Value for Money
The effectiveness of Official Development Assistance expenditure
Published 20 June 2019
6 recommendations
Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, HM Treasury
International
nao.org.uk
This report focuses on what Official Development Assistance spending is achieving in practice.
Recommendations (6)
Source: NAO Recommendations Tracker · PAC follow-up below
HM Treasury
Rec 1
Accepted
Implemented
HM Treasury should, as part of the Spending Review:
• develop a systematic approach to assessing departments' capability and capacity to deliver their plans for ODA expenditure and their plans to consider the effectiveness of that spending; and
• consider each department's and cross-cutting fund's actual ODA expenditure against the budget agreed as part of the Spending Review 2015, to contribute to its assessment of each department's capacity to deliver programmes funded in this way.
HM Treasury
Rec 2
Accepted
No Longer Relevant
HM Treasury should, when agreeing the framework for assessing progress against the objectives in the UK Aid strategy, allocate responsibilities for monitoring progress.
HM Treasury
Rec 3
Accepted
Implemented
HM Treasury should develop guidance on how departments and cross-cutting funds might make the impact of their ODA expenditure more transparent as part of, for example,the annual report and accounts process.
HM Treasury
Rec 4
Accepted
No Longer Relevant
HM Treasury and DFID should set out the steps they will take, across a range of scenarios, to make sure the UK meets its legal obligation regarding the ODA target in the light of the UK's decision to leave the European Union.
Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office
Rec 5
Accepted
Implemented
Each department should, depending on the outcome of the DFID-funded review of transparency performance, produce a plan for the actions required to help it meet the target.
Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office
Rec 6
Partially Accepted
Implemented
Departments should:
• classify their programmes according to the type of performance measure (such as activities, outputs and outcomes) to which they are best suited: and
• then, working together, share information on the approaches they take across these classifications.
Parliamentary Committee Follow-Up
The Public Accounts Committee examined this NAO report and published its own recommendations. The government responds to PAC recommendations via Treasury Minutes.
117th Report - The effectiveness of Official Development Assistance expenditure
Public Accounts Committee
· 23 September 2019