Tackling Unsustainable Debt

Lord Purvis of Tweed Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My noble friend Lady Chapman tells me that we are doing exactly as the right reverend Prelate seeks. I completely agree with him on the history of the Jubilee movement. The UK wants to see effective solutions to those debt challenges. We strongly support the IMF’s three-pillar approach to providing support to countries facing immediate liquidity pressures. Where a country needs to restructure its debt, as I have said before, the common framework remains the best available tool to do so. We are focused on ensuring that the common framework delivers more timely, orderly and co-ordinated restructuring.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, further to my noble friend’s question on the scale of the debt servicing costs as related to health and education costs, we know from Center for Global Development information that, as a result of western countries cutting development partnership support—the UK is cutting this by up to 40%—many of the least developed nations are borrowing more to fill the gap for the very programmes we are cutting. What assessment are His Majesty’s Government making of the countries for which we have cut development partnership support, which are borrowing more to fill the gap that we have created?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I do not know the specific answer to the noble Lord’s question, I am afraid. I am very happy to write to him to fill that in. As I have said, the action we are taking at a multilateral level is proven to be the most effective route that we can take to tackle these issues.