I wondered if you had a view on the peremptory cancellation of the fraud investigation into BAE Systems and ‘commissions’ paid to prominent Saudis.  As you put it, Hilary Benn’s ‘money quote’ in this Prospect debate was:

All functioning governments have essential features in common: a capacity to do things, good financial and information management, clear lines of accountability and freedom from corruption, to name just a few. We owe it to the world’s poor to help their governments to develop these capacities.

Hmmm… so where does the cancellation leave the war on graft, DFID’s legitimacy in egagement with corrupt regimes, and the government’s anti-corruption Tzar (aka Hilary Benn)? I personally don’t buy the security co-operation argument – why would Saudi stop cooperation given their own vulnerability to Al Quaeda?  So if it was jobs, was it justified by the price we’ll pay in our international influence?

 Perhaps even worth an entirely new posting!

So, DfID provides budget aid to the Museveni government which operates a single party system.  No propping up there then?

I enjoyed the debate between Easterly and Benn, but unlike you, I think Benn came off worst.  The setting of overly ambitious targets is not just a problem at DfID, but across many of the government agencies I have worked in and around, since the Blair government came to power.  Another classic target is the promise of the Northern RDAs to ‘close the £30billion output gap between the North and South of England’, a target so misguided and dumb it just distracts from the real issue of getting anything done. Similarly, the target of ending world poverty is so far outside the aegis of DfID as to be meaningless.  If you set silly targets, you get silly projects and cause and effect become almost impossible to prove.

As for the issue of how you measure success, again I find Easterly’s argument far more persuasive.  Unfortunately the development world, is now saddled with cretins like Geldof who couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag and come out with classics such as the ‘Just give us yer k*ckin money’ quote.  I tend to prefer Schumpter’s quote "Econonomies make money, money doesn’t make economies’. 

Aid has been poured into places such as Kenya, which year on year has got poorer and poorer, largely as a result of non-existent governance and rampant corruption.  Most rational people would like to see what is given being spent properly, before the begging bowl is extended for more of the same. 

Tom

It’s not a black and white issue though, is it? Budget support to countries like Sierra Leone can hardly be judged as 100 percent free of the chance of expropriation. If some of that money is used to buy votes then there is an extent to which aid is propping up the government. Whether the government in a particular place is being propped up or not, whether this is acceptable or not, is then a much more subjective judgement.

Adam

I think you have been misled.  UK aid is not used to prop up corrupt regimes.  If there was a difference of opinion with the World Bank, it was about the best ways to tackle corruption, not about the importance of doing so.

Owen

Max Hastings in The Guardian this morning:

‘ As with so much else this government has attempted, the purpose has been admirable, the execution lamentable.’

Explains a lot.