International Development Committee
Oral evidence: UK progress on the sustainable development goals (SDGs), HC 1732
Tuesday 19 March 2019
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 19 March 2019.
Members present: Stephen Twigg (Chair); Richard Burden; Mr Nigel Evans; Mrs Pauline Latham; Chris Law; Mr Ivan Lewis; Mark Menzies; Lloyd Russell‑Moyle; Paul Scully; Mr Virendra Sharma; Henry Smith.
Questions 64 ‑ 108
Witnesses
I: Rt Hon Penny Mordaunt MP, Secretary of State for International Development; Rt Hon Lord Bates, Minister of State for International Development.
Examination of Witnesses
Witnesses: Penny Mordaunt and Lord Bates.
Q64 Chair: Welcome. Thank you, Secretary of State and Minister. We are delighted to have both of you here with us for this evidence session as part of the Committee’s inquiry around the voluntary national review and the sustainable development goals. We have you for an hour and we are going to seek to cover nine areas during that hour. Let me kick off by going into the issue of who has lead responsibility, the role of DFID and the Cabinet Office. The evidence we have had, so far, to our inquiry says overwhelmingly that, when it comes to domestic implementation of the global goals, DFID should not be the lead Department. Secretary of State, why is it that DFID remains the lead Department for domestic implementation?
Penny Mordaunt: We have overall responsibility for policy, for making sure that this is at the top of the agenda and for making sure there is work in progress across Government. It is the Cabinet Office for domestic Departments and making sure that Government, as a whole, is delivering on its priorities, work plan and manifesto commitments. That is how Government works. It is one reason why, with my other hat on, I have moved the Equalities Office there, because that is where you get the welly and what is required to ensure that we are meeting objectives. It works well. We have worked hard over the last 12 months to make sure that Departments themselves understand what their responsibilities are and why this is important, and are showing leadership among their stakeholders on this. That works well, and we do not want to make this a fringe activity in terms of delivering in the UK. The power of the global goals is what Government’s job is, so it is the right thing to do.
Q65 Chair: On the Cabinet Office, we had evidence last week from officials from BEIS and DWP. The senior DWP official who gave evidence said that it was the Cabinet Office’s role to embed the global goals into business as usual, but the sense I have is that the Cabinet Office has not thrown its heart and soul into this. Am I wrong?
Penny Mordaunt: We are getting there on this and I do think there has been a step change. I would be the first to admit, historically, this has not been in the right place. The visibility of the goals was low, but that has changed. I would point to the process of single departmental plans and how that has evolved. I would point to the recent session we did at Cabinet on this. You are seeing Departments talking more frequently about the global goals in events that they do, meetings that they hold.
This is not going to change overnight, but the approach we have taken is having an effect. People are understanding what their responsibilities are and how it can help them get things done in their own Departments. There is more to do, but we have seen a step change in how Departments are seeing their responsibilities in this area.
Q66 Chair: Obviously, you have two big jobs—Secretary of State for International Development, and Minister for Women and Equalities—but you also have this role overseeing the SDGs. Then David Lidington and Oliver Dowden each have a distinct role within the Cabinet Office. Could you just explain what they do as opposed to what you do when it comes to domestic implementation of the global goals?
Penny Mordaunt: The global goals are what Government does. The Cabinet Office will have the Government’s priorities; it will know what each Department is supposed to be delivering on and whether they are implementing their single departmental plans. The work that I do with the Cabinet Office on things like ODA is also enabling us to join the dots between things: how can we crack issues that we have, on both international delivery and domestic delivery? How do we make the resource that we have go further and contribute to both those things?
It is not just about dry processes; it is about a bit of creativity as well. We have been helped by DFID having a foothold—a base camp, if you like—in the Cabinet Office over the last 12 months. The prime purpose of that was coherence over ODA along with the cross‑ministerial group that we set up, but it has had the added benefit of really embedding and helping those in the Cabinet Office who are looking to ensure that Government is delivering to raise the profile of the goals, ultimately, with those officials.
Chair: Thank you. We are going to go now to some of the broader issues.
Q67 Henry Smith: Secretary of State, I understand that recently the sustainable development goals were discussed at Cabinet. Is that the first time they have come to Cabinet since their adoption in 2015?
Penny Mordaunt: Well, I have not been in Cabinet, personally, that long.
Henry Smith: That is a fair response.
Penny Mordaunt: But, no, I do not think it is the first time that the goals have been discussed in Cabinet or been on the Cabinet agenda. We were talking about, in particular, the VNR and doing a bit of a stocktake as to where things are, but I cannot really comment from 2015. You would have to make inquiries to the Cabinet Secretary about those sorts of things.
Q68 Henry Smith: That is a fair enough comment, Secretary of State. When the discussion did take place at the recent Cabinet meeting, can you give us a flavour of what the engagement was across Government and an idea of the discussion that took place?
Penny Mordaunt: My spleen will be removed if I talk in too much detail about what goes on in Cabinet.
Henry Smith: Generically.
Penny Mordaunt: I can say that there is enthusiasm for this. Individual members of Cabinet and those attending Cabinet are very passionate about the areas that they are working on and very focused on how we can get more impact by really embracing the international stage on some of the things we are trying to get done. Climate change is top of the list on that front. People are engaged.
Where we have had other ways of measuring how well our nation is doing in these areas, and on issues where we are trying to change behaviour and get particular focus on—human capital, for example—with developing nations, I have played back what we are doing internationally into what that means for us domestically. For example, when the Human Capital Index was published, I wrote to the Prime Minister to outline what we were doing well, where we were on that, what we still had left to do. The tie‑up works really well. We need to ensure that the VNR process really embeds how people are reporting, how they are measuring progress against the global goals, and how it absolutely puts that at the heart of what their Departments are doing.
Q69 Henry Smith: Can you give any examples of how the Prime Minister and Cabinet colleagues are engaging in the voluntary national review process? Are there any examples of that engagement that you would be able to share with the Committee?
Penny Mordaunt: Oh yes.
Chair: And not just that picture with them all holding a sign.
Henry Smith: That is encouraging.
Penny Mordaunt: There is a lot of activity. We are running a central communications plan on this and the stakeholder engagement, but each Department is doing its own events, mailings out and so forth to its stakeholders. I can give you a big long list of the Departments that are leading on particular goals and when they have done stakeholder engagement events, as they all have. Some have done several events. We can certainly supply you with exactly the events people are doing.
Q70 Henry Smith: Is there one particular engagement that stands out more than others, which you can share with us now?
Penny Mordaunt: Lord Bates and I have direct experience of the events that our own Department is doing. In fact, you attended one yesterday. We had one earlier today with business, which created a huge buzz, with particular businesses wanting to use their own supply chains and suppliers to gather further information and encourage particular behaviour. That was all very good. There are lots of initiatives. The Department for Education, for example, has been working with the British Council on doing a huge piece of work surveying people; DWP did a big event earlier this month with its stakeholders; Defra has a big engagement programme; Treasury did a lot of work in February with all its stakeholders. There is just an enormous number of events going on, and we have been doing different workshops with different parts of our stakeholders. The feedback I have had is that they have all been very good, very engaging.
Lord Bates: Just to add to that, to give you a flavour of where I felt there was some real traction, take the education ones that have been done. The Secretary of State did the World’s Largest Lesson and Connecting Classrooms. If anybody has been on the World’s Largest Lesson website, the resources are fantastic, first rate, and I saw those in operation in schools. The UNICEF visit and the engagement of young people was particularly exciting.
Take the event that we have just come from. I have been at the Home Office, where we have been engaging with the private sector. In many ways, the private sector, through organisations like the UN Global Compact and the UK organisations of that, are very advanced in this area.
Yesterday, in Bristol, it was interesting to see how Mayor Rees is really making this a principal issue for him and called for us to see what more could be done in connecting cities. I met there also with the universities, which are doing a great deal in this area.
You come back from these events and sometimes you think you are banging your head against a brick wall; everybody is stopping you and asking you what this badge actually means when you walk through a corridor. Actually, out there, there is a lot of incredible stuff happening, which is what we are trying to capture in the voluntary national review.
Q71 Chair: Can I welcome very warmly what you said about local government and the engagement through Marvin Rees in Bristol? That sounds very positive, and local government should be a bigger player in this generally.
If I could ask Minister Bates a follow-up on the private sector, it is great that there is DFID engagement with the private sector in terms of global partnerships and SDG 17, which DFID leads on. Is there a sense of a private sector engagement on the domestic implementation and working with relevant Departments like BEIS?
Lord Bates: Yes. I noticed that you had the senior responsible officer from BEIS before you last week and noted what he said about how they are moving forward with the industrial strategy on that. There are two elements to it. There is a Treasury dimension, which takes the lead in the economic growth and decent work area. That is a very important part and it will have to answer for that in its single departmental plan as to how it is going to achieve it, and it will have to report on that in its annual report and accounts. The UN Global Compact is quite exceptional. I have met with Lise Kingo who runs the organisation out of New York. It has a huge amount of resources available in the way it is connecting up.
But rather than painting too rosy a picture, I would say this, which came out from the meeting this morning and my conversations with the UN Global Compact. The connection with business is working well, with big business, the big multinationals, the big corporates—you almost expect them to be in there and actively engaged. Where there is less progress and awareness is at the SME level. Perhaps we need to explore how we do more in that area about embedding the goals in the SME culture in the UK, which is something that we need to talk more to BEIS about.
Q72 Paul Scully: What will the final VNR look like? You have done the emerging findings and things like that. Will it track the UK’s progress against every goal, target and indicator with data, commentary and a plan for future action?
Penny Mordaunt: I want each sub‑goal to be very visible in the final document. In terms of the hard data and numbers, we already have about 70% of that, but obviously there are other ways we can measure progress and we can develop new metrics. With my other hat on, I am producing some more on women’s economic empowerment to sit alongside the single departmental plan later this year, for example. I am very keen that it goes into that level of detail, because it is not until you get into that level of detail that some issues surface.
In terms of the final presentation, this is obviously very important. We are bouncing around a whole raft of ideas at the moment but, although Government is responsible for making sure a good job is done, it needs to be owned by a very wide set of individuals. We are looking at what other nations are doing and have done. It is a useful process to go through, but if we do it really well it is a powerful tool to springboard to the final push. We have some ideas, but we have not firmed up our plans in terms of its presentation yet.
Q73 Paul Scully: You talk about getting down to the data. Are you able to commit to reporting the ONS‑generated and approved data for each of the indicators in the VNR, or alternative data if that ONS data is not available to you?
Penny Mordaunt: We are going to put our best foot forward. In terms of high‑quality data, we do not have a completely comprehensive picture. We have gone a fair way, but where we can plug gaps we will. Clearly, the ONS has a particular role, but this has to be a quality piece of work and we are doing everything we can on that front. As you will know, we are also funding other nations, to ensure that they have the best data they can arrive at as well. That is our role, and obviously the ONS is doing both of those: it has a role domestically here and is contracted with us to supply those services to other nations.
Lord Bates: Briefly on that, we had quite a vigorous internal discussion all about what the voluntary national review looks like. You can go to the UN website and there are now 90 or 100 examples of VNRs that have taken place. To answer your point specifically, we felt that the ONS is worthy of a big shout-out. It has done incredible work in going from having data sources for about 40% of the goals up to 70%. That is one of the highest proportions in the world for the indicators that are there. The ONS has the national reporting platform that you can go to and, by each goal, you will see the indicators and have links to them. The ONS has a responsibility to supply that as an annual report to the UN Statistical Commission.
We do not want to drown it in data, because that is already happening, so the Secretary of State was very keen to ask, “How can we give a bigger reflection, perhaps, of what is going on beyond Government, in the devolved Administrations, in local government, in business, schools and hospitals? How do we do that?” That was part of the national conversation, so you will find when the VNR is produced that it will have more of that flavour, as a snapshot of the wider area, but be supplemented by the ongoing work that is flowing between here and the UN Statistical Commission in a very positive way.
Q74 Paul Scully: You talk about a snapshot. The Emerging Findings and Further Engagement document that came out last week was a snapshot of UK activity, which meant that parliamentarians were not able to make a substantive comment about the content of the review at the recent engagement event. Is there a reason why it was kept so high level when we know more detailed analysis exists?
Lord Bates: On that point, in many ways, in producing that at the outset, it is high level because a lot of the granular stuff, which we are very excited about, is going to be published later. We are working through this. We have had about 200 examples submitted to us as part of our consultation exercises, where people have produced data on what they are doing practically to implement on the ground: universities, hospitals, businesses, faith groups, et cetera, an incredible array. Our feeling is that that granular stuff and the examples and stories will be a very significant part of what the finished document is. What you have seen is the initial thinking on what you might say will be, if it was an annual report and accounts, the financial datasets. But really, to wrap around that, the notes, the strategy, the commentary on performance will come later.
Penny Mordaunt: If you are a stakeholder who is engaged with this already in a particular area, looking at opportunities for people with learning disabilities or whatever it is, you know the goals, you know the sub‑goals and- you know the data. It is all in the public domain. You have the opportunity to engage either with us directly or via the lead Department. The purpose of this initial document—which is not a draft; it is just a method of engaging people—is to scoop in others who are currently not living, breathing and getting out of bed in the morning for the global goals and particular aspects of them.
When I talk to businesses and introduce them to the global goals, they are thinking, “Wow, this is incredible. How many are there?” When you tell them there are 17, they say, “Seventeen? Why are there not five?” It is a balance, to try to have a tool that is pulling more people in, because those people who are already immersed in this do not need a document to engage with this process.
Q75 Paul Scully: As it goes on then, as you say, the stakeholders who are immersed in it are going to be feeding in constantly, because they live and breathe it. As the review continues, what more opportunities are there going to be for parliamentarians to engage and give feedback along the process?
Penny Mordaunt: There can be lots of interactions with particular APGs and others. I am sure Lord Bates and colleagues will be in demand there. When we produce the document that captures all the data and the feedback—this will be put together by the lead Departments and we will bring it all together—there will be an opportunity for people to give feedback on it. It is going to be factual; it is not about people editing it or anything like that, but there is engagement.
The other thing we want to demonstrate is that, where there is work to be done, we have a plan going forward to do that. That is where the main focus should be: what is it that we need to do to ensure those goals are delivered?
Q76 Chair: To pursue that a bit further, Paul used the phrase “high level”, which is quite a kind phrase. Others describe it as “selective” and “cherry picking”. I am encouraged, Secretary of State, by what you just said, because it is going to be important—as well as highlighting the positive examples, which I agree we should—if there are gaps where we are not, as a country, meeting some of the targets and indicators, that it is pointed out, we are open about it and there is some sense of a plan moving forward. Are you able to provide reassurance that that will be the case?
Penny Mordaunt: I think so. I agree with that. There is a cycle in these things where Departments, if they are being scrutinised on particular issues, will put their best foot forward. They will then be pulverised by the UN or whichever international body it is. There will then be a rebuttal. Everyone will come away feeling depressed about the situation and no one is focused on what it is we need to do next. When you look at it, whether it is this sort of work, CEDAW or whatever, the best reviews are honest. The whole point of the goals is that we are saying there are lots of things that need to get done across the world, the UK included, and we want a methodical plan so that, in 2030, the world is a better place. We need to be open and transparent, have good data and all those things, and we need to demonstrate what we are going to do next. Those are the most successful reviews. If people are not doing that, there is no point in doing this.
Q77 Lloyd Russell‑Moyle: You are right, Secretary of State, about the nervousness of any Government to show warts and all, in terms of the danger of then getting pulverised, to use your word. How do we engage in narratives that might not match up to the data in this? You have said that you want the data to be standalone, Lord Bates. The ONS reports that already and this is a narrative‑based document. Many of us hear narratives in surgeries of people who have a very different view of what the statistics are maybe saying. How are we engaging those kinds of views so that they feed into this in a slightly different way, rather than it just being corporate Britain? Do you get what I am saying?
Penny Mordaunt: Yes, absolutely. There is obviously data, but we want to be presenting not just an assessment of what happens next but an assessment of people’s experiences and some of the issues that are discussed in our surgeries. We want every part of this to be transparent. When we were looking at presenting this, this was one of the questions I asked my team: “How can we tell the public where people’s responses are? What have they said to feed into this report?” If people then want to go and find out more about what a particular stakeholder has said, we can put this together in such a way that people can click on a link and go to that submission. We are thinking about these things so that we can give confidence to people about what we are submitting as a report. That is very important.
Q78 Lloyd Russell‑Moyle: You say you are thinking about these things and it is all great. We have three months left. If I, as a Member of Parliament, want to feed in the thousands of examples that I have from surgery visits, for example, which might be interesting, how would I do that? You said earlier that I could either contact you or contact the Department. Where do I find the list of names, as a parliamentarian, of who I want to feed that information to? In what system does that happen? You are saying nice words about how you are thinking about it, but we have only three months left.
Penny Mordaunt: I am sorry. I am talking about how we present it. Individual Departments will be running their own stakeholder programmes, we will have a central point of contact as well, and obviously there is survey work. There are all sorts of ways people can feed in, including, if you are a parliamentarian, writing to me. But when we produce this we need to have a way of demonstrating who has submitted evidence, so that people can check that what we are putting forward presents a picture that is owned by everyone and is credible.
Q79 Mrs Latham: Obviously, the voluntary national review is a huge undertaking. At what point was the team appointed by DFID to undertake it and what resources were allocated towards it?
Lord Bates: I might have to write with the specific date when everything was formulated, but you may recall that there was a debate after your Select Committee’s very helpful report came out, in 2016, looking at the various alternatives. There was a lot of debate internationally, at OECD, among many, about different alternative models. Some people set it up in the President’s or Prime Minister’s office; some people set up an independent Department; some people set up a non‑governmental body to oversee it. There were a million different ways. After looking at your report and taking into account other discussions, in 2016, we said that we were going to come up with this configuration where DFID would retain a policy lead for the area, because we never want to lose sight of the fact that the goals are global. We cannot achieve these alone and, no matter which Government is there, it has to be in partnership with other countries and, within the country, between private and civil society and the public sector.
We decided on this model in the Cabinet Office. The co‑ordination element of the Cabinet Office unit, which numbers about four people who work on this, not exclusively, is in the Prime Minister’s implementation unit. Within DFID, there are about nine people working specifically on the global goals and the voluntary national review. There are three or four who are working very effectively across Whitehall with some of the key lead Departments that have a lot of the key goals, such as Defra and BEIS, which we need to work with. There are about 12 people there. They were set up and, if I was pinning a date—at this point I was hoping there might be some inspiration shouted from behind me, as they are here—our Agenda 2030 was published at the end of March 2017. That was when we put it forward as to how we were going to implement this plan and then gradually the resources have built. The resources have grown as we have been delivering the voluntary national review. The voluntary national review has been going on for about six months, this process of consultation.
Penny Mordaunt: There are two other things I would add. In terms of what is happening with regard to Brexit and staff moving to other Departments, this has been protected. This is one of the protected areas, so we are not losing policy people. Also, as well as people who are doing the administration of this, this has taken up a fair amount of senior people’s time across Government Departments, for example the Perm Secs. As well as ministerial engagement, there have been a lot of bilateral meetings between the Perm Secs in my Department, the Cabinet Office and the Perm Secs of all Government Departments. It is part of what many people are doing, including very senior people in those Departments.
Q80 Mrs Latham: What about the Cabinet Office? How many staff does it have dedicated to this and any other resources?
Penny Mordaunt: There are four in the Cabinet Office.
Lord Bates: The Cabinet Office’s prime role here, remember, is to co‑ordinate. It produces the high‑level summaries of the single departmental plans. There are four people working on it within the Prime Minister’s implementation unit, but not exclusively, whereas the DFID headcount that I referred to is exclusive on this effort of the voluntary national review and the SDGs, because we have the policy lead.
Q81 Mrs Latham: Are you happy and satisfied with the support provided by the Cabinet Office in co‑ordinating the cross‑governmental aspects of the VNR process and embedding the SDGs in other Departments, in their planning, implementation and reporting?
Penny Mordaunt: In terms of the VNR process and the administration for that, that is fine. I refer you to what I said earlier. This is business as usual. It is improving, but we do not need extra people running round doing things to specially embed additional fringe activity. This is core, so it is what everyone should be doing as part of their job.
Q82 Mrs Latham: But you have more people in your Department than the Cabinet Office has, and it has to pull it all together, or are you pulling it all together really?
Lord Bates: The voluntary national review is something that we are taking a lead on, so that is part of it. A crucial point of principle is the model you choose, because you could have gone down the route of having 60 or 70 people in one unit, in one Department, and other countries have done that. We thought that the fatal danger in doing that was that you then get siloed; you get moved to one side and say, “That is the SDG Department”. We had this ambitious idea of trying to mainstream it through the single departmental plan, so therefore it is the responsibility of everyone in Government to deliver on the goals, not just one Department. That is a fundamental change. I am not saying that we are there yet, but that is the strategy we are adopting and, of course, that goes even beyond, into the devolved Administrations as well, and into local government.
Q83 Richard Burden: Apologies for my late arrival. The thing I have not been able to get my head round on this is that it is not so much favouring a model of a vast or central Government unit; it is more the separation of the lead Department—in other words, DFID—from the Department that is meant to be co‑ordinating this work and embedding it in other Government Departments. Would it not have made sense to give the leadership role and the co‑ordination role to the same Department? I do not follow the logic of splitting that responsibility.
Lord Bates: It was widely debated at the time and it was a political decision that we took to say that we wanted DFID to keep the lead, because it had the connections internationally plugged in on the global goals, but we had a co‑ordinating function that was done through the Cabinet Office, which was to be light touch because we wanted Government Departments to take responsibility for the goals in their own area. If somebody asked me, “How is the leadership question?”, it could not be clearer, because the Secretary of State is the Cabinet lead on the global goals. Our Permanent Secretary in DFID, Matthew Rycroft, is regularly presenting to other Permanent Secretaries at their regular meetings on the global goals and what needs to be done. There is a cross‑Whitehall leadership group on the global goals, which is co‑chaired between DFID and the Cabinet Office. Within that, perhaps we have not communicated it enough, but in the model we have chosen it is about as clear as you can get.
Q84 Mark Menzies: Evidence from BEIS and DWP has suggested that they have had to work to very tight timelines in order to feed into the VNR process. Why have those timelines been so tight?
Penny Mordaunt: We have been demanding, but rightly so, in terms of the depth and the quality of what we have asked for. That is right, because we have to do a quality job on this. It is just about turning around that information. We are not asking people to do new business here. It has been a lot of work for people and we are very grateful for the efforts that they are making, but we are not asking for new business.
Q85 Mark Menzies: We heard last week that the first draft of Departments’ chapters were produced “in a vacuum” and they wanted to know more about the vision for the final review. Given you are submitting your main messages to the UN in just two months, how are you planning to pull these individual contributions together?
Penny Mordaunt: There is a difference between how we present the review—as I said at the start, we have lots of ideas but are yet to put a final concept to bed—and the innards of it, and the innards of it have not been produced in a vacuum. We have not just come up with the global goals. This is what Departments are supposed to be doing: alleviating poverty, food security, good health for everyone. They have the indicators; they own these areas. Throughout this process, we need to make those Departments feel that this is not an additional burden on them; that this is a helpful exercise to them in getting that focus on what they need to do to arrive at where they need to by 2030. To get underneath the surface of your question, the attitude we need to take is that this is a positive exercise that will help us, as a nation. It will also help other nations get where they want to be, if we are doing it right.
One of the main bonuses of going through this is that we will get others to come and help. We will get business more engaged; we will get new partnerships formed. The backdrop to this in DFID is that we have made announcements this week on creating more of those partnerships cross‑sector and joining up the domestic and the international more. That is the prize in all of this and we have to get officials who are working on this, not as their main area of business, but contributing to this review in those lead Departments, to see this as an exercise that is going to help them, as well as presenting a snapshot of where we are in the UK.
Q86 Mr Evans: You mentioned how important the stakeholders are to the VNR process. Why do you think it was so ad hoc and late in getting them involved?
Lord Bates: Some of the stakeholder engagement was actually very early and very positive. I think of the UK Stakeholders for Sustainable Development group, which produced a report. We are coming back to a similar point, which is that you could have said engagement with stakeholders on the sustainable development goals was a DFID lead responsibility with a bit of co‑ordination from the Cabinet Office. Instead, like the single departmental plan, to be consistent, we said that it is down to that Government Department to consult with its stakeholders on the goals for which it is responsible. That is clearly going to be a longer process, it is going to require more energy and drive and it will be less universally consistent as to who performs in which way. But given that we are not doing the goals, as it were, for one Parliament or one review, but it is going to be 12 years and different Governments will have to have responsibility for delivering and achieving them, we believe this is the best model that is likely to deliver in the long term. That is certainly the view of the Civil Service as well.
Q87 Mr Evans: I think you had a plan of some of the engagements with stakeholders. Is it possible to send us that?
Penny Mordaunt: Certainly, I think we could do that.
Q88 Mr Evans: That would be useful, but there seems to be this view that the fractured way in which it has been delivered has not been all that brilliant, and that maybe it has not all been brought together as well as it should have been.
Penny Mordaunt: Departments have known and appear to know, unless they are fibbing, what good looks like. I can give you an example. We wanted Departments to be not just holding events but proactively writing out to stakeholders to tell them about the review, the process and all of that. DFID provided a comms pack for Departments, so we had draft letters that contained the information that they could then edit, if they wanted to, to send them out. We have given them some core resource to go and do that, but obviously they own the mailing lists and the relationships, so we have asked them to do that. We have not just said, “This is what you need to do”; we have tried to get some consistency and quality in what people are putting out, so it has been co‑ordinated in that sense. We need to allow a bit of variety between Departments about how they do that with different stakeholders, but we can certainly provide you with a map of the collated events and mailings.
Q89 Mr Evans: That would be really useful. Are there still going to be opportunities for engagement prior to it being sent to the United Nations?
Penny Mordaunt: Yes. This is an ongoing process and, when we produce the document, there will still be time for people to tell us what they think and what we should be doing in terms of the final presentation.
Q90 Mr Evans: You have mentioned the devolved Administrations. How well has that gone?
Lord Bates: I have to be careful here.
Mr Evans: Name names.
Lord Bates: Let me tell you of one devolved Administration that has done something really innovative and interesting, which is the Welsh. Their Well‑being of Future Generations Act, although not specifically targeted on the goals, selects a number of goals. They have also appointed a future generations commissioner, and I am interested to learn how that has gone. Everybody is aware of them. There are some particular issues in Northern Ireland with the Executive. Bringing all these pieces together is an important part of it, but another one of these messages that we are trying to communicate is that we cannot centralise responsibility for delivering these goals. It is not a Government’s responsibility; it is all Government, all officials, civil servants, civil society, private sector. It really has to go that deep; otherwise we are going to come nowhere near hitting the mark on it.
I have been absolutely fascinated, in the events that I have been going to, by the great variety. It is one of the things I really appreciate, that because we have not been so prescriptive in saying, “It needs to be done this way, in this form”, et cetera, it has allowed a number of different ways to come up and we will learn from that.
Chair: You have mentioned Wales and Northern Ireland; let us now hear from Scotland.
Q91 Chris Law: I was really intrigued to hear about the engagement you have with the devolved Administrations, and I have yet to hear about it. Regardless of that, I want to move on to the High‑Level Political Forum in New York. Penny, you mentioned that the heads in the Cabinet are passionate and very focused on the sustainable development goals. What are the Government’s plans for that forum and how important is this moment for the UK?
Penny Mordaunt: As I said, if we do this really well, this should be a process that engages and excites people about looking at what comes next and the next steps. That, to me, is my prime objective in it. Although I will be doing that, taking the lead there and making sure everything goes okay, I do not think it should be me who is the sole presenter. We have had all sorts of wonderful ideas, looking at what other people have done, about engaging young people. We need all sectors represented there. We have a clear idea of what good looks like, but it will not be me on my own presenting.
Q92 Chris Law: That leads me comfortably to the next question, which is this: which Government Ministers will be attending, or which ones are planning to attend at least?
Penny Mordaunt: The final presentation and delegation has not been finalised yet. I am expecting that I will be there, but we have not finalised who will be going.
Q93 Chris Law: Would you expect Ministers from other Departments, given it is supposed to be cross‑Government?
Penny Mordaunt: Although we clearly have lead Ministers for certain issues and, obviously, there is a focus on particular goals going into this, having a panel of Ministers up there is not what it needs to look like. Although we are engaging individuals, that is not really going to fire people up. We ought to be hearing from young people. I put forward the idea that we ought to have some videos there of people who will be coming of age in 2030.
Chair: There is a Division in the Lords, Minister. If it is okay, we will carry on. With a Division in the Commons, we would suspend.
Penny Mordaunt: Yes. I will park all the difficult questions for Lord Bates’s return.
We need civil society there. We need business there. A major part of what we are trying to do on the international front is close that funding gap. We need the whole picture there and, if it is just Government, it will not be doing what it needs to do. That is what we are thinking of, but we are thinking of really engaging ways that we can do this that do not just give a good presentation. It is a very important point for the UK, both in terms of the domestic agenda and internationally. With what is happening around the world at the moment, we have to demonstrate the merits of being involved in this. We have to demonstrate the merits of the UN, despite all its failings. We have to demonstrate the merits of the multilateral system. This is an important moment, but we also want to make sure it is going to engage people. That is my prime job.
Q94 Chris Law: It is important to hear these things, but it is difficult to square with some of the evidence we have taken. The UKSSD examined our own domestic delivery and, out of it, said that more than three‑quarters were either insufficient or poor when it came to SDGs across our Departments. I wonder what your thoughts are on that. What does that say about the Prime Minister, who should be leading on this, given the fact that she will be presenting this at the summit in September?
Penny Mordaunt: Sorry, your point about the PM is—
Q95 Chris Law: In 2015, David Cameron was leading on the high‑level meeting at that time and, from what we have taken in evidence, it has been rather muted since. Given the UKSSD’s report, which said that 76% across Departments were failing the SDGs either as insufficient or poor, I am asking you what your thoughts are with regards to leadership on this.
Penny Mordaunt: The Prime Minister has shown leadership on this. She frequently talks about the global goals. She has been very forward leaning, despite the shift she has had, on the international stage, in terms of going to Africa and making those speeches. I cannot remember how long it was prior to that that a PM had done that, but it was quite some time. So I think she has, even with the backdrop of what she has had to deal with on her shift.
I would come back again to say that this is a country that, as well as trying to do things on its domestic agenda in difficult times, has really stepped up internationally. The 0.7% is recognised as a huge commitment. We have tried to ensure that we are enabling other nations to do things well. We have a really good story to tell on that front and, despite all kinds of pressures, the Prime Minister has kept that commitment exceptionally strong.
With regard to our own House, we have to approach this exercise as being gratuitously honest about what is left to do. That is the point of this process but, because there is more to do, it does not automatically say that there is no leadership or drive on these issues. That is not true.
Q96 Chris Law: Would you say then we should expect more engagement from the Prime Minister between now and September when it comes to our SDGs? Should we expect to see across this Committee and across the House that there will be more engagement?
Penny Mordaunt: I think you will. As I say, this has to be sincere. It is not a matter of playing global goal bingo at the Dispatch Box or anything like that. This is about a culture change in Whitehall to put these goals absolutely at the heart of people’s business, and that takes time. Over the last 12 months, there has been a shift in that. I mention 12 months; I have been in the post for just over that, but in my time there has been a shift. That has been about the time and the engagement with the highest management in those Departments. It has been about the profile of this in Cabinet. There are all sorts of things that have changed, but we need to continue that and we need to get the data better where there are still gaps, which is happening. With officials, we also need to make sure they know why this is a good thing for them to do for the things that they really care about.
Q97 Chair: Can I take you back, Secretary of State, to the question of other Ministers attending? You made a very strong point about civil society voices, young people’s voices, but I do not think that needs to be mutually exclusive with other Ministers potentially attending. As you will know, the sense is that on the international scale we have a pretty good story to tell. It is on the domestic implementation of the global goals where there are more questions. While your leadership there is crucial, I would make a plea that there should be senior representation from other domestic Departments, perhaps those where there is a focus on this particular VNR.
Penny Mordaunt: Certainly, I will take that on board.
Q98 Lloyd Russell‑Moyle: The focuses will be the Department for Education, the Treasury, the Equalities Office, which is you anyway, BEIS and the Home Office. Those are the lead Departments on the areas that are being reviewed. Have you already had any conversations with those Ministers about going?
Penny Mordaunt: No, not about the presentation itself, because we want to make sure we have the right balance of the other sectors represented. In terms of the process, the other areas that are going to be particularly focused on, in addition to your list, are employment, justice and peace.
Q99 Lloyd Russell‑Moyle: Yes, well, it is the Home Office that leads the peace and justice cluster, but you are right that other Departments feed into it.
Penny Mordaunt: There are other Departments involved in that.
Lloyd Russell‑Moyle: That is why I mentioned the Home Office. If I went to any of those Departments’ websites or looked at any of those Departments’ plans, I would struggle to find a huge link to the sustainable development goals. You would probably acknowledge that. Even in the single departmental plans, it does not align with the Government’s policy in Agenda 2030. Is there any effort going on here to try to make sure that the single departmental plans and the cross‑departmental strategy aligns with the VNR that we are producing now? It seems very much like an add-on.
Penny Mordaunt: Yes, there is. That is fair criticism, because the single departmental plan process has been evolving over time. In Equalities, we are going to have our first single departmental plan this year and, alongside that, we are publishing some new metrics. This is a bit of a journey for Government. There are very practical things that need to happen. To get completely lowbrow, that includes proper communication tools, photographs and all the sorts of things you need to have an engaging part of your website that presents this properly. We are doing those things and I would applaud DFID’s comms team, who have been fantastic in putting this and the messages that surround it at the heart of what every communications team is doing in Whitehall. They have spent a lot of time doing that.
Q100 Lloyd Russell‑Moyle: I do not think anyone necessarily doubts DFID’s commitment to this. The challenge is how long it has taken to get other Departments on this. While I take your reassurances with some comfort, the proof will be in the pudding and we have already had two years waiting for this. At our last session on this, we heard that the UK child poverty tracker of progress had taken place without any reference to the SDGs. Particularly seeing as this is one of the key areas that the SDGs are reporting on, how was that allowed to take place? What assurances are we making that, when any Government strategy is signed off, it is being looked at through the lenses of the SDGs? We do that already on gender issues; there is a process that a Department must do. What process are we ensuring that the Departments must do in this respect, or are we just hoping that it will happen with a bit of education and training, and a bit of publicity, which is important, but not enough?
Penny Mordaunt: As well as the lowbrow comms that I have just described, this is really about the leadership of those Departments. That is both your Secretaries of State and your Perm Secs. We have spent a lot of time, and my Perm Sec has spent a lot of time, meeting bilaterally with other Perm Secs to take them through exactly what is required, in terms of not just this process but what the Department needs to be doing to really ensure that this is not some kind of fringe exercise, as I said.
Q101 Lloyd Russell‑Moyle: What happens if the Home Secretary, for example, who is leading on the peace and justice area, does not really bother signing off on SDGs, does not see it as an importance in his Department? Do you have any clout or ability to say to him, “No, you have to”, or is it the case that you have asked nicely and he can just—
Penny Mordaunt: Although I am the facilitator of this and have certain responsibilities, it is the Prime Minister who has said this to Secretaries of State. She chose to have a session on this at Cabinet. As well as the meat of what we are doing as a Government, she wanted a session on the VNR to say to people, “Well done, so-and-so. This is good progress. This is what you need to do”. It is the Prime Minister who will be taking issue with Secretaries of State who do not do this. It is one of her priorities.
Q102 Lloyd Russell‑Moyle: That is her priority. You have spoken very well today about involving civil society organisations, and it is always worth reminding about reaching out to all nine major groups of the UN, the ones it identifies: young people, farmers, NGOs, science, local authorities, which you have spoken about, women, indigenous peoples, trade unions, and business. Has the Prime Minister instructed that those Secretaries of State need to meet those nine different sectoral groups to ensure that they are feeding in? The disability organisation that we spoke to last time said that it did not really feel it had been involved in developing any of the initial thinking on disability. Has the Prime Minister set the tone for those nine major groups to be involved at every level of Government?
Penny Mordaunt: Yes. Obviously, I am not privy to all her conversations, but when we have had meetings about this, including round the Cabinet table, she has made that very clear.
One of the things that I am very conscious of, with both my Departments, is that we are very clear about who needs to be doing what, and disability is an example. Quite often, things are hard to do for certain groups of people because there are so many Departments involved. That is why drilling down into the goals is critical. For those cross‑cutting issues like disability, the things we need to report on that have real impact on people’s lives and quality of life will not be visible until you get into the sub‑goals. I am very conscious that one of my jobs is to make sure that that is working.
Q103 Lloyd Russell‑Moyle: In the reporting then, when we get to the HLPF, could we have reassurances that each one of those nine major groups will be included in the Government delegation? Other countries do that. They would have a young person in the Government delegation, maybe from the British Youth Council. They would have a trade unionist in the delegation.
Chair: Do not give an example for all nine, Lloyd.
Lloyd Russell‑Moyle: I am not going to, but you get the idea. Can we have a commitment that the Government will consider ensuring that that happens, so it becomes a real presentation from Britain rather than a presentation from Government?
Penny Mordaunt: That is exactly what we are looking to achieve and we have had exactly those sorts of conversations. As for what it is finally going to look like, how much of it is presentation, how much is video, we do not have a final answer to that yet, but that is absolutely what we should be doing.
Q104 Chair: It is very welcome to hear you say that this is one of the Prime Minister’s priorities. Is there a possibility that the Prime Minister could join you in presenting the VNR in New York, in July? I know the Norwegian Prime Minister did that. It could send a very powerful symbol of how seriously the UK is taking this.
Penny Mordaunt: The way we have structured this is that she will take the lead in September, but she is very interested in how we are going to present this. She has enabled us to get to where we are over the last 12 months with the Cabinet, and I think she would want to be involved in some way, but at the moment people have to make do with me.
Q105 Mr Lewis: Good afternoon, Secretary of State, Minister. Of course, the Secretary of State might be Prime Minister by then, so we would not have to concern ourselves with some of these complex issues.
Penny Mordaunt: I do not think that is possibly going to happen.
Mr Lewis: How will the outcomes of the VNR be followed up at a national level? Will the review be disseminated and discussed within the UK by Parliament, Government and stakeholders? That is one element of this. Are there plans for further, regular reviews of national progress on the implementation of the SDGs? Crucially, if the answer to that is yes, by whom and what form will that take? Lines of accountability and responsibility on these issues are a bit unclear.
Lord Bates: On the voluntary national review itself, it will be published around about mid‑June, in time for the High‑Level Political Forum. The structure of what happens around that we are very open to. The Secretary of State has been saying that she is open to advice and I am sure we will be very interested to hear what the Committee says in this respect, because that was very influential first time round in structuring it. The vehicles by which it could be disseminated are, in many ways, a mirror reverse of what has been happening with the engagement. These are the people who have fed in to the review and, to me, it would be tragic if we lost that engagement and did not continue to use it throughout the lifetime of the goals. You are supposed to do a VNR roughly every five years, so there is going to be another one upcoming sometime soon and building on those links, going forward, will be very important.
There have been opportunities within the House. In the House of Lords, there was an excellent debate on the voluntary national review and lots of ideas were fed in at that point. That then became a structured part of our engagement with Parliament. The parliamentary roundtable that we had was another example of that.
But we do not need to be, as it were, too prescriptive about this. It is a learning experience. The point is that it needs to be seen that the VNR publication is not the end of a journey; it is another part of the process.
Penny Mordaunt: I would add a couple of things. As well as the ONS and the data reporting, the road map for the next steps, on each of these issues where we know we have work to do, needs to include some milestones for each individual area about where we want to have got to by certain points. In particular areas, there will be other summits and conferences. What are those moments where we can say, “By this stage, this is where we want to have got to”? There will be merit in that.
To slightly flip this, one of the things that I would want to see in what we are working on with some of these new initiatives, like the Great Partnership, is organisations holding themselves to account for what they are doing. To be brutally frank, unless we get others to help, we are never going to get to where we need to be in 2030. We are trying to take out some of the effort of “getting with the programme”, whether it is business or other organisations that want to start to contribute more to the delivery of these goals, by devising ways in which they can really do that without having to reinvent the wheel.
We are seeing this in the events we do. Even if they are not directly on this subject, we are getting questions from business: “How can I embed the goals in what I want to do? How should I be presenting this in my annual report?” All those right kinds of questions are being asked. We are trying to create ways in which people can do that, including members of the public, the National Conversation being one example of that, where we are looking at what an individual can do. That is, in some respects, the real prize in this, so I would be looking for that as well.
Q106 Mr Lewis: I think you would accept that, often, perception is reality. Our evidence suggests that stakeholders generally feel that, in terms of implementation of the goals, there has not been anywhere near the kind of engagement they would have expected. That is a general view that comes across time and time again. When I was a Minister, I used to say that if people keep telling you that, there is either a massive conspiracy against the Government, or maybe they are telling you the truth. There is a sense among stakeholders of this disconnect. Would one solution be the creation of a formal stakeholder group to specifically engage on these issues? As well as all the events that take place, specific conferences around particular themes, would it not make sense to create some sort of formal stakeholder group that engaged on implementation?
Penny Mordaunt: I would say two things, and Lord Bates might want to add something. First, again, this is business as usual. We have to embed this into what Government does and what society is doing, and there are stakeholder groups looking at sub‑goals and all these individual issues. Reinventing something that somehow sits above that would not add anything.
Secondly, how will we know that this is really going to get into the place we want it to be? I want it to be in this place over the next 12 months as we get into the final decade of delivery. I would like to go out on to the street and, out of 20 people I ask, for at least one of them to say, “Yes, the global goals”. Unless that happens we are not going to have entrepreneurs engaged; we are not going to have business engaged; we are not going to have the innovators, people putting their savings into global goal ISAs, et cetera. We are doing a huge amount of work in the Department on what that final decade looks like. We are working with people like Richard Curtis and others, to look at not just how we raise the profile of the global goals among everyone, but what is the thing or things that the UK is going to really do to deliver them, and which particular goals are we, globally, the complete game‑changer in? There is a lot of thinking going on there and that is where we need to be. If there are any further communications, stakeholder engagement and so on, that is what I am focused on doing.
Stakeholders close to these issues are already engaged. We need to open this out much more to get to people who could be contributing by what they are doing but do not know about the goals yet. That is what we need to be doing.
Q107 Chair: Would it be fair to say that the VNR process itself acts to concentrate minds and is creating a step change particularly on the domestic implementation, which might not have happened were it not for there being a VNR process? The serious work starts here in terms of domestic implementation.
Penny Mordaunt: Let me put it this way: sometimes you learn more about your own country when you go abroad and find out what other people think of you. Looking at tools that we judge others by, the Human Capital Index being one, we learn stuff about ourselves. We can also learn from other nations on this—I really believe that. It is providing people the opportunity to look at things through a fresh lens. The added value this process brings to these Departments is that it ensures that the activity we are doing is comprehensive. Quite often, I refer to issues that have been in the “too tough” in‑tray for too long. With this process, you cannot do that. You have to deal with those issues. It is very easy for Departments to park some of those issues and do other things, but this means that we have to leave no one behind; we have to deliver it all. That is the added value that this process brings.
Q108 Chair: That brings me to a final question, for Lord Bates. Secretary of State, you mentioned learning from other countries and I welcomed what you said earlier, Minister, about looking at how other countries have conducted their VNRs. Is there somewhere in particular that you think we can learn a lot from in how they went about their VNR, so that we can get this right?
Lord Bates: Having had the opportunity to reflect on almost being led into commenting on the devolved Administrations, I do not want to cause an international diplomatic incident by pointing out their failings, other than to say that we looked at them all. They varied between ones that were heavy on pictures and limited on content, and some that were very heavy on data but did not have any narrative. That is the reason we arrived at our configuration, which is to have high‑level data but then real substance in the individual stories about what people and organisations are doing on the ground to implement it.
In conclusion, as a final point, the Committee might wish to be conscious of almost the reverse effect: that once you do a voluntary national review there is an energy across Whitehall, which, I agree, perhaps is not visible to everybody, but I see and we see, each day, how people are engaging with us in a very real way as to how they go about implementing this. The key, as far as we are concerned, is to ask, “How do we ensure that that keeps going after the VNR?”, so people do not say, “Oh, hang on, are you still going on about the SDGs? Did we not have the VNR?” No, this is just a report on a moment on a journey, and we need to make sure that we keep everybody’s heels to the fire on that.
Chair: That is a great note to end today’s session on. Can I thank you both very much indeed for your evidence today?