Staff cuts in the Department for International Development (DFID) may prevent the UK’s increasing budget for international development being spent effectively, a new report said today.

The International Development Select Committee’s report on the Department for International Development’s Annual Report 2007 welcomes the Comprehensive Spending Review Settlement for 2008-11, which increases DFID’s budget and continues the trend of increasing the trend towards the target of 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income to be allocated to Official Development Assistance by 2013. But it adds that DFID faces a significant challenge in using this funding effectively when it is also required to reduce its administrative costs, and therefore its staff numbers.

Committee chairman Malcolm Bruce, MP for Gordon, said: "We accept that DFID cannot be exempt from Government efficiency targets. But DFID has already significantly reduced its headcount. Further staff cuts are coming at a time when the Department is increasingly focusing on the poorest countries, which are often fragile states. These are countries where development assistance is needed most and where the potential for poverty reduction is greatest. But work in such environments is much more resource-intensive, in terms of both money and people, and therefore expensive. DFID will therefore need to make some difficult decisions about where its priorities lie."

Elsewhere in the report the Committee has welcomed some of the measures intended to increase the Department's effectiveness. DFID’s new Public Service Agreement Delivery Agreement and the establishment of the Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact should make it easier to identify whether DFID’s expenditure is effective in reducing poverty in developing countries.

However, the Committee has expressed concern that DFID does not have in place adequate measures to achieve its aim of promoting gender equality across its programmes.

Bruce added: "Women throughout the developing world continue to have less power, money and land than men. They are more vulnerable to violence and have less access to healthcare and education. DFID needs to up its game on gender equality as the Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved without progress in this area.”

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