Conservative Manifesto 2010 Promote Our National Interest One World Conservatism

Conservative Manifesto 2010 Promote Our National Interest One World Conservatism

We will honour our commitment to spend 0.7 per cent of national income in aid, and ensure our aid is transparent and properly targeted. We will spend at least £500 million a year to tackle malaria. Both the British people and those who receive aid will get more control over how it is spent. We will push for a trade deal which brings growth to the poorest countries, helps those countries adapt to climate change, and puts in place the building blocks of wealth creation.

the global downturn has shaken up rich and poor countries alike. for poor countries, it threatens to undermine a decade’s growth and poverty reduction. for rich countries, it puts new pressures on household and government budgets – nowhere more so than in the UK, where Labour’s appalling mismanagement of the economy has saddled us with unprecedented levels of debt. but we should use this opportunity to reaffirm, not abandon, our values – which is why we will continue to increase the level of british aid. We will do so because it is in our national interest, as well as being the right thing to do.

Deliver on our commitment to the world’s poorest nations a new Conservative government will be fully committed to achieving, by 2013, the Un target of spending 0.7 per cent of national income as aid. We will stick to the rules laid down by the oeCD about what spending counts as aid.

We will legislate in the first session of a new Parliament to lock in this level of spending for every year from 2013.

We support the millennium Development goals and will continue to work towards them. We will maintain an independent Department for International Development (DFID) and keep aid untied from commercial interests. We will be completely transparent about the cost and performance of DfiD programmes by independently evaluating programmes and by introducing, where appropriate, payment by results.

Our bargain with taxpayers is this: in return for contributing your hard-earned money to helping the world’s poorest people, it is our duty to spend every penny of aid effectively. We will ensure british aid money is properly spent by publishing full details of british aid on the DfiD website. this will include spending data on a project-by-project basis, published in an open and standardised format so that it can be used by third party websites. in addition, we will work to bring about improved transparency of aid spending by other development organisations.

We will create a new myaid fund to allow british people a direct say on aid spending, as well as giving people in developing countries more say over how aid is spent in their communities.

Under Labour, our aid funding is not used in a focused way, and is sometimes spent in countries that should be looking after their own poor citizens. So we will stop giving aid to China and russia and review which other countries should get british aid. We will focus more on the poorest, paying particular attention to development within the Commonwealth.

a key aim of our aid is to make sure everyone gets access to the basics: clean water, sanitation, healthcare and education. We will focus particularly on the rights of women, children and disabled people to access these services. malaria continues to kill nearly a million people per year, despite the fact that it is easily preventable and treatable. So, as part of our commitment to increase aid funding, a Conservative government will spend at least £500 million per year tackling malaria and will strongly support efforts to develop a malaria vaccine.

trade and economic growth are the only sustainable way for developing countries to escape poverty, which is why we will put maximum effort into achieving an ambitious, pro-development global trade deal. our aid programme will help poor countries put in place the building blocks of wealth creation: property rights, effective public services, stability and the rule of law.

We will provide a more integrated approach to post-conflict reconstruction where the british military is involved – building on the Stabilisation Unit in Whitehall and creating a new Stabilisation and reconstruction force to bridge the gap between the military and the reconstruction effort.

to help deliver on our commitment to developing countries, we will:

• establish a Poverty impact fund to support innovative and effective british povertyfighting groups which do not currently qualify for government funding;

• explore ways to help the very poorest developing countries take part in international climate change negotiations, and work to make our aid ‘climate-smart’;

• end Labour’s use of the Export Credit guarantee Department to support investment in dirty fossil fuel power stations, and instead use it to help spread new green energy technology to developing countries; and,

• encourage the establishment of a Pan-african free trade area, which has the potential to transform that continent’s economies.