G7 Finance Ministers

Part of Oral Answers to Questions — Treasury – in the House of Commons at 10:30 am on 1 March 2007.

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Photo of Gordon Brown Gordon Brown The Chancellor of the Exchequer 10:30, 1 March 2007

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has taken a major lead in international development in Scotland and elsewhere. There has never been a year when international development payments by member Governments committed to overseas development have been higher but we must maintain that over the next few years. I agree that we have to deal with issues of child labour and child protection and that we have to build capacity in health care systems. Over the next two months, our two priorities at the G8 will be, first, to move forward with our plan for school education so that 80 million children who do not go to school get the chance to do so and, secondly, to build on what we have achieved by creating vaccination facilities to prevent, first, pneumoconiosis, and then tuberculosis, diphtheria and, in future, malaria. We are prepared to make substantial investments as a Government—with, I believe, the support of the whole House—to ensure that we can eradicate some of the worst diseases in the world.