The creation of my department, and the fact that it is headed by a Cabinet Minister, reflects that, as does the publication of this White Paper. It is the first White Paper on development for over 20 years. Considerable progress in poverty elimination is now possible. The past 50 years have seen great advances. On average, people live longer and in better health.
More people have clean water.
More are literate. More people have escaped from poverty in the past 50 years than in the previous 500 years. But because of population growth, more people are living in abject poverty than ever before. The challenge of development is to apply the lessons of success to enable the poor to work their way out of poverty. We are committing ourselves to refocus our international development efforts on poverty elimination.