Is the UK loosening strings?

Much excitement here just after 3pm Singapore time - messages started to come in from colleagues about an apparent UK announcement that it was withholding funding from the World Bank over the conditions attached to aid and debt cancellation. This is more or less what activists have been asking for recently in our cut the strings campaign: we (along with members, particularly Christian Aid and World Development Movement) have been telling the UK government to withhold funding from the World Bank and IMF until the harmful strings are cut. Campaigners have been emailing Hilary Benn and Gordon Brown and lobbying their MPs, and our new campaign report (coming soon...) spells out the demand clearly. Debt activists are today on their way to a march, organised by Christian Aid, which aims to take this message right to the Treasury and 'drum it home'.

When we calmed down and got the details, it was clear that it's not yet time to call off the campaign: the promise relates only to £50 million that the UK had already withheld from the World Bank until it took certain actions on reviewing conditions. But this is a response to campaigners: the UK is now asking the Bank to go further, and says it will make stronger demands when the next negotiations over funding start in the next couple of months. The actual 'demands' remain to be seen, but Hilary Benn said this morning on the Today programme on Radio 4* that he wants to see "evidence of practice changing" on conditions at the Bank. And also that "I don't think it's right that we should be telling other countries what to do." Our point exactly. But we still are - and the UK still needs to do more. But we do seem to be having an impact.

(*I can't get the link to work, but try visiting the Radio 4 /Today website to listen to the item from 8.10am this morning - a good long discussion about the rich world controlling poor countries both through conditions and by dominating the World Bank and IMF.)