UK Home Office wants to 'significantly expand' ODA portfolio

LONDON — Priti Patel, the U.K.’s home secretary, has an “ambition to significantly expand the Home Office’s ODA [official development assistance] portfolio,” according to a civil service job listing. The advertisement is inviting applications for a new role at the Home Office: director of ODA and upstream delivery, paying up to £110,000 ($135,000) per year. Candidate interviews are due to take place in mid-July. “The role is to build and lead a new ODA Directorate for the Home Office and enact transformative change to focus the Department’s activities on strategic upstream interventions,” the ad states. “As we look towards the next SR [spending review], the Director will need to use their experience to build a credible SR bid in line with the Home Secretary’s ambition to f the Home Office’s ODA portfolio,” it adds. The Home Office declined to give Devex any further information about the job or the department’s plans for increasing its ODA portfolio. Previous experience managing an ODA project and “significant experience of ODA policy and engagement” are requirements for the role, according to the job description. “It’s unusual for a job advert to mention the secretary of state’s ambitions in a spending review,” said Ian Mitchell, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development think tank. “The Home Office’s focus is on strengthening borders and deterring migration. ... This is not fighting poverty in any sense.” --— Nick Dearden, director, Global Justice Now Mitchell said he was “concerned” about the lack of development objectives justifying the ambition to acquire more ODA money. “The ambition was clearly about growing the amount of money the department receives from the ODA pot,” he added. “I think it's unhelpful to see the ODA pot as something that builds the size of your department,” he said. It is “the only piece of government spending we use for other countries' development,” whereas the Home Office is focused on domestic work. The Department for International Development itself has not had a real-terms increase in its budget for five years, he said. The Home Office ODA portfolio is already “substantial,” according to the ad, which says that the department spends more than £500 million in ODA, although U.K. government statistics indicate that figure was £452 million in 2019. Much of that is focused on supporting asylum-seekers arriving in the U.K., which is allowable under international aid rules but controversial since it means the money never leaves donor countries. The Home Office is not the only department outside of DFID to spend ODA. Since 2015, the U.K. government has pursued a strategy of spending more ODA outside the development department in a bid to improve coordination of strategic objectives. However, the strategy has been criticized, as some departments spend aid less effectively and transparently than others. Jonathan Glennie, a development researcher and senior fellow at the Joep Lange Institute, told Devex he was not opposed to the Home Office spending ODA but said, “The problem is that spending aid is inherently very hard to get right — something people not experienced in this field probably won't appreciate.” He added that “people in other ministries need to be very humble when it comes to making spending decisions and overseeing ODA spending, and they need to be overseen and engaged with experts in ODA spending.” Others in the development world were more critical. “We are deeply concerned that the Home Office is currently spending aid money, let alone expanding its so-called development program,” said Nick Dearden, director of Global Justice Now. “The Home Office’s focus is on strengthening borders and deterring migration. ... This is not fighting poverty in any sense,” he said. According to Development Tracker, a government tool showing aid spending, the Home Office currently has four active ODA projects, which are focused on relocating Syrian refugees, supporting asylum-seekers, tackling modern slavery, and decreasing smuggling. Patel, an aid skeptic, was the U.K. secretary of state for international development between 2016 and 2017 but was forced to leave the job after carrying out unauthorized meetings with Israeli government officials. Last year, she began working at the Home Office, where she has been subject to high-profile allegations of bullying, although a government investigation reportedly cleared her. The Home Office declined to comment for this story.