Select committee: International Development Committee
Recommendation 8
Fifth Report - Afghanistan: UK support for aid workers and the Afghan people
Published 4 Mar 2022
Paragraph 46
Addressed to Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office
International Development Committee Afghanistan All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
We welcome the establishment of the Joint Afghanistan Casework Unit but note the lack of clarity around the cost, staffing and current workload of that Unit. We are also concerned that more than three months after it was set up there is still no clarity on whether or not any of the costs of that Unit will be counted as UK ODA expenditure. We recommend that the Government: • establish targets for the performance of the Joint Afghanistan Casework Unit and report quarterly against those targets, publishing that first report by the end of June 2022; • report the number of cases involving people employed as aid workers that the Joint Afghanistan Casework Unit has taken receipt of, and report the status of those cases, by the end of June 2022; and • publish the costs of the Joint Afghanistan Casework Unit it attributes to the ODA budget.
From: International Development Committee, Fifth Report - Afghanistan: UK support for aid workers and the Afghan people (HC 919), paragraph 46, 4 March 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 19 May 2022 (deadline 4 May 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government's response sets out its position on the Committee's recommendations on Afghanistan, including that it "do[es] not accept the Committee's conclusion" on the banking crisis, while describing steps on resettlement, aid disbursal and transparency.
- On resettlement, it says "the capacity of the UK to resettle people is not unlimited" and that it is working to launch the ACRS 'third pathway' "as soon as possible", with "further detail" to be published "in due course".
- On the Committee's call for quarterly reports on ACRS numbers, it says statistics on people relocated "will be included in upcoming editions of Immigration Statistics". It adds that it does not "collate data on whether people were employed as aid workers".
- On aid disbursal, it says it "agree[s] it is imperative" that humanitarian funding is disbursed efficiently and that the FCDO has done this. It states that of the £286 million pledged, 50% was disbursed by end December 2021 and 100% by the end of the financial year.
- On Development Tracker, it says financial contributions to partners will be published "within three months", with "any potentially sensitive information redacted".