Gordon Brown – 1998 Speech at Lambeth Palace on Reducing Debt in Poor Countries

The speech made by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, at Lambeth Palace, London, on 29 July 1998.

I am grateful to have, at your invitation, Archbishop, an opportunity to be a part of this Lambeth Conference, with its historic theme, the theme chosen by all nine provinces in the Anglican communion worldwide, our duty to help countries burdened and immiserated by debt.

We are constantly reminded of the economic links that now bind countries and markets together in the increasingly globalised economy.

But for far longer, indeed for centuries, the Church, with its worldwide mission, has avowed and demonstrated the moral links that bind us together, all of us, citizens and nations, rich and poor, in one moral universe.

Martin Luther King spoke of how we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny, part of one moral universe.

And it is because of our shared responsibilities, our common concerns, our linked destinies ,our dependence each upon another that our teaching tells us that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

To quote the experience of only one country, Niger, where life expectancy does not remotely approach the biblical three score years and ten and where a majority are dead by 50; four fifths of adults are illiterate; two thirds live on less than 1 dollar a day. It is a country which spends nearly four times more of its resources servicing its debts than it does on looking after the health of the people.

Part of a region in which 200 million can barely move their bodies because of hunger, part of a world where 30,000 children die every day from preventable diseases and where 1.3 billions, two thirds of them women, are in poverty.

John F Kennedy said that if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

Because money spent on servicing debts is needed far more for health and for education, debt relief is a matter not just of dispensing charity but ensuring justice prevails.

But debt relief is also an economic issue, because a mountain of inherited and hitherto immovable debt stands in the way of the economic development which would break the cycle of poverty disease and illiteracy.

And it is to move this mountain of debt that, in response to the arguments and pleas of the churches, I believe our inescapable duty is to try to ensure by the year 2000 all highly indebted poor countries are embarked on a systematic process of debt reduction.

Last year only one country had entered the process. Now there are six, most recently including Mozambique, with £3 billion of debt relief pledged.

For the fourteen others with still with no place at the table – it is urgent that following the G7 we step up on our actions to systematically remove the barriers between them and the debt reduction measures that will help them. And I look to you to use your moral authority with governments all over the world to support the necessary action.

First, for countries like Rwanda, Liberia, Democratic Congo weighed down by the double burden of debt and the economic consequences of war, and who without special help will never recover, we have an urgent duty to help them move from crisis to development by:

– taking into consideration performance under the post-conflict assistance programmes in assessing a debtors track record;

– tackling the problem of debt arrears; and

– ensuring ,with help from bilateral donors, that IMF and World Bank funding is concessional

Second, for all other countries, we must find faster and easier ways to secure the debt relief they need and so in the run up to the IMF and World Bank meetings in October, Britain will offer highly indebted poor countries, all the technical assistance and back up they need to enter and make the most of debt reduction programmes.

And at the IMF meetings in October we will ask that all possible means of financing debt reduction be considered.

Third, each country must be asked to do more.

I want every creditor country to follow our unilateral action in targeting export credits for the poorest countries solely on peaceful and productive expenditure.

And I want all donor countries to write off their aid loans to the poorest countries, something that the UK government has already done in its loans with over thirty of the world’s poorest countries, a policy now extended to those poorer Commonwealth countries committed to poverty eradication.

Fourth, we must help our citizens do more.

Clare Short will tell you how as an individual government we are both increasing aid – by 28 per cent in real terms or 1.6 billions over the next three years – and redirecting aid to health, education and anti poverty programmes. Our goal as a government is to halve the proportion of the world’s population living in absolute poverty by 2015.

But we also want British people to be part of a giving society.

And I can tell you that we have also set aside 60 millions as a tax supplement for individual donors giving Millennium Gift Aid to education, health and anti poverty programmes in the poorest countries. The 60 million we have set aside from government could produce an additional 250 million for work of the charities and organisations in Africa and the poorest countries.

Finally, we must now redouble our efforts to find long term solutions that create a virtuous circle of debt relief, poverty reduction, and economic development,

Last year, the 48 least developed countries received, between them, less than 1% of foreign commercial investment in all the developing nations.

And if countries are to draw on secure flows of commercial finance in a world disciplined by the realities of an inescapable and endlessly judgmental global market in capital, then it is to their advantage not just to tackle corruption, secrecy and wasteful military expenditure but also to follow internationally agreed and publicly recognised standards or codes of monetary and fiscal policy, corporate behaviour and there must be freedom from corruption.

These international codes of good practice -the rules by which nations and people live – operational rules for fiscal transparency, monetary and financial good practice, good governance and good social practice – codes that will be applied to all countries by international agreement, rather than be imposed by the rich on the poor, and signed by rich and poor countries alike, would, in my view, provide a new framework for world economic development that would give new hope to the poorest and the most vulnerable countries.

And in my views these new codes of good practice that can bring both stability and international investor confidence need not be oppressive: indeed they can be liberating because they offer the poorest countries a chance to break the power of lack of governmental accountability, secrecy, and corruption which have held them back by denying them international credibility and confidence.

And let me make one further suggestion: if international institutions can agree on codes of practice that set minimum standards in economic management, they can also go on to explore the possibility of a new international code of good social practice. Perhaps based on minimum social standards, core labour standards and decent provision in health and education.

Harold Macmillan once famously spoke of the wind of change blowing across Africa, changing the politics of that great continent.

What inspires your vision is something more fundamental. Your vision is of a new climate of justice across the world, a new climate of justice that will eventually liberate nations from debt, people from poverty, and millions of individuals from unfulfilled lives, bringing our global economy and our moral universe into harmony for the benefit of all, transforming not just the politics on one continent but economics society and politics the world over.

One that recognises that by the strong helping the weak it makes us all stronger.

I was taught in church to believe that an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

So today, let us resolve from here in London today, within 15 months of a new century, to work together, churches, political leaders, the peoples of the world to :

– tackle debt
– tackle poverty directly
– tackle the causes of poverty and the causes of underdevelopment.

So to end the long night of injustice and make the Millennium a new dawn of hope for Africa and the poorest of the developing world.