Third-party Aid Providers

John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
4. How much and what proportion of UK Government aid is delivered by third-party providers.

The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Rory Stewart)
As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, almost all our Department’s work is done in partnership with third-party providers. Our Department provides the policy and the monitoring. In a humanitarian situation, it will be UN agencies delivering on the ground, and in a development situation, NGOs and partner Governments will work alongside us.

John Mann
How exactly are we going to promote our democratic values in cases where our aid budget is being delivered by a third party, such as a foreign Government, and neither the people nor the Government in the recipient country have a clue that it is UK money going in?

Rory Stewart
I absolutely agree that we need to make sure that when UK taxpayers are contributing, that is clear to the people receiving the money. That is also why the Secretary of State has focused hard, with all these third-party providers, on securing value for money and ensuring that the UK national interest is served and UK taxpayers get the credit.

Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)
Isn’t it great that we have so many excellent NGOs in the UK to help us to deliver our aid programme? Does the Minister agree, however, that there is still too much competition, overlap and duplication between some of our NGOs, and that a measure of streamlining and collaboration would be most welcome?

Rory Stewart
That is absolutely right. Co-ordination is vital, particularly in an extreme humanitarian situation. It is terrible when people require assistance if we are wasting money duplicating effort. That is why DFID staff and UN staff are working so closely together, and that is why co-ordination is central to our multilateral aid review.

Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
Does the Minister recognise the role of civil society organisations in delivering the sustainable development goals, which the former Prime Minister helped to draft? If so, why do the sustainable development goals not even appear in the recent civil society partnership review?

Rory Stewart
The sustainable development goals are central, and the UK Government played a very important role in bringing them forward, but this is a cross-Government effort and we will be bringing forward a cross-Government response.