Outside experts will be consulted on the U.K. government’s new development strategy, according to Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.
“We will be tapping the expertise and the experience of all our stakeholders. We get a huge amount of input in the ordinary course of things from all the NGO groups, from our international partners, from the key partners that we work very closely with from the U.N. [United Nations], and all of those will be able to feed into that process,” he said Tuesday.
Raab was speaking to politicians on the U.K. Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, which monitors the work of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office.
The background: The U.K. government has faced repeated criticism for an alleged lack of consultation on the recent merger of the Department for International Development and the Foreign & Commonwealth Office — a charge Raab denied during the committee session.
Asked whether FCDO is actively calling in people to consult on the development strategy, Raab said he would write to committee Chairman Tom Tugendhat with more detail.
Raab also refused to give a precise publication date for the new strategy but said it would be released in “months, not years,” adding that FCDO is “actively working” on the document.
Why it matters: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy — a major document outlining the U.K. government’s international policies — was published in March but received backlash for placing little emphasis on development.
Since then, development advocates have been questioning how the country’s reduced aid budget will be spent in the future and what approach the government will take on development more generally. The new strategy aims to answer some of those questions.
Aid advocates are now likely to hold Raab to his pledge that they will be consulted.