International Development (Reporting and Transparency) Bill

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. He raises an important point about bilateral aid, and we must consider how our money fits into that. I am pleased that the Secretary of State has joined us. I hope that the annual report for which the Bill provides will contain an analysis of how our money, and other money, is being spent. I shall cite two examples to show how money is being spent and, unfortunately, wasted. The first relates to a school that was built by a non-governmental organisation to the north of Kandahar—a commendable project to provide education in a small town where there has been no form of education for a couple of decades, because of the various wars. Unfortunately, once the school was built the poppy fields to the north of the town were scorched, taking away the livelihoods—illegal though they were—of all the people who lived in that town. They have abandoned the town, leaving behind a brand-new school building. That is a good example of lack of co-ordination between the various international operations in Afghanistan. The second example relates to bilateral aid, which was mentioned earlier. An embassy offered to build so many miles of road in Afghanistan. There are already many contractors building roads there and much work has been done in that respect. The condition that the donor country placed on the project required that country to provide the contractors. Limited funds were made available for the road building, and by the time the firm of contractors had flown out all its equipment, the time, and the funding, had almost run out. Had that money been allocated to a senior organisation in Afghanistan, it could have paid local contractors to continue the road building, rather than wasting time getting another company to come out and do the same work.