With billions of people around the world living in poverty, we have an urgent moral and practical imperative to make our international development policy more effective:
- Moral, because it is our responsibility to help those struggling with hunger, illiteracy and environmental instability;
- Practical, because failed and impoverished states are incubators of disease, insecurity, and extremism, and so represent a clear threat to our national interest.
A Conservative government will focus on improving three key areas of international development:
1) AID
We are committed to achieving the UN target of spending 0.7% of national income as aid by 2013. Our top priority will be to ensure that every single pound of taxpayers' money delivers the maximum impact – so we will establish an Independent Aid Watchdog to monitor the performance of the Department for International Development.
We'll move towards results-based aid, where money is handed to governments only when development results have been achieved. We'll focus our aid on the countries where it will make the biggest difference, and spend £500 million a year to save lives by tackling malaria.
We'll also empower people in poor countries by giving them more control over how aid is spent - and strengthen public support for aid by giving British people a vote over where and how some of their aid is spent.
2) TRADE
We will put maximum effort into achieving an ambitious, pro-development global trade deal, because trade will do more to eliminate poverty than anything else.
3) CONFLICT RESOLUTION
We will give much greater importance to conflict prevention and resolution – because a nation mired in conflict remains vulnerable until the fighting stops, no matter how much aid or trade it receives.