MP's global poverty plea

A Leeds MP has called on the world's leaders to live up to their promises on aid and development in a parliamentary motion.

John Battle (Lab, Leeds West) says that decisive action is needed against poverty and climate change at a summit of world leaders next month.

He is a co-signatory on a parliamentary motion which states that ‘the world is off-track to meet the key targets on eradicating poverty’ agreed at the G8 summit at Gleneagles in 2005. The motion calls for ‘the Government, Europe and the G8 to acknowledge that the world can't wait to make poverty history.’

Mr Battle said: “When I visited a local primary school recently, a 9 year-old boy saw I was wearing a white band on my wrist and said: ‘Didn’t we Make Poverty History last year?’ Unfortunately the answer is no: we are now halfway towards the 2015 Millennium Development targets on poverty, but we are still a long way from meeting them. Unless rich nations take more decisive action, we will fail to meet the goals and fail those in poverty.”

He went on: “The Make Poverty History campaign in 2005 won major commitments from the world’s richest countries, but we need the promises made then to be followed through. The G8 summit in June is an opportunity for world leaders to make cast-iron guarantees of action on aid, debt relief, world trade and climate change.”

John Battle MP 01 May 2004