The development white paper : second report report, together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes of evidence and appendices / International Development Committee.

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. International Development Committee
Date:
[1997]
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Licence: Open Government Licence

Credit: The development white paper : second report report, together with the proceedings of the Committee, minutes of evidence and appendices / International Development Committee. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    11 November 1997] [Continued [Ms Follett Cont] is possible is important to development and it is also important to people who live under bad governments because then it is not just despondency, they can say: “Look, we want a better government than this. Look what is happening in our neighbouring country. We could achieve similar progress.” Optimistic political models spread to countries that do not have good government. 43. Would the British Government like to see the multilateral organisations adopting these criteria? Would you do anything to work towards that? (Rt Hon Clare Short) Absolutely. Again, the whole international system is supposedly signed up to the targets. One of the things that we want to achieve is a much sharper signing up and there has been a move in the management of the IMF, the Bank, the World Trade Organisation even that is interested more and more in managing the international system in a way that helps to eradicate poverty, but we want to strengthen the commitment to this kind of way of working because it can draw the whole energy of the international system together and therefore the potential for progress is very much greater. The partnership is the method of working, but for example the Communication that the Commission produced on the Lomé re-negotiation now talks about the partnership model of working too. Everyone knows that where you get donors and governments working together in agreement about the objectives you can get massive advances and we want to get that wherever we can get it, but recognise that you do not get perfection and sometimes you have to settle for less. Mrs Kingham 44. Going back to what you said before about working with partner governments and the list of criteria, I think that is commendable, but what I think concerns me is that we are encouraging and working with these countries who have made a commitment to eliminating poverty in their own countries but yet on the other hand I am concerned that they may be undermined and their ideals may be undermined in eliminating poverty by things like the multilateral agreement on investments, on the fact that they are pushed for commercial reasons to get financial profit for their countries, to setting up free trade zones. I am concerned that these ideals and these good criteria are going to be undermined in a sense by not having enough teeth on things like having very regulated labour standards and very distinct codes of conduct that are actually sort of compulsory instead of rather than being something that people would choose to sign up to. I have seen that myself in Sri Lanka and in El Salvador where there might be a commitment—or there may not be sometimes—in the government to eliminate poverty and yet these free trade zones set up where people have no labour rights at all, sometimes child labour is used, and it is just seen as a sop to multinational companies, to get them in to get the quick bucks really? (Rt Hon Clare Short) The first point—and I had a meeting with all the Commonwealth High Commissioners this morning and there was a lot of interest and enthusiasm not just polite working groups were being set up for the African response and the Caribbean response and so on—but this is back really to the question of globalisation and its pattern and how we might manage it and whether it marginalises some and I think it is a profoundly important question. I do agree with you. On the MIA this is an OECD proposed agreement on rules of investment within the OECD countries that require any country not to treat investments coming from a foreign source in a different way than investment that is coming from its own country. It is not meant in any way to be a development instrument; it is meant only to apply to OECD countries. The concern of course is that it will become the model and then will spread more and more widely and the developing countries will not have been at the table when it was developed and their interests are not taken into account and then it becomes the model. That would be the concern. One of the new responsibilities of our Department with the enlarged remit is to take that kind of point on board and some of the British NGOs, as you know, have campaigned on this point and we have done quite a lot of work and the British Government, amongst others, have put in reservations on the MIA on the question of poor labour standards and environmental protection to make sure that countries are not driven into creating incentives to attract investment that mean constantly cutting labour standards or cutting environmental standards, that the line that everyone agrees on includes protection for those rights. I agree with you we have to go on both fronts and I agree with you very much that good governments must succeed rather than be undermined. I think in the rather cruel 80s and some of the IMF imposed programmes when, I think unforgivably myself, the IMF adjustment programme required some of the poorest countries in the world to charge for basic education and basic healthcare and therefore the poor were driven out of fundamental services that we knew promoted development and sometimes undermined governments with good intentions and that is probably partly the era to which you refer. Happily that is over, we have very different leadership from the Bank and the Fund. That does not mean it is always perfect on the ground, but definitely the strategies are very different. I have recommended before to everyone reading Mr Camdessus’ speech to the annual meeting of the IMF; it makes you very hopeful about what we can achieve, but not complacent. So we have to pursue on both fronts; we have to have good partnerships with governments and we have to make sure that the interests of the developing countries are at the table in the international institutions and the Department has taken on the responsibility to try and create those relationships and make sure that that agenda is brought to the table. Chairman: Now we would like to focus on Dependent Territories and Mr Bernie Grant will ask our questions. Mr Grant 45. This is something that we raised previously. The White Paper reaffirms the principle that the reasonable needs of the Dependent Territories are a
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