What was the state of Britain's contribution to international development when Labour took office in May 1997?

No British government can ignore issues of international development. The United Kingdom's history, the Commonwealth connection, the reality of trade, migration and personal links, and the concern of many citizens for humanitarian action see to that. But in the run-up to the 1997 election, the Conservative government, while maintaining its traditionally open attitude to international trade and indeed claiming in its election manifesto a leadership role on addressing issues of debt, was not seen as a powerful force in international support for development.

A significant reason for that was an aid programme that was declining in real terms. Also, the government had been found to have acted illegally in the case of a high-profile project in Malaysia, the Pergau Dam, a project which ministers had been advised was uneconomic. Indeed, the government had made a point of asserting that the political and commercial interests of the UK would be given particular weight in decisions on aid. But, more broadly, neither the UK nor many other OECD countries had found it easy to generate strong domestic support for more than humanitarian aid, or for giving development issues a high political profile. This had already in 1996 stimulated the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD to set out, in a landmark document, Shaping the Twenty-first Century: The Role of Development Cooperation, a new approach to aid, linking it strongly to specific development results.