Dan Smith: Tories to prevent DfID from becoming uppity teenager

After having reviewed DfID's White Paper, Dan Smith tackles the Green Paper that the Conservatives published over the summer. Smith argues that, overall, the Green Paper is conservative in the wrong way.

A few appetisers:

Under the Conservatives, DFID will remain a separate department but be better coordinated with the Foreign Office and the rest of government (pp 56-57). Some may suspect that “coordinated” is a polite term for “subordinated” but the Green Paper authors would probably insist that they are talking about a recalibrated division of labour with the Foreign Office taking a clearer policy lead. Time will tell which version is more accurate but, certainly, the Green Paper offers heart to critics concerned that DFID has become an independent fiefdom with its own foreign policy.[...]

I worry that when the Conservative team criticises what it sees as the NGO culture in DFID, it is the engagement and commitment of staff members at all levels of the organisation that they are taking issue with. And I worry that if they put pressure on engagement and commitment and the accompanying spiky attitudes, NGO-ish atmosphere and casual clothes, they risk replacing those positive qualities with a bureaucratic approach that, in the event and with greater cause, will annoy them even more.

[...] one way a Conservative government will get value for money is by focusing the UK’s international aid on fewer than the 108 countries to whom it goes now. The document rightly abstains from saying how many countries will get it, though it does commit to ending UK aid to China, and it says a Conservative government will strengthen links with Commonwealth countries, implying though not promising more aid to Commonwealth developing countries. [...]

I am intensely pleased that the Conservative Party has committed itself to continuing to expand development assistance. There is much to welcome. But it has not yet done any better than the government – in fact, it has done somewhat worse – in the essential task of shaping a new way of understanding and supporting international development.