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Parliamentary Strengthening, developing countries, promoting democracy

New inquiry: Parliamentary Strengthening

3 September 2014

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The Government has recently been assessing the work UK taxpayers fund in strengthening parliaments in developing countries. The Committee has decided that this is an opportune time to undertake a brief inquiry into the subject.

  • The importance of parliaments in developing countries and the value of engaging in Parliamentary strengthening,
  • How best to engage in parliamentary strengthening, in what circumstances to engage and how to ensure work is focused on the needs of developing countries
  • Whether DFID should give a higher priority to Parliamentary strengthening and, if necessary, a lower priority to other work in promoting democracy, eg funding elections and funding civil society to hold governments to account
  • The cost-effectiveness of work on parliamentary strengthening being funded by DFID and other Government Departments in recent years; and how this might be improved (this year there have been DFID and FCO reviews of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy and DFID is preparing a new ‘How to’ note on parliamentary strengthening)
  • What DFID can learn from other donors
  • Whether, and in what circumstances, parliamentary strengthening is  best done bilaterally or through multilateral agencies
  • The value of the Westminster brand and whether DFID should make more use of UK institutions in the work it funds to strengthen parliaments     

The Committee invites written submissions from interested organisations and individuals. The deadline for this is Tuesday 7 October 2014.  The Committee will consider requests for reasonable adjustments to its usual arrangements for taking evidence and publishing material, to enhance access. Please contact indcom@parliament.uk or telephone 020 7219 1221.

Please note
As part of a scheme to encourage paperless working and maximize efficiency, the Committee is piloting a web portal for online submissions of written evidence. Written submissions for this inquiry should therefore be sent via the International Development Committee website- Please click the evidence form to submit written evidence.

Written evidence submitted should:

Have a one page summary at the front
Be no longer than 3000 words in length
Have numbered paragraphs
Avoid the use of colour or expensive-to-print material