Public Policy and Expenditure Mailing List Archive

["Andy Bullock" <<address removed>>]

I acknowledge that it is not an easy task to summarise a numerous and varied 
set of contributions. However, I would just like to pick up on Colin Poulter's 
fifth summary of the economic opportunity dialogue, and his point that my 
comments on DFID's PSA are 'internal organisational issues for DFID'. 

There are three clues that it is not an internal issue - the word "Public", the 
word "Service" and the word "Agreement". 

There are examples from other international development 'sectors' where UK 
politicians at the very highest level have made (very) public commitments, 
which they have then failed to meet, or it has later emerged that they never 
intended to meet. Yet, they bask in the publicity and kudos at the time of 
making those commitments. And then nothing happens.

Is this also a pattern in agriculture, food and hunger? Well, we could try this 
one from the former Secretary of State: 

"The UK Government stands ready to be judged against our delivery of (our) 
strategy (to eliminate hunger). And the whole development community - 
governments, international agencies and civil society in all its parts - should 
be judged collectively against the delivery of the Millennium Development Goals 
on poverty and hunger".

And the current global trend in hunger is?

Who judges, how and when? Its hardly an internal organisational issue, is it. 

Andy Bullock