Britain frets over a lost duck and a punctured wheelchair in Zimbabwe

I hope that in due course we shall see her showing all the enthusiasm of a new convert to the way her department projects the United Kingdom’s soft power around the world: its contribution to poverty reduction, to children’s education, to disease elimination and, most relevant to this debate, to promoting gender equality and tackling HIV/AIDS around the developing world.

In the meantime, I notice that, in a nod to the Daily Mail, she has expressed the view that too much development aid is “stolen or wasted”.

At the other end of the building I spent two years on the House of Commons Select Committee for International Development under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Bruce of Bennachie. I mention briefly a visit that we made to Zimbabwe in 2010.

It is a well-kept secret that the British Government are the largest donor of international aid within Zimbabwe. I do not think that our Government particularly want to let people know that, and the Zimbabwean Government certainly do not want people to know that. None of that money is spent via funding of government institutions or through government services in Zimbabwe. It is all channelled through NGOs.

I wanted to mention one particular visit that we made while in Zimbabwe. As ever with Select Committee visits, it was designed to see whether the projects were value for money and were being properly run and administered, whether the objects for which they had been set up were being fulfilled, and to give a report to the House of Commons with recommendations.

We visited a particular project—an allotment in a field belonging to a widow. It had a fence with a vegetable garden, and the paths between the vegetable beds were surprisingly wide. That turned out to be so that she could get round her allotment in her wheelchair. She is a disabled widow, and we were brought in to see this project.

United Kingdom taxpayers had paid for the wheelchair, which seemed like a pretty good investment to me. She was going round her vegetable garden with her wheelchair and looking after her ducks. The British taxpayer paid for six ducks. The ducks lay eggs, the eggs are sold at market and she has a cash flow. Occasionally, no doubt, duck appears on the table as well.

On the point about stealing and wastage, we did bring back some criticism. In Whitehall, they know how many wheelchairs and ducks they have supplied to Zimbabwe. Not a wheelchair is rolled, not a duck clucks, without them knowing in Whitehall.

Our comment was that the degree of monitoring, auditing and evaluation was grossly over the top. It is a wheelchair and six ducks, for goodness sake! I hope that the Secretary of State will understand that good results and outcomes can be achieved with very modest inputs, and that to fret too much about a lost duck or a punctured wheelchair is not good value for money in itself.

I invite the Minister, in responding to the debate, to cast some light on the plans the Secretary of State set out earlier this week, and to give us some assurance that the reinvestment of overseas development aid from EU programmes which she prefigured will not only be directed to conflict prevention and poverty reduction projects, but will also pay particular attention to the needs of women and widows and their families, highlighted so starkly by the Loomba Foundation report and by the many well-informed and passionate contributions to this debate. I also remind her that her own department has already shown her how it can do that.

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