David Lepper

Labour Party | Brighton Pavilion

More Funding for AIDS fight

Since 1994 the International HIV/AIDS Alliance - based in my Brighton Pavilion constituency - has benefited millions of people through the technical and financial support it and its partners have given to HIV prevention, AIDS care, and orphan projects.

The Alliance marked the 10th anniversary of its work in over 40 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America with a week of events during which it was a pleasure to welcome International Development Minister and Co-op Party Chair Gareth Thomas MP and Dr Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAID, to the organization’s Brighton HQ.

Central to much of its work is capacity building in local communities to help people with AIDS and others to organize and to influence laws and policies – ideas close to those of the co-operative movement.

In June the Alliance became one of 4 organisations to join the Department for International Development in partnership agreements to promote the role of civil society in eliminating world poverty.

The Labour government’s commitment to fighting international poverty and AIDS has now been re-inforced with the July Spending Review and the UK’s new strategy for tackling HIV and AIDS in the developing world

In the Spending Review Chancellor Gordon Brown ensured that the total UK official development assistance would rise to almost £6.5 billion by 2007-08 - a real terms increase of 140% since Labour took office in 1997.

What this shows is the Labour government’s commitment to reaching the UN target of 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI) devoted to official development assistance – from 0.26 % in 1997, to 0.42% in 2006-07 and 0.47% in 2007-08.

Gordon Brown also made it clear that the Government wants to maintain these rates of growth and on this timescale would reach 0.7% of GNI by 2013. If Britain’s proposal for an International Finance Facility were adopted, the objective of 0.7% could be achieved earlier, by 2008-09.
These additional resources will be used to increase UK bilateral aid to Africa to at least £1.25 billion a year by 2008, spend at least £1.5 billion on HIV/AIDS related work over the next three years, and ensure that more children in the world’s poorest countries are able to go to primary school.

The HIV/AIDS strategy -launched by Tony Blair and Secretary of State Hilary Benn at a 10 Downing Street event with women and young people living with or made vulnerable by AIDS - provides detailed spending plans for the £1.5billion for AIDS-related work committed in the Spending Review.

The Prime Minister announced that at least £150m will be spent helping children whose parents have died from AIDS and other children made vulnerable by AIDS.

He also announced a doubling of the UK’s contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria over the next three years – increasing the UK donation to £150m.  And he has given his personal commitment to providing global leadership to tackle AIDS during the UK presidencies of the EU and G8 in 2005 and beyond.

New UK funding of £116million for two major UN agencies to strengthen leadership to tackle HIV/AIDS was announced by Hilary Benn. £36million will go to UNAIDS over the coming 4 years, and £80million to the UN Population Fund over the same period. It is planned to help improve sexual and reproductive health for women and young people in developing countries.

Co-operators are playing a vital role in the wider fight against world poverty and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. The co-operative movement already has a long history of involvement, particularly in fair and ethical trading where it has made a real international impact.

Now the Co-operative College is leading a consortium of more than 10 co-operative organisations in the new Strategic Grant Agreement with the Department for International Development announced by Gareth Thomas in May.

Commenting on the new agreement Juergan Schwettmann, Chief of the Co-op Branch of the International Labour Organisation, outlined a strategy to scale up strategic twinning through partnerships between co-ops in Africa and Europe and strengthening regional trading blocks of co-operatives.

The new Strategic Grant Agreement puts our movement at the heart of work to reduce world poverty.