13.1 |
Resources
675.
Sir Suma
also told the Inquiry that Ministers had considered reallocating
funding
to Iraq
from low‑income countries, but had decided that that would not be
consistent
with DFID’s
mission to maximise its impact on poverty. Ministers had instead
decided
to reallocate
funding to Iraq from DFID programmes in other middle‑income
countries:
“… that
meant closing some programmes … in Eastern Europe, Central Europe,
and
also Latin
America … in order to help finance the Iraq
programme.”
676.
The Inquiry
describes earlier in this Section the creation of the Global
Conflict
Prevention
Pool (GCPP) in order to promote a more joined‑up approach to
funding
peacekeeping
and peace enforcement operations and conflict prevention
programmes.
677.
Sir Mark
Lyall‑Grant told the Inquiry that while he agreed that the
principle behind
the GCPP
was a good one, decisions about how to spend relatively small sums
of
money had
led to “huge disputes between Government departments”, which
had
consumed
significant amounts of senior officials’ time.423
He
concluded that Pools
(the GCPP
and the ACPP) had “essentially collapsed” under the pressure of
rising costs,
and had
been “a failed experiment”.
678.
Sir Peter
Ricketts, FCO Permanent Under Secretary from 2006 to 2010, told
the
Inquiry:
“I wouldn’t
have said that they are a failed experiment, but they are certainly
under
real stress
because of rising costs, particularly of assessed contributions to
the UN
and other
international organisations … That has required some difficult
prioritisation
decisions …
But I think the Pools have been useful in bringing the three
departments
together
and forcing us to make choices about what our top priorities are
…”424
679.
This section
describes the Government’s mechanisms for scrutinising
UK
expenditure,
and how those mechanisms were engaged in relation to Iraq. The
Inquiry
has not
conducted its own audit of any element of UK expenditure in
relation to Iraq.
680.
A number of
bodies contribute to the scrutiny of government expenditure,
including:
•
The Public
Accounts Committee (PAC). The main work of the PAC is
the
examination
of the reports produced by the National Audit Office
(NAO).
The Committee
typically examines 50 value for money reports each
year,
as well as
reports on some departments’ resource accounts.
•
Departmental
select committees. The core tasks of the select
committees
include
examining and reporting on estimates, annual expenditure plans
and
accounts,
and monitoring performance against targets in the Public
Service
Agreements.
423
Public
hearing, 20 January 2010, pages 36-37.
424
Public
hearing, 2 February 2010, pages 21‑22.
557