In the three years since our election, Labour has transformed Britain’s contribution to international development and the reduction of global poverty. For years under the Tories, development policy was distorted by commercial and short-term political interests. With Labour, all of Britain’s development effort is subject to a simple test – its contribution to the reduction of poverty in the world’s poorest countries.
Despite considerable progress in development over the last four decades, around one in five of the world’s population – two-thirds of them women – live in abject poverty. They survive on the very margins of existence, without access to clean water, sanitation or healthcare, and without even basic education. That is 1.2 billion human beings robbed of their dignity, deprived of the opportunity to fulfil their potential.
For this reason, Labour has focused our development strategy around the achievement of the international development targets (IDTs). These are targets agreed by the major governments of the world at a series of United Nations conferences in the 1990s. The targets include: halving the proportion of the world’s population living in poverty, universal primary education, improvements in child and maternal mortality, reproductive healthcare for all and sustainable development plans in every country. All this to be achieved by 2015.
While these targets are ambitious, they are not unrealistic. They are serious projections of what can be achieved if the best practice in development of recent decades is implemented more widely. Labour’s objective has been to help galvanise the national and international political will to put in place the policies that will deliver on these targets. And that has meant a radical shift in the priorities of British development policy.
After years of Tory cuts, Labour has increased substantially the resources available for development. By 2003, Britain’s development spending is set to rise to £3.6 billion, the highest figure ever in cash and real terms and 53 percent higher than in 1997. As a proportion of national wealth, development aid will rise to 0.33 percent, up from the 0.26 percent we inherited from the Tories.
And we are spending this money in new ways. Not supporting isolated development projects, but working increasingly with developing country governments to put in place economic and governance reforms that will allow them to generate higher levels of economic growth and deliver quality public services.
We have not just made this shift of priorities within our own development programmes. We have also put considerable energy into improving the quality of the major multilateral development institutions to which we contribute, such as the European Commission, World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations.
But poverty reduction obviously depends on far more than good quality development programmes. Developing countries themselves must lead the development process in their countries, putting in place the reforms necessary to reduce poverty. We also need to ensure that international agreements on the environment, trade, finance, investment, agriculture and security help rather than hinder sustainable development in the poorest countries. This is why Labour has deliberately broadened the focus of our development strategy to engage with these wider policy issues.
On debt, for example, Britain has played a leading role in arguing for faster, wider and deeper debt relief for the world’s poorest countries, and for debt relief to be linked to policies that benefit the poor.
Similarly on trade, Britain has been very active in pushing for reforms to international trade rules that would bring real development benefits to the poorest countries. A particular focus has been on agriculture, textiles and industrial products, where rich countries impose a range of barriers to poor country exports.
In these and other areas, Labour argues for a shift in the balance of power within existing institutions and structures in favour of poor people. If we are to create a world which is more equitable and in which we make faster progress in the reduction of poverty, the interests of the world’s poor need to be brought centre-stage. Labour will continue to use its influence to champion the cause of the world’s poor and to promote global social justice.