The Newton Fund

International Development Committee

Following the government’s response, this review typically would have been the subject of an oral evidence session in front of Parliament’s International Development Committee (IDC), or its ICAI sub-Committee. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Committee instead took evidence from ICAI, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in writing before publishing its conclusions.

ICAI follow-up

ICAI follows up on all of its reviews to check what progress has been made since publication.

ICAI’s Newton Fund follow-up is available to read now. We rated the government’s progress towards meeting the recommendations for our Newton Fund review as ‘inadequate’.

We found that governance and oversight mechanisms had been strengthened, and there had been substantial improvement on gender equality, diversity and inclusion. However, there had been little attention to addressing ICAI’s core concerns over the Fund’s primary purpose, development impact or tied aid.

Further follow-up

We returned to the Newton Fund through the next follow-up process, which was published in June 2021. We found that the changes that have been made to improve the Fund’s approaches to ODA compliance and assurance, and the changes to how the Fund monitors, evaluates and learns, are very positive and indicative of a significant amount of work.