This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The British Foreign Office has been ranked one of the world’s worst major aid donors on transparency, according to a new study.

The Whitehall department was described as “poor” and “well below average” on transparency of aid spend, ranking 40th among 45 major donors by the Aid Transparency Index, launched by the global campaign Publish What You Fund.

The annual index examines international donors that spend more than $1bn (£760m) in aid, and assess how easy it is to track the cash.

The FCO ranks below South Korea’s International Co-operation Agency, which came 38th in the index. Spain’s agency for international development and the FCO were the only two European organisations included in the “poor” category.



In contrast to the FCO’s low ranking, the Department for International Development (DfID) came third, with a rating of “very good”.

Catherine Turner, director of advocacy at Publish What You Fund, said; “This is a wake-up call to the Foreign Office to up their game when it comes to aid transparency. Such a low ranking raises questions about how seriously the FCO is taking their commitment to improve standards.”

The FCO had no information available on 39% of the transparency indicators, she said, and lacked data on evaluation and results.

The 2015 UK aid strategy committed all government departments that provide aid to achieving a “good” or “very good” rating in the index by 2020.

Katy Chakrabortty, Oxfam GB’s head of advocacy, said: “It’s a worrying irony that, amongst the departments other than DfID spending aid, the Foreign Office has taken the most strides towards transparency, yet remains almost rock bottom in the rankings … This is not good enough at a time when the government already spends over a quarter of UK aid outside of DfID.”

The rising proportion of the £13.4bn British aid budget spent by departments outside of DfID has drawn concern from aid organisations, who see the FCO and others as less transparent.

Recently, MPs from the international development committee told Penny Mordaunt, the development secretary, to “get a grip” on aid spent outside DfID, amid worries that millions of pounds were being spent in China. There have also been widespread transparency concerns over the conflict, stability and security fund, a cross-department aid pot set up under the auspices of the FCO and DfID.

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An FCO spokeswoman said it was committed to transparency but security issues prevented it releasing details on projects that were high-risk or in conflict zones.

She said: “Foreign Office aid is tackling poverty and conflict, and boosting prosperity in some of the world’s poorest countries. We have made changes to improve our transparency, and routinely publish our aid spending on gov.uk. We are confident that we will meet HMG’s transparency commitment by 2020.”