Source · Select Committees · International Development Committee
Recommendation 19
19
Accepted in Part
Paragraph: 103
Require BII to align its entire portfolio with the UK Government's development agenda, emphasising impact.
Recommendation
BII must ensure that its entire portfolio is aligned with the UK Government’s development agenda. With a diminished ODA budget there is more pressure to target development assistance towards the poorest and most marginalised groups: consequently, there is a greater responsibility for BII to actively manage its portfolio. It should place a greater emphasis on the impact delivered with the money it controls.
Government Response Summary
The government partially accepts, agreeing ministers should maintain scrutiny over ODA and BII allocations. While stating BII annually monitors development impact for active investments since 2012 and current monitoring is appropriate, the FCDO will review in 2024 whether additional external spot checks are needed to verify BII's internal assessments.
Paragraph Reference:
103
Government Response
Accepted in Part
HM Government
Accepted in Part
Partially Accept The Government agrees that Ministers should maintain scrutiny over the ODA budget, including allocations to BII. Ministers closely review the allocation of the ODA budget to ensure spending is aligned with Departmental priorities and approve all FCDO capital contributions to BII. Capital contributions to BII between 2015–2021 equalled approximately 4% of the UK’s ODA budget and enabled a planned build-up of BII’s activities over that time. The FCDO closely scrutinises BII’s activities to ensure effectiveness. As mentioned in the response to Recommendation 1, strong governance arrangements provide accountability and detailed oversight. FCDO’s active role in setting BII’s five-year strategy ensures BII operates in lockstep with the UK’s International Development Strategy. BII annually monitors the development impact for both direct and intermediated active investments made since BII’s investment mandate was expanded in 2012. Investments made in the current strategy period are assessed under the new Impact Framework. The Impact Score assigned to each new investment, which forms part of the Framework, is also reassessed at 2-year intervals after BII’s initial investment, in addition to annual impact monitoring. Investments made in previous strategy periods 2012–16 and 2017–21 are all subject to annual monitoring and assessed against the development impact metrics agreed at the time of the investment. Ministers recognise the importance of the FCDO-BII Evaluation programme (see response to Recommendation 3) considering gender, development impact and environmental and social outcomes, having integrated these into previous evaluations. The FCDO will ensure these will also be a specified feature of future portfolio and individual investment evaluations. Ministers consider BII’s monitoring to be appropriate. However, as part of FCDO’s commitment to ensure best practice oversight arrangements are maintained, the FCDO will review in 2024 whether additional spot checks of BII investments by external experts to verify BII’s internal ESG and development impact assessment are required.