Tackling fraud in UK aid
The government’s approach to managing fraud in the aid programme is broadly relevant and effective – but more can be done to find fraud cases by improving oversight and intelligence sharing across aid-spending departments, and streamlining and enhancing whistleblowing systems.
International Development Committee
A hearing is held by Parliament’s International Development Committee (IDC) or their ICAI sub-committee for most ICAI reviews.
The hearing for this review took place in July 2021. You can watch the hearing online.
ICAI follow-up
Approximately one year after we publish our reports, we follow up on the steps the government has taken in response to our recommendations. This process is a key link in the accountability chain, providing Parliament and the public with an account of how well government departments have responded to ICAI reviews.
During our follow-up review, we found that the government, led by FCDO, engaged positively with our review and the responses to its recommendations have led to important changes, including the establishment of a cross-government ODA Counter Fraud Forum.
However, severe human resource shortages following the FCDO merger in both the fraud investigations team and the Control and Assurance (counter-fraud) team have hampered the implementation of plans. We therefore judge that the government’s response to Recommendations 2, 3 and 4 is inadequate, despite some initial promising signs, and will return to it again next year.
Further follow-up
Overall, our further follow-up review has found that FCDO is yet to take adequate action to address ICAI’s three outstanding recommendations from the original review, either because of delays in taking action (in the case of recommendation 2), or because it is unclear whether initial steps taken will deliver the required change (in the case of recommendations 3 and 4).
Given that taking forward the actions necessary to deliver on these outstanding recommendations is critical to efforts to limit fraud risks facing the UK aid programme, we will return to review the government’s response to these recommendations again in 2024.
Third follow-up
We will return again in next year’s follow-up review to examine whether there has been adequate action to strengthen the approach taken to whistleblowing, to pursue independent scrutiny of procurement and to take a proactive approach to fraud investigation.