Call to improve aid effectiveness

The government must do more to make aid to developing countries more effective, according to MPs.

In a report published on Thursday, the Commons international development committee called for more evidence to increase aid effectiveness.

Simply providing "larger quantities of aid" would not take the millions of people living on less than a day out of poverty, it said.

It added: "Efforts to make aid more effective depend on credible evidence which links particular actions with better development outcomes.

"Large pieces of this evidential base are missing."

The Department for International Development (DfID) "must ensure that it is not simply joining a plausible consensus but has done the research to prove to us and, equally importantly, the taxpayer, that its approach delivers more effective aid", it said.

"Without it, DfID is operating on well-intentioned guesswork."

It said that the Paris declaration, under which 100 donor and developing countries agreed to measure their success at making aid more effective with a set of indicators and targets, had "some impact" on development assistance.

And while it commended DfID for working "to fulfil its commitments under the declaration", it added that "progress globally, however, has been patchier".