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| Reduce Third World Debt! |
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| In my opinion, the reduction of Third World Debt is a crucial moral issue and vital in the fight against poverty. An urgent overhaul of debt relief rules is urgently needed to stop the world’s very poorest countries from incurring further debts. |
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| I have been elected to the House of Commons most senior Committee on this issue. This enables me to have one-on-one meetings with the Head of the World Bank, Mr James Wolfensohn and the Head of the IMF, Mr Horst Köhler - I lobby them personally in Washington D C on British public concern on this serious issue. |
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| Many developing countries struggle to pay millions of pounds with very few of these having even a hope of clearing their debts. Many of these debts, which have been growing since the 1970s, have condemned the world's poor to lives of desperate poverty and utter despair. Money which could and should be spent on health, education and sustainable development is instead having to be used for debt repayment. This is wrong. |
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| While small progress has been made in cancelling some poor countries’ bilateral debts, many countries still have owe large amounts of multilateral debt, despite the fact that the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative is now over six years old. Only six of the 19 countries the World Bank predicted would have completed the HIPC Initiative by the end of 2002 did so. And 70 per cent of countries have missed the targets for receiving their due debt relief. HIPC needs a fundamental review of the way it operates. Though well intentioned it is not doing enough for those in poor developing countries. Of the 42 countries participating in the HIPC Initiative, only six countries (14 per cent) have completed the Initiative and sixteen countries (26 per cent) have not received any relief under the Initiative. |
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| I believe that reform of international rules must also be a priority to promote free trade and open markets and allow poor countries to increase their share of international trade. Debt relief on its own does not offer a long-term viable solution to tackling poverty. Poor countries must be able to export their goods to the West. Yet the West has barriers to such trade, which is quite wrong. The Government have failed to take an effective lead on the reform of international trade rules and the Common Agricultural Policy, both of which are harming poor countries, as you will read elsewhere on this website. |
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