You would be hard-pressed to find an area of government policy more transformed under Labour than international development, or even an area over which the party’s rank-and-file are more proud. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown led the G8 on global poverty issues, creating and firmly establishing the Department for International Development as one of the world’s leading government aid agencies.
More, Labour left a legacy of addressing development issues across Whitehall. It’s not just DFID’s work that impacts on global poverty, it’s the rules set down by the Treasury for multinational companies and how they behave across the world, and as much about what the Department for Transport has to say about biofuels, which is behind a huge resource grab in Africa. This is a radically different world from the one the party met in 1997. The financial crisis, climate change, resource and energy scarcity, and rise of the G20 at the expense of the G8 has brought about a need to rethink the UK’s approach to global issues.
You can read what ActionAid has to say on the coalition government’s development policies here. We applaud its decision to protect aid spending. The new emphasis the international development secretary Andrew Mitchell has placed on improving aid effectiveness and transparency is welcome. But as Labour takes up the challenge of renewing policy in opposition, a global approach is needed across all policy areas.
The ‘beyond aid’ agenda: shadow international development secretary Harriet Harman has rightly prioritised the problem of tax avoidance as one of her key policy areas. Aid is crucial to development, has had a huge positive impact and needs to be maximised. However, the OECD estimates that developing countries lose three times as much money to tax havens as they receive in global aid. Much of this is a result of tax avoidance by multinationals, as we’ve shown in the case of the British brewer, SABMiller. Private sector growth is crucial for development but the lack of global standards on tax avoidance means developing countries lose much needed resources that could pay for more schools and hospitals. At this year’s G20, the UK government, from the Treasury to DFID, can and should be leading calls for concerted global action to lay down strong standards to ensure companies to pay their taxes, at home and abroad. Labour ministers championed this agenda at the London G20 in 2009, and the party should continue to call for further action on this front.
The competition over scarce resources: Oil production will soon peak and we need to adjust. Biofuels were once touted as a green solution to energy shortages and climate change. The UK and other EU member states set ambitious targets for the amount of biofuels in transport fuel, and European companies began acquiring land in developing countries to grow them. In just five African countries, 1.1 million hectares have been given over to biofuels (an area the size of Belgium). However, growing evidence is mounting about the social and environmental impact. When a full life cycle analysis is conducted on biofuels, which must include the consequence of all land use change due to biofuels, the net effect is an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. ActionAid, the World Bank and the IMF argue that biofuel production is having a significant effect on global food prices – impacting on lower-income households in the UK and in developing countries. An integrated approach is needed to can find the sustainable solutions to our transport needs, to reduce our demand for energy, tackle climate change and guarantee the world’s rising population has enough food to eat at affordable prices.
These are just two issues where a coherent, cross-government approach is needed to tackle the world’s challenges. Labour’s record on development means it is well placed to play a constructive role in national and international policy debates over these issues, and the party’s policy review allows it to start forming these critical ideas.