Brown points way on global poverty

Anthony Butcher · 28-12-2004, 12:49 PM

Quote:

The coming year offers a "once-in-a-generation" opportunity to eradicate global poverty, Chancellor Gordon Brown said.

He was speaking as more than 100 charities, trade unions and campaign groups joined forces under the banner Make Poverty History to urge the Government to do more to help.

Mr Brown said Britain had led the way on debt relief, but acknowledged a "step-change" was needed to complete the process.

Speaking on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, he said: "We shouldn't have to choose, as we are at the moment, between the temporary emergency relief that we are giving... and the long-term tackling of the underlying causes of poverty.

"We need to be able to do both, and that's why we need something akin to the Marshall Plan of the 1940s, which is a bold effort at reconstruction, a very substantial increase in resources."

A doubling of international aid was needed, he told Today.

Mr Brown hailed the Make Poverty History coalition and the "huge groundswell" of support from faith groups, along with the work of high-profile campaigners such as Bono and Bob Geldof.

"We have tried to respond by trebling over 10 years the amount of aid," he said.

"We led the way with 100% debt relief for the individual countries. Now there are 27 countries instead of one receiving debt relief.

mkpdavies · 28-12-2004, 01:19 PM

Quote:

Mr Brown hailed the Make Poverty History coalition and the "huge groundswell" of support from faith groups, along with the work of high-profile campaigners such as Bono and Bob Geldof.

Why does this one statement make me very uneasy about the whole thing?

I just hope all this is not a load of hot air with millions being wasted and the people not actualy benefiting at all! Should we perhaps concentrate on getting a few countries on their feet at a time, rather than spreading the resource so thinly over all of them?

I don't know, I just don't trust Brown as far as I could throw him!

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