Aid budget ‘needs more scrutiny’
By politics.co.uk staff
The money Britain spends on overseas development to promote education isn’t being properly scrutinised for value for money, MPs have said.
The influential public accounts committee argued that with the upcoming rise in the budget for international development, the need to properly assess the impact of its spending would only increase.
Committee chair Margarert Hodge said: “My committee strongly supports the case for UK government aid to primary education in developing countries and welcomes the significant progress being made in enrolment, particularly for girls.
“What surprised us was the department’s lack of a coherent framework for assessing the impact and value for money of its spending; and its willingness instead to rest claims of overall performance on selective examples and anecdotes.”
The MPs found that although there had been great improvements in education participation in countries where the Department for International Development (DfID) is concentrating its efforts, those improvement can’t be attributed to British aid.
Andrew Mitchell’s department is the only one to see a large increase in its funding following the spending review settlement. Total aid spending will increase from £7.8 billion to £11.5 billion by 2015.
The committee also raised concerned about cases of fraud in programmes funded by DfID in Kenya and called for far more effective scrutiny of how British money was spent abroad.
The report said of DfID’s response to the findings: “It assured us that it is placing an increasing emphasis on quality and attainment in deciding which programmes to support, and on measuring important indicators of education delivery against the costs.
“Until this is achieved, we can have little confidence that UK taxpayers’ money is securing the fullest benefits for poor people overseas.”
