future or whether we have just done that all in the past 12 months.
Harriet Mathews: I am not aware of adding any at the moment, but I think it refers back to whether they are successful and have an impact, and then being open to considering good cases.
Q128 Chair: Clearly, this is a move back away from the decision that was taken a few years ago that World Service was going to be entirely supported by the BBC. I welcome it, and I am not challenging you on it; I think it is very good. I hope it will mean that the World Service in future can look forward to receiving other support, whether from the FCO or other Government Departments, rather than being subsumed within the general news ethos of the BBC.
Harriett Baldwin: We all believe this is really important. The Committee will be aware that the Foreign Secretary’s emphasis this year is on media freedom. We were talking earlier about democracy and elections. We all know from our own experience how important it is in elections to try to get accurate reporting and facts.
One thing I am pleased to see the BBC doing—obviously, they are completely independent of Government—in Nigeria, for example, is work around fact checking and some of the kind of language that has been used in Nigeria on social media that has been shown to be inciting violence. They are providing a wide range of interesting material for listeners and we are very ambitious for the potential reach, up to perhaps a billion over the years to come. It is already the most popular international broadcaster in Africa.
Q129 Ian Murray: Minister, we are all big fans of the BBC World Service—indeed, it is probably one of the most important pieces of soft power that this country has. There is no doubt that the Foreign Office is committing both resources and time to that particular project, and Mr Gapes is correct: that is the right thing to do. But there are real concerns at the BBC and in the wider community that the Government’s approach to the BBC as a whole might damage the BBC World Service, in the sense that the Foreign Office is funding some of the BBC World Service to expand but the Government is then taking money off the BBC to fund some of its projects, such as free TV licences for the over-75s, which is projected by 2020 to be up to a quarter of the BBC’s entire revenue.
What representations are you making to your colleagues in other Government Departments to say that, if we wish to continue to expand the BBC internationally for our soft power footprint and to spread democracy, the rule of law and human rights across the world, we need to ensure that it is funded properly? For the Foreign Office to give to the BBC World Service with one hand but the Government to take it off with another does not seem to be the best way to achieve that.
Harriett Baldwin: I do not want to reopen the whole BBC funding remit that the BBC signed up to a few years ago, but I can give the Committee the assurance that, as far as the Foreign Office is concerned, we think it is important to fund the BBC and the BBC World Service in different African languages, and also—I don’t know if you are getting on to this—the British Council to expand some of its English language teaching, particularly in francophone Africa.
A number of different countries in Africa have approached us about switching their whole national language of education to English. We have worked in Rwanda with the Government, which wanted to do that. We recently had an approach from Morocco, which is keen to do the same sort of thing. I think that the Committee should be interested in the projection of English, because although it is not unique to the UK, it is an important part of what helps, because it helps the businesses that go in, invest and create jobs behind it. The easier you find it to communicate in a country, the more likely it is that trade and investment will follow.
Q130 Ian Murray: I fully understand that. I know this isn’t the DCMS Committee or the DWP Committee, but this is a crucial point in terms of BBC funding. The entirety of BBC2, BBC radio and BBC news could be taken out of the BBC system, because they have to be able to find the funding for nearly £750 million of over-75s TV licences. What would the Foreign Office do if the BBC said, “Okay, we will meet that demand by closing down the BBC World Service”?
Harriett Baldwin: You are definitely drawing me into wider funding settlement aspects. Where we are working with the BBC, it is on the funding for some of these international initiatives, which obviously the BBC will do independently. I think it would be outside the spirit of what they signed up to in the funding settlement if they were to treat that as part of the decisions they need to take in order to deal with the funding settlement they signed up to and accepting the responsibility for the over-75s TV licence. I don’t know whether you have any more insight on that, Harriet?
Harriet Mathews: No.
Q131 Ian Murray: So the Government’s position in terms of the funding of the BBC TV licence is that UK licence payers should pay for the BBC World Service but not be given services such as BBC2, BBC radio and BBC news in the UK, because of the funding settlement that the Government have imposed on the BBC? Is that the position of the Foreign Office?
Harriett Baldwin: That is not what I am saying. The funding that we are providing, the £290 million, is in addition to any licence fee settlement, isn’t it, Harriet?
Harriet Mathews: Yes.
Q132 Ian Murray: But it is a fraction of the cost of the over-75s TV licences.
Harriett Baldwin: It is completely separate from that. Honestly, I didn’t come to your Committee today fully briefed on what the BBC licence payers’ settlement was in 2015.
Q133 Ian Murray: Maybe you can write to us, then, with what the Foreign Office’s position is.
Harriett Baldwin: I will happily be answerable for what the Foreign Office is doing. I have mentioned the support we are giving, which is completely outside the licence fee settlement, to ensure that we are able to expand these services across Africa.
Q134 Chair: Okay. China is playing a major role in Africa—probably a bigger role than any other country in terms of its investment and development projects. What are we doing, and what success have we had, to encourage China to adopt higher standards in its development projects in Africa?
Harriett Baldwin: The Committee will have noticed that when the Prime Minister made her statement about the UK having the ambition to be the largest G7 inward investor into Africa, that was qualified by the words “G7”. It is certainly the case that there is very significant Chinese inward investment into African economies, particularly on the infrastructure side.
I can give the Committee a couple of examples of where there is an alignment in terms of what we are aiming to do. In terms of our policy initiatives, as the Committee will be aware, we very much focus, not only in terms of private sector inward investment, inward investment through our own development organisations, but inward investment into education, health, tackling diseases.
That is the range of things that we will be working on. Where there is overlap, we have fruitful co-operation. For example, we have something like a partnership for investment and growth in Africa, which is a £10 million programme. On China’s outward mining investment programme, we are working with them in terms of greater social responsibility in the mining sector specifically. Where there are examples of overlap of objectives, we will obviously work with China.
Q135 Chair: I have figures which indicate that the Government’s prosperity fund has pledged to spend £50 million to £70 million in Nigeria by 2023. Total UK spending on development in Nigeria, bringing together all the different Departments—DfID, BEIS, the FCO, the conflict stabilisation fund and the prosperity fund—is £319 million. In contrast, the American Enterprise Institute says that Chinese investment and construction contract in Nigeria was not in the millions, but the billions: it was $7 billion in 2018 and $21 billion between 2016 and 2018 in total. So what we are doing is significant, but it is peanuts compared with the massive Chinese investment that is going on in important Commonwealth African countries such as Nigeria.
Harriett Baldwin: I think the figures show that we are the second largest G7 inward investor into African economies—
Chair: I don’t doubt that.
Harriett Baldwin: —behind the US and obviously we are behind the Chinese.
Q136 Chair: We are not just behind. We are not even in the race with the Chinese, who spend billions and we are spending £300 million—they spend $21 billion. These are on an astronomically different scale, aren’t they?
Harriett Baldwin: And in different places, as well. There will be countries where—
Q137 Chair: I was quoting the Nigerian figures.
Harriett Baldwin: I appreciate that. There will be countries where we have more engagement than the Chinese and other countries where the Chinese have much more engagement than us. Of course, it is a much bigger economy and population. In terms of our new approach to Africa, we would like to see certain things happen more in years to come. What happens is that the UK investment comes through a lot of organisations, not only our own branded organisations, but multilateral organisations such as the World Bank and UN peacekeepers funding. Up until now, it has also come through the European Union funds. In Nigeria, how much the UK is doing relative to the figures that you have just read out will probably not be as perceptible. You raised Nigeria as an example, but there are lots of other countries.
Q138 Chair: You are not challenging the figures, are you? You accept that the Chinese are spending billions of dollars in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa.
Harriett Baldwin: Yes, and on different things. There will be lots more on infrastructure, whereas we will be funding more education programmes, tackling malaria and diseases. So we will be funding different things.
Q139 Chair: Do you think that our funding gives us as much influence in Africa as countries with different values which are spending far greater sums?
Harriett Baldwin: From the point of view of our objectives, our new overall approach to Africa is that we believe that we are working in partnership and with the UK’s strengths for a stronger, more peaceful, healthier, more prosperous world. So our objectives in Africa are often different from China’s. It is a different approach and the Committee is right that some economies are on a very different scale as well.
Q140 Chair: When you talk about a different approach, could one of those be that the Chinese give priority to economic growth, whereas we want growth that is sustainable in terms of the environmental considerations?
Harriett Baldwin: I will give the Committee an example of where we have been able to work closely with China for shared objectives around the illegal wildlife trade. The UK was working across a range of different African countries on tackling the illegal wildlife trade, but the key to shifting demand was working with the Chinese Government for them to bring in an ivory ban. That was an example of where we find common ground and can work together on achieving shared objectives. Harriet, do you want to elaborate at all on the difference between what we do? We are not going to try and compete with China’s economic might. We are just going to try and do different things in a different way.
Harriet Mathews: There are examples in various countries, including the DRC, where we are working on transparency together and where listings on international stock markets make a difference. That means you have to prove origin. You mentioned one of the bigger programmes.
Q141 Chair: Is that mainly with the mining industry?
Harriet Mathews: Yes, with the industry and particular companies. Sometimes we talk about companies or country and they get merged, but there are good national areas of co-operation such as the illegal wildlife trade. There are also areas where British companies and embassies are working together to make sure we have got those standards really present and clear in the chain.
Chair: Okay, thank you.
Q142 Mr Seely: To follow up on this, I understand very well the morality of helping to support poverty alleviation and health improvements. You do not need to articulate that as an argument because I understand it. I also understand that we cannot do everything ourselves, as we sometimes give the impression of trying to do.
The question that has concerned me and perhaps other people here is that the Chinese are much more hard-headed about their national interest, maybe in a way that does not help Africa in the long term. What I see from the UK is that our aims and goals seem to be almost divorced sometimes from our national interest and are expressed in a very woolly, very vague way of poverty alleviation.
Poverty alleviation should be everyone’s problem. I do not see why it is specifically our problem. Are you confident that you understand what our national interests are and how to prioritise them, rather than vague assertions?
Harriett Baldwin: The goals that everyone has signed up to are the United Nations sustainable development goals. The UK is going to be the first country to submit itself to a voluntary national review on where we are against those goals. The whole world signed up to them and they are the goals to which the whole world is working in 2030. We believe that Africa matters to our national interest and that Africa being a more secure, more prosperous, healthier part of the world is strongly aligned with the UK national interest. Achieving the sustainable development goals and working with our friends and partners to achieve those is part of achieving that UK national interest.
Q143 Mr Seely: I am not saying that Africa does not matter, or that poverty alleviation is not important; it is just a question of how we prioritise it, as opposed to sometimes more focused national interests. I wonder whether you think we have that balance between generalised aims and Britain’s national interest right.
Harriett Baldwin: The two strongly overlap. We believe that our different approach not only is more likely to deliver what is in the UK’s national interest—a safer, healthier, more prosperous and better educated world—but allows us to play to our strengths. As we see them, they revolve around some of those soft power assets, such as the City of London, financial flows and some of our economic strengths.
We believe that it is in our national interest to be a beacon for free trade. For example, trade with sub-Saharan Africa over the past 12 months has gone up by about 6.5%, and it is very much in our national interest for that trajectory to continue. I accept the premise of your question, which is that we operate differently from how we sometimes see China operating, in terms of its strategic national interest. But we think our approach plays to our strengths as Global Britain, as a trading nation and in terms of a soft power economy—
Q144 Mr Seely: And are we gaining greater influence as a result?
Harriett Baldwin: I would like to see us use this new approach to Africa to be much more successful in “branding” the UK—to use an unfortunate phrase. There is a lot that we do across sub-Saharan Africa that people will not appreciate comes directly from the UK, because we have been working through different agencies and organisations. So there is more that we can do there.
Q145 Mr Seely: Why have we been unsuccessful, given the vast sums of money we spend?
Harriett Baldwin: In terms of the branding, you could be on the ground in Nigeria and see something that is happening as a result of our private infrastructure development group, or some education that we are funding as a result of our partnerships, for example with UNICEF—just to name a partner at random—or with the work that we are doing to train Nigerian armed forces, and you would not necessarily be aware that the UK is behind that work. I think it is to do with the messaging and the branding.
But all the evidence shows—and we are doing some really detailed work on this issue at the moment—that we actually have very high levels of positive perception in sub-Saharan Africa, and that is partly helped by the work being done through the World Service and through our diplomatic network and our increasing number of posts. However, there is more that we can do to maximise what we do. Harriet, what do you want to add to that?
Harriet Mathews: Not very much. I think you are right that a lot of our work has been directed at building institutions, which are harder to put a label on, because it is a longer-term process.
Q146 Mr Seely: There is not a lot of success; there is not a lot of evidential basis to value how successful those programmes are. If you keep a child alive, that is a measure of effect. If you build a school that people attend, that is a measure of effect. I am right in saying that governance programmes have very few measures of effect, and therefore it is very difficult to know if they are successful, especially if other major players such as the Chinese use more malign forms of influence—bribery, corruption and other things—simply to undermine the large sums of money that we are putting towards governance programmes. Do you think that is an unfair comment?
Harriett Baldwin: Where I completely endorse the direction of that comment is that I think we need to make more of the successes. Last year I signed the security partnership with Kenya, and we were able to return some of the illicit financial flows that had been found in the UK to fund projects in Kenya. In the last 12 months alone we were able to return illicit financial flows in Nigeria—$73.3 million was returned to Nigeria in 2018. I think those are successes, in terms of the governance programme and the anti-corruption work, but I definitely agree that part of our new approach is to try to make more of those successes.
Q147 Mr Seely: So you are saying that you can provide evidence of the success of governance programmes—not exceptions, but evidence of the success, broadly—that justifies the large sums of money we spend on them?
Harriett Baldwin: You are making me put my DFID hat on now. This is Open Government Week, and we are publishing our governance strategy document this week. That will contain lots of examples of the kinds of things we do.
I was recently in Ukraine, where, as the Committee is aware, there were huge issues with corruption. I visited their government procurement department, ProZorro, which we funded through Transparency International. We funded it through a third party, so the UK does not necessarily gets the soft power credit that you are talking about. The specific results are incredible: they now have the most open procurement system in the world. I will write to the Cabinet Office here and ask them to have a look at it because it is so good. They saved $2 billion on procurement. That is a fantastic success.
Q148 Mr Seely: You gave me another single example of an expenditure programme that accounts for 10% to 20% of the £13 billion a year you spend. Can you prove, across the board, the worth of governance programmes? Can you present evidence in a comprehensive and not occasional way as to the worth of continuing them, and can you provide evidence of the fact that they actually produce measurable evidential-based results? Is the answer to those questions yes or no?
Harriett Baldwin: Absolutely. Everything programmed by DFID is measured and evaluated by us. We do that rigorously, whether through Transparency International or the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. We really do. I will happily provide that DFID information to the Committee. I will send a copy of the Governance Position Paper.
Chair: Perhaps we can have a note to the Committee.
Q149 Ann Clwyd: Can I ask you about any kind of focus on human rights? The Foreign Office has been criticised for dropping human rights off its shopping list, putting it low on the list of priorities. Where is the focus here?
Harriett Baldwin: I challenge that. It is a core part of our overall work, and our work in many countries in Africa. I spoke earlier about what we are doing in Zimbabwe to fund a range of different civil society organisations, where we think that is strengthening the power of the people of Zimbabwe to challenge their Government on human rights compliance. I can give the Committee all sorts of examples of things we are doing on human rights.
Q150 Ann Clwyd: Let us look at the influence on China. How are we influencing the Chinese human rights approach, given that many of the mining developments are highly controversial, and—as is so often the case—the human rights of those working in the industry are abused across the board? Are we having any influence there at all?
Harriett Baldwin: Specifically on mining in sub-Saharan Africa, or more widely human rights in China?
Ann Clwyd: Chinese developments.
Harriett Baldwin: I know that you took evidence from the Minister for Asia recently on China more widely. To narrow it down to the mining industry in Africa, we are working to improve conditions in the supply chain not only through the work we do with consumers in this country, the listings of different companies in the UK and shareholders’ ability to challenge effectively through the supply chain, but through the work we do with the World Bank—the extractive industries transparency initiative—which is designed to help Governments form a framework in their country of how extractive industries can be held to those high standards in transparency, and in terms of the treatment of people within the workforce and in the supply chain. Obviously they are different in each country.
Q151 Chair: Thank you. Can I finally take you to Brexit? Currently, the United Kingdom has a number of relationships with African countries via our membership of the European Union—there is an EU economic partnership with central Africa; there is an EU East African Community agreement; there is a Southern African Development Community agreement; there is a West Africa partnership agreement; and there is the Eastern and Southern Africa agreement. The Government recently announced that they would continue the Eastern and Southern Africa agreement. What progress has been made in rolling over the other European Union free trade agreements in Africa?
Harriett Baldwin: I certainly hope, Mr Gapes, that with your new-found freedoms you will be backing the withdrawal agreement tonight.
Chair: I certainly won’t be. I want us to remain in the EU, which is the best deal we have, but that is another issue. Can I get you back to the question: what is happening on the other agreements the European Union has with Africa?
Harriett Baldwin: The way the withdrawal agreement will work is that obviously it will allow us to move into an implementation period in which we are able to implement our free trade agreements, to come into force by the end of 2020. I am working very closely with colleagues in the Department for International Trade on the policy objectives with regard to the sub-Saharan African trade agreements, to ensure that in the event of no deal—which seems unlikelier by the day—we have those agreements in place to fall back on. We have already announced the one for the ESA, and we are very close to being in a position to announce the other ones in the unlikely event that we fall into a no-deal situation.
Q152 Chair: Can I be clear? We are currently on 12 March. By 29 March, within the next two and a half weeks, will we be able to guarantee that we have these other agreements—four of them, as far as I am aware—in addition to the Eastern and Southern Africa one?
Harriett Baldwin: The Government’s position is that the withdrawal agreement would ensure that that was not needed.
Q153 Chair: No, Minister, you referred to a no-deal scenario. If there is a no-deal scenario on 29 March, are we able to say that we are confident that we would have these four agreements with countries in regions of Africa, which we currently do not have except as part of being in the European Union?
Harriett Baldwin: We are confident that we have made that offer, that we have all the writing agreed, and that our partners in Africa would see that it was in their interests to finalise those agreements, which I understand are literally words apart. We have done all the work, so in the unlikely event of no deal, I hope our African trading partners would sign those agreements.
Q154 Chair: To be clear, we would be transposing the EU agreements as UK agreements. We would not be making any changes.
Harriett Baldwin: We feel that the best way to move forward on this in the event of no deal is to take as a starting point the EU agreements, have them in place, and then use those as a basis for improving trade relations in the future.
Chair: Okay. As you said, we hope it does not come to that, and that Parliament will make sure that we do not have a no deal, but that is for another day. We are very grateful to you and your colleagues, Ms Longbottom and Ms Mathews. We have covered a lot of ground, but inevitably we have concluded on Brexit—it is that day, isn’t it? Thank you very much.