The 2010 Millennium Development Goals Review Summit - International Development Committee Contents

Examination of Witness (Questions 83-147)

RT HON GORDON BROWN MP

9 NOVEMBER 2010

Q83   Chair: Good morning. I normally ask our witnesses to introduce themselves, but I think on this occasion, Mr Brown, it will be unnecessary. Can I say thank you very much for coming in to give evidence. You will know that we are concluding a report on the MDG Summit, its outcomes, and its future direction. The Committee has actually just visited Washington and New York, talking to the World Bank especially, and UN institutions. I think you would not be surprised to hear that we got a very good reception, because the UK's standing in all of those councils is extremely high. I hope you will agree that the Coalition's commitment to delivering on the 0.7% that your Government was also committed to has, I think, created a great deal of resonance in those corridors. At the end of the day, what matters is—are we actually going to deliver on what the poor people of the world expect?

I wonder if I could start by asking you for your judgment on the outcome of the MDG Summit. Do you think it was a success, partial or complete? To what extent do you think the leaders who did assemble—well over 150 Heads of Government of one sort or another took part—secured what was needed, which I think most people would argue at that stage was a rescue package for the MDGs, which after all were at the centre, and still are, of the UK Government's commitment to achieving their development targets?

Gordon Brown: Let me first of all thank you as a Committee for the work you do to further the cause of social justice throughout the world. On a non-partisan basis you have published many important reports that have guided both previous Governments and alerted opinion around the world to the need to be vigilant about the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. I do want to thank this Committee itself for the work that it does.

I'm struck by the contrast between the potential for this decade and the probable outcome of this decade. The potential is that Africa—to take Africa alone at the moment—is one of the faster growing continents in the world; it has been growing in the last few years as fast as Asia had been growing. Africa has a tremendous opportunity because we need to increase food production round the world by about 70% over the next few decades, and therefore there is a huge opportunity for Africa to produce for the world—if you like, to feed the world. Forty per cent. of Africans now have mobile phones, and there has been enormous progress in the number of children going to school, the number of people who have survived beyond the age of five, when 20% were dying before the age of five. Of course there has also been a halving in many countries of the rates of deaths from malaria. There has been enormous progress, not least because of debt relief and because of aid.

However, there is a problem, which I think the Millennium Development Goals Summit exposed, that aid is likely to fall, not rise, as a percentage of national incomes over the next few years in the donor countries. There are still 70 million children not at school. The death rate for infants is still very, very high indeed. The productivity of a continent like Africa is very low without the infrastructure investment that's necessary to move it forward: a third of the roads of, let's say, Latin America or Asia; less roads now than 30 years ago. If you put the two things together, there's enormous potential; it could be the best decade of development for Africa and for the developing countries.

The problem is that in the next few years it is likely that there will be less resources available for the things that are going to be important for Africa's development. That's education and infrastructure, and we have to find new ways of making sure that these resources are available. Otherwise, we will have very high levels of unemployment and underemployment in Africa and the developing countries. We will still have incredibly high levels of poverty, which are completely unacceptable. There will be social tensions as a result of that, as people see the relative deprivation that they suffer compared with the rest of the world; we know there is a security problem related to a number of countries where al­Qaeda is making progress in developing countries by exploiting—unfairly—for extreme religious purposes the social discontent that exists.

Q84   Chair: Can I bring you back to the actual role of the summit, and we'll bring in Chris White? You, both as Chancellor and PM, have taken part in very many summits, and obviously from the UK point of view Gleneagles was one that effectively secured many commitments, not least from this country, which we've honoured, which many other countries haven't. From your experience, just what do these international summits achieve? On the day, you get a great gathering of people, you get great proclamations of intention, but at the end of the way, what gets delivered?

Gordon Brown: They focus people's minds on what is the task ahead. This was a chance in 2010 to look at the progress made since 2000 and what had to be done over the next five years. Decisions that have been made this year will be decisive for what happens by 2015. I have to be honest: we will not meet the Millennium Development Goal targets the way we are going; we will not meet the aid targets that we have set for the world; we will not even meet the targets that have been set for Africa in the Gleneagles Summit, where we are probably anything between £10 billion and £20 billion a year short. We have to find new ways of making sure that these resources are available. The dominant feature of the world at the moment is this massive global economic restructuring, which is far beyond anything that anybody has experienced during the course of their lives. In this massive restructuring, the potential is for Africa to be a driver of growth, and for Africa to develop consumers of products that would be produced here and everywhere else, but the danger is that without the support that is needed for infrastructure and education to make Africa more productive—and that is true of many other developing countries as well—we will sink backwards and this could be a lost decade for growth and a lost decade for development.

  Chair: Okay. I will bring in Chris White.

Chris White: Good morning.

Gordon Brown: Good morning.

Chris White: I am a relative newcomer to this Committee.

Gordon Brown: So am I, by the way. This is the first time I've been here.

Q85   Chris White: In my brief experience, people are generally invited, but in your case you asked to come along to this Committee meeting. We are now six months from the general election, and a number of my colleagues around this table have used the House to make speeches on international development. I just wondered why you'd waited until now to give forth your views.

Gordon Brown: Let's not get into this in any detail because it's a diversion from what we're doing, and I think it's unfortunate that this is the sort of question that is the first question from a Committee member. Let's put it this way: most former Prime Ministers have rarely spoken in the House at all. I have decided, obviously, to concentrate on my constituency work, and to do some of the work that I've been doing internationally, but at the same time I've taken a very big interest in some of the questions that the Government I led were involved in. I think it's right that this Committee look at the lessons we can learn from the development summit that took place in New York, and it's right that people who can contribute to the work of the Committee should be here to talk about it. So I'm here because I think I've got a perspective on this that is of use to this Committee, and I think it would be unfortunate if it was suggested that there was only one way of making your views known in this House. The Select Committees are incredibly important to the workings of this House.

  Chair: You're here, Mr Brown, so that's fair enough, I think. Michael McCann.

Q86   Mr McCann: Thank you very much, Chair. Good morning, Mr Brown, and thank you for being here this morning. You mentioned a few moments ago that the MDGs won't be met by 2015, and we know that many of them are significantly off target. Do you believe that it's because we set far too ambitious targets for the MDGs, or do you believe that the response of Governments across the globe has been far too insipid?

Gordon Brown: To say that every child should be in school in the year 2015 is not an ambitious target in my view. It's a matter of human dignity, and it's a moral demand upon us to meet something that most people would say was a natural right of individuals in every part of the world. I went to Tanzania a few months ago and I met some young people in their teens who were pleading to be able to go to school. You know when you talk to kids here they accept it as something for granted and probably sometimes prefer not to go to school. These teenagers were pleading to go to school. They knew the importance of education to their lives.

Then I went to a school in Uganda and I met children there, and they were proudly showing me their computer. They were all round this computer, dozens of them, one computer in the school, and to be honest the computer was no better than a typewriter, because there was no internet connection, it was moving so slowly, the power supply was obviously not stable anyway, and here we had young kids proud of having a computer in the school. We knew as we looked at it that this computer could make no difference to their education because it wasn't linked to any of the educational services that could be provided.

To me it is a matter of necessity, that for security as well as moral, but also for economic reasons, every child has the chance of education round this world. The fact that 70 million children don't go to school at the moment is something that is completely unacceptable. The fact that many of these children are in middle­income countries is very unacceptable as well. We know that in India there are still 8 million children that have to get the chance of schooling, although they've made huge progress. In Nigeria, an oil­rich country, large numbers of children—probably 7 or 8 million—are still not going to school. The majority of kids not going to school are girls, and again that is something that is completely unacceptable, because it is a form of discrimination.

The average expenditure on a pupil in sub­Saharan Africa is about $180 a year—what's that, about £130­£140 a year? This is not an impossible goal. It could be met very easily. Now what have you got to do? You have to build the schools and have the teachers. We need to train 2 million teachers a year. There is no system in the developing countries at the moment that can produce 2 million extra teachers a year. That is a priority that we have to be able to deliver, and I think we can do that. We have to use the internet and services, for example correspondence learning courses both to train teachers and give education information to pupils. We have to use the most modern means of communications to do this. At the same time I think we have to make sure that the countries who are responsible for educating their children spend about 20% of their budgets on education, and we have to make sure that we honour the commitments that have been made in this country—commitments that have been made and have been reinforced—and commitments in other countries that are in danger of not being met. We have to make sure that people are aware of how this is such a priority for the future. I will be publishing in the next few months, with other people, a plan for how we can meet the 2015 target, and still do it even though there is a massive backlog of numbers—70 million still to go to school—and even though there is a massive shortage of teachers in the countries that need to have the teaching staff.

  Chair: We will come back to your role in the Global Campaign for Education later on in the questions, but if I can bring in Richard Harrington next.

Q87   Richard Harrington: Mr Brown, you are very welcome here. With your experience internationally, what is there to be done about countries which should be donating a lot more money to international aid? I think particularly, within the European Union, of countries like Italy, which clearly significantly underperform compared with us.

Gordon Brown: I'm not going to attack any individual country, but I do say this. When people come to Gleneagles or come to the UN Development Summits and make promises, these are promises that were turned into pledges; these were promises that became specific financial commitments made by these individual countries. I think we have to look at the danger and risks in 2015 for developing countries—that have their own ambitions about the future and their own leaderships that will evaluate what promises have been kept and what haven't been kept—and the damage that will be done to these countries if we are not able to meet the commitments that we've stated, not just as generalisations but as specific pledges for the future.

I think we have to look at other ways of making sure that development finance can be made available. I've always supported private­public partnerships; if you look at infrastructure around the world, most infrastructure is done in other countries by forms of private­public partnership. That is something that has to be developed for infrastructure in Africa and in the developing countries. I've also mentioned before, and I still hold to this, that in my view the potential for global financial levy or a global tax is there. Once you've dealt with the problem that we're trying to deal with, which is to prevent tax havens being the resource or, if you like, the location for large sums of money, and therefore escaping the net, and once you can establish that there is exchange of information between the different tax authorities round the world, then there's scope for not simply a negative set of actions, which is to prevent tax avoidance, but for positive actions, which is the countries of the world working together with a global levy or a global contribution. There are various things that I think we have to look at to make sure that the richest countries maintain the commitment that they have made to finance development for the future, in the different sources of financing, the use of private­public partnerships, but we can't evade the critical fact that if people make commitments they have to be asked to keep them. There is the damage that is done to international relations, and to the views of young people in these countries which are expecting these commitments to be honoured, if that doesn't happen—if you look at Africa, we have 20% of young people already unemployed. That is probably underestimating what the position is. Africa has a very high birth rate, so Africa will form a quarter of the world's young people by 2025. To have a large number of young people susceptible to propaganda, the west—as it will be called—failing to honour its commitments is nothing short of a disastrous problem that could face our countries in years to come. Therefore it makes it all the more important that we remind ourselves that our commitments have to be kept.

  Chair: We'll bring in Richard Burden. Two or three colleagues have caught my eye for supplementaries.

Q88   Richard Burden: Thank you. The way you described, in answer to the Chair's first question, the role of summits like the recent summit bore some resemblances to some of the ambitions that the current UK Government said they wanted to get out of that summit. They said they wanted an action agenda, they said they wanted a results­based policy and financial commitments, including on the most off­track MDGs, which is in a sense very similar to what you were saying. You've given some examples about initiatives that could be taken, to take that forward. How far do you think that the summit that did take place was successful, in practice, in laying the basis for commitments that will be kept rather than commitments that will be aspirations?

Gordon Brown: You have the MDG summit that took place in September, and the previous one that took place two years before. You have the G20 meeting this week with a development plan for the future, which is going to focus on the economic development that is absolutely crucial for countries in Africa. I keep saying that the potential for development and for growth in countries that have previously been held back is enormous, in this decade, but the danger of us not being able to meet these commitments that we have made, which would make it possible for economic development to flourish, is very high indeed. I think the test of the summit that took place in September will be how far countries maintain their commitments over the next few years, and how far we make progress on the educational, health and other objectives.

If you take vaccination, we were involved in creating what was called IFFIm, which is the International Finance Facility for Immunisation. Under it we had a private bond issue, which was underpinned by six different Governments, including the United Kingdom. That has probably released about $4 billion or $5 billion for immunisation so that you can frontload the provision of immunisation and vaccination for particularly young children in areas where there are dangers from polio, diphtheria and a whole range of other diseases. The latest estimate is that that has already saved about 3 million lives. The issue is, can we maintain that commitment? Can that commitment continue? Can we find, for example, for neglected tropical diseases, for how we deal with HIV/AIDS, for how we deal with malaria, better forms of long­term funding through the Global Fund, which is the vehicle by which this will be provided, over the next few years? That is a real test, because as I see it, the Global Fund is not properly funded at the moment for the task that it has to do over the next few years.

Q89   Richard Burden: Thank you. You've put quite a lot of emphasis on Africa and I absolutely understand why. I think in a little while some of my colleagues will be asking a bit more about Africa and issues there. Perhaps you could say a few words about the task of achieving the MDGs, and lessons for parts of the globe that are not Africa. In particular, in looking to the future, the fact is that in the past and in many ways the MDGs focussed on low­income countries, but the majority of poor people in the world are now going to be living not in the least developed countries but in middle­income countries with a lot of poor people in them. How do you think the international community should respond to that, both in terms of achieving the MDGs, but also in terms of strategies for the future?

Gordon Brown: We have to remember that 1 billion people who are classified as poor live in middle­income countries. We have to remember that India is probably the country with almost certainly the largest number of poor people in the world, and it is a middle­income country. We have to remember that Nigeria, for example, Angola or China are all middle­income countries but they still have very substantial levels of poverty. I think the interesting thing is that India, Nigeria and China are in a position to release resources for them to be able to tackle the problems of poverty in their own countries, and they should be encouraged to so do.

I notice that Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize winner, went to India only a few weeks ago to say that India was a knowledge superpower, but it also had 8 million children not at school. I know that Prime Minister Singh wants to complete the process of making sure that every child goes to school. In the middle­income countries, the priority for aid is less than in lower­income countries, but it is none the less a barrier to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals if they can't make progress.

There are specific programmes in India where we can be of help. For example, I noticed the other day through Teach First, a British programme based on Teach for America, which is an American programme where people give time to work to help disadvantaged children by giving their skills as teachers before they go on to other careers, that Teach For India has just started in India. These are really good initiatives that can be built on for the future, but there's no doubt that if you can't solve the problem of poverty in middle­income countries, you can't meet the millennium development targets.

Q90   Mr Clappison: Money is very tight at the moment, as we know. You've spoken of the need to get as much resource into aid as possible, so therefore it's very important that every penny that we are told goes on aid is actually spent effectively on alleviating poverty. On a visit recently by this Committee to Brussels, we found out that a large proportion of British aid is delivered through the European Union, but that the European Union aid budget is rather strange. The money it disburses is going to countries that are not remotely poor or have lots of poor people in them, and many of them are in the neighbourhood of Europe itself.

Of the countries you mentioned this morning—I might be wrong about this—I think none of them features in the top 10 of countries that receive funding from the European Union, and the countries such as Turkey and Croatia and Serbia, which are not remotely poor, do receive a lot of funding from the European Union. Was this something that came to your attention as Prime Minister, and do you think we should be more critical of where Europe is spending its money?

Gordon Brown: You have to remember that in my previous answer, I was talking about the numbers of poor in middle­income countries, and you are talking also about middle­income countries, where they have substantial levels of poverty. Of course, where it is a set of countries that are neighbouring the European Union, there has always been a prior responsibility to be of assistance to them. I don't think we should find it surprising that the European Union wants to help where there is poverty in the vicinity of the European Union. I think also the measures that have been taken in Palestine and in the Arab communities to try and relieve poverty there have been incredibly important indeed.

There's no doubt that the European Union has increased its aid to Africa. There's no doubt that over the last few years the European Union has been responsible, pooling resources in some cases with the bilateral aid programmes of different countries, in helping get 40 million children to school. There's no doubt that the European Union has pioneered some of the aid initiatives in healthcare as well. I think it's a balanced picture. I think you have to understand that there is a very considerable amount of poverty in middle­income countries, but you have also to understand that we have made commitments, particularly to Africa, that have to be met, and the European Union has a very special relationship with Africa.

Q91   Mr Clappison: It does, but the money that it is telling the world it is spending in Africa, it does spend some on Africa, but it also spends an awful lot of money in other countries that could be spent on Africa. Turkey is the largest single recipient of European Union funding. Croatia, which is not remotely a poor country, is in the top 10 of countries that are recipients of the European Union. One suspects that the real reason for spending this money is not to alleviate poverty, but for objectives of the European Union itself.

  Gordon Brown: Yes.

Q92   Mr Clappison: You have to draw the line somewhere, don't you, if you're going to justify this to the public? They don't realise that the money that they're being told is being spent on aid—which is part of our budget; it's our money that is going to Europe—is being spent by the European Union otherwise?

Gordon Brown: I think you and I agree that the European Union must collectively, and as individual members of this entity, make the contribution to Africa and the developing countries that has been promised. Nothing should stand in the way of that happening over the next few years to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. I repeat: the Millennium Development Goals will not be achieved only by action in low­income countries. It will be achieved by action in middle­income countries as well, and there's a variety of ways that that can be done, by partnerships and by relationships that are supportive to these countries. I think when you talk about Turkey and Serbia and other countries in the vicinity of the European Union, you're talking about countries that actually do have large numbers of poor people.

Q93   Pauline Latham: Good morning, Mr Brown. You mentioned India—I have another question, which I'll come to—but India is a middle­income country; in fact it has a space programme, which we can't afford. It has a nuclear programme, which we are very limited on, and it has many billionaires who come over and buy up companies in this country. Do you think it's appropriate that we should be giving so much aid to India, when they should perhaps be looking after their own more?

Gordon Brown: I did say earlier on that middle­income countries have to contribute more to the relief of poverty in their own country. I did draw out the contrast that Amartya Sen had made between India's technological lead as a knowledge superpower with some magnificent universities and institutes of technology, like the Indian Institute of Technology, and the fact that there are still 8 million children not going to school. In the 19th century, Britain went through an industrial revolution; at no point did any Government in the 19th century commit themselves to the abolition of poverty. There were no targets that were set for removing poverty in our country, even during the period of great and absolute poverty in the industrial revolution. In the 21st century you have India, a country that is committed to not only the reduction but the abolition of poverty. India at the moment is revisiting its poverty line. I don't know if the Committee has looked at this—

  

Q94   Chair: Can I say, Mr Brown, that the Committee is planning to visit India early in the New Year to look at exactly this.

Gordon Brown: I think that's really important, and I think you'll find that you have an Indian Government who are absolutely committed to the reduction of poverty, to the point at which they have worked out and are delivering a new poverty line. They are saying it is not sufficient simply to include incomes in their poverty measurement; they have to include access to health and to education. You will find in India the number of people classified as being in poverty rising, because they are going to be more ambitious about the target that they have to meet.

I don't think we can accuse the Indian Government of being lax in their wish to do something about poverty, but I think we have to be aware that there are massive barriers in a country that, after all, was part of the British empire for many, many years, and has huge problems, both ethnic and also, because of its environment and landscape, of a massive amount of poverty in different parts or different regions of the country. I do think that if we can help India make their own contribution to the relief of poverty, and after all the massive thing that is being done is what they are doing as Indians themselves, then we should be prepared to make that contribution, reminding ourselves that if we are committed to the Millennium Development Goals, and they have to be met by 2015, middle­income countries will have to be in a position to have delivered more by 2015 than low­income countries.

Q95   Pauline Latham: Maybe we could come back to Africa now. You talk about it providing the growth impetus for the next century, and in your speech in Kampala you were very optimistic about Africa. Some of the 54 countries on the continent are growing fast, but others are not.

  Gordon Brown: Yes.

Q96   Pauline Latham: You tend to talk about Africa as if it's all the same, and it clearly isn't. Would it be sensible to talk about Africa, or should we think of very different categories, such as very fragile states, in a different way from the ones that are very successful?

Gordon Brown: I think a new Africa is emerging though. I do think you're absolutely right to say that little progress has been made in countries that are conflict states like the Democratic Republic of Congo. Marginal progress has been made because of the difficulties they've inherited in countries like Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone has the population of Scotland. It's got between 5 million and 6 million people. It's got 200 nurses, it's got 100 doctors. It's got 120 midwives. Whenever they train nurses, because they can't pay them, they lose their nurses. You're absolutely right. There are countries that are recovering from conflict, that are not in a position to deliver the services that are necessary, and there are countries, obviously, that are potentially middle­income countries or that are middle­income countries, like South Africa, Nigeria and Angola, and there are countries, in sub­Saharan Africa in particular, that are incredibly poor.

By 2050 the balance of Africa will have changed dramatically, because Nigeria and Egypt will probably be the two largest economies in Africa. You'll see a number of countries like Rwanda making progress, but you'll also see problems, as you say, with conflict countries that have still to be resolved. I think there is merit in talking about the new Africa, and I think there is merit in us no longer talking about first, second and third worlds, but about one world that is distorted by massive inequalities between countries, but all part of one world, potentially trading with each other, potentially communicating with each other, and who need to be treated equally and with the same respect as we would treat what were previously called first world countries.

I think the vision of a new Africa will encourage people in Africa to be big performers. There's no doubt that there's a new generation of leaders in Africa, many of them are women, who I believe will make a bigger impact in Africa than perhaps in any continent in years to come. If you have all the countries you're talking about, with no proper road system throughout Africa, no rail system, no form of communication that works effectively, if you have Africa, the only continent in the world where only a 10th of the trade is within Africa, and 90% of the trade is outside Africa, because there are no proper mechanisms for people trading with each other in Africa, then there are huge problems that can only be dealt with by Africa co-ordinating and working together. Therefore the move to a common market in Africa, or what we might call a single market, over time, is something that we should support, and we should support cross­border co-operation being intensified in different parts of Africa.

Q97   Pauline Latham: If I could just take you back again to your speech in Kampala, you said, "And so I believe we need to focus not just on poverty, but on growth."

  Gordon Brown: Yes.

Q98   Pauline Latham: "And not just on providing services for the poor, but on an investment climate for those who bring wealth." I presume, from the way you speak in that, and obviously you're very passionate about it, that it means that you're happy to support the current Government's desire to strengthen the role of the private sector in Africa.

Also, you talked very passionately about having the internet everywhere. Wouldn't it be helpful first if all the different places that were not in the cities actually had electricity that was sufficient to be able to put computers on? Not just that, it has to be affordable for the people who are there, because there are people in Africa who are, even in cities, cooking on wood stoves outside because they can't afford electricity.

Gordon Brown: That's why you need cross­border co-operation, to be honest, and we shouldn't think of Africa as just a set of countries, all completely different. If we don't have co-operation across borders, you can't solve the power problem in Africa. You can't solve the provision of electricity; you can't have the big investments that are necessary for the transmission of power across Africa.

The reason I focus on the internet is not because I think it is more important than having electricity; clearly having electricity is vital to people's lives. The reason I focus on the internet is you can make a technological leap in Africa. We spent a century with fixed­line telephones, with massive infrastructure investment, in cabling and everything else that made the telephone industry possible in its old form. But Africa's not going to do that. The question is how quickly it can move to the next stage.

At the moment there are 40% of Africans, I gather, who have mobile phones; there is the potential for the mobile phone to be the vehicle through which communications are carried out without having to have the fixed­line investment. At the same time, the mobile phone could be used for education information, health information or agricultural information; there are many projects going on in Africa at the moment that are making that possible. At the moment 40% of Africans have phones, but only 1% have access to the internet. How can you bridge that gap, which is ridiculous in terms of price as well? In India, you can get access to the internet for $6 a month. In Africa it's often $200 a month, and it's only a business market that's being served by the internet. We have to find a way of getting the price of the internet down, so it can be used in schools and in hospitals and used for agricultural information. We need more cabling, obviously, around Africa, and more satellite coverage, but there are other ways, it seems to me, through the mobile phone that you could get the equivalent of internet services.

That's why I think the technological leap that would actually allow Africa to be a cost-effective service provider, if it managed to do this, and create large numbers of jobs in Africa, is something which is very much worth considering. That is not ignoring electricity, which requires co-ordination and big investment in infrastructure, but it's also looking at the potential for Africa to make this technological leap.

Q99   Pauline Latham: So you're happy for the private sector to bring more jobs, as the current Government are trying to support?

Gordon Brown: Yes. The problem about the private sector is this: "Dead Aid" is a book that was written a few months ago to suggest that there were better ways of providing investment in Africa. The problem is not that we don't want the private sector to invest internationally in Africa. The problem is that there has not been enough private sector investment in Africa, and every attempt to encourage private sector inward foreign investment into Africa has not been as successful as it should have been. It's partly that Africa has to show, and that's why I talk about the new Africa, that it's reforming, but it's partly that western and Asian financiers have to look at Africa as a source of new opportunities for the future.

I think you'll find, if you look around the investment community, there's quite a lot of Africa funds being formed at the moment, and there's quite a lot of interest in the provision of infrastructure in Africa. There's probably about a £100 billion backlog for infrastructure investment per year in Africa to do with power, roads, transport, communications and, of course, education. If you could persuade the private sector to invest in Africa, and if you could persuade, obviously, the big investors to take an interest in long­term investment in Africa—in power, electricity, environmentally efficient measures for dealing with climate change, and education—that would be the best. The problem about the "Dead Aid" argument is not that the private sector is there and being prevented from doing things; the problem is that there has been insufficient private sector investment in Africa. The truth is that after the dotcom bubble, the private sector should have moved to the area of unexploited opportunity, which is African infrastructure investment, but instead moved into sub­prime mortgages.

Q100   Chris White: Thank you; just a quick supplementary. I agree with your comments about trade, and that growth is really the only way out of poverty. I would be interested in your comments on how we make sure Africa doesn't become the dumping ground for developing countries' products.

Gordon Brown: For developing countries' products?

Chris White: Developed.

Gordon Brown: Developed countries' products. The amount of trade between Africa and the rest the world will be determined partly by trade agreements, and there is a proposal in the G20 tomorrow, as I understand it, at the meeting in Korea for free access for African markets to European and American markets. In other words, we relax the rules that prevent Africa from trading with the rest of the world.

As far as looking at the question the other way round and whether there is a danger that Africa becomes a dumping ground for developed countries' products, to be honest Africa is not in a position at the moment to have the consumer wealth to buy these products. McKinsey's say that by 2020 Africa will be responsible for about $1.5 trillion of consumer purchases, and if Africa is in a position to buy these products, then the people of Africa must have a choice in what they buy. I don't see this dumping ground as the issue.

Africa could be one of the biggest agricultural producers in the world, selling to the rest of the world, and investing in its agriculture because it has large amounts of potentially usable land. It could help solve the food shortage problems that we have over the next 50 years, when demand will rise very substantially for food. Africa should not be a food importer. Africa should be a food exporter. That, I think, is one of the ways that we can solve some of the problems for African prosperity in future.

Q101   Hugh Bayley: I'd like to ask questions about the IMF and the global crisis. In your speech in Kampala to African leaders, you said, "The Washington Consensus is dead." During the crisis, the IMF made loans to Tanzania, to Kenya, to Ethiopia, without any strings at all. Why is it no longer seen as right or necessary to impose conditions such as public sector salary ceilings, or current account conditions on developing countries when the IMF provides support?

Gordon Brown: I think there has been a shift from what was called structural adjustment, which was a disaster for the poorest countries, to a recognition that you have to build a relationship of equals between the developed and the developing world. It didn't make sense during the economic crisis, did it?, for countries who were trying to keep demand moving in their own countries—in other words, trying to keep economic activity growing—to be given help only on the condition that economic activity was contracted. It would have made no sense for the world, trying to get out of a financial crisis, to lend to these countries on condition that they cut back on services that were vital for these economies to keep going.

The whole sort of question of economics—political economy—is having to be reviewed as a result of the financial crisis. The IMF is part of this debate. The IMF argues that co-ordinated action between different countries and different continents could make a huge difference in creating higher levels of world growth and less unemployment. As we know, the insecurity that people feel in this period of global change is going to be the big issue of the coming decade. People sense that the world is changing very fast and that they have very little control over the events—people worry about their jobs—and that is as true in the poorest countries as it is in the richest countries. Therefore you have to think, "What is the purpose of economic policy?" The purpose of economic policy is surely that we have high levels of growth and employment with sustainable environments.

Q102   Hugh Bayley: Growth in Africa has bounced back more quickly than in the developed world, since the crisis. During your time at the helm of the IMF you led the argument for £100 billion of debt in the poorest countries to be cancelled. To what extent has that provided the macro-economic space for sub­Saharan Africa and other poor countries to re­establish strong growth?

Gordon Brown: Let's be honest. Africa would have suffered a huge amount during the crisis if there had not been support from the international community. So too would all the developing countries. Even then, there has been a rise of 100 million in poverty as a result of what happened during the financial crisis, and even then, the growth that has been expected in Africa and elsewhere has not been as high as it should have been. Africa survived the financial crisis partly because the international community, the IMF, the World Bank and particularly the African Development Bank were prepared to put in and inject additional resources into these countries to keep economic activity moving. I think as we move forward, as I say, investors are beginning to see developing countries as a source of potential new opportunity, and that is a very good thing; but I think the way forward will often be public­private partnerships to sustain and enhance economic activity. I would see the future of aid and development not just in traditional aid, which in my view should not be cut, but also in the enhancement of partnerships between Governments and the private sector for big infrastructure, education and other projects.

I think we also have to remember there's another factor in the world of developing countries, and that is the role of China. I think I'm right in saying that China, even though it is classified by many people as a developing country, is the sixth biggest donor of aid to Africa. There are probably 1 million Chinese workers at the moment who are involved in infrastructure projects in different parts of Africa. There is a battle for influence going on in Africa as well, and I think it's very important for us to recognise that we have to build a better and more effective partnership between African countries and ourselves.

  

Q103   Hugh Bayley: I know the Committee will come back to China later in our conversation. In your speech in Kampala you stressed the importance of private sector growth in Africa, and you listed five determinants of growth: economic integration, exports, private investment, improved skills for the work force, and better governance. If you presented that as an economic programme to a developed country it would be challenging. There are capacity constraints in Africa. Are some of the determinants of growth that you've listed more necessary than others?

Gordon Brown: I was talking to the people who compiled all these reports—these global monitors about what progress has been made in different countries of the world, and who is performing best economically and doing things. I was asking what was the main factor they would look for—from all the different things that are going on: investment in infrastructure, economic integration, and so on and so forth. They said, yesterday when I was talking to them: education—human capital. If you have a very large population in Africa—I think it's about 150 million adults—who are illiterate, and if even people who have been at school are unfortunately coming out without the qualifications that are necessary for them to have the skill to get a job, and if you understand that the future of the world economy is going to be based on large numbers of people having the additional skills to produce value­added goods and services that people will want to buy, then the importance of education in Africa and in developing countries cannot be underestimated.

If we, the western countries, were to say that we guarantee that every child will have a decent educational opportunity, that is the most important thing that we can actually do to make possible a link between, if you like, the dignity of the individual and the economic progress of a country. I think it would be a very worthwhile effort. I think we have to do far more in this area. In addition to infrastructure, which can have private sector funding, I would say that education is the most important additional investment that we can help with that would make it possible for Africa to move forward.

They have to remove the regulatory burdens that prevent people starting business; they have to have a means by which people can cross between different countries without huge border controls and they have to co-ordinate on the provision of infrastructure, otherwise I just can't see how all the different countries of Africa can provide potentially the power services. There has to be co-ordination so that they can share and pool the provision of big infrastructure investments for the future.

Q104   Hugh Bayley: One final question. The IMF hasn't had a good record of dialogue with civil society or with parliamentarians. Dominique Strauss­Kahn is coming to talk to a global conference of parliamentarians in Brussels next month. Would you encourage the IMF, country by country, to engage with Parliaments to explain what they're doing with the Government of that country, and to try to get buy­in and understanding from parliamentarians and civil society?

Gordon Brown: You're absolutely right. You can see international institutions as a few hundred of the elite talking to each other at international meetings that are held every now and again, whether it's in New York, in South Korea or in France, as it will be for the G8 or G20 next year. You can have this elite, most of them unelected, to be honest, talking among themselves about what is the right thing for each country in the world. Alternatively, you can build a big global public opinion about what is necessary and what should be done. I think the important thing is to focus on how we can build that global public opinion. That means not just parliamentarians; that means the institutions of a civic society. If you look at the number of international NGOs that have mushroomed over the last 20 years, there is a massive increase in the number of organisations that are acting or thinking at global level. This concept of global citizenship—people thinking of themselves as not simply British, American or Japanese but thinking of themselves as citizens of the world as well—is very important.

The IMF itself will require, like the United Nations and like the World Bank—all of whom need quite major reform, by the way—a very educated public opinion if they were to be persuaded to act in ways that I think the Millennium Development Goals, or objectives like that, would benefit from. I think it's our duty as parliamentarians, but also in association with civic organisations in different countries that have an international perspective, to persuade the international institutions that they have to listen to a more educated and informed public opinion.

Q105   Chair: I'd like to bring in Jeremy Lefroy, but before I do, just on that point: global citizenship is a noble idea, but do you not think, given the economic catastrophe that overwhelmed the developed countries, that developing countries may have some right to suggest that maybe the model that we have encouraged them to aspire to isn't always as effective as they might like? It might even make them look to China, which has weathered the storm rather better than Europe or America, and to take the view that maybe they might prove better partners. Is that not an issue that needs to be addressed?

Gordon Brown: You have to remember that China has hundreds of millions of people still in poverty, and it has major social challenges that have to be met, and that its system still has to show it can meet. I think you're absolutely right: the biggest danger that we face at the moment, and it's happening already, is protectionism of the mind. There are protectionist measures that different Governments are taking; you're seeing cross­national mergers being prevented, you're seeing trade barriers going up, you're seeing currency competition. If you go around the world you're seeing all these things happening at the moment, and therefore people are reacting to the individual problems that they have as national economies by resorting to protectionist measures. You have to put an alternative.

When the protectionism of the 1930s happened, by pursuing policies such as I'm talking about now, everybody lost out, and millions more were unemployed. Because there was no international co-operation, and the London conference of 1933 failed, we had an era, a decade of protectionism, that ended in war. It seems to me that it's our duty to point out that you can achieve more by co-operating than you can by acting individually on your own, and the danger of protectionism is that in the end it protects no one, because it gives people a false solution that behind a national border they can solve problems that actually are simply being disguised by the tariffs or the non­tariff barriers that have been put up. The danger at the moment is people succumbing to forms of protectionism that are damaging both to individual countries and to the world economy.

I think the more we talk about the role of the international institutions in fostering global co-operation, and the benefits that can flow from that, which are, in my view, millions of additional jobs around the world, and the less we favour policies of protectionism, the better it will be for both developing countries and the industrialised world.

Q106   Chair: I can say yes to that, but I have to say the Committee didn't hear a speech anything like that on the airwaves of the United States when we were there last week. I can't imagine an American politician saying what you've just said.

  Gordon Brown: I did say it to the Congress, and it certainly didn't get great applause.

Q107   Jeremy Lefroy: Good morning, Mr Brown. In your Kampala speech you said that prosperity does not simply trickle down, but must be actively distributed to ensure that the many see the benefit, something with which I would entirely agree. From my experience of working 11 years in Tanzania, and many more in African business, I've seen that at first hand. You list, as Hugh has already mentioned, a number of what you see as drivers or ingredients for growth. One which wasn't there, and which I would like your comments on, is access to finance, particularly among poorer people. I would also like your comments on how social protection schemes can perhaps contribute towards growth. These have become more popular in recent years, obviously, in Mexico and Brazil, and more recently in Africa. I'd be grateful for your comments on those.

Gordon Brown: I'd be interested to hear your experience of Tanzania, which is a country that has at least managed, in the last few years, to increase remarkably the numbers of children in education. That has been a great achievement, and I see that President Kikwete has just been re­elected.

The issues of access to finance should not be ignored. I have written about it recently. I think what Muhammad Yunus has pioneered in Bangladesh has massive implications for Africa, and people are already seeing the benefits of microcredit becoming available for business. I think access to banking services is another reason why I would emphasise the importance of the internet and the mobile telephone. I don't think you're going to get the old banking systems of Britain and America working in lots of parts of Africa now. I think you have to leap forward and think of how you might use the internet and the mobile phone. Certainly the way that remittances are dealt with now through mobile phones is something that is actually getting money quicker to people at a cheaper cost. I think access to finance is incredibly important.

The dearth of small business funds is something that the World Bank addressed with a big initiative a few years ago. The absence of big multinational investment other than in oil, gold and resources is a big issue. I think Africa ought to be considered as the next opportunity for investors round the world. That's why I think it's right to talk about a new Africa.

On social protection, if you look at China, the very fact that there is inadequate social protection is one of the reasons why savings are so high, and therefore people are not consuming. China is moving towards full coverage for healthcare in rural and in industrial areas, and increasing that safety net. That means that you have a more balanced economy as a result. If you look at the UN development report that was just out last week, their measure of the human development indicator, as they call it, the HDI, is income, but also health and education; it's also providing a safety net in these areas. In terms of some of the schemes that have been looked at for help for people who are encouraged to take work—there are big work­based schemes in Africa and there are big schemes that are incentives for people to take up education and the opportunities available—I think it's very important that we think of a global social code, with a sense that there is a minimal level of social protection for everyone. If they were missed out from my Kampala speech I apologise, but I think the provision of microfinance is going to be more important in future years. I also think that the lesson of emerging market countries is that without a safety net, you're actually in danger of having unbalanced economies.

Q108   Jeremy Lefroy: Do you think, Mr Brown, that there's any evidence that social protection actively contributes to the growth that we're all seeking?

Gordon Brown: Absolutely. It depends on your definition of social protection. Obviously education contributes towards growth. People have done a huge number of studies about maternal mortality, and the money that you spend on making it possible for a mother to survive childbirth without her being physically injured or dying is a massive spur to children doing better, to the father and members of the family being able to work, and towards a more sort of self­reinforcing cycle of potential prosperity, or at least release from poverty, for a family. For a simple investment in midwife care, or at least some form of trained help at the time of birth, or very simple kits that prevent there being infection, you are actually making it possible for a family to be self­sufficient rather than to be completely at the mercy of the elements. I think there are even very simple examples of social protection that make a difference.

I think it's easy to forget the huge advances that have been made in the last few years. There is the Global Health Fund—the six vaccinations that cost a dollar and give people protection against the potential for them to be subject to death from disease. These are very basic things that are social protection, but without them the costs for a family of survival or of getting prosperity are very high indeed.

Q109   Jeremy Lefroy: My very final one. You mentioned earlier the need for African countries to work together to form some kind of African economic union, which I certainly think is absolutely vital. This has been talked about for 20 or 30 years in my experience. Do you see any signs that we are actually getting there?

Gordon Brown: There are a number of countries that have formed a free trade area that has just come in. They have removed tariffs and they have removed trade barriers to co-operating with each other. If you look at the reports of the African Development Bank and what they're doing, more and more they're providing finance on a cross­national, cross­border basis. More and more they're asking for integrated programmes for roads or for transport generally, or for power and energy developments. More and more I think you'll see this co-ordination across borders, because not only does it make sense economically, of course, it does create the potential for trade between these countries as well.

It is unique to have one continent where only 10% of the trade is within the continent. If it weren't for the fact that all the exports were resources and not manufactured goods or service products, it would be showing us that Africa was a very prosperous continent, but that is not the way it happens. They need to trade with each other more effectively, and therefore you have to find a way of removing the barriers. There are some very simple things like roads, but there are also trade barriers, passport controls and everything, that are unnecessary. The African Union, I think, can do quite a lot, but obviously its record in delivering these things is something that you have to look at in certain instances. The African Development Bank, with the money it has, has made a huge impact on that and should continue to do so.

Foreign investors should be urged to look again at Africa. We're talking about a new Africa and new opportunities. While I know that means the discussion is not about India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries, I think it is important to emphasise that there is a moment of opportunity here for Africa. It will either go forwards, because it is pushed forward by the momentum of a level of economic activity that brings greater prosperity; or, because it cannot afford the infrastructure investment that is necessary, and education and everything else, it's going to be stalled at the moment of opportunity. I think we have a responsibility to play a part in making sure that doesn't happen.

Q110   Anas Sarwar: Good morning.

Gordon Brown: Good morning.

Anas Sarwar: We're just back from the UN, the IMF and the World Bank, and I'm sure all my colleagues on the Committee will agree that every meeting we were in and every ambassador we met paid tribute to the tremendous role the UK plays in not only putting their money where their mouth is, but also in leading the debate on development. I pay tribute to your role in achieving that and putting Britain at the forefront of that.

I want to just pick up on where Hugh Bayley was in terms of improving infrastructure and governance. I just wondered what you think DFID can do, and what we can do using the MDG framework, to implement the policies you suggest are essential for supporting growth, such as wider use of IT, greater investment in infrastructure, and improving governance?

Gordon Brown: I think in all these areas we can make a bigger impact. We have to look pretty ruthlessly now at what is not going to be achieved by 2015 unless we change our positions. I think we have stalled, to be honest, and the mood will be one of soon saying it's impossible to affect the outcome for 2015. I don't think that is the case. A lot of decisions have been made, obviously, and it takes time to implement them. There's only just a bit over four years before 2015.

In the issues that I'm raising, let's take health not education this time. If you take the neglected tropical diseases, which are responsible for large numbers of deaths, and then you take malaria, where there is progress being made but there is still a huge amount to be done, there is the opportunity of combining huge technological advance with creating the capacity to deliver. That's where the challenge is. The drugs companies have just come together in the last few weeks to announce that they will make available, for the six major neglected tropical diseases, their patents free of charge, and they will also produce the drugs—the injections—and make them available to people free of charge. They also said—and we should thank Andrew Witty at GSK for his role in making that possible, and I'm sure he's worth interviewing for you as a Committee on what he's done—that six of these diseases are capable of being eliminated as a result of this initiative.

The problem then is, what is the capacity to deliver healthcare? What is the capacity to deliver these immunisations? Just as what is the capacity to deliver safe childbirth, and what is the capacity to help when there are infant problems? If you take malaria, by 2015 it is undoubtedly the case there will be an immunisation that will be at least 50% or 60% effective, according to what the experts are saying. Again, the issue will not be the cost of that drug. The issue will be the capacity to deliver. I think we have to concentrate on how we can build up the capacity to deliver. That may mean partnerships between our healthcare systems and developing countries' healthcare systems. There has to be some imaginative thinking about how the capacity to deliver healthcare can develop over the next few years. We will have the technological means by which, through scientific and medical advance, we can potentially eliminate a lot of diseases. The problem will be our ability to deliver that in healthcare systems. I think that's where a lot of the effort should be made.

We have NHS Worldwide; I think it's called NHS Global now. It's important that it makes available a lot of its expertise to those countries, because you are talking about 1 million avoidable deaths every year from malaria. You are talking in childbirth about mothers who go to say goodbye to their friends before the impending birth of a baby, because they think the chances of surviving that childbirth are very limited. You have one in eight mothers dying, in countries like Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, in childbirth or during the course of their pregnancies. These are all avoidable deaths. It seems to me that it's not some great scientific change that we're waiting for, or some great medical or technological advance that is beyond our means to finance. It's quite simple. It's the delivery of adequate healthcare systems in these countries, where we have to work together and perhaps cross borders as well within Africa to deliver.

Q111   Anas Sarwar: One way of improving good governance and a citizen-state relationship, and also letting a lot of countries end the dependency culture and take ownership of their own programmes, is obviously promoting tax systems and tax justice. What do you think donors such as DFID and the international community can do to help African countries further their capacity to collect tax revenues?

Gordon Brown: I think Christian Aid has launched a major campaign about the extent to which tax avoidance in developing countries prevents expenditures that could eradicate many of the diseases that we're talking about, and the scale of tax avoidance being extremely high. We have to press forward in every country with this policy; people have to exchange information on tax affairs. If you have a system where you can move your money to a country that is under no obligation to tell you, if you ask, that a citizen of their country has got money or has got tax­free accounts, essentially, in that other country, then you can never, never solve the problem of fairness in taxation, because there will always be somewhere for someone to go to avoid their requirement to pay tax. We think of it as a problem that is between Britain and Liechtenstein, or between Switzerland and the Antilles, and everything else, but clearly massive amounts of money—billions—are being lost through tax avoidance in some of the developing countries. You have to have exchange of information.

It can only be agreed at global level; that's why I come back to this global citizenship. You cannot solve the problem of tax avoidance at a British level or at a European level. You can only solve it at global level, and that's very important. If you have a proper exchange of information, and you've sorted out some of the problems associated with tax havens that really lead to the race to the bottom in standards, then you can move on to doing the second thing, which is having an internationally acceptable levy that could actually be, as the Americans have proposed for America, on the liabilities of the banks, minus some of their capital requirements. You could actually do something.

Q112   Anas Sarwar: Thinking more in­country, a lot of countries don't have adequate tax systems because of corruption among Heads of Government; it's in the Government's own interest not to have an adequate tax system because of their own financial benefits. Do you think that any pressure should be put on individual Governments or there should be conditionality added to any elements of aid? What do you think we can do to try and overcome tax corruption among Governments themselves and make in­country tax revenues increase?

Gordon Brown: I noticed George Soros is speaking here this week on the transparency initiative in relation to extractive industries, and therefore we'd be in a position to know, if this were seen through, the payments that have been made by one company to either Governments or other companies, and I think this is true across the board. If you have transparency, and if you have a requirement to report, and if a condition of international aid is that people are utterly transparent about where it goes and therefore accountable for what happens, then you have the best chance of seeing the money used well.

The transparency in the end ought to be with the publics of each individual country. They ought to be the people demanding the openness and accountability to them. In the absence of the best measures for dealing with that, I think the international community also has to insist that where public money is involved—that is given by international donors, other countries' donors—there is a degree of transparency and accountability all round. I've been proposing this, obviously, for years, and everybody wants to see it. The question is, will the requirements placed by donors—the World Bank, in particular—on the people they give money to be sufficiently robust so that actually happens. Corruption is a problem; it's a problem in every country, I'm afraid, and it's a problem that has to be dealt with only by there being, in the long term, the best transparency and the best accountability to the peoples of these countries.

Q113   Anas Sarwar: You mentioned my next point, which is on extractive industries. President Obama in his address to the MDG summit mentioned new legislation being passed in the US to have compulsory reporting of extractive industries that are taking place in African countries. Do you think that is something we should be replicating here in the UK and passing legislation on?

Gordon Brown: I believe that we have rules, that we introduced a few years ago, governing the reporting of companies about their payments to other people and to Governments. I think we have rules that companies have agreed to follow, and some companies are doing so. If it becomes necessary to have further legislation to deal with it, I think there would be public support for that happening. The more this is set down in the legislative process of different countries, the better. However, what we are looking for is the transparency of Governments in developing countries to their own people, and that is what is going to be, in the end, the most successful way of dealing with this.

Q114   Pauline Latham: Coming back to governance, you talked about corruption in many African countries. In the United States, no President can serve more than two terms. In Africa, that was the case, but many African leaders have overruled that and decided that they're going to stay on much longer. In fact a friend of mine from Derby, a Cameroonian, walked barefoot from Derby to Downing street to present you with a petition asking you to use your influence with world leaders, particularly with African leaders, to ask them to honour their original agreements. Can you tell me what you did about that?

Gordon Brown: Yes. I think there are a number of African leaders—it has not been increasing, in my view, over the last few years—who said they would serve two terms and then failed to do so. I think people make it clear, as I have, to some of these leaders that if they say something and then are not in a position to deliver it, their authority is affected by that, but it's very difficult for us to impose a rule on African countries that we don't apply ourselves.

Q115   Pauline Latham: We don't have a President, though.

Gordon Brown: Yes, but I think it's very difficult for us to say. Mayor Bloomberg in New York has served more terms than he said he would at the beginning. He's a very good Mayor of New York, and a very successful Mayor of New York. So it's difficult for us to say, when sometimes in our countries people serve long terms, that there should be a limit on the terms. I think the real issue is keeping promises. That's important.

Q116   Jeremy Lefroy: We've referred to China before, and clearly inward investment in Africa by China is absolutely huge at the moment. Do you think that investments generally by China—we're talking, obviously, in extremely general terms—are made in the right way? You referred to perhaps 1 million Chinese working in Africa on infrastructure projects. Would it not be better if they were to train local people to do that work?

Gordon Brown: You can see it from China's point of view as well as you can see it from our point of view. China has a need for resources; China is prepared to sign long­term agreements that many others are not prepared to sign, where they guarantee particular prices for these resources, and China is prepared to support Governments as they try to develop as a result of their willingness to enter into agreements with them. China also is a country with billions—I think it's $3 trillion—of reserves, and they're talking about how they might invest more of these reserves in Africa. I don't think it's a bad thing. The fact that China's prepared to invest in Africa is a good thing. The point you're raising, about the terms on which investment is made, is an important issue. It would obviously be better for Africa if the work forces indigenous to these countries were doing a lot of the infrastructure work. I know that China's policy is not simply to have a lot of people from China working in Africa, but there are a lot of people who are prisoners who are sent to Africa to do compulsory labour as part of their sentence.

The challenge is for us really. If China is taking a long-term view on its investments in Africa, and if it's prepared to sign up to long­term agreements, why are our companies, our countries, not prepared to do something similar? I think that becomes the issue for the future, that there is a battle for influence as well as a battle for resources happening here. We should recognise that it is in our security interest, as well as our economic interest, to be more involved—as long­term committed—to projects of development in Africa. The levels of private investment in Africa have been far too low, and therefore are an incentive for the Chinese to do what perhaps we and others should have done some time ago.

Q117   Jeremy Lefroy: Mr Brown, why do you think it is that our companies don't invest in the way that the Chinese do?

Gordon Brown: I think we take too short­term a view often about what is successful investment. I wasn't joking when I said a minute ago that it would have been obvious, after the different infrastructure, dotcom and other big investments made by the private sector in the world economy in recent years, for people to have turned their attention not just to Asia and to the Middle East but to Africa. It would have been the natural thing to do, because rates of return in Africa have been very high. It may have been a false definition of what constituted security in Africa, or it may have been the statements that have been made by African leaders, which could be, in my view, geared towards this idea of a new Africa more effectively. However, there is no doubt that there is investment waiting to be done in Africa, and it's not entirely public sector investment; it could be private sector investment.

Possibly we should be thinking far more imaginatively about the partnerships that can be delivered with a minimum amount of Government support. If you, for example, form a £100 billion infrastructure fund for Africa, and you had six Governments maybe to back it, with some guarantees, not fully guaranteed, then the chance of that public­private partnership taking off would be very strong. I think that's the way that we should be thinking. If you included in that educational investment, as well as roads and physical investment in power and energy, it seems to me that you could get the benefit from the most important problem that Africa's going to have to solve in the long term, and that's the lack of skills, the lack of literacy of its own people. There are things that could be done, and people could be more imaginative in the future.

I have proposed, on a number of occasions, the public­private partnership model for Africa as a way to get better use of development resources in some areas. It's not possible to think of it for all health or for paying for teachers, but it could work for building schools, the development of power, and the transport system. I think we have to be far more imaginative in the future about how we deliver, so that we can actually not just meet but exceed the Millennium Development Goals, which are minimum goals; as you know, these are not the high point of what we would like to see achieved across the world. To reduce infant and maternal mortality is not the same thing as eliminating all avoidable mortality, and to get children to school is not enough, because they have to get a quality education, so I think we have to be much bolder in the way we look at things for the future.

Q118   Hugh Bayley: Both the IMF and the World Bank expressed concerns about the level of Chinese lending to the DRC, and of course had to reconsider some of their own programmes. What can we do to make China more aware of the risks of creating new unsustainable debt burdens in Africa, and to encourage them to learn from our mistakes in the past and follow good developmental models that transfer skills rather than simply building infrastructure and leaving, for instance? In particular, is there any way that we could persuade China, without having to join the OECD, to become an observer member or an associate member at the DAC so that we can discuss these questions of development partnership on a close and equal basis?

Gordon Brown: This is one of the problems: the Chinese definition of aid is very different from our definition of aid. That's partly because it's not part of these discussions. I think you have to say that China is prepared to invest long term; that is an important element of any development strategy, and perhaps we have not been long­termist enough in the way that western countries have approached development aid. We haven't been able to give predictable and sustainable aid for projects even over a year or two. The long­term nature of the commitment to Africa is, I think, important. I agree with you that the strings that are attached that we have removed over the last 10 years, about trade for aid and everything else—tied aid—are important aspects of really having an anti­poverty policy, and not simply a pro­influence policy. That is where, I think, by discussion and deliberation we could come to an understanding with China about this.

Remember, this is a problem that can be solved; it's not an impossible problem. Although there is competition, and although I think it is damaging us that we have not done enough in certain areas of Africa to build up support for what we are trying to do, I think by debate and discussion it's not an impossible problem to solve. Again, I do say that when the world works together and actually tries to solve problems, it can usually succeed better in doing so. Where the world ignores problems, and there is a stand­off, and on a lot of these issues there have just been stand­offs, as there is, for example, on the currency at the moment, then you go backwards, not forwards. My fear for this decade—I'll be very straightforward—is that we lapse into a form of protectionism that is not necessarily the old protectionism of raising huge amounts of trade tariffs and barriers, as happened in the 1930s, but has a similar effect in that it actually removes the engine of growth that comes through trade, and it makes countries look in on themselves instead of out.

There is no solution to the world's economic problems without co-operation, and there is no solution, in my view, to the long­term need for growth, in America and Europe in particular, where we have low growth economies now. There is no solution to that that doesn't go through things we can do in Addis, Abuja, and in different parts of Africa, as well as in China, India and Asia. We have to be countries that are in a position to export to these countries, and equally we have to put them in a position where they can export to us.

Q119   Mr McCann: A couple of weeks ago, Mr Brown, a friend of mine who's a highly successful businessman in America was over in the House of Commons, and he said to me that if he was a younger man—

Gordon Brown: Is that Bill Gates you're talking about?

Q120   Mr McCann: No, not Bill Gates, no. A guy called Jerry Dowd, a highly successful businessman. He said that if he was a younger man, he would move to China, because of the enormous opportunities over there. I was just wondering: do you think there's ever going to be a time, within the next 10 years, 20 years, or next generation, when businessmen will say that about Africa?

Gordon Brown: Yes, I think so, because I think it has great potential and it's a great opportunity. We are not just talking about Africa today, although much of the discussion has been about that. India and many other countries that are classified as emerging markets have huge potential. It's in the interrelationship between the countries of the world that I think you're going to find the greatest dynamic for growth. China depends on exporting to the rest of the world. America has announced that its future lies in doubling its numbers of exports. Each continent is so interdependent now with the others that any strategies for growth that are successful will depend on countries and continents working together. That's why protectionism is such a danger.

Ngozi, the managing director of the World Bank, addressed a meeting a few months ago and said: "Which part of a continent has had higher rates of growth than Asia, is now a $1 trillion dollar economy, and has moved forward faster than Brazil and Russia"—I think it was—"in the last few years?" Of course the answer was sub­Saharan Africa, which actually is a $1 trillion economy. Africa itself is a $1.5 trillion economy. Britain is about a $2 trillion economy, so Africa as a whole, with 1 billion people, is unfortunately still a very small part of the world economy, but it is not an insignificant part of the world economy now. Obviously quite a few people have found that to develop mobile phones in Africa has been a very successful business, because there are now 40% of Africans—300 million or 400 million—with mobile phones?

Q121   Richard Burden: In one of your answers just a few moments ago, when we were talking about China, you talked about the importance of the change of mindset that we went through in looking at not just development but aid specifically being an anti­poverty issue rather than a pro­influence issue. I wonder if I could ask you just to comment on, in a sense, one of the perhaps dangers in mindset that could take place from hereon in. Given the links between barriers to development and conflict, and given the increasing concern of a number of countries, understandably, to address areas of conflict around the world, not just in Africa, how do you respond to the concerns that a number of NGOs would put forward—that there is a real danger that there will be a securitisation of aid, and that while we may say that what we're going to be doing is focusing on poverty alleviation, actually there will be a crossover into seeking influence, but it will be seeking influence through the area of conflict and the resolution of conflict, in a sense, in our image?

Gordon Brown: What have we achieved at a global level as continents working together over the last few years? First of all, the United Nations has a better humanitarian agency; it is not as successful as it should be and not able to act as quickly as it might, but now, for the first time, it has a backup of resources, which means it can act without having to wait to call round the world for people to give donations. We have 100,000 peacekeepers as part of the United Nations. But what don't we have? This, I think, goes to the heart of this, and about how you need global cooperation to do this: if a country is in conflict and comes out of conflict, then you have no easy means by which international effort can contribute to the civilian staff, policing, security services, the building of infrastructure and so on that is necessary as a direct result of the damage that has been done by conflict. You can send peacekeepers and you can send humanitarian aid, but we're not in a position, as we should be, to mobilise the resources of engineers and civilian law and order forces to back up a country that is setting off on the road to rebuild itself and to reconstruct. There is a missing element in international provision.

You have humanitarian help, which could be better, and you have peacekeeping help, which is in an emergency, but it's just peacekeeping, with all the difficulties that are associated with that, because you're not rebuilding the country, and you're not helping that rebuilding process. It takes 10 years or more for a country to recover from a conflict, when actually we have the skills that can help them recover quickly. I think there is a missing part of the jigsaw in the United Nations system, or in the international system, because it doesn't need to be through the United Nations, where we can provide help for reconstruction in emergencies where there's damage like flooding, as happened in Pakistan, where again the response has been magnificent from people, but institutionally there is a lot to be done very quickly, and it has not been done, but also where there has been conflict and people are trying to rebuild from conflict.

Therefore, instead of this battle for influence, with China saying it will do something and then Britain saying it will do something, then America saying it will do something, we need a prior international agreement that you would actually take action, and you have the resources mobilised through national contributions to global activity on this, so a global force on this can actually do something. I think that is urgently needed.

The international community could actually prevent conflict and prevent civil wars much more successfully. I believe there is merit in this proposal. When we dealt, as a country, with Rwanda, we did not see what was happening clearly enough, and nobody acted quickly enough to deal with the carnage that eventually led to the loss of 1 million lives in a very short period of weeks. If you had international officials, elected politicians and administrators who were prepared to pre­announce that they would not stand by and they would not allow themselves to be marginalised or isolated in the event of something like a Rwanda crisis in the future—we have instances around the world that worry you that things like that may continue to be possible—if you had some pre­announcement of solidarity that would be exercised by people not being silent and not being allowed to put other issues and other interests before taking action to deal with these things, then we might be better at preventing conflict in the first place.

There's a great deal more that the international community can do by resolving that it will take common action, both when there are problems, and even to try to prevent problems. I think it's a collective decision that we need, that perhaps the United Nations and perhaps other institutions are important in delivering. These are the sort of things that we should be able to do in this modern world, and particularly when people can communicate with each other and can send messages about what's happening and about violence that's taking place, we should be able to act more quickly.

Q122   Richard Burden: Do you have any thoughts about what the mechanisms could be for achieving that? The second thing you said could be in a sense an extension of Responsibility to Protect.

Gordon Brown: The problem with Responsibility to Protect is it's not being implemented. There's a prior difficulty about knowledge and our ability to know what is going on, but that is very quickly being resolved in this world by people's ability to communicate messages. The Zimbabwe elections were exposed, not because the Zimbabwe Government wanted us to know, but because people were taking photographs on mobile telephones at the polling stations and were actually filming the results. There's a group in Kenya that was formed to deal with ethnic violence that's now spread around the world—I don't know if the Committee has looked at this—communicating to each other if ethnic violence takes place in their country and among their communities, and stirring international public opinion. Aung San Suu Kyi: the knowledge we have of the fraudulence of these elections, but also her isolation, when she was actually the elected leader of Burma, the knowledge we have of what's happening in Burma, and the repression in Burma, came from people blogging and people sending information out by texting.

The prior question of whether you know what's going wrong in particular countries, even when they try to seal themselves off from the outside world, is quickly being resolved by our ability to communicate with each other. Then the question is, if you know what's going on, is the international community better placed to take action? We should have far better mechanisms for acting quickly when things go wrong.

Q123   Chair: I want to talk about your role in the Global Campaign for Education, but you've made a lot of statements this morning that I think will find resonance with the Committee. We were, as I said, in the United States last week, where there was a very sharp swing in the elections towards Republicans. We met a representative on an NGO who was a Republican staffer. He said that a Republican Congressman, will say to him, "Why should we give more aid, when all they do is burn our flag?" Donald Trump was making some investment in my constituency and suggested he might want to be a presidential candidate, saying, "We should stop buying things from China. We should stop exporting jobs to Mexico. We should tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement." How big a role has America had in blocking the agenda that you actually want to explore? Or to what extent do you think they can be persuaded to take part in it, in the spirit which you're suggesting?

Gordon Brown: I think this week's G20 will expose the fact that you can't solve the problems that the world faces about high levels of growth and employment in the future, and tackle the high levels of poverty in the poorest countries, without far enhanced international co-operation. I think the problem for each country, including the biggest countries of the world, and of course that includes America, is that people are looking for national solutions to what is a global problem. We have a global problem at the moment; we have a massive—

Q124   Chair: I think we would agree with you; the point is how do we persuade them?

Gordon Brown: We have a massive global restructuring taking place: for the first time, the balance of economic activity—the majority of economic activity in the world—is no longer in Europe and America. We have a financial system that is not global in its supervision, but global in its operation, and therefore it's bound to run into crises. Over the next few years, people have to start to understand that you cannot solve the problems in any one country—this is true of any country; I'm not trying to get into domestic politics here—without a degree of international co-operation that has never existed before. When you see the battles that are happening over currencies, or the battles that are happening over financial regulation, and when you see the loss of industrial capacity and its inability to create jobs and to make people prosperous, people will come to understand, in my view, that you can't afford to look inwards; you have to look outwards for a better way of running the world economy. If you look at the American polls, by the way, people are not against co-operation to deal with problems, but people will see it as an easy answer. If a massive amount of imports are coming in from one country, that potentially is jobs that could have been given to people in that country, and that looks like a problem. That's why you have to have a far more expansive debate about global problems that require global solutions.

Q125   Chair: You've had a long commitment to promoting the role of education as a key to development in developing countries, and you're now Co­Convenor of the High-Level Panel of the Global Campaign for Education. What we've tended to campaign for—we've all been involved in these campaigns, "Send my friend to school", "Send my buddy to school"—is just numbers; trying to get numbers of children not in school into school. However, there's a lot of evidence that the quality of education that they get is often pretty meagre, and the drop­out rate is quite high. To what extent is it a problem that the MDG is simply about getting children into school, and not about actually giving them a decent education?

Gordon Brown: I've emphasised the importance of teachers and teacher training. Anybody who looks at their own education knows the importance of the individual teacher. If the teacher is not trained, or the teacher is not turning up because they're not being paid, or the teacher is not given the materials that they can work with, the education is bad from the start. I think you have to have a focus on training and developing a sustained teaching work force, and that's a big part of solving the gap between the number of people potentially at school and the number of people who are at school.

I do think we can leap a technological generation in education, and I think that's important; without undervaluing the importance of teaching on the spot, and teacher training on the spot, I think we could do a lot more using the modern means that we have of communicating information and education. I notice that the Open University is training thousands of teachers in Africa by correspondence course, and there's a huge amount more that can be done. That's an issue that I think we can deal with more effectively.

Every time I talk about education, I'm not just talking about the numbers going to school, I'm talking about having trained teachers for them, and having decent materials, the use of the internet, high­quality learning as a result of that, and then you have to think, if you're making the link between education and the economy, of vocational education, about the chances for people going on to do university, college or technical education of some sort, and of people actually finishing their school courses. I don't think it is enough any more to talk about education for all; it's high quality education for all, and that depends on high quality teacher training, high quality teachers themselves, and investment in not just infrastructure and buildings, but in the technology that is so important to education in our schools now, and it does cost money.

That is where I see the debate about education moving. I see the link between educational opportunity and economic success becoming more powerful as we move through the years, not just for us, because it's important to us, but for Africa as well. In that sense, the problem is no different from the problem here—that we have to give people the opportunity to realise their potential to the full, and that means developing vocational, technical and university and college education. I think that's where the education argument has to move.

That is the future of countries that are developing countries; their future lies in the human capital, the people themselves, and the empowerment that we're talking about is not Government from this country telling people what to do, but giving people the power to make decisions for themselves. It's a growth plus agenda, so it's growth, but it's also investment in health and education that is a necessary means by which people become more prosperous.

Q126   Chair: Do you accept that there are practical concerns? Particularly in rural areas, the lack of sanitation means that girls won't go to school. The lack of decent accommodation means that teachers won't actually go into rural communities to teach, because they don't have decent facilities.

Gordon Brown: But it has been solved in other countries and it can be solved in these countries. Let me just say, the biggest problem is in conflict countries. How do you guarantee the provision of education to children when the country is broken down, and when no other services are working, and therefore the schools are not working because there are no other services really working? Most of the children who are not in school at the moment are in countries that are broken down and countries that are in conflict. We have to devise a way, as we have devised for health through Médecins sans Frontières and the Red Cross for providing health services in emergencies, for providing continuous education, even when there's a breakdown in countries.

We have to have an "Education Without Frontiers", an "Education Without Borders," set of initiatives to make sure people agree that even when a country has other problems, you will continue to try and provide education. I think that is a big challenge, because it will need more than just building schools. It will need teachers who are prepared to travel to areas that are very difficult areas, and are prepared to work there. That is a great challenge. But don't tell me that's insuperable. If you can solve some of these problems for health, you can solve some of these problems for education as well. If you're looking at how you meet the Millennium Development Goal target on education, you cannot exclude the fact that we have to take very different action to make sure that even when there is conflict or chaos or breakdown there is some sort of agreement that education can continue.

Q127   Chris White: Yes; it's really continuing on that theme. How do you think better progress can be made on MDG 3: providing secondary education to girls?

Gordon Brown: It's partly cultural, as you know. In some areas of the world—northern Nigeria is a good example, I think, with the ethnic loyalties of the people there— women's education, girls' education, has been undervalued. I think when you look at what I said about maternal mortality, or if you look at the bringing up of children, the number of years that a girl has at school has a huge influence on their ability to do the other things that are absolutely important for their family's life. Education itself is an important means by which you can prevent maternal mortality and prevent infant deaths. I think that's generally recognised to be so.

We have to find a way of emphasising the importance of girls' education—that discrimination is not acceptable, that the benefits are huge, and that the cultural objections to girls' education have to be removed. In some areas of the world people don't want boys to go to school, because they want them to work earlier, but in most countries the majority of people who are not in education are girls. It's cultural. It's about the benefits of education and it's about anti­discrimination legislation being effective. These were some of the things that happened in Britain in the 19th century that we had to deal with, and these are problems that have to be dealt with now.

Q128   Chris White: I think we agree on the importance of secondary education for girls. I just wondered if you had any practical ideas of how it could be improved.

Gordon Brown: The problem at the moment is that we are short of teachers, we are massively short of schools, and particularly in rural areas provision is very difficult. Even if it was a problem with boys' and girls' education, we have an absence of investment. We need to train 2 million teachers every year for developing countries, and we are clearly not doing that. For sub­Saharan Africa alone, we have to train 5 million teachers by 2015. The lack of teachers in most countries—in some countries there are unemployed teachers, by the way—the lack of provision in school buildings and the lack of encouragement, of course, where there are alternatives, where there's work for people to go to, make it very difficult to win this argument.

There are some very good projects that are having some success in different parts of the world. There is one in Kenya I was looking at the other day, Afrikids, which is helping young children, particularly girls, get to school, because they're dealing with all their other needs, nutrition and health as well as education, and then they're dealing with their employment needs at a later stage. There's a lot of good work being done and a lot of good projects that could be built on. In India, a huge project has just started; it's called something like the movement for universal education, and you have a number of areas where they're focussing on getting education for girls into these areas. We build from these projects, but there is a shortage of teachers round the world, there is a shortage of buildings, and there is a shortage of equipment, and we have to face up to that. You can't solve the problems without solving the logistics problems as well.

Q129   Richard Harrington: Thank you, Mr Brown. I'm conscious of time moving on. If possible, could we just speak a little bit about the G20? You mentioned in a speech recently the G20 agreeing a strategy for global growth, and one way of eradicating poverty being through growth mechanisms. I wondered if you'd like to comment, with the French taking over the presidency of the G20 for 2011, on what outcomes you'd like to see from that and, as part of that, if you could perhaps expand on your suggested constituency system to include African representation within the G20. What are people's reactions to that?

Gordon Brown: If you're looking at the way forward, Chairman, for the proposals that you would make after the UN summit, I think you have to take into account the under-representation of Africa and the developing countries in the international institutions. The G8 has been replaced by the G20 as the premier economic organisation. At the G20 we insisted that the African Union be represented, and that the Chairman of NEPAD, who was Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia, be present as well, so there were two members of African governance or African institutions at the G20.

In the long term you probably want the G20 to be based on a representative system, where there's a constituency system, like there is for the IMF committees. You have to find a better way of involving African, Asian and developing countries. Otherwise the same objections the G20 had to the G8 will be the objections that the G190 will have to the G20. I think you have to prepare for the fact that this is not a permanent arrangement; the G20 has to be more representative for the future.

I also think that we would be failing if we didn't recognise that, when I talk about extended co-operation within the G20, it goes right across the board. It's a tragedy that we don't have a trade agreement, because that would help Africa in particular, but help all the developing countries. It's a tragedy that the rules, at the moment, on financial supervision look like being different for America and Europe, and therefore different from different centres of the world. It's going to be a bad thing if we can't bring all the global financial centres into agreements about how we deal with financial stability problems. It's clear to me that you could create millions more jobs around the world if you had the level of international co-operation I'm talking about, because it is the barriers to both trade and growth that have been created between countries that are part of the reason why the world has grown far more slowly than it should.

The G20 has a big responsibility for dealing with these problems, and the big beneficiaries of them doing so would be the poorest countries of the world, because they would be brought into the international system in a way that could create growth. It's very interesting to look at the way the world economy has developed faster than at any time over the last 20 years—lots of countries becoming fast­growing countries, but all potentially stalled by our inability to solve some of the structural problems in the world. Not to have proper global financial supervision, not to have trade deals that allow people to benefit from the sale of their products, and not to have understandings about how each country would be prepared to increase its consumption in future years.

  Richard Harrington: Thank you. Excuse me, Mr Chairman.

Q130   Mr McCann: On the point about the suggested constituency system for greater representation for African countries, did you speak to any other countries or people about this? What was their reaction, given the problems that you mentioned?

Gordon Brown: I think President Sarkozy, who's going to be chairing the G8 and the G20 next year, has a number of ideas for how he can move this forward. President Sarkozy and France have always been keen to have the strongest possible relationship and representation of Africa, because of the Francophone countries that are very much associated with France. I think there is widespread support in the developing countries, and in the emerging markets, for a further change in the way the G20 operates. I think it would be the height of complacency if we thought that because the G8 had been replaced by the G20 as the premier institution for economic co-operation, we could just leave it like that for years to come.

I was responsible for initiating the move to having a leaders' G20, but I recognised at the time and I still would argue that you have to find a way that each continent of the world feels that its voice is being heard. It is not necessarily the case that we have an institutional mechanism for both consultation and engagement of some of the poorest countries in this. Of course, this was the problem that bedevilled the climate change talks; while it was impossible to have an open session with 200 countries to try and reach an agreement, there was no agreement on what the executive or decision­making body that would be making the recommendations was. If you don't get an agreement about how the world can work more effectively on the economy, you also have problems on environment and on security and in dealing with terrorism and the other major issues like conflict proliferation that the world faces. You have to find better forums for reaching agreement.

Q131   Anas Sarwar: I want to move on to the World Bank. As I said, the Committee's just back from visiting the World Bank, and in the IDA15 round the UK was probably the leading light in terms of giving its commitment to the IDA15. I just wondered what you think the UK's priorities should be for the IDA16 replenishment?

Gordon Brown: We should play our part. The World Bank is absolutely critical for the next stage, but if I were looking at the figures, I would say you can't rely on a one­off payment to the World Bank to solve the problems of how you get to 0.7%. I think there's a bit of a misreading of how our country's going to meet our 0.7% target. The most likely outcome, as I see it at the moment, is that we will not meet that 0.7% target, and I think there's an obligation on this Committee, which has upheld the 0.7% target, to make sure that that target is reached, but as I understand it the way to get to that target is one­off payments to the World Bank. I don't think that will actually work or convince anybody.

Q132   Anas Sarwar: Just on that, do you think that we should have legally binding targets in terms of the 0.7%?

Gordon Brown: Our Government did believe that. I think there is a Bill that could be implemented to do that. I think that is a way forward to satisfy public opinion, and also the sense that is developing in developing countries themselves that countries are not going to meet their targets.

Q133   Anas Sarwar: Just moving on from that, you'll know that the UK is currently having a bilateral and a multilateral aid review. Do you think, perhaps, after that review a lot more of our money should be going through multilateral agencies?

Gordon Brown: I know there will be some reluctance to talk about multilateral agencies if they involve certain agencies, and I can understand that. People have their own prejudices or views about the way certain agencies work. I think the pooling of aid is absolutely crucial. You cannot achieve the results that we are talking about unless you can pool resources for particular purposes and for cross­national purposes. If I'm right, some of the problems related to developing countries will not be solved simply by a bilateral aid commitment. You have to look at a pool of countries as donors, and sometimes a pool of countries working together as recipients. If you're dealing with infrastructure, you can't really do it in the old way.

Think about the issue as one of pooling resources. We work with a number of different countries to sign agreements with countries like Tanzania, Zambia and Malawi and so on and so forth, and we've done that; I think it was five or six countries pulling together to make commitments that are more long­standing than would otherwise have been made. I think the pooling of resources is what we think. That will lead to multilateral action, but it may be that multilateral action is in different forms with a number of different ways that multilateral pooling could actually happen.

  Chair: Pauline, you have a supplementary comment?

Q134   Pauline Latham: You say you doubt if we will reach the 0.7% in time. This coalition Government have said that they will reach it by 2013. That's a commitment from the Government.

Gordon Brown: I hope that is the case. What I'm really pointing to is my reading of the figures, which is 0.56% in 2011 and 0.56% in 2012.

Q135   Pauline Latham: And then it goes up steeply to 0.7%.

Gordon Brown: Yes, it goes up to 0.7%. It cannot be done just on a one­off basis by saying that you're going to make payments to the World Bank in one year.

Q136   Pauline Latham: They haven't said that, because they're conducting a review. It's interesting to note that you were saying you can't do it by one­off payment to the World Bank, but it's interesting to note that between 2003­04 and 2009­10 your Government's commitment to the World Bank gave four times as much as it had done in 2003­04. So you obviously thought that the World Bank was a good vehicle.

Gordon Brown: That was continuous support, not a one­off payment.

Q137   Pauline Latham: And who is saying that from 0.7% in 2013, 2014, 2015 will not be continuous support?

Gordon Brown: Well let's see, I hope that's the case.

Q138   Pauline Latham: Yes but I don't think you can actually say that it is not going to happen, because you don't know at this point in time. But we are in a difficult financial situation, which you are only too well aware of.

Gordon Brown: What I would say to you is that in the last 12 years, aid rose from 0.26% to what I think will be, in 2010, 0.55%, so there was a consistent and sustainable rise in aid, not moving at the same rate every year—sometimes because there was a debt payment in 2004 or 2005, I can't remember—but there was a consistent and sustainable doubling of the percentage of aid in a very fast rising national income at that time.

Q139   Pauline Latham: Yes, fast rising, which we do not have now; so we have to temper it and we are going to get to 0.7% in 2013. I'm sorry, but you left us in this mess.

Gordon Brown: What I mean by fast rising, if I may say so, is that the pressures on the Government now, because income is not rising as fast as a whole, to get to 0.7% are less than they would otherwise be if you had massively rising national growth.

Pauline Latham: Well, it would have been nice if we'd been left with that situation.

Q140   Chair: This Committee has a role to play, Mr Brown.

Gordon Brown: My issue for you is to look at how you can get sustainable increases in aid over a period of time. We mustn't fall into the trap of believing that if you can get to a particular point in one year but can't sustain it, that is an achievement, because that is again something that people would feel let down by.

Q141   Chair: I think that this Committee clearly has a role to play and will be taking evidence and I think that I would be speaking on behalf of the Committee: we support the commitment and have done so and will continue to do so and will certainly expect the Government to deliver on it. The Secretary of State has said on more than one occasion he also intends to bring into law, as the previous Government had planned to do, a 0.7% commitment, which presumably would bind or try to bind Parliament beyond 2013. I think to simply achieve 0.7% in one year and fall away would not be either in principle or spirit of the letter, but that is a job for this Committee, and rest assured, this Committee will fulfil its function.

Gordon Brown: Absolutely. It has been a pleasure to talk to you and I hope it's of some help to you.

Q142   Hugh Bayley: There is a question about short­termism versus long­termism. Back in 2009, there was consensus among the G7 that you needed to stimulate economic activity to stop recession turning into a very severe depression. Now there seems to be consensus that you need to move very quickly to reduce the deficit that was caused by that stimulus. Stimulus though is needed in poor countries as well as rich countries to recover, and aid is an important part of that stimulus and it needs to come sooner rather than later, both to aid recovery and to ensure that more is achieved against the Millennium Development Goals. What can be done internationally to persuade other counties to sign up to IDA16, to increase their bilateral aid programmes and to provide the ability for counter­cyclical measures to be used and put into practice by poor countries in pretty much the same way as we have done in rich countries?

Gordon Brown: I think the fact of what happened in Africa and in developing countries in 2008 and 2009 is that there was a very big stimulus to their economies, and it was a stimulus provided by the international community as well as by their own action. The problem that they have at the moment is that that stimulus is going and therefore they have to find other ways of finding drivers of growth.

I think the support that IDA can give these countries is obviously going to be important in future years, but again, I do emphasise that it's the combination of public and private investment that's going to make the difference. I mean, 80% of poverty reduction comes from growth; you can't rely on growth for delivering proper healthcare or proper education; that has to be a decision that is made by Governments themselves because there is no automatic follow-through from growth to investment in health and education. The issue for me is how can you build a more effective public-private partnership to deliver the higher levels of growth and the higher levels of social protection that are necessary in the countries that we're talking about. I think we need to think more imaginatively about the public-private partnerships that I'm talking about and more imaginatively about how groups of countries can underpin a number of different initiatives that could actually lead to quite big investment projects in these countries.

Q143   Anas Sarwar: I realise time is moving on, so just a couple of very quick questions, Mr Brown. What are your views on what should follow the MDG framework post-2015, and do you think that concentrating on what we do after 2015 is a distraction from achieving our 2015 commitment?

Gordon Brown: No, it must be right to think beyond 2015, and I think we should, but it's also right to emphasise that our credibility in doing so will be affected by what happens to the delivery of aid before 2015. Thinking beyond 2015, I have to say that one of the issues that arose in the last few years was that we had one strand of opinion wanting to emphasise the importance of the environment—rightly so because climate change was affecting the poorest countries in the world worse and some countries were in danger of having climate change refugees and evacuees—but at the same time, we had the pressure on the Millennium Development Goal targets as well.

We have to find a way of integrating our concern for the relief of poverty and the provision of decent public services with our concern for a sustainable environment. As we look at objectives beyond 2015, I think rather than looking as if the two are sometimes at odds with each other, we have to find a way of bringing them together. You do so when you look at water, for example, but I think we could be even better at showing how we could achieve sustainable development in some of the poorest countries in partnership with them, and any new assessment of Millennium Development Goals would have to reflect that for the future. So that is one way that I think we can improve things.

I've read the UNDP Human Development Report and I think they are looking very imaginatively at a human security index as well as a human development index, and at the extent to which we can do more to help people deal with catastrophes and deal with tragedies that happen as a result of natural disasters. I think this whole issue about the quality of life is an important element of any future examination of the Millennium Development Goals, because as we rightly say, for a child to be able to go to school but not to able to read after they've gone to school, not to have proper teaching when they're at school and not to be able to get a job as a result of the years of education they've had at school means that the commitment on teaching and learning and every child going to school is too narrow. It has to reflect what education has to deliver in practice as outputs as well as the input of children going to school.

Q144   Jeremy Lefroy: Thank you. You've already spoken about the need to find a way of integrating the tackling of poverty and climate change. What do you think will be the effect of climate change on the growth prospects, particularly for sub­Saharan countries?

Gordon Brown: If we do not find a way of dealing with adaptation and mitigation, and find a way soon of financing that, I think you are talking about countries where there will be, as most people agree—I'm not saying all experts agree on this because there's been this disagreement about the impact of climate change—problems associated with crops failing, with flooding and of course, as I said, with evacuees and refugees. We know that's happening in a few island states but we also know there are big problems in Africa, Bangladesh and other countries. Unless you can deal with these issues of mitigation and adaptation and unless you can finance action to do something about it, you will have, again, a sense that promises have been broken; but more than that, you are going to have these problems becoming bigger and bigger as we go through the years.

The interesting thing about Copenhagen and the failure to reach an overall binding agreement was that different elements of that were there, and are still there. You have each country agreeing to national plans for carbon reductions, you have a system of greater transparency and the reporting of that that all countries did sign up to, you had a system of short­term financing for the developing countries most affected by climate change—this $10 billion a year which we are contributing to and we're grateful that the Government have continued that contribution to the environmental initiative—but then you have this issue about an agreement in principle that $100 billion of funding would be made available by 2020 on a continuous annual basis. Not having a mechanism by which that finance is raised is therefore increasing doubt about whether that is serious. If you had not had the disagreement about a treaty itself—the form of a treaty—then these four building blocks of the climate change talks would have been seen as a success. What was missing from Copenhagen was an overall treaty that seems to be binding, and therefore a framework with which people can believe that there is going to be security and stability in the way we approach the issue of climate change and give investors the sort of framework within which they could make decisions about investment.

There are, however, two individual commitments on finance; one on short­term finance, which has to be honoured, obviously, and the second one on long­term finance, where there is a working party now chaired—it was me before—by Prime Minister Stoltenberg of Norway, with some very prominent people on it. It's jointly chaired with Prime Minister Meles of Ethiopia and there are a large number of leaders and a large number of financial experts on it, and it's looking at how this target of $100 billion can be reached by 2020. It will need to come up with quite innovative proposals if they're going to be acceptable or workable in the world community.

The building blocks on climate change were agreed at Copenhagen, the overall framework which was not agreed is deterring investment in nuclear power, low­carbon and renewables and probably affecting the ability of that market to generate thousands of jobs, which it should be doing very soon and will perhaps not be able to do. However, on the individual aid issue, there is an agreement in principle; that now has to be delivered.

Q145   Chair: Thank you, Mr Brown. I think you have demonstrated to the Committee not only your continued commitment to development but your wide understanding and knowledge of it, which we appreciate. I think in some ways, you've answered Mr White's question as to why you wish to engage with the Committee and we appreciate that you have done so.

Gordon Brown: Well I hope you'll be able to stress the importance of Select Committees.

Q146   Chair: Well we seem to have got into the habit of being the first Select Committee that ex­Prime Ministers give evidence to; your predecessor did the same. I would just say that apart from saying thank you, and hoping that we can perhaps continue to engage with you on development issues where the Committee and yourself share clear views and ambitions, as far as I'm concerned as Chairman of this Committee, the Committee has continually backed the commitment of achieving 0.7% by 2013. I think we understand the concerns and share them, of achieving a sharp increase in the third year and we'll continue to ask questions as to how this can be done.

We are looking forward to legislation that will in fact enshrine that as a commitment long term and I think all of us take the view that 0.7% has to be delivered and maintained, not just delivered in one year. These are all activities that the Committee will continue to hold the present Government to account for—rest assured of that. Your particular commitments in Africa I think are well made, and I hope that you will not just regard this as a one­off, and that you will recognise that there is a lot of common ground between the Committee and your own interests and you may feel able to share your thoughts with us in the future.

Gordon Brown: I said at the beginning, Chairman, that I thought the work of the International Development Committee on a non­partisan basis had been incredibly successful over recent years. You've undoubtedly got the same enthusiasm and determination and drive to pursue the international development agenda and to visit countries and to see what progress has been made. The work of this Committee is an incredibly important element, not just in Britain's leadership on these issues but in making them resonate in every part of the world, so I do congratulate you as a Committee.

Q147   Chair: What is clear is that whatever little party political barbs get in, the Committee and the commitment to deliver on international development depends on strong cross­party support and I think the outside world knows that that's why the UK is in the leading position it is, because all parties are committed to delivering results. So leave the barbs aside, there is a strong cross­party view about what we can achieve together.

Gordon Brown: Thank you very much, Chair.

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Prepared 19 December 2010