December 20, 2012
The Pergau Dam Affair: Britain's greatest assist scandal
Tim Lankester, the polite servant in assign during the assist for traffic liaison in 1994, has created the revealing book about the liaison that redefined British aid.
by Claire Provost, guardian.co.uk (12-12-12)
Nearly twenty years on, the Pergau Dam Affair remains Britain's greatest aid scandal. Not usually were hundreds of millions of pounds in UK assist linked to the vital arms deal, though the plan was deemed hopelessly uneconomic by officials in Britain as good as Malaysia. In late 1994, assist for the plan was declared unlawful in the landmark case at the UK High Court.
The Guardian ran some-more than 100 articles upon Pergau that year, that dug into the secrecy surrounding the event as good as asked how it was possible that so much could have gone wrong.
As the comparison polite servant in assign of UK assist when the liaison broke, Tim Lankester (left) found himself the centre of attention. It was the 1993 National Audit Office (NAO) report that remarkable his refusal to sign off th! e spendi ng without formal, created instruction from ministers that effectively blew the alarm upon the project. His move raised the question: why had comparison politicians authorized 238m in assist then the largest grant awarded for the single plan against the advice of polite servants?
Lankester has now created the erotically appealing though eye-wateringly costly book upon the affair. Uncovering lost papers as good as reconstructing the twists as good as turns of events, it offers the behind-the-scenes take upon the debate that would redefine British foreign aid.
"We were slipping in this direction for years," he says, describing the "pessimistic" mood between UK assist officials at the time. The assist bill had been slashed, some-more was being destined through international organisations, as good as what was left was increasingly being abused by commercial interests. "Pergau was us drawing the line in the sand," he says.
The UK assist programme at the time was managed by the Overseas Development Administration (ODA), the dialect of the Foreign Office. Without the own cupboard minister, the ODA was as good diseased to defend the corner, says Lankester. Meanwhile, the government's argumentative aid-for-trade process brought increased vigour from business, that saw the assist bill as the sugar pot.
The finish of the cold war had ratcheted up foe in the global arms trade; British firms, along with the small people in government, were after any opportunity to boost sales.
The trouble began in 1988 with the secret counterclaim agreement joining the promise of civilian 
aid to Malaysia with t! he vital arms traffic deal. Lankester, at the Treasury then, sent the memo to John Major warning that the linkage could "create acute annoyance to ministers as good as greedy public expenditure I have small doubt that the press will eventually get upon to this".
However, it would take 5 years for details of the plan to emerge. There were some-more people who knew about Pergau in commercial operation than in Whitehall, says Lankester, while NGOs knew zero before the NAO report. He doubts the plan would have gone through had some-more people good well known some-more about it earlier. Lankester cautions against solely blaming politicians, observant polite servants "gave approach as good easily".
Looking back, he admits he had doubts about the legality of the plan as good as should have sought grave legal advice. He additionally underestimated the power of the commercial operation run in Whitehall as good as the Malaysian Prime Minister's own enterprise to pull through the dam project, he says. On the UK side, he puts much of the event down to the "extremely dominant" Margaret Thatcher, who was good well known to have views upon assist as good as traffic with Malaysia. "It was difficult for ministers to mount up to her."
Lankester visited Pergau for the initial time final summer, as good as contrasts the play of the event with what he found immense healthy beauty as good as the relatively well-functioning dam. "It does work quite well, though it came at such the high cost," he says.
The event did leave the small certain legacies: the cross-party consensus that assist should be officially "untied" from commercial interests, the brand new action enshrining in law the misery reduction focus, as good as the cupboard apportion for the brand new Department for Interna! tional D evelopment (DfID). Now, when the permanent cabinet member dissents from the spending proposal, council is immediately notified.
His book, however, ends with the warning: "It is unfit to say that something like this will never occur again with British aid."
Revelations that 500m in UK assist is outlayed through the small group of, essentially British, consultants raised questions in Sep about who benefits as good as who increase from the UK assist programme.
The World Development Movement, that led the legal challenge against assist for the Pergau dam, sounded the alarm as good as pointed to the bequest of Pergau after the former growth cabinet member Andrew Mitchell reportedly linked assist to India with ambitions to sell Typhoon fighter jets final year.
"We just shouldn't go there," Lankester says of joining traffic with aid. It's the summary he'll take to DfID this month, where he's presenting his book. "I'm happy for us to spend income in countries where we have traffic relations, though I don't want any linkage," he says. "It's just as good dangerous. It's the slippery slope. That's the doctrine of Pergau."
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