13.2 |
Conclusions: Resources
Ms Short
and Sir Suma Chakrabarti both told the Inquiry that DFID’s ability
to plan to
deliver
humanitarian assistance had been constrained by the Treasury’s
reluctance to
provide
additional funding from the Reserve.
By the end
of January 2003, DFID officials had developed a detailed (but still
draft)
assessment
of potential UK contributions for humanitarian relief and
reconstruction in Iraq,
under a
number of scenarios.
Ms Short
did not approach Mr Brown or the Treasury with a specific bid
for additional
resources
until 21 March (although she was aware that Mr Brown was
likely to support it).
She did
write to Mr Blair on 5 February, 14 February and 5 March,
advising him of the cost
of
potential UK contributions for humanitarian relief and
reconstruction (up to £440m a
year), and
seeking direction on the role of the UK in delivering the
humanitarian response.
She also
raised the issue in Cabinet on 27 February.
Given the
scale of UK resources that might have been required, it was
reasonable to seek
clear
direction from Mr Blair on the UK’s role in the humanitarian
response. But that did
not
preclude an early bid to the Reserve. Indeed, a detailed bid may
have focused the
Government’s
attention on the need to define the UK’s role more
clearly.
By the end
of March, DFID had earmarked £210m for humanitarian assistance in
Iraq,
comprising
£90m from DFID’s own resources and £120m that it had secured from
the
Reserve. In
addition, the Treasury had agreed that the UK military could spend
£30m on
providing
humanitarian assistance in the UK’s Area of
Operations.
The
humanitarian crisis that had been feared did not materialise. By
the beginning of May,
DFID had
reallocated the balance of the £210m allocated for humanitarian
assistance that
remained
uncommitted – approximately £90m – to reconstruction.
45.
Given its
limited programme funds, the FCO found it particularly difficult to
identify
funding for
new activities in Iraq. It was successful in making bids for
funding from
the Reserve
to pay for security costs for personnel deployed to Iraq and
diplomatic
representation,
but other bids were rejected in full or in part.
46.
The FCO’s
difficulty in securing additional funding was due in part to the
quality of
its bids to
the Reserve, and in part to the Treasury’s perception that the FCO
had not
made
sufficient effort to reprioritise from within its existing
resources. The Inquiry has not
assessed
the accuracy of that perception.
47.
In their
efforts to secure funding, departments stretched the scope of the
GCPP to
accommodate
activities as diverse as military equipment for the Iraqi Security
Forces
and the
Basra Poetry Festival. But the Pool was small (only £7.5m for Iraq
in 2003/04)
and the
process for securing funding was slow. Sir Mark Lyall‑Grant told
the Inquiry that
decisions
about how to spend relatively small sums of money had led to “huge
disputes
577