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Source · National Audit Office

The effectiveness of Official Development Assistance expenditure

This report focuses on what Official Development Assistance spending is achieving in practice.

Published: 20 Jun 2019 Recommendations: 6 Type: Value for Money NAO confirmed: 6 Department: Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
Dept: Department for Business, Energy & Industrial StrategyForeign, Commonwealth & Development OfficeHM Treasury Topics: International nao.org.uk →

Recommendations

6 items
5 accepted 1 partially accepted 4 implemented

Recommendation 1

Addressee: HM Treasury · Source location: Page 15, paragraph 25

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.

Response position: Accepted

Delivery: Implemented · Q1 2021-22 · Confirmed by NAO

Recommendation 2

Addressee: HM Treasury · Source location: Page 15, paragraph 26

HM Treasury should, when agreeing the framework for assessing progress against the objectives in the UK Aid strategy, allocate responsibilities for monitoring progress.

Response position: Accepted

Delivery: No longer relevant · Confirmed by NAO

Recommendation 3

Addressee: HM Treasury · Source location: Page 15, paragraph 27

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.

Response position: Accepted

Delivery: Implemented · Q1 2021-22 · Confirmed by NAO

Recommendation 4

Addressee: HM Treasury · Source location: Page 15, paragraph 28

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.

Response position: Accepted

Delivery: No longer relevant · Confirmed by NAO

Recommendation 5

Addressee: Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office · Source location: Page 16, paragraph 29

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.

Response position: Accepted

Delivery: Implemented · 05/2022 · Confirmed by NAO

Recommendation 6

Addressee: Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office · Source location: Page 16, paragraph 30

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.

Response position: Partially accepted

Delivery: Implemented · 06/2022 · Confirmed by NAO

Public Accounts Committee follow-up

1 report

The Public Accounts Committee examined this NAO report and published its own recommendations. The government responds to PAC recommendations via Treasury Minutes.