{"id":579893,"date":"2010-05-26T08:08:42","date_gmt":"2010-05-26T12:08:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.oxfam.org.uk\/applications\/blogs\/pressoffice\/?p=12923"},"modified":"2010-05-26T08:08:42","modified_gmt":"2010-05-26T12:08:42","slug":"did-the-queen%e2%80%99s-speech-deliver-on-aid-commitments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/579893","title":{"rendered":"Did the Queen\u2019s speech deliver on aid commitments?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Campaigner Ian Sullivan asks, has the first Queen’s speech of the new parliament delivered for poor people?<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We had the election and the people spoke – or said \u2018hhhhmmmm, not sure\u2019. Now we’ve entered the brave new world of hung parliaments and coalition. Yesterday was a more familiar moment for British people. We had the cosy reassurance and familiarity of the pomp and regalia of the Queen’s speech and the opening of parliament. I didn\u2019t count the number of jewels in the crown but I couldn\u2019t see any cuts there.<\/p>\n

This was also the big legislative launch of the Dave and Nick show, or Libcon or Conlibs alliance, depending on where you stand. One area that I was particularly looking forward to hearing about was the commitment to legislate on the historic 0.7% of Gross National Income (GNI) commitment that had been made in 1970. We\u2019ve only been waiting on this for 40 years now.<\/p>\n

Since all three main party leaders promised to introduce this piece of legislation as part of their manifestos, I was excitedly waiting to hear the news of how and when it would happen. I was hoping that they\u2019d get on with it, get it through parliament and onto the books. No more “promises”, “commitments”, “ambitions”, “hopes” or “dreams”. Basically, I was listening out for some cold, hard timetables and some boring official type language that pointed to imminent action. I didn\u2019t hear it.<\/p>\n

The good news is that the government didn\u2019t backtrack and scrap our aid commitments. In an age of austerity (cuts to you and me) we have to be thankful for that. They did reaffirm the promise to reach the 0.7% of GDP figure by 2013.\u00a0This was also put out on the Department for International Development<\/a> website, and it forms part of the coalition agreement<\/a> between the two parties. Compared to most rich nations, the UK is in a good position<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But the point is that legislating for 0.7% was what we were sold throughout the election. Today was a great chance to follow through on this promise and show the world that we are serious about tackling poverty. What a great message of global leadership this would have sent out ahead of the G8 and the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit<\/a> later this year.<\/p>\n

In the last ten years, international aid has achieved some pretty incredible results. We\u2019ve seen millions more people on life saving HIV and AIDS anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) and 32 million extra children in school. But there\u2019s still more to be done.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been waiting for 40 years for the government to keep the promises they\u2019ve made, and after today we\u2019ll have to wait longer yet for it definitely to be in the bag.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot to be pleased about when it comes to government aid commitments, but we can\u2019t ease up the pressure until we see it sat in the statute books and in the budgets.<\/p>\n

Take action and tell the government, “Don\u2019t Drop the Ball on Aid”<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Campaigner Ian Sullivan asks, has the first Queen’s speech of the new parliament delivered for poor people? We had the election and the people spoke – or said \u2018hhhhmmmm, not sure\u2019. Now we’ve entered the brave new world of hung parliaments and coalition. Yesterday was a more familiar moment for British people. We had the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4233,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-579893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4233"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}