Candidates in the Devizes constituency joined a debate to give their views on tackling poverty overseas. NIGEL KERTON reports.

THE four Devizes Constituency parliamentary candidates shared a platform at Marlborough on Thursday to talk primarily about poverty overseas.

The meeting was organised by the Marlborough Brandt Group set up 23 years ago to foster relationships with the community of Gunjur in The Gambia in West Africa.

Alan Wood (United Kingdom Independence Party) said there was no democracy of the kind recognised in the UK.

"Here you can get rid of your leaders every four or five years if you want."

First of all, said Mr Wood, money given for aid and how it was distributed needed to be accounted for.

Mr Wood said aid had to be sent wherever people needed water, food and shelter but he warned there was no overall single answer to the problem of poverty. However, the UK was far better placed to distribute aid than the EC which he described as a corrupt and inefficient organisation."There is not one single answer to the problem and we must seek different solutions at different levels."

Sharon Charity (Labour) said the world could no longer stand by and watch as 30,000 children in the poorer countries died each day from preventable illnesses that simple cheap remedies could cure.

Mrs Charity said she thought the south Asian tsunami had opened the eyes of the rest of the world to suffering.

Mrs Charity also called for the accumulating "tsunami of debt" of the poorer countries to be turned back.

"Drop the debt and give more and better aid," she said.

Fiona Hornby (Liberal Democrat) called for more sharing of skills as well as giving aid in the form of goods and money so that the emerging nations could help themselves more.

She said: "We believe that 100 per cent debt cancellation for the poorer countries is essential.

"Trade with the poorer countries needs to be reformed to make it fairer and give the producers a more equitable share of the profits."

Michael Ancram (Conservative) said countries like Britain had a global responsibility for looking after those parts of the world that were not so well off. He said the tsunami and the ensuing fundraising was an example of the how humanitarian assistance was available.

"We want to see more aid but we want to see it used in better ways."

He said more resources had to be diverted to key areas like public health and education and the EU aid policy needed reforming.

Gordon Hutt from Marlborough asked if aid should only go to projects with proven benefit to prevent it being wasted.

Mr Ancram said ways had to be found of finding good governance in areas where aid was needed and only then letting the money follow.

Miss Hornby called for more transparency in the way aid is given and said one of the problems was that not many people knew where the aid given by Europe ended up. But, she said, the bottom line was to ensure that people did not have to go hungry or tramp miles for water.

Mrs Charity said one test for good governance in areas needing aid was zero tolerance of corruption.

She said Labour was committed to helping those countries that were themselves committed to poverty reduction.

Dr David Watson asked how the candidates proposed dealing with corruption when giving out aid.

Miss Hornby said countries in need depended on cash help and she did not think it could be restricted to giving goods or services only.

Mr Ancram said it was right to be concerned about corruption and said an example was Palestine where until the recent death of Yasser Arafat a lot of the aid given by the EC did not go where it was needed.

Mr Wood said corruption could be avoided by giving money towards setting up infrastructures in the poorer nations so that they could do more to help themselves.

Mrs Charity said the fear of corruption was no reason for not giving aid and said the "holocaust of children dying" could be prevented with simple aids like mosquito nets.

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