As the UN conference on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) this September edges ever closer, it is important to keep the pressure on our elected representatives to keep their promises to the world. If we are going to be able to plug the funding gap to meet the MDGs and provide clean water, healthcare and education to the world’s poorest people, we need new sources of additional aid. Please write to your MP now and ask them to urge the government to introduce a stamp duty on sterling currency transactions at a rate of 0.005% with its revenue ring fenced for development assistance.
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Dear (Insert name) MP,
I welcome the government’s appeal to the international community, businesses, charities and faith groups to work together as never before to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
A pivotal moment for achieving the Goals will be 25 September, when the UN hosts a major MDG conference in New York. As we build to this event it is becoming increasingly clear that the world is considerably off track in terms of honouring its compact with the world's poor.
According to the Department for International Development (DFID); almost 10 million children die each year before their fifth birthday of preventable diseases; more than half a million women die each year due to complications during pregnancy or childbirth; every day over 6,800 people become infected with HIV and over 5,700 people die from AIDS.
If we are going to plug the funding gap to meet the MDGs and cover the additional costs of helping the world’s poorest people adjust to the devastating affects of Climate Change, we need new sources of additional aid now. A way of contributing to this is to implement a stamp duty on sterling currency transactions. Set at the very low rate of 0.005% it can be afforded by the market, cannot legally be avoided and would not damage trade or business in the City of London. Every year it would raise in the region of £2 billion of much-needed additional revenue and is simple and inexpensive to collect as the system is electronic.
Raising extra development revenue in this way is now endorsed by figures as respected and diverse as the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and former chief economist from the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz.
As my MP please write to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for International Development and ask them to lead the fight against global poverty by introducing a Sterling Stamp Duty at a rate of 0.005% with its revenue being ring fenced to boosting aid spending.
Please reply to this message with your thoughts and the responses of the Government.
Yours sincerely
(insert your name)
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