30 September 2005 - Prime Minister Tony Blair’s renewed enthusiasm for forcing open developing economies to international competition will ‘make poverty inevitable’, a South-East Euro-MP has warned.

New vigour for globalisation will ’make poverty inevitable’

Reacting to a speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton in which Blair signalled a lurch to the neo-conservative right, Green Party Principal Speaker and MEP Caroline Lucas warned that the effect of full international competition on developing countries would be catastrophic.

Dr Lucas said: “Tony Blair’s unqualified embrace of free trade and globalisation will condemn millions to poverty, and undermine the limited positive effects of the debt relief and aid package agreed by the G8 leaders in Scotland this summer.

“Forcing African nations to open up their markets to competition not just from the West – but from the new economic giants of China and India – will do nothing to alleviate poverty – in fact, it will do just the opposite.

“We must replace the current global free trade paradigm with a trading system based on high social and environmental standards, with quotas where necessary, is both fairer and more sustainable for workers in both the North and the South.”

Dr Lucas also condemned the Prime Minister for failing to address environmental issues – or make more than a passing reference to climate change – in his keynote speech.

She added: “By mentioning climate change for just a couple of sentences as a potential justification for new nuclear power stations, Tony Blair has clearly shown how incapable he is of exercising any kind of leadership on the issue.

“As UK CO2 emissions rise, and he joins George W Bush in calling for ‘dialogue rather than international treaties’, Blair continues to fail us all on tackling what his own advisors have called a ‘greater threat than terrorism’.

ENDS