JOHN HUMPHRYS:                    Tomorrow, ministers 
from the world's richest countries are meeting in Mexico for another of 
those sessions where they talk about the poor.   If they'd always delivered 
on every promise that's ever been made there'd be no poor people left. 
 But they haven't.  When push comes to shove charity usually begins at 
home - and the poorest stay poor.  Indeed, by many measurements the gap 
between the world's richest and the world's poorest is widening, not getting 
narrower.  The current big promise is that by 2015 the numbers of the very 
poorest will be cut by half and every child will get at least a primary 
education.  There's much more besides.  But it will all cost a lot more 
- about thirty five Billion pounds, fifty billion dollars every year more 
than they're giving at the moment - and so far there's nothing like that 
amount being offered.  The International Development Secretary, Clare Short, 
will be Britain's representative at the talks.  She's also in the news 
of course at the moment because she's worried about what Washington has 
in mind for Iraq. Just before she left this morning I spoke to her.  I 
asked her first about aid, and suggested that the rich countries  keep 
making promises but don't put up the hard cash.
                    
CLARE SHORT:                That's not correct, firstly 
the Millennium Development Goals aren't about money, they are about the 
world committing to intensify its effort to reduce poverty, get children 
into school, improve healthcare, therefore children survive and women don't 
die in childbirth.

HUMPHRYS:                    All of which costs money.

SHORT:                    Yes, but there's also cost 
reform, aid without reform gives you Mobutu no progress, so just aid isn't 
it, it's reform to run economies, way on in a way that ensures that they 
grow, that domestic savings stay at home and are invested back into the 
economy and they are the conditions that attract inward investment which 
brings you access to modern technology and then aid can give you access 
to ideas, policy reform and then speeding up things like getting more children 
into school and so on. So you need that combination. We've got fifty billion 
dollars of international aid in the current system and it has been declining 
because people have become cynical about all of this.  They call it compassion 
fatigue but I think people starting not believing that aid worked. Actually 
in recent years we've improved its effectiveness massively and we need 
to turn round that public perception. Certainly, in Britain people care 
about levels of poverty, but they feel nothing works. So, we've got international 
consensus on how to do the reform, we've got fifty billion and we're going 
to a meeting, where if we don't come up with more money, things will turn 
sour and nasty and I think partly because of that, this is one of the advantages 
of the EU meetings, we have now had the EU come up with, by 2006 an extra 
seven billion a year, and commitments to reform and improve the way the 
money is spent, and President Bush, in an administration that's been saying 
aid is a waste of time and we don't believe in it, suddenly comes up with 
another five billion.  Now that's not the extra fifty billion that the 
World Bank say we need to really meet the Millennium Development Goals, 
but it's turnaround. 

HUMPHRYS:                    But it's not a big enough 
turnaround is it, that's really the point I'm making. Five billion sounds, 
from the United States, sounds a great deal of money but that's five billion 
over three years, that works out at about ten per cent of what is already, 
bearing in mind the United States is the world's richest country by far, 
a tiny, tiny budget compared with their gross national product.  I mean 
that five billion actually isn't very much, is what I'm saying...

SHORT:                    ..absolutely...

HUMPHRYS:                    ...very mean..

SHORT:                    It's not very much but this 
is an administration that in all the preparations for the Monterrey meeting, 
have been saying aid is a waste of time, we don't believe in aid, we don't 
believe in the Millennium Development Goals, we are never going to commit 
ourselves to the 0.7 of GDP for aid which is the UN target.  Suddenly, 
the President makes a speech saying, I support the Millennium Development 
Goals and I've come up with five billion dollars so that's a turnaround. 


HUMPHRYS:                    It's a gesture rather 
than a really significant...

SHORT:                     Well I think it's a turn 
around and it isn't - throwing money around is not the only point, the 
point is to commit to an agenda of reform, to more trade access, to resolving 
some of the conflicts that large parts of Africa are stuck in conflict 
and therefore can't develop and then deploying aid well. Of the fifty billion 
we've got, if we used it more effectively to go where the poor are and 
to back reformers, it would be worth fifty per cent more. So my own view 
and I think this is what's happening, in this country, is you've got to 
show you know what you are doing, you are serious, there's no messing about, 
the aid isn't being used for cheap political reasons, or for trade reasons, 
it's really going to help poor people get the chance of a better life. 
We've got to get the world into that kind of mood and I think things are 
turning, that is my judgement and as you've said the money is tiny. I mean, 
Britain, we've increased our spend, we are on three billion pounds. We 
spend a hundred billion on social security, these are very tiny amounts 
of money, but well used can really help really poor countries to really 
turn themselves around and start to grow and reduce poverty. 

HUMPHRYS:                    In Britain, we are still 
nowhere near meeting that point seven per cent. I mean that is the trouble 
isn't it, and it is a manifesto commitment from your party, it was in 1997, 
it was again the last time around. And the difficulty is that although 
as you say, we have been increasing the amount we give, it's still less 
than half of that target of point seven per cent.

SHORT:                    Yeah, I started though, 
I mean the last Labour government  - you and I can remember that far back, 
left it at point five two and it was going up steadily to the point seven...

HUMPHRYS:                    And then it came down.

SHORT:                    It came back, I took over 
it's point two six, we've increased from two point two billion to three 
point six billion and we've got to keep on going up and get ourselves to 
the...it would be seven billion in the UK if the UK was meeting the UN 
target. So we've got a way to go, but in the meantime we've refocused what 
we do, we've focused on the poor areas, we've focused on reformers, we've 
untied all our aid from trade contracts. So it's some of the most effective 
aid in the world and now we're just having a comprehensive policy review 
and the budgets for another three years, so I'm talking to Gordon a lot. 


HUMPHRYS:                    Ah, are you getting anywhere 
with him.?  

SHORT:                            Gordon cares about development 
as you know. 

HUMPHRYS:                    Yeah, what he said was 
that too often we fail to meet our targets, I mean I'm quoting one of his 
own documents now "our ambitions outreach our achievements. It's not enough 
to make a pledge".  So, if  you are trying to bend his arm, you are in 
a very strong moral position aren't you.?

SHORT:                    I agree completely.  I absolutely 
agree. Gordon cares, he's made some very strong statements, the Prime Minister 
has said that Africa is a priority, we deploy our money very, very effectively, 
you know that's the review of the UK's programme across the world. So I 
am expecting a good settlement. 

HUMPHRYS:                    It's going to have to 
be good won't it because at the present rate, we did a bit of sums in the 
office this morning and at the present rate it will take thirty odd years 
to reach our target. 

SHORT:                    That's right, so it's turned 
around and increased and it's much more effective, but at the present rate 
of progress, it would take to 2040 for Britain to get to 0.7...

HUMPRHYS:                    That's not good enough 
is it, you don't believe that's good enough.

SHORT:                    No, it isn't.  So as I say, 
I'm expecting a good settlement this time. 

HUMPHRYS:                    Have you got a target 
yourself? I mean, have you got a date by which we should reach our commitment?

SHORT:                    As soon as possible. And 
obviously I can't, I'm negotiating with Gordon, I'm expecting a good settlement. 
I'm not going to say anything that blows that up today.

HUMPHRYS:                    Of course it has to come 
from somewhere?

SHORT:                    Well, it has to come from 
the growing British economy. We do survey work now to see how our public 
education work's going, and this isn't just to sort of get people to like 
my department. If we don't, as a country, and other countries like us, 
face up to the levels of inequality and poverty in the world, we're going 
to hand over a messed up world to the next generation, with growing conflict, 
environmental degradation, disease, a non-sustainable climate, so attending 
to these gross levels of poverty and giving the poor of the world a chance 
to grow their economy in a sustainable way is absolutely key for the survival 
of humanity and its future decent life. So we've been looking at British 
public opinion, trying to publish more material, get them to see it's not 
just a bit of charity for the poor, it's investing in better and safer 
conditions in world.  And British public opinion comes in very strongly, 
saying these levels of poverty and inequality in the world are one of the 
biggest moral issues humanity faces, seventy odd per cent.

HUMPHRYS:                    Given that, shouldn't 
we be setting the target? Shouldn't we be committing ourselves? We're committed, 
this government is committed ultimately to meeting that point seven per 
cent, but as you say, it's a very, very, very long way off. Should we not 
be committing ourselves to saying we will reach that target by, I don't 
know, three years, four years, five years from now. Oxfam thinks it should 
be five years.

SHORT:                    I think that would be very 
desirable and where I would like us to get to,  is the British public and 
their moving from saying 'oh dear, aid is a waste of money' and when we 
formed our government, I did some public opinion surveying and people said 
'we care about poverty, but aid's a waste of money - it doesn't work, it 
goes for corruption'. And then we asked the public if they liked the ideas 
of these targets of getting all children in school, halving poverty, and 
they said ' yes, very good - spend money on it.' So it clearly wasn't meanness, 
it was not believing in the old order. So, we, I think we've turned a lot 
of that round, I think people do believe and think it's important both 
for our own self-interest as well as, as a moral issue and now I want the 
public knocking on the doors of the government, saying speed up the spend.

HUMPHRYS:                    But it's never going 
to be a vote winner is it. I mean Prime Ministers are never going to win 
elections by saying 'guess what, we increased our, our aid packages to 
the poorest world, but I'm sorry to say, some of that money's had to come 
from the NHS or Education, or Transport or whatever it happens to be'.

SHORT:                    I don't agree actually. 
I think people in our kind of comfortable type societies now want our own 
society to be well run, but they want something fine and decent to believe 
in. I don't believe that everyone is just completely selfish and materialistic. 
I think they want the world to be safe and they want a fair and decent 
world, and they want to be part of a country that contributes to that, 
and I think, you know, that Britain lost an empire and never found a role, 
Britain using its position on the Security Council, in the IMF, in the 
World Bank, in the Commonwealth, in the EU, and so on, to drive the world 
to be more intelligent about giving the poorest countries a chance to trade 
decently, have environmental agreements that take their interests into 
account, enable them to grow their economy and see their people do better, 
I think people in the UK would take a pride in that. It won't come up as 
the top headline thing in the polling, but I think people want to believe 
that politics and their country, is about something finer than their own 
immediate selfish self-interest.

HUMPHRYS:                    To what extent should 
aid be linked to good government, to democratic government, I'm thinking 
obviously here of Zimbabwe and the American attitude to giving more money 
to, or giving money to Zimbabwe?

SHORT:                    I think the old idea that 
you make the aid conditional on good government because for some reason 
we believe in good government and going to force it on people is very old-fashioned. 
The truth is, you can't reduce poverty, you can't get a growing economy, 
you can't get all kids into school, and everyone with health care, which 
people need and you need to get a growing and efficient modern economy. 
Unless you've got efficient government, you deal with corruption, you spend 
the public finances properly, you consult people about what they think, 
otherwise governments make mistakes. So effective, competent, consultative, 
democratic government is crucial to successful economic performance and 
the reduction of poverty, so it all goes together. We increase, we change 
what we do, we don't just fund lots of separate projects, where you've 
got a weak government that isn't reforming itself. We back governments 
that commit themselves to the major reforms that will lead to the economic 
growth, the improved public services for their people, and then we help 
them tighten up their public financial management systems, lots of corruption 
is not just bad people, there's some bad people everywhere, it's lousy 
systems where the money isn't properly managed, the civil service is so 
underpaid you can't live on the money, and then you get a culture where 
people are charging, gross inefficiency, so we now focus on all of that 
very strongly, as well as proper law enforcement. You need that for commercial 
sector to run, but you also need it for justice when you ask the poor in 
the world just not being abused by the forces of law and order is one of 
their top priorities.

HUMPHRYS:                    But thinking about what's 
happened in Zimbabwe and South Africa's attitude to Mugabe effectively 
stealing the election. We've got the Americans now, Ed Royce the Chairman 
of the Africa Sub-Committee in Congress, saying it's harder to aid the 
continent if Americans perceive South Africa et cetera, is unwilling to 
stand up for democratic principles. The, the Ari Fleischer the President's 
spokesman saying much the same sort of thing. Do we go along with that 
view?

SHORT:                    Well Zimbabwe's a complete 
tragedy for the people of Zimbabwe firstly who are hungry in an agriculturally 
rich country, and it's an educated people, I mean this is, the economy's 
shrunk by ten per cent in one year and it's going to shrink by another 
ten per cent, so there's brutality, and thuggery and the stealing of an 
election, the destruction of an economy. Well this is a disaster for all 
those people and for the surrounding neighbourhood. But we mustn't punish 
a whole continent because one ageing politician has completely lost his 
way, and given up on all the decent standards of human rights, and actually, 
although South Africa hasn't spoken out strongly in the past, President 
Mbeki hasn't made any comment on the elections yet, so it's not true. And 
the SADC  report, the South African countries monitors of the election 
made a very, very critical report of the elections, so it isn't true that 
Africa is saying this is okay, but it's a damage, it's damaging for Africa.

HUMPHRYS:                    Ultimately, this is about 
money right as you said right at the beginning, money and making sure....

SHORT:                    ...no it's money...

HUMPHRYS:                    ...money...

SHORT:                    ...it's money behind the 
......... 

HUMPHRYS:                    ...absolutely accept 
that, but you can't do it without the money, clearly and we talked about 
the United States earlier and how it's making a relatively small contribution, 
some people say, a pathetically small contribution, and now we see they're 
spending an extra forty-eight billion dollars a year on defence. Doesn't 
that make you say, they've got it the wrong way round?

SHORT:                    Well I think the US saying, 
we got it, you know, a mission, to make the world safe, we've got to deal 
with international terrorism, is reasonable given what happened on September 
11th. But you cannot make the world safe from military action alone, as 
everyone I think now sees in Afghanistan, it's a failed state, all its 
institutions have collapsed, that's why bin Laden could hide himself there, 
that's why the Taliban took over, see how happy the people were when they 
fell and their kids could go back to school. But if we don't help Afghanistan 
build up the institutions of the modern state and be able to manage itself, 
it will remain in squalor and poverty, and that's where you get criminality 
and drug-dealing, and it's those conditions, not that create terrorists 
because the poor of the world are not terrorists, and the figures in September 
11th were, but the bitterness and division in which such things flourish, 
so it's completely foolish to say we can make the world safe by military 
action alone, we need effective development to make the world just and 
evenly developed, to make the world safe.

HUMPHRYS:                    And that applies to Iraq 
as well,  if America does intend to use some of that forty-eight billion 
pounds to attack Iraq, your view on that is don't do it?

SHORT:                    Our view is that we mustn't 
ignore the fact that Saddam Hussein is determined to develop weapons of 
mass destruction.  There's no doubt about that from him throwing out the 
UN inspectors and all the rest of it, but simply blind military action 
against Iraq doesn't deal with the problem, so we've got to address the 
problem, I absolutely believe that, and it's wrong to ignore it and it's 
wrong to say that we shouldn't.  The best thing is to get the UN inspectors 
back here, but there isn't crude military action that can deal with the 
problem of Saddam Hussein, and with the state of the Middle East and the 
terrible suffering of both the Israeli and Palestinian people,  but the 
anger there is in the Arab world, to open up a military flank on Iraq would 
be very unwise.

HUMPHRYS:                    Our European partners 
seem to think we shouldn't support the United States unless there is a 
UN resolution saying so.

SHORT:                    My view is very strongly 
that we should face up to how serious this is.  I mean, chemical and biological 
weapons are almost more frightening than nuclear in that you don't need 
complicated machinery to deliver them.  A little bottle of Anthrax in a 
river in any country could kill lots and lots of people, so we can't ignore 
this, that is just - we can't put our heads in the sand, but people's fear 
that there's going to instant mass bombing or something.  That won't do 
either.  There aren't any detailed plans.  We need a much more sophisticated 
debate about what's the best way to deal with it.

HUMPHRYS:                    And if there were to 
be an invasion there'd have to be a UN resolution would there?

SHORT:                    Yes, absolutely.  And we're 
nowhere near that.  I mean we really aren't.  The media, not you, that 
tries to hype it, but no-one has proposed any specific or detailed military 
action, but everyone who's serious should say Saddam Hussein in his determination 
to have weapons of mass destruction is a real threat to his region of the 
world and we've got to get tighter about how to deal with it.

HUMPHRYS:                    Clearly the United States 
or lots of people who work closely with the White House are talking this 
up, talking about the possibility of an invasion.   If it were to happen, 
I know this is hypothetical, if it were to happen and Tony Blair were to 
say we're with you all the way, could you see it yourself, Clare Short, 
as a resigning issue.  You've resigned on a matter of principle once before.

SHORT:                    Twice actually, I'm that 
kind of person.  I think it's because I was brought up as a Catholic.  
I mean I think like that about everything and I think everybody should, 
and it's not that I think my government is going to do the wrong thing, 
but we've all got to have our bottom lines, that's you know, about being 
a member of a government

HUMPHRYS:                    Is that the bottom line 
on this one.?

SHORT:                    Well, of course there were 
conditions in which I wouldn't be able to support action, but I don't expect 
them to be proposed.

HUMPHRYS:                    But there are conditions.

SHORT:                    Of course, but about all 
sorts of things.  I mean, I'm made like that. 

HUMPHRYS:                    I mean some people.....

SHORT:                    I'm proud to be a member 
of the....

HUMPHRYS:                    ... you know, you become 
a team player and all that, and it's not the same old Clare Short.  What 
you're saying is, it is the same old Clare Short.

SHORT:                    Yes, I am the same old Clare 
Short, and I'm proud to be a member of the government, but I've got lots 
of bottom lines, but I don't expect the government to breach them, but 
if they did I would, you know, that's what you should be like in politics 
I think.

HUMPHRYS:                    Clare Short, thanks very 
much indeed.

SHORT:                    Thank you.