In his evidence to the Committee David Ward urged MPs to act.
The UK Department for International Development (DfID) has agreed to support the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety by reinstating its funding pledge to the World Bank’s Global Road Safety Facility (GRSF).
According to DfID, the £1 million funding allocation is to “achieve measurable results in improving road safety in developing countries”. DfID said it will consider a further £0.5 million allocation to the GRSF, if the facility is successful in attracting finance from other sources and provides evidence of results. The DfID funds will be allocated over a three year period.
The funds were outlined in the UK Government’s response, published on 19 December 2011, to a Parliamentary inquiry and report on infrastructure. DfID agreed with the House of Commons International Development Select Committee that “appropriate life cycle risk analysis” of expected road crash death and injury scenarios is also needed both for its own programmes and in the work of other donors.
In its inquiry, the International Development Select Committee had found that DfID failed to honour its £1.5 million pledge initially made to the GRSF in 2009 at the high-level Moscow Ministerial on global road safety. In evidence to the Committee, Lord Robertson’s independent Commission for Global Road Safety had urged MPs to call on DfID to honour its pledge. In oral evidence to the committee of MPs David Ward, Executive Secretary of the Commission for Global Road Safety, had described the DfID decision to drop its Moscow funding pledge as “quite astonishing, in the context where DFID has no cuts, that the new Government is even reviewing this. How can you go to an international conference on a subject like this, make a commitment like that, and then forget about it because of the change of Government?”
Chair of the International Development Select Committee Malcolm Bruce MP, highlighted the reinstated pledge as an important move:
"We welcome the Government's positive response to our report on infrastructure. We are especially pleased that the Government has listened to our request that it reinstate the £1.5 million payment that was pledged in 2009-then subsequently withdrawn-to the Global Road Safety Facility. DFID claims to place a high priority on road safety in developing countries: it is only right that the Department makes some direct funding to the cause."
DfID said it would also “develop guidance for the inclusion of road safety design within UK-funded road programmes”. DfID also resolved to continue to influence the Multilateral Development Banks to hold them to account on pledges of improved attention to road safety within road infrastructure programmes.
David Ward, Executive Secretary of the Commission for Global Road Safety and Director General of the FIA Foundation said: “This policy U-turn has at last pointed DfID in the right direction. We commend DfID for reviewing its decision and reinstating its Moscow commitment to the GRSF. Prime Minister David Cameron has himself acknowledged that confronting the global epidemic of road traffic injuries is an international priority. The UK Government is a signatory to the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety. But this would have meant little without a funding commitment, so it is encouraging to see the UK now playing its part in allocating some much needed resources.”
Click here for DfID’s response in full >
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmintdev/1721/1721.pdf
See the previous stories on the Commission for Global Road Safety’s campaign to reinstate the Moscow funding:
http://www.makeroadssafe.org/news/2011/Pages/DfIDmuststandbyitswordandfundglobalroadsafetysayMPs.aspx
http://www.fiafoundation.org/news/archive/2011/Pages/UKGovernmentUrgedtoHonouritsMoscowMinisterialPledge.aspx