Who is Anne-Marie Trevelyan, DFID's new secretary of state?

LONDON — When Conservative Party politician Anne-Marie Trevelyan was appointed as the new leader of the U.K. Department for International Development last week, she became the organization’s sixth secretary of state since the Brexit referendum that took place less than four years ago. “[Trevelyan’s] lack of obvious development-related experience — or previous interest in the area — is a concern.” --— A former senior DFID official Although her appointment was a relief to the development community — securing the department’s future for the time being — it also came as a surprise. Trevelyan has shown little previous interest in the sector, and not much was known about her. A loyalist to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the former corporate financier backed his 2019 campaign to lead the Conservatives. She was a board member of the staunchly pro-Brexit European Research Group of eurosceptic parliamentarians and said there would be “rioting on the streets” if the withdrawal from the European Union were delayed. A relative newcomer to politics, she was first elected as Member of Parliament for Berwick-Upon-Tweed — England’s northernmost constituency — in 2015 but did not take on a government role until after Johnson’s rise to the premiership less than seven months ago. Soon after her promotion to the top DFID role last week, tweets she wrote suggesting skepticism of aid began circulating on social media. “Interesting article by Lord Ashcroft on the value (or otherwise) of the overseas aid budget. … #charitybeginsathome,” she wrote in one. In another, she replied to a DFID tweet on child hunger by saying: “There r kids in NE [the Northeast of England] who have no regular meals due to chaotic parents. Should they go hungry?” In 2017, however, she took part in a charitable choir to support victims of the war in Syria. Trevelyan is not the first aid skeptic to become DFID’s secretary of state — Priti Patel was well known for her wariness of foreign aid. But in combination with her lack of experience, it has proved a concern at a time when DFID is fighting to protect its integrity and independence from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. A former senior DFID official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve professional ties, said Trevelyan’s appointment gave the impression that Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who has been in politics for a decade, will be “pulling the strings.” Another said she “was clearly going to be the junior partner politically to Raab.” Leading DFID will be Trevelyan’s most senior job in government yet. She previously held junior ministerial positions at the Ministry of Defence starting in July 2019, working as minister for defense procurement and, most recently, completing a brief stint as minister for the armed forces. She also served as parliamentary private secretary to then-Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson in 2018, and in 2015 she was part of the U.K.’s delegation to the parliamentary assembly of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Just weeks ago, Trevelyan presented medals to British troops serving in the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. While lacking development expertise, some say that Trevelyan’s defense and security background could stand her in good stead for leading DFID. “Somebody who is aware of the policy dilemmas that the U.K. faces in developing countries has some advantage, in that quite a lot of the U.K. engagement in many countries in Africa and Asia has a defense dimension, as well as a development and foreign affairs dimension,” Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director-general of the Royal United Services Institute, told Devex. “At a time when many of our politicians have very little experience of foreign affairs, it's helpful if you have experience in one area or another,” he continued. Chalmers also highlighted that “quite a large proportion” of the U.K. aid budget is spent in conflict-prone countries, arguing that “it's helpful to have that conflict sensitivity” when approaching many of the countries where U.K. aid is deployed. But the former senior DFID official was more skeptical. Trevelyan’s defense background “may be useful when it comes to DFID engaging with National Security Council-type issues and agenda and critical regions such as Syria and MENA [the Middle East and North Africa] where there are also legitimate British defense or security interests, but her lack of obvious development-related experience — or previous interest in the area — is a concern,” he said. “It just reinforces the perception that ... she's just there to implement a Johnson/Raab approach to using the aid budget to pursue their wider post-Brexit, ‘global Britain’ agendas.” He added that “a lot of my former colleagues at DFID will essentially be in ‘damage limitation’ mode, trying to keep the ministers happy while not letting them loose on major ongoing programs which could potentially be subverted for non-poverty-reduction-related objectives.” A second former DFID official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, said the political landscape meant Trevelyan was unlikely to deviate from Johnson’s agenda. “All new Cabinet members want [or] need to demonstrate absolute loyalty,” he said. “So we might expect a harder-edged depiction of aid and the role of DFID [from Trevelyan] — far more on how the national interest is being served and how there are benefits to ordinary people, less about the global mission on poverty reduction and non-U.K. beneficiaries of U.K. aid. She'll be keen to stamp her credentials in that direction.” Outside of security, Trevelyan has campaigned to reduce plastics. Her environmental record is patchy, having voted to support fracking — the injection of high-pressure mixtures of water and other materials into rock to extract natural gas and oil — in national parks. But she has also spoken at length in Parliament on the need to protect wild birds, including puffins and eider ducks. Another issue closer to home — her young adult son has Asperger’s syndrome — is campaigning to improve conditions for autistic people. During her time at the Ministry of Defence, she advocated against the military’s automatic disbarment of people with autism. "We're losing the opportunity for brilliant minds who have the ability to have this extraordinary focus,” she said. “We absolutely need these minds employed for the nation's good.”