13.1 | Resources

609. Discussions on funding the Better Basra Plan – the first of three Better Basra Plans

– continued into August.

610. Mr Browne wrote to Mr Timms on 10 August to inform him that departments had

agreed to provide a total of £20.4m from existing resources to fund the Plan, now costed

at £26.5m because of the later start for some of the work.379 A total of £7m would come

from the GCPP Reserve and £1.4m from FCO‑managed programmes. The MOD, the

FCO and DFID would each contribute £4m. Mr Browne asked Mr Timms to agree a

further £4m from the Reserve.

611. A Treasury official advised Mr Timms that Treasury officials had facilitated that

deal.380 Negotiations had been difficult, with the MOD offering “considerable resistance”

to the need to find its contribution from the core defence budget.

612. The official concluded that the deal was a good one for the Treasury, because:

• It had held the line that the cost of the Better Basra Plan should not be an

automatic call on the Reserve.

• It had succeeded in getting departments to reprioritise their existing resources

to fund the project.

613. Mr Timms replied to Mr Browne on 15 August, welcoming the successful

conclusion of negotiations and agreeing to provide an additional £4m for the Plan from

the Reserve.381

614. The Better Basra Plan also attracted US$80m in US funding.382

615. Mr Dominic Asquith, British Ambassador to Iraq from 2006 to 2007, reflected on the

UK’s funding mechanisms in his evidence to the Inquiry:

“I think in terms of being able to switch funds, or find extra funds that were required

at short notice … it wasn’t a particularly flexible or effective system. That came out

rather visibly in 2006, when it was clear that we needed to put greater effort into

building up the capabilities in Basra … The calculation … was somewhere in the

region of £30 million, which … was required to come out of our current resources …

which struck me at the time as being certainly a peculiar way of approaching what

we were directed was a high priority, but we weren’t being given the extra resources,

to deliver it.”383

379 Letter Browne to Timms, 10 August 2006, [untitled].

380 Minute Treasury [junior official] to Timms, 15 August 2006, ‘Better Basra Plan’.

381 Letter Timms to Browne, 15 August 2006, ‘Better Basra’.

382 Minute DFID [junior official] to Private Secretary [DFID], 6 October 2006, ‘Iraq: Future for DFID

Programme from 2007’.

383 Public hearing, 4 December 2009, pages 23‑24.

545