Campaigners take Vote Global message to the heart of the City

The following speech was given by ActionAid campaigner Chris Jordan on the steps of the Bank of England earlier today, as part of an event organised by the Justshare coalition of churches in the City of London

I have an amazing job as a campaigner with ActionAid, where I get to work with inspiring, passionate people from developing countries every day. But I don’t want to be doing this job forever.

In this day and age, we know what needs to be done to end poverty – but we’re just choosing not to do it.

I’m sure we can all agree it’s a scandal that nearly 1 billion people will be going to bed hungry tonight; that 72 million kids don’t get a primary education and that women make up 70% of the world’s poorest people. Meanwhile the threat of climate chaos looms over all of us.

These are fundamentally international problems, with international solutions – and that’s why we should be voting global. To me, that doesn’t just mean making our choices for the things that will help those ‘poor people living thousands of miles away’ out of pity.

It’s about fundamentally altering the way we do business, here and abroad, to put people first – not markets or bankers. Its will benefit us, just as much as it will benefit people in poor countries.

You might remember the amazing coalition that sprang up in response to the financial crisis and the London G20 – with hundreds of groups – from development, faith, domestic poverty, trade unions and green campaigns.

We all came together to demonstrate the huge appetite in this country for the big decisions to be taken that would benefit ordinary people in this country and around the world – instead of running the whole country for the benefit of the City of London.

The financial crisis showed quite how interdependent our world is today.  Many of the countries that felt the effects most, we’re developing countries that did least to cause the problems in the first place.

The thing is – we know what needs to be done – we have the big answers to the big questions. Since the G20, and during this election, ActionAid has been campaigning hard for tax justice.  This means 2 things.

First, we need to stop tax dodging – particularly by multinationals – which mean ordinary people have to pay more in tax, or that result in spending cuts on public services.

In developing countries, the multinationals who operate there illegally evade $160bn in taxes they owe. That’s far more than those countries ever receive in aid, and means we’re quite literally giving with one hand and taking with the other.

And it’s not just poor countries that lose out – tax dodging costs the government here billions – far outstripping the amounts fiddled by benefits cheat’s that we hear so much about.

This has been accepted as ‘business as usual’ for far too long.  We’ve made some progress since the G20, but much more needs to be done.
Second, we need a Robin Hood Tax.  Taxing the banks to raise billions to address poverty and climate change, both here and abroad is a no brainer!

Our campaign has already mobilised massive public support – but the politicians are yet to commit to a plan that would do more than just insure the banks against future bail outs.

As I said to begin with, I really don’t want to be having to do this job forever, so it’s high time to build a fairer system. We know what needs to be done – we have the solutions.

Make sure you get out on vote next Thursday – and vote global!