4 July 2006
Children from across the UK travelled to Number 10 to quiz Tony Blair about how much progress has been made in helping Africa.
Parts of this transcript may have been edited
Read the Q and A
Question:
Mr Blair, thank you for your work, which you did for children’s education last year at the G8 Conference. Can you tell us what you and other world leaders are going to do at this year’s G8 to help all children in the world get an education?
Prime Minister:
We have just committed ourselves to, over the next 10 years, £8.5 billion for education worldwide. What we are trying to do is to get the other leaders to agree to commit themselves to similar things because we want to meet the development goal for 2015 of making sure that all kids get access to decent primary education. So that is what we are trying to achieve at the moment. We have got the G8 Summit coming up in St Petersburg in just in a few days time and we will be trying to get the other leaders to commit themselves to similar types of things.
Question:
Will you take our teachers to the next G8 meeting in Russia?
Prime Minister:
Well I don’t know, I don’t see why not, they can just about sit in the suitcase I think. It is a great campaign, did someone say 8,000 schools are taking part in this, which is fantastic! And is this going on in other schools as well?
School Child:
Yes.
Prime Minister:
I mean other countries as well, or is it just our country who is focused on this?
Official:
100 countries.
Prime Minister:
100 countries! Yes, well I can certainly take these ones with me, yes. If I take all of them I will be taking a lot.
Question:
Prime Minister, you recently mentioned that the UK’s aid budget is rising to £5.3 billion. Can you tell us what immediate differences the money pledged at the G8 last year has made for children and education in 2006?
Prime Minister:
Yes. If you take something like the debt relief for example in Nigeria, it has meant that they have been able to hire thousands more teachers and put I think 3.5 million children into school. The money that we are giving on not just schooling but things like HIV-Aids which is also very very important, but in relation to schooling the debt relief money means that countries, instead of having to pay out money because of their debts, they can spend the money on their schools, and there are a lot of countries in Africa that have benefited from that.
Question:
Mr Blair is there still 100 million children out of school, or have you managed to get teachers to educate them?
Prime Minister:
Well no one can be quite sure what the figure is, but there is still an awful lot, yes, but 100 million is probably about the right level. The tragic thing is that the children really want to learn. I mean these aren’t like our schools you know, they are often outside with not a lot of teaching equipment and the kids sometimes have to walk a long way in order to get to school, but they are absolutely desperate to learn. If we can get this money flowing, not just from our country but from other countries into places like Africa and if we can get the children in at least the primary education then that will make a big, big difference.
Question:
Mr Blair, making the teachers made us realise the value of a good education. How will you use our cut-out teachers to enable children around the world to get a quality education?
Prime Minister:
I think the best way of using them is just to highlight the issue, just to say to people that here is what we think is important, the children here are saying look we have benefited from education, it is important you have education, and therefore we can use this to say to the world leaders and other people - look, everyone wants you to go and do this. You see one of the difficult things about this whole area is you have got to get all the wealthy countries in the world to spend money to make this happen. The trouble is that all governments can spend their money on this, or they can spend money on that, or on the other. But if we are to get enough money to go to these poorer countries, we need to be able to show that the country, our country, wants to spend that money, wants to give that hope and opportunity to other children and therefore when you run a campaign like this it is very, very important.
If you remember last year’s Make Poverty History Campaign, and Live 8, you know the concerts and everything, what was important about that was it was a big demonstration to the political leaders of the world that if they did something for Africa they would be supported by the people in their own countries and that is why it is important to do it as it will make a big difference. One of the things that is very difficult sometimes is that countries like Africa have got so many different problems, sometimes people kind of think it is hopeless thinking it doesn’t matter how much you do it is never really going to change. But actually you can go to countries in Africa where as a result of the money that has come from this country, children have got the chance of an education, their parents have got the chance of a proper job, killer diseases are getting cured and some of the real big problems of Africa are getting solved, so it does make a difference and that is why it is important that you do a campaign like this.
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