Alex Singleton

Yesterday the British government revealed, under the Freedom of Information Act, details of who are benefiting from the Common Agricultural Policy. The Queen and Prince Charles are among the beneficiaries of subsidies, but the largest winner of the system is Tate & Lyle which received £233m in export subsidies.
The Common Agricultural Policy is corporate welfare […]

I was on the BBC World Service this lunchtime talking about water privatisation in the developing world. I was up against Rudolf Amenga-Etego of the Ghanan National Coalition Against Privatisation. I pointed out that it is government control of water that has been the real problem: Ghana, almost half of the population is without regular […]

At a meeting today in the House of Commons looking at the Africa Commission’s report, War on Want attacked the government’s support for GATS (the General Agreement on Trade in Services). War on Want said that GATS (free trade in services) was “mercantilist”. This is completely wrongheaded. Hilary Benn, the Secretary of State for International […]

A report on Reuters today says:
African countries cannot absorb increased aid flows because their financial systems and management policies need strengthening, the International Monetary Fund’s top Africa official said on Monday.Abdoulaye Bio-Tchane, director of the IMF’s Africa department, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an aid conference in Mozambique that African governments […]

The Guardian’s Victor Keegan writes:
The national debate about immigration in the UK is being conducted almost entirely in a political context. If an economic dimension is added, attitudes change quite dramatically and a lot of hypocrisy is exposed.
he fact is that economic growth - and the control of inflation - in the UK is becoming […]

Today I was at Conservative Campaign Headquarters for the launch of their international development manifesto. Conservative leader Michael Howard said:
…however effective our aid programme is - and it is absolutely vital - we have to recognise that on its own it cannot solve the problems of global poverty. Good governance, free enterprise, free markets and […]

Britain’s finance minister Gordon Brown has called for a Marshall Plan to solve Africa’s problems. According to today’s Observer:
[Brown said:] “…it’s also going to be in our benefit in the long run for the developed countries to have a Marshall Plan for Africa.” The West could benefit not only from trade with a flourishing Africa […]

Clare Short, Britain’s former Secretary of State for International Development, says that debt cancellation is often seen as “mystical solution” to poverty, “when in fact it is just the equivalent of giving aid.” She points out that: “It is a good thing, but it is not world-changing.”
According to BBC News:
Ms Short, who quit the government […]

The World Development Movement, a pressure group, has attacked the contents of a leaked report to be published this week by the Commission for Africa. The Commission was set up by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Movement’s Peter Hardstaff, head of policy, said:
On aid, trade and debt, key issues where rich countries must take […]

Writing the the Guardian today, Gérard Errera, the French Ambassador to the UK, states:
We recognise that, ultimately, greater integration of poor countries in world trade through better access to our markets is an essential driver of growth and poverty reduction.
So we can now expect the French Government to be agitating for the abolition of the […]