G8 and G20 Summits

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We need a process of continual checking up on the progress being made towards the MDGs. Now, in 2010, we are two thirds of the way towards the final point, and we should be doing better. We chose maternal and child health at the G8 because those are two of the goals that we are furthest from meeting.

I, too, welcome the document to which my hon. Friend has referred, and I encourage my colleagues to read it. While it is not perfect, it sets out pretty clearly on pages 15, 16 and 17 what countries promised to do and what they have done. That is progress. We have all sat here and heard reports of the great things achieved at G8 summits, but this document holds countries’ feet to the fire and asks, “Did you do what you promised to do? If you did not, you must think again.”

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister is right to draw attention to the likelihood of deaths in pregnancy in sub-Saharan Africa, but does he not think that the summit was a little bit complacent about the immediate and very serious problem of food shortages throughout that area, and the consequent large migration flows as people desperately seek somewhere to live and something to eat? Is there not a real sense of urgency when one in six of the world’s population are suffering from food shortages, the largest number in history?

[The Prime Minister]

I would not say that the summit was complacent. It was my first G8 summit, and I was struck by the fact that about half the sessions were opened up to visiting leaders from the African Union, Algeria, Egypt and elsewhere in Africa, so that they could keep reminding the richest countries in the world of what they had promised to do. The G8 cannot substitute for the work of the United Nations and other food programmes—it is not an emergency organisation—but I do not think that it is complacent about these challenges. At least, for the first time, it is checking up on itself a bit more, and that can only be a good thing.