13.1 |
Resources
565.
Beyond that,
the Treasury would continue to scrutinise claims on a case by
case
basis, in
terms of value for money, impact, and robustness of the costing,
and the
robustness
of the risk management. Departments would also have to provide
“clear
evidence”
on the extent to which they had reprioritised their existing
resources to
accommodate
Iraq:
“The
emphasis will be on satisfying ourselves over the degree of
re‑prioritisation that
has taken
place to accommodate Iraq‑related pressure within existing
baselines.
DFID
received an eight percent real terms budget increase over the
SR2002 period,
the FCO
nearly three percent and the MOD received their most generous
settlement
for nearly
20 years. We are therefore far from convinced that further
re‑prioritisation
within
existing baselines is not possible.”
566.
The
availability of CPA funding was key. Some officials in CPA(South)
had stated
that it was
easier to secure funding from London than from CPA(Baghdad). The
Treasury
should
therefore continue to push for CPA(Baghdad) to fund initiatives in
the South,
rather than
providing a significant increase in UK funding.
567.
Treasury
officials had considered but rejected another approach – the
creation of
a “pooled
arrangement” for future Iraq claims, with one pool for military
activity and one
for
“reconstruction and related” activity. The idea had been raised by
some (unnamed)
departments.
Such an arrangement might help ensure more effective prioritisation
of
activities
and prevent a “piecemeal stream” of bids to the Reserve. Treasury
officials
had
assessed, however, that creating a pooled arrangement now might
encourage
departments
to allocate money “prematurely”, before the outcome of the Madrid
Donors
Conference
was known and before the effect of the anticipated increase in the
flow of
funding
from CPA(Baghdad) to CPA(South) was clear. The potential demand for
funds
was so
great that a pool could quickly be emptied, prompting further
claims to the
Reserve.
The official commented that the Treasury might wish to revisit the
idea of an
Iraq pool
in the future, if the situation changed.
568.
Mr Boateng
replied to Baroness Amos on 25 September, agreeing to provide
an
additional
£6.5m from the Reserve to cover immediate further needs in Iraq,
but rejecting
the request
to earmark £33.5m for DFID’s anticipated future needs, citing
“recent reports
that … [US]
sources of funding are now starting to be
unblocked”.341
569.
Sir Nicholas
Macpherson told the Inquiry that although it was “totally open”
to
Baroness
Amos to challenge that response, she did not.342
He pointed
out that the
US$100m
announced by Mr Brown in his 9 April Budget statement was
never fully
claimed by
departments.
570.
In his
evidence to the Inquiry, Sir Suma Chakrabarti suggested that
this exchange
had not
occurred in isolation:
341
Letter
Boateng to Amos, 25 September 2003, ‘Iraq: Reconstruction Funding:
Reserve Claim’.
342
Public
hearing, 22 January 2010, page 22.
537