UK foreign secretary Ed Miliband will argue that the global financial system is not serving developing countries and must be reformed to ease the pressure of heavy borrowing costs on vulnerable governments.
In remarks previewing a forthcoming speech, Miliband will call for a “new deal” in which international financial institutions, including the World Bank, step up to assist countries that are effectively trapped by expensive external finance. He said the international architecture needs to do more to prevent debt burdens from undermining development.
Miliband pledged to deploy the UK's diplomatic weight behind efforts to secure urgent reform of the international lending system. He pointed to the Gleneagles summit of 2005, held under the last Labour government and associated with the Make Poverty History campaign, as an example of a high-profile diplomatic push that helped refocus global attention on development challenges.
The foreign secretary's intervention comes amid wider debate over how to respond to rising debt servicing costs in many low- and middle-income countries. By urging coordinated action from multilateral lenders and other global actors, Miliband is seeking to place debt and lending reform on the international agenda.
He did not, in the preview, set out detailed policy prescriptions, but framed the issue as one requiring collective diplomatic engagement to prevent setbacks to development progress. The call for a renewed international effort signals an intention to press partners and institutions to consider new approaches to lending, debt relief and financial support for vulnerable states.