With just weeks to go before an expected General Election, election fever has taken hold in the UK. This has meant a heightened focus on the key election battleground of recent UK General Elections: health, education and other key domestic public services. High levels of economic growth, low inflation and interest rates, falling hospital waiting lists and improving school results suggest that the government’s approach of promoting economic efficiency alongside social justice has, to a large extent, paid off.

The chances are that by summer 2005, the Labour government will be experiencing an historic third term. Yet admirable though its domestic achievements are in the UK, its record in promoting economic development and social justice in some of the poorest countries in the world is, some would say, even better.

Working closely with the Department for International Development (established in 1997) Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown has transformed the debate in the UK on the importance of international development. The Chancellor is on record as saying “when some are poor, all are impoverished” and his recent actions and achievements in this area are now substantial.

In 1997 when the Labour Government came to power, just one country was going to receive debt relief. Today 27 countries are benefiting, with $70m of unpayable debt being written off, with 37 countries now potentially eligible for debt relief. In human terms, debt relief has meant that in Uganda, four million more children now go to primary school; with debt relief in Tanzania, 31,000 new classrooms have been built and 18,000 new teachers recruited; and with debt relief in Mozambique, half a million children are now being vaccinated against tetanus, whooping cough and diphtheria. However, the scale of poverty, hunger and disease in the word’s poorest countries suggest that a great deal more needs to be done. Evidence shows that in households suffering extreme poverty, life expectancy is often around half that in the high-income world, 40 years instead of 80. Of every 1000 children born in developing countries, more than 100 die before their fifth birthday, compared with fewer than 10 in the high-income world.

It is easy to see the social and moral case for reversing these trends and enabling poor countries to develop their health and education systems. But as President George W Bush has acknowledged, tackling these problems is vital to international and national security and stability. And in drawing up its plans to deal with these challenges in the future, the UK government has drawn its inspiration from the past and has set out a vision for a new Marshall Plan, based on the plan put forward in 1947 by Secretary of State George C Marshall.

This is a key year for the UK government’s international development ambitions. The launch of the Make Poverty History campaign will help provide the necessary momentum before the UK hosts the G8 Summit in July 2005. Five years after world leaders agreed the Millennium Development Goals to halve the proportion of those living in poverty by 2015, the UN summit in September will surprise no one when it finds that the world, on current progress, has no chance of achieving these goals. So the call for a new Marshall Plan is timely.

At its heart are three essential elements: first, the historic step of delivering full debt relief for the world’s debtburdened countries; second, to deliver the first world trade round in history that benefits the poorest countries and ensures they have the capacity to benefit from new trade; and, an international finance facility (IFF) to double aid from $50bn to $100bn.

The IFF proposal is perhaps the most crucial element of the Chancellor’s Plan. It recognises that, despite the progress made in recent years in securing debt relief for many countries, traditional funding models will be unable to reach the scale of resources needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The IFF, therefore, offers a temporary financing mechanism to provide an additional $50bn a year in development assistance between now and 2015, and would work by “frontloading” donor commitments by leveraging additional money from the international capital markets by issuing bonds. The IFF not only has the potential to create the scale of funding necessary to make the MDGs feasible, it would provide a mechanism to invest in developing countries now, to prevent problems later. However, if its ambitions are to be realised, the IFF will need the backing of the G7.

The Labour Government could be heading for an historic third term in power

The original Marshall Plan not only made possible the reconstruction of Europe, but the renewal of world trade and generation of prosperity for both Europe and America. The scale of today’s development challenges call, if in a different world, for a similar shared response: comprehensive, inclusive, and an assault on the underlying causes of poverty.

The scale of today’s development challenges also means that a new consensus between the richest countries will be needed to tackle the problems of the poorest. Sustaining such a plan will require more than just a set of policies and programmes agreed by the developed world.

A progressive consensus, based on a set of progressive views and values embraced by the people across the world, will be needed to cement a new deal between the richest and poorest countries of the world.

We have the opportunity in the coming decade to cut world poverty by half. Tens of millions of lives can be saved. The practical solutions exist. The political framework is established. And for the first time, the cost is affordable. All that is needed is action.

In the words of a US President: “the history of free peoples is never written by chance but by choice – that is by our own actions that people of compassion and goodwill can and do change the world for good”.

Wilf Stevenson is the Director of the Smith Institute. The Smith Institute is an independent think-tank that has been set up to undertake research and education in issues that flow from the changing relationship between social values and economic imperatives.

For further information, visit: Website: www.smith-institute.org.uk