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Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Bill

The hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope) has talked about some of his concerns about the Bill. They are shared by others, but they are not well founded or substantial, and I shall deal with them in the course of my remarks. First, let me say a few words about the general point of the Bill. When the history of these times is written, I am sure that one of the great movements that will be noted is the great flood tide of international opinion for ending global poverty. The response to the Ethiopian famine of the 1980s grabbed public attention in a way never seen before, and harnessed public opinion across the developed world. The formulation of the millennium development goals, with their targets for creating a better world, have been worked through national Government and international organisation mechanisms to produce real change. The Make Poverty History campaign motivated the public in the richest countries in the world to force our leaders to commit to ending the scandal that gives a child in Africa a fraction of the life expectancy of a UK child, not to mention the very much lower chances of getting an education, health care, a job or even—tragically, in this day and age—enough to eat each day. As well as the issues of increasing aid, of improving trade and of governance—about which the hon. Member for Christchurch is absolutely right—an important aspect of this world opinion has been the understanding that a poor country cannot develop if it is shackled by debt, and that is what this private Member's Bill addresses. Governments have already taken steps to write off debt—the hon. Gentleman referred to that—although some countries do not subscribe to the consensus view on that, so there is still work to do. Consideration must, for instance, be given to the situation for countries such as China; its investments in Africa and how that is working should be addressed. There has also been genuine progress on the cancellation of public debt, and I talked about that in my earlier speech. This Bill deals with the rest of the commercial debts. It deals with the creditors who will not voluntarily, either out of normal commercial interest or for ethical reasons, engage with the debt cancellation process, and who remain outside the international consensus and the international mechanisms for dealing with developing country debt, instead aggressively pursuing the debts at the expense of the poorest people in the world. Therefore, the Bill addresses a small part of a very big picture. That is an account of the broad idealism that has driven everyone who has been involved in the whole movement to address debt cancellation and world poverty, but the hon. Member for South-West Hertfordshire (Mr. Gauke) pointed us to the Bill's details, and he was right to do so because that needs to be looked at. He identified three big issues, but I counted four. I hope his maths improve if he is to find himself on the Opposition Treasury Front Bench.