Oh dear, it’s the time of the year when executives of failing state-funded banks award themselves massive bonuses and the government’s only response is to say: ‘sorry guv, nothing we can do’.

Despite the fact that Britain’s biggest banks have seen their share-prices fall in 2011, and are hugely exposed to sovereign debt in Greece, Ireland and Italy, the annual bonus pot is set to be around £7 billion.

But we shouldn’t fall for the weasel words of Cameron and Osborne when they claim they are powerless to prevent Stephen Hester’s bonus.

In fact, EU legislation drafted in 2010 by Labour MEP Arlene McCarthy explicitly gives governments across the EU the power to ban bonuses to banks bailed-out by the state.

The purpose of the directive was bring the bonus culture of the financial sector back to reality, with limits on cash payments and rules that bonuses should be in shares or contingent capital so that executives would be rewarded for the long-term stability of their institution.

Here are the relevant sections of the third capital requirements directive:

Recital (12) CRD III Regarding entities that benefit from exceptional government intervention, priority should be given to building up their capital base and providing for recovery of taxpayer assistance. Any variable remuneration payments should reflect those priorities.

Annex V, Section 11 Directive 2006/48/EC, point 23 (k) in the case of credit institutions that benefit from exceptional government intervention:

(i) variable remuneration is strictly limited as a percentage of net revenue where it is inconsistent with the maintenance of a sound capital base and timely exit from government support;

(ii) the relevant competent authorities require credit institutions to restructure remuneration in a manner aligned with sound risk management and long-term growth, including, where appropriate, establishing limits to the remuneration of the persons who effectively direct the business of the credit institution within the meaning of Article 11(1);

(iii) no variable remuneration is paid to the persons who effectively direct the business of the credit institution within the meaning of Article 11(1) unless justified;

EU wide guidance on the implementation of these rules, overseen by the European banking authority makes clear:

The competent authority could also require the institution not to award any variable remuneration as long as the government support is not yet paid back, or until a recovery plan for the institution is implemented/accomplished.

In other words, governments have the power to intervene on any bonus to a state-backed bank. Indeed, banks should build up their capital base and pay back the taxpayer before awarding themselves bonuses.

McCarthy, who is launching an inquiry on the implementation of the rules, said:

“The 2011 remuneration rules that the coalition signed up to and should have implemented, clearly give the government, as the major shareholder in RBS, the power to ban bonuses for directors of bailed out banks.

She added that:

“If they weren’t prepared to ban bonuses, the government should have applied the remuneration rules which stipulate that 60 per cent of bonuses must be deferred and paid in instalments for at least three years.”

The hard economic facts are that, in 2011, the RBS share-price fell by over 40 per cent, costing taxpayers, who still own 81 per cent of the bank, around £23 billion.

Meanwhile, RBS has continued to make massive job cuts, having just announced last week that 3,500 more jobs would go.

Last, but not least, RBS has missed the government’s lending targets for British businesses. In other words, there are no grounds for Hester, or any of RBS’s executives, to be awarded six or seven-figure bonus packages. Ed Miliband and the Labour party agree. Even London Mayor Boris Johnson has described the payment as “utterly bewildering” adding that RBS should be “run on public sector lines”.

While City fat-cats may argue that big bonuses are needed to attract the best executives, the concept of a bonus is that it is awarded according to merit. And the coalition, which signed up to the EU law on bank bonuses, has the power to stop the payments for Hester and others. It’s time they had the guts to use it.

See also:

• All in it together? RBS fat cat “in line for £7m payout”. Seven. Million – Shamik Das, January 27th 2012

• Cable fails to provide a stick or carrot in the fight against obscene pay - Duncan Exley, January 24th 2012

• Three things Cameron should do if he’s serious about high pay - Duncan Exley, January 9th 2012

• How bankers’ bonuses are contributing to the new credit crunch - Cormac Hollingsworth, December 6th 2011

• All in it together, eh Gideon? FTSE fat cats see pay rocket 50 per cent - Shamik Das, October 28th 2011

New figures out today show that the US economy grew by 0.7 per cent in the last quarter compared to a contraction of 0.2 per cent in the UK. The final figures for 2011 put to bed Treasury spin from the autumn that the UK was doing as well as the US.

On the morning of the last US GDP figures in November, ITN’s Laura Kuenssberg tweeted:

“Treasury sources say UK grown at same rate as US so far in 2011″

As I blogged at the time, this was only true because of the boost to GDP in Q1 caused by the added economic activity following heavy snow at the end of 2010. With full 2011 figures out for both countries, we now know that while the UK grew 0.9 per cent last year, the US grew by 1.7 per cent.

Indeed, while the UK economy has contracted in three of the last five quarters and may already be in a double-dip recession, the US economy has not contracted since the second quarter of 2009.

The US has taken a slower approach to deficit reduction than the UK with cuts only starting to bite in 2013.

And while George Osborne has blamed the eurozone for the latest downturn, research by the House of Commons library has shown that it was only trade that ensured the economy was growing at all in 2011. Surely now it’s time for Osborne to accept the need for a Plan B.

See also:

• Growth revision shows economic recovery is off track - Tony Dolphin, January 9th 2012

• UK growth – bottom of the table, wallowing with the PIGS - Daniel Elton, November 28th 2011

• UK set for among slowest growth in EU - Will Straw, November 11th 2011

• UK growth down as IMF warn deficit reduction should not be at the expense of growth - Shamik Das, October 5th 2011

• No growth? ‘Keep calm and carry on’ says Osborne – Ben Fox, October 4th 2011

Lord Mandelson has put his support behind a new report (pdf) from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) which calls, amongst other things, for the coalition’s nascent green investment bank to be turned into a national investment bank, and put to work improving Britain’s infrastructure.

Writing in the foreward to the pamphlet, Lord Mandleson said:

“This report argues that in the increasingly multipolar world in which we live, it is arguable that no single world view will emerge to define the way we manage globalisation. But, while the end of a world in which the west dictated the terms of globalisation is not necessarily a tragedy, a world without a shared set of principles for managing globalisation would be.

“This report is not naïve about the prospects for global governance, but it argues for new rules accepted by developing and developed countries alike, because ‘no rules’ is not a sustainable option.

“All of the recommendations in this report are directed towards that set of principles.

On the topic of a national investment bank, the report concludes:

“The vision and scope of the nascent Green Investment Bank needs to be more ambitious.

“First, it should become a National Investment Bank with green characteristics, rather than an institution purely focused on green investments.

“The energy and transport sectors are two critical areas where Britain already has some comparative advantages, but it makes little sense to restrict such an important branch of industrial policy to these sectors in isolation.

“Second, this bank should be able to utilise the historically low yields on government borrowing with immediate effect. The chart below shows the interest rate on 10-year government bonds. Any investments with a rate of return greater than the current yield of around 2 per cent will generate a positive net impact on the government’s balance sheet.

“Investing in marketable services of this kind would turn the government’s private finance initiative on its head by allowing the public sector to borrow and then sell or lease back the service to the private sector, rather than the other way around.”

Introducing the idea on Left Foot Forward earlier this month, Will Straw wrote:

“Despite these low borrowing costs, it has rarely been harder to get credit in the private sector. The time is clearly right for a British Investment Bank set up on a strictly commercial basis and run by an independent board tasked with generating a long-term return across a diverse range of sectors.

“Any investments with a rate of return greater than the current yield will generate a positive net impact for the government’s balance sheet.

“Indeed, investing in marketable services like transport infrastructure, sources of renewable energy, or housing would turn the Private Finance Initiative policy on its head by allowing the public sector to borrow and then sell or lease back the service to the private sector, rather than the other way around.

With support from Lord Mandelson and Will Straw, is a national investment bank an idea whose time has come? We can but hope.

See also:

• The economy is crying out for more investment; we need a British Investment Bank – Will Straw, January 14th 2012

• George Osborne is the downgraded chancellor of a deflationary government – William Bain MP, December 8th 2011

• The coalition could end up borrowing more than Labour – Cormac Hollingsworth, July 27th 2011

• Wolf savages government’s approach to growth – Will Straw, February 11th 2011

• A middle way for economic recovery – Gerald Holtham, September 16th 2010

With almost 70 million children of primary school age not in school, a figure set to rise by 2015 and not fall to zero as promised in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), urgent action is required, Gordon Brown said this week.

In his new report, “Delivering on the promise, building opportunity: the case for a Global Fund for Education” (pdf), the former prime minister offers a blueprint for the reform of key international institutions so they deliver more effective support for education in developing countries.

Part of the solution is more money. Brown’s report draws on UNESCO research showing the annual financing gap for achieving universal basic education is $13 billion (£8.3bn), compared to current aid levels of just $3bn (£1.9bn).

Not all of this would come from governments, however, with the report highlighting the recent creation of a Global Business Coalition for Education, and notes that US corporations currently give $8bn (£5bn) a year to global health causes but only $500m (£320m) to global education.

But the flagship recommendation is the creation of a new, independent Global Fund for Education. While the current major education fund, housed within the World Bank, has presided over an impressive fall in out-of-school numbers of 40 million over the past decade, progress has now stagnated or even gone into reverse.

This fund, recently renamed the Global Partnership for Education, has been unable to attract significant support from donors and has been criticised in some quarters for being slow and inflexible – and what is more, many countries with the largest numbers of out-of-school kids, including Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, are not eligible for grants.

A new Global Fund for Education would attract funding from non-traditional sources, make grants to NGOs and private companies working in remote areas (and not only governments or international agencies), and finally deliver resources commensurate with the size of the global education challenge.

The health sector again provides a template, following the huge successes of GAVI and the Global Fund for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria.

This report sees Brown at his best: forensically focused on policy detail and driven by a deep passion for improving the lives of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people, and with Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd publicly backing the idea, the proposals contained in the report may soon become reality.

See also:

• 100 years of the ANC, Africa’s oldest liberation movement – Tony Dykes, January 9th 2012

• Blair: “The money is just a way of funding the rest of the things I do” – Shamik Das, September 30th 2011

• Don’t listen to the sceptics – India’s poorest will die without our aid – Anas Sarwar MP, June 15th 2011

• Education for all: A global imperative – Natan Doron, May 20th 2011

• Meeting the Millennium Development Goals – can we do it? – Jim Dobbin MP, September 23rd 2010

On Wednesday afternoon, Alex Salmond announced that the question the SNP would put to the Scottish people on 24 June 2014, the 700th anniversary of the battle of Bannockburn, would be:

Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?

As many picked up on, this question is may be “simple, straightforward and clear”, but it’s not quite as fair as Salmond suggests it is. By phrasing the question as “do you agree…” rather than the more neutral options of “do you agree or disagree…” or simply using “should”, there is likely to be a small but significant increase in the amount of people voting yes.

Time and time again, textbooks on survey construction warn against phrasing questions the way the SNP have, because it will lead to biased responses.

The CDC lists leading questions in its catalog of survey biases (pdf):

Different wording of the same question can guide or direct respondents toward a different answer… The preferred phrasing is, “Do you agree or disagree that . . . ?”

Taylor-Powell (1996) writes:

Biased questions influence people to respond in a way that does not accurately reflect their positions. A question can be biased in several ways:

(1) when it implies that the respondent should be engaged in a particular behaviour;

(2) when the response categories are unequal or loaded in one direction;

(3) when words with strong positive or negative emotional appeal are used, such as “freedom,” “equality,” “boss,” “bureaucratic,” etc.

Here are some examples of biased questions:…

3. Do you agree that funding for Extension in your county should be increased?…

This is a leading question. A better question would state:

Do you agree or disagree that Extension funding should be increased?

And Janes (1999) warns questioners against leading questions, saying:

Let them tell you what they think.

Salmond is not the first referendum writer to phrase his question thus, however.

The wonderfully obfuscated question asked of Quebec in 1995 read:

Do you agree that Quebec should become sovereign after having made a formal offer to Canada for a new economic and political partnership within the scope of the bill respecting the future of Quebec and of the agreement signed on June 12, 1995?

While the question which decided Malta’s accession to the EU was:

Do you agree that Malta should become a member of the European Union in the enlargement that is to take place on 1 May 2004?

What else do these referendum questions have in common? They were all written by the group campaigning for a yes vote. The question may still be simple, straightforward and clear, but it’s looking less and less likely that it’s fair.

See also:

• Progressives need a positive vision for Scotland - Ed Jacobs, January 26th 2012

• Hughes makes the case for an English Parliament as Salmond faces fresh scrutiny - Ed Jacobs, January 23rd 2012

• Win or lose, Scottish independence referendum heralds a revolution in UK politics - Ed Jacobs, January 16th 2012

• SNP: Cam’s “economic uncertainty” argument is nonsense; we’ll stick to our timetable - Humza Yousaf MSP, January 9th 2012

• Referendum on Scottish independence? Time to ‘bring it on’ - Ed Jacobs, June 5th 2011

As winter’s icy chill blasts millions of Britons up and down the land, with wages frozen, jobs lost and benefits slashed – with even cancer patients and disabled children not spared by the Cabinet of the compassionless – for at least one individual, there’s reason to cheer.

RBS chief Stephen Hester’s 2011 pay packet could reach £7.38 million. Seven million, three hundred and eighty thousand pounds.

That’s right, those responsible for the crisis are rolling in the dough once again, as if there’d been no recession, while those that had nothing to do with it are paying the price. Fair? Fair???

The Telegraph reports:

In a statement on Thursday night, the bank said Mr Hester would get a bonus of £963,000 as the taxpayer-backed lender bowed to political and public pressure to ensure its chief executive was not handed more than £1m.

However, the bank admitted Mr Hester was still potentially eligible for an award under a long-term incentive plan (LTIP) worth as much as £4.8m.

This means his total pay package for last year including his £1.2m salary and £420,000 pension could reach £7.38m.

If Mr Hester were to receive his maximum LTIP grant it would take the total value of the awards made to him since he took over as chief executive in October 2008 to about £27.5m.

The actual value of these awards is likely to be substantially lower than this due to the collapse in RBS’s share price over the last 12 months.

As foreign office minister Jeremy Browne told Question Time last night:

“There’s a question of honour. Even if there’s a contractual opportunity for him to have a bonus it doesn’t mean he has to accept it… He is effectively a public servant in a bank which is almost completely owned by us the taxpayers.

“He needs to think like a public servant who has a duty to his country, not just his own wealth… No-one’s forcing him to take this money. He could struggle on with £1.2m.”

All in it together?

See also:

• Cable fails to provide a stick or carrot in the fight against obscene pay – Duncan Exley, January 24th 2012

• Three things Cameron should do if he’s serious about high pay – Duncan Exley, January 9th 2012

• How bankers’ bonuses are contributing to the new credit crunch – Cormac Hollingsworth, December 6th 2011

• All in it together, eh Gideon? FTSE fat cats see pay rocket 50 per cent – Shamik Das, October 28th 2011

• Coalition fails “moment of truth” on bankers’ bonuses – Will Straw, February 9th 2011

Barack Obama put American manufacturing at the top of the agenda in his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night - and slammed US companies who had outsourced jobs in a ‘’race to the bottom’ and the tax breaks they get for exporting manufacturing jobs. Commentators and unions said the speech led with more discussion of manufacturing than anyone has heard in years.

Obama set out the steps (but not a total programme) to start in-sourcing, and committed to building:

“An America that attracts a new generation of high-tech manufacturing and high-paying jobs.”

US unions such as the United Steelworkers reacted positively as Obama set out a ‘blueprint’ to put manufacturing at the heart of the US economy including:

• Eliminating existing tax deductions for outsourcing jobs

• Big multinational corporations forced to pay a minimum tax

• Use some of the money this tax brings in to cover the expenses of bringing jobs home

• Pass tax cuts for manufacturing in the USA

• A trade enforcement unit to look at bringing cases against countries that cheat, use piracy, give subsidies – this was aimed at China

• Train skilled workers, with a national commitment to train two million with skills that will lead to a job and streamline the maze of training programmes

• Turn the US unemployment system into a re-employment system

US unions said that the ‘blueprint’ had a number of solid steps that will help “stop the outsourcing and start the in-sourcing.”

Obama also praised US companies such as Milwaukee’s Master Lock (which he referred to as a unionised company) for bringing work back to the USA.

In a sideswipe at US corporations and banks he said that the US had to see itself as a country mutually supporting each other and that they had to abandon the “each of us on our own” and selfish, “in it only for ourselves” mentality where companies believe in an “ideological fantasy that government is in the way”.

And he told Wall Street:

“Banks had made huge bets and bonuses with other people’s money. Regulators had looked the other way. It was wrong. It was irresponsible.”

What the speech lacked was a manufacturing strategy and in taking on Wall Street, talking about taxing the rich, Obama was putting down markers.

There was also no reference to the demand from US unions that companies cease their ‘war on workers’. Perhaps, one commentator said, he was saving them for another day – during the election campaign! We shall see.

See also:

• Obama’s State of the Union address: Response and reactions – Alex Hern, January 25th 2012

• Manufacturing’s recovery ends before it starts – Tony Burke, January 10th 2012

• Unions need to win over the public if they’re to avoid a repeat of Wisconsin – Amelia Peterson, September 25th 2011

• Celebrating the influence of player unions in US sport – Ruwan Subasinghe, March 14th 2011

• IDS should proceed with caution when looking to emulate US welfare reforms – Sophia Parker, November 10th 2010

In April 2012, the government will change how it compensates public pensioners for inflation rises, no longer paying public pensions indexed to the retail price index (RPI) but indexing versus the consumer price index (CPI) at a cost to pensioners of possibly as much as 1.4 per cent per year in lost rises.

This is one of the reasons why public sector workers are in industrial dispute. How much angrier will they be when they find out that while their indexation to the better RPI will end in April, this month the government gold plated RPI government payments to private pensioners until 2047, for another 35 years?

In the 2011 budget, the chancellor announced that the default inflation indexation for government payments would change from RPI to CPI. The reason for the change is that indexing to CPI saves the government money, and of course conversely costs money to the people receiving those payments.

The two major losers here are both pensioners: Public sector pensioners lose out, because they directly receive payments from the government; but so too do private sector pensioners. As Chart A.1 shows, this is because the only buyers of government index-linked gilts are the funds that pay private pensions. There are no other buyers.

Chart A.1:

And just like the public sector unions, the private pension funds told the government in quite clear terms that they didn’t want it to change the indexation to CPI.

But unlike the government’s stance on public pensions, on November 29th last year, the day before N30, the government’s debt agency, the DMO, announced that the government would not try to sell any CPI-linked bonds, because the private pensions funds were on a buyers strike.

But the government owns the whip-hand here.

There are literally no other sellers of bonds that will pay interest linked to inflation rates. And given the pension funds need to receive these payments from the government so they can pass them onto their pension clients, how long do you think the bond market would have held out before they capitulated and started buying CPI bonds?

Well, we shall never know.

A week ago, the private pension funds were able to buy a bond that will pay them RPI-linked payments for the next 35 years. So, while in April this year public pensioners will start getting lower pension rises linked to CPI, private pensioners have just received a guaranteed RPI-linkage for another generation.

In 35 years, that means private pensioners will be receiving 63 per cent more in their pension than public sector pensioners, all facilitated by our government, as Chart 2 shows.

A gold plated promise!

Chart 2:

As we know, of course, there is also a class element to this. The higher your income, the more likely you are to be enrolled in a pension. The data from the ONS of percentage not enrolled in a pension versus income and age are charted above.

For example, for 40-49 year olds on the lowest income 77 per cent aren’t in a pension, but for those earning above £600 per week, in the same age, over 81 per cent are in a pension.

Happily for the richest, as they reach 80, because of the deal the government did last week, they will still be receiving RPI-linked pensions. So much for “we’re all in it together.”

See also:

• Four myths about today’s strike: Busted. – Alex Hern, November 30th 2011

• Osborne proved the doommongers wrong – the economy is even worse than we predicted – George Irvin, November 30th 2011

• Public sector pensions no more gold-plated than those in private sector – Nigel Stanley, November 28th 2011

• New survey shows public more willing to take action over pensions – Neil Foster, November 21st 2011

• Report suggests cost of current public sector pension schemes is affordable – Naomi Cooke, May 27th 2011

By Pete Jefferys, policy and campaigns officer at the Co-operative Party

Amongst the more pernicious elements of the government’s welfare reform bill is the effective scrapping of the social fund, an interest free loan facility for the most financially vulnerable. The proposal is for the fund to be cut by 39 per cent and the rest passed on to local authorities without a ring-fence, which of course means that many councils will use the money elsewhere in their much reduced budgets.

The boon for legal loan sharking companies – which lend money at astronomical levels of interest – is obvious. The industry is clearly growing through the economic downturn; just witness the prevalence of new faces on the high street and web.

However since 2008 there has been no information on the size of the high cost credit sector, despite an Office for Fair Trading commitment to look into the issue.

Stories about people ending up in mountains of debt and even homelessness after taking high cost credit are starting to filter into the press. Given the unprecedented squeeze on household incomes currently ongoing and expected well into the future, these cases are likely to increase.

But just how much more expensive is high cost credit than other sources of consumer finance, such as from community co-operatives?

Recent analysis from Barnardo’s suggests there is a huge difference:

What this data does not include, though, is the danger of the debt rolling over and thus accruing the thousands of percent of interest that legal loan sharks charge (APR).

Credit unions, community finance providers owned by their members, cannot charge more than 27 per cent APR and many charge less than this. One leading loan sharking company charges an APR of more than 4,000 per cent.

The industry should be much more transparent about the risks of high interest accruing on loans from certain lenders and the benefits of co-operative financial service providers.

The government should fulfil the spirit of its own child poverty strategy which warns that:

Unmanageable personal debt can drive a cycle of poverty and distress that is very difficult for families to escape.

The Co-operative Party believes that the government should step up action to tackle high cost credit and the spiralling debt it can cause. The government should:

• Implement a strategy to manage the supply and demand of high cost credit – focused on making the industry transparent and supporting affordable alternative such as credit unions. This should include annual assessments of the size, growth and geographical spread of high-cost lending by an appropriate authority.

• Support an easily accessible credit cost comparison website. The money advice service could provide such a service for consumers to compare how much a short term loan costs from all different providers – including credit unions – and highlight the risk of debt accrual from different providers. Current comparison sites fail to highlight these dangers and don’t always include credit unions.

• Look into time-limits on high cost loans to prevent massive debt accrual.

• Follow the lead of the Welsh government and aim to ensure that everyone in the UK has access to a credit union.

At the weekend, Co-operative Party activists and MPs were campaigning against legal loan sharks in Liverpool. We surveyed around 100 residents in the Norris Green area and found that there is huge support for our call for action on high cost credit (over 90 per cent).

We also found that one in three surveyed had not heard of credit unions – testimony that much more can be done to raise the profile of fair and affordable lenders.

Whilst this government presses ahead with callous welfare reforms – such as their aim to scrap the social fund – more and more families are being forced towards high cost lenders. If David Cameron is serious about a more moral capitalism, then he should take action to tackle the most predatory companies of all: legal loan sharks.

The Co-operative Party is campaigning for a fairer economy that puts people before profits. You can join the campaign here.

See also:

• Government needs to find a way to tackle high-cost lending – Johann Lamont MSP, December 2nd 2011

• Ignore Wonga’s spin; they’re still targeting students – Alex Hern, January 13th 2012

• Wonga target students with friendly advice: Take our 4000% loan – Alex Hern, January 11th 2012

• Need for affordable credit ‘big bang’ to aid low income communities – Kevin Gulliver, June 27th 2011

• Public sector mutuals are a good idea but the coalition just don’t get it – Michael Stephenson, November 18th 2010

By Mann Virdee

To launch his annual letter, Bill Gates gave a speech to students, international development experts, and the first global poverty ambassadors at the LSE last night.

In the speech, Mr Gates appealed to policy makers from around the world to maintain aid levels, which have been so effective in helping the world’s poorest and have improved the quality of life globally.

He praised the efforts made by the UK in tackling global poverty, saying such commitment to reach the 0.7 per cent target is ‘exemplary’.

However, he added that the only thing that stands in the way of eradicating extreme poverty is governments that falter on international aid because of financial difficulties.

Cameron and other world leaders must also ensure that donations for the Global Fund are increased in line with commitments, and this Government needs to encourage others to do so too.

Mr Gates said that the time to help build up self-sufficiency and overcome the need for aid is now, and the key to success is innovation. He cited innovations in health and agriculture, such as the near eradication of polio and development of disease resistant crops, and how they have completely transformed the lives of so many, as examples of this.

On the progress being made, Mr Gates reassured the audience and stated clearly:

“We will be successful.”

He was joined by Professor Hans Rosling, who gave a presentation on global trends and the tremendous benefits of development aid.

The speech came a day after Mr Gates addressed a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, where he praised the role Tony Blair and Gordon Brown played in pushing forward the agenda on development and aid to Africa.

See also:

• Gates tells G20: Innovate, lead and donate to save the world - Shamik Das, November 3rd 2011

• Cameron is abdicating his responsibility on international development - David Taylor, October 14th 2011

• New report justifies aid to India and other Middle Income Countries - Gareth Thomas MP, August 24th 2011

• How many more children could GAVI be saving? - Guppi Bola, June 14th 2011

• International development back in the news – where it belongs - Jim Dobbin MP, June 8th 2011