The government is to create an independent watchdog to monitor the effectiveness of the fast-rising overseas aid budget, the development secretary Hilary Benn said yesterday.
After pressure from the Conservatives, he said he was establishing a seven-strong body of experts to help him ensure the £7bn a year spent by the Department for International Development was being properly spent. "The government is committed to ensuring that the UK's aid budget is used effectively to make a difference to the lives of the world's poorest people and that it represents value for money," Mr Benn told the Commons yesterday.
Andrew Mitchell, shadow development secretary, criticised the move for not going far enough. "I'm glad that Hilary Benn has acted on this Conservative proposal ... But his proposed Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact lacks teeth and rigour. It won't actually evaluate DfID's work - it will merely comment on how well DfID is evaluating itself. And it won't report directly to parliament."
Mr Benn said the committee would determine which government programmes should be evaluated, identify gaps in the programme of evaluations, assess the effort and resources spent on different forms of evaluation, and determine whether international standards of aid delivery were being met.
Mr Mitchell said that under the Conservative proposal an independent watchdog would commission totally independent, external evaluation of DfID's work and report to parliament's international development select committee. "A Conservative government will spend more on aid. But our first concern will be with effectiveness. We must focus on outputs - not just inputs."
Sarah Hague, an economic adviser at Save the Children, said: "This announcement is an important step forward and should be applauded. Save the Children's research showed that from 2002 to 2004, almost 20% of UK aid was not delivered on time, if at all.
"DfID is now in a strong position to challenge its major partners such as the World Bank and EU on improving their aid and delivering what they promised to the poorest countries in the world."
A report released today from Oxfam estimated that rich countries' target of an increase in overseas aid of $50bn (£25bn) by 2010, which was agreed at Gleneagles in 2005, will be missed by $30bn.
In the latest downbeat study of progress made since Britain hosted the G8 summit two years ago, Oxfam estimated that the projected shortfall would condemn 5 million people to die needlessly from the effects of poverty - most of them women and children.
