CT: In 2005, Gordon Brown pledged free education for every child in Africa and free healthcare for children and families. He has just re-committed himself to ending child poverty. How optimistic are you that he will match words with actions?
AA: I'm fairly optimistic that Gordon Brown himself will do his level best to push for a fast delivery of the promises that were made in Gleneagles in 2005. But he needs to persuade many others in the international community in order to achieve that end. So I think he's going to need not only all of his commitment but also his influencing skills, particularly with other G8 countries to speed up the delivery of healthcare, education, and particularly funds for anti-retroviral drugs for HIV and Aids sufferers.
And I think on that area we had quite a setback in some senses at the recent G8. The leaders had previously agreed to almost universal access by 2010, and that was good, but at the recent G8 the US tried to define that as five million people, whereas all the statistics and data that the UN and others are producing suggest that it is more like 10 to 15 million people.
So there is a real inconsistency between the promises of Gleneagles and the target that is now being set for it. So we would really be looking to Gordon Brown to shift that target back up to a much more realistic target of ten to 16 million people, not five.
CT: You said yesterday that the Government "remains in a strong position to continue influencing global policies affecting poor people". Do you think Brown's replacing Blair is going to result in greater efforts to end extreme poverty on a global level?
AA: The truth is that time will tell. I think Gordon Brown is probably even more committed than Tony Blair to bringing about greater international justice on poverty issues. And I don't mean by that that Tony Blair doesn't care, but a lot of the work behind the scenes to cancel debt and to get greater aid flows going was actually worked by Gordon Brown - even under the Blair premiership.
Where I think the jury is still very much out on Gordon Brown is, what is his commitment to climate change, to really doing something serious around climate change? And I think in that area there is no doubt that Tony Blair was in fact the leader. Gordon Brown has only more recently seriously engaged in the climate change issue.
And a very important indication of that was him commissioning the Stern Review by the economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which he commissioned in order to show that the economics of responding to climate change would be much better than the economics of not responding to climate change. That was a seminal piece of work which Gordon Brown commissioned.
But until that point he had not actually shown that much engagement with the climate change debate and Tony Blair was actually the leader on that one.
So we are very much looking for Gordon Brown to step into Tony Blair's shoes on that one and really push for radical action to cut greenhouse gases in order for us not to start going backwards with Tony Blair stepping out of the premiership.
CT: What shape do you think that radical action should take?
