- Check against delivery -

It is with humility and pride that I speak to you for the first time as Labour's International Development Secretary.

It's now ten years since our Labour Government established the Department for International Development. And on behalf of today's ministerial team, Shahid, Gareth and Shriti let me begin by paying tribute to our predecessors.

Their leadership, their dedication, their application of Labour values has built a department now recognised by its peers as quite simply the best aid agency in the world. On behalf of the whole Labour movement, let us say to Hilary Benn - thank you.

Conference, all of us in this hall came into politics not just with an ambition to change governments but with a vision to change lives. And that is what this Labour government is doing each day, each week, each month.

Our aid - more than double what it was under the Tories - is now:

· taking 3 million people out of poverty each year. Permanently.
· Our support has already helped treat a million Africans with HIV/AIDS.
· And our assistance has put 6 million more children into school in Ethiopia, 17 million more in Bangladesh.

And behind these huge figures are human stories.

As we heard today from our speaker from Darfur there is no development without security. And that is why I will continue to work closely with Des, with David and with colleagues across Government.

I have met people who have shared terrible experiences like hers. Some of the children, the mothers, the fathers in the Al Saalam camp in northern Darfur - people who somehow manage to keep hope alive amidst the horror.

Mothers motivated to learn to read and write, to give themselves and their children a better future yet who risk rape and murder every day just searching for firewood.

If you had met them, you would not question our duty to act.

Their stories underline how now more than ever the need for international development is critical.

Because we cannot escape each others' problems in today's interdependent world.

And we can no longer pretend that commerce can be globalised but justice need not.

Whether it is conflict, the spread of disease or the impact of climate change the distinction between foreign and domestic doesn't make sense any more.

There's no over there and over here anymore. Because there will be no security or prosperity over here, if there is insecurity and poverty over there.

Not in a world where an epidemic can move silently across continents on a plane ride.

When a conflict in one country causes a refugee crisis across an entire region.
And not when the pollution emitted by one country can reap a devastating whirlwind thousands of miles away.

These challenges, by their very nature, demand an international response.

And this goes to the heart of our politics. A politics of collective endeavour. A politics which seeks to find shared solutions to problems we share.

For we have a moral duty to act in a world which today remains unequal, unsafe, and unsustainable.

This is the test which history has set us. We know how to build schools and educate children yet today 72 million children have no class to attend.

We know how to build hospitals and treat illness - and yet today 30,000 African children will die from diseases we know how to prevent or cure.

We know how to end poverty - yet poverty kills a child every three seconds.

Never before in history have we had the knowledge and resources. Never before have we been able to say it could be ended in our generation.

So let's be the generation that ends it.

How do we rise to this challenge?

We go first to those whose suffering is most acute, whose need is most urgent whether inflicted by nature, or the nature of men. From earthquakes in Pakistan, floods in Ghana, to the horror of Zimbabwe.

And while we can and must provide this humanitarian assistance we must also provide the long term support which allows countries to provide the basic services their people need so that they are no longer dependent on aid.

That is why, just two weeks ago, Gordon Brown and I launched the International Health Partnership to help countries like Nepal, Zambia and Cambodia to build enduring health services and not depend on one-off health initiatives.

Our aid must help these countries trade and grow to escape the need for aid.

And our global institutions must be made ready for the development emergencies we face.

That is why later this week I will travel to New York to put the case for not 26 UN agencies to deal with water and sanitation but for a single coordinated approach to a very basic need.

That is why next month I will travel to Washington for the annual meeting of the World Bank where I will argue against forcing the poorest countries to privatise their most basic services.

And that is why in Europe I will argue for fundamental reform of the Common Agriculture policy and for Europe to lead the world to a pro-poor trade deal and champion not just free trade but fair trade.

And as we reform our international institutions we must also resource them.

Take the challenge of preventable disease. 15,000 people dying each and every day from AIDS, TB and Malaria - mothers, fathers, farmers, mechanics, teachers, infants - people like us, children like ours.

We have the knowledge and the skill, the drugs and the bed nets to stop these diseases. In the face of this suffering it is our duty to act and act we will.

That is why I can announce today, to this conference, that Britain over the next 8 years will contribute £1 billion to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

We will be the first ever donor to the Global Fund to provide them with an eight year commitment which will give them predictability and certainty to pay the doctors and nurses needed to combat these killer diseases.

This is just the next step on the long road to global justice.

And we in this party have shown in the past we have the courage, the strength and the commitment to make that journey.

Think back to another time we gathered here in Bournemouth. 1985. A year when the British people, but alas not the British government led the world in an outpouring of humanity and compassion through Live Aid.

But for those of us who in 1985 were Labour party members and supporters, we also remember that year for another reason.

For the speech Neil Kinnock gave from this very platform.

A day when Neil took one of the most courageous steps on our own long journey back to government.

He took on Militant and their 'far-fetched resolutions'.

But there's another passage from that famous speech which I remember well. He talked of visiting the barrios of Managua, the shambas of Tanzania and the back streets of Addis Ababa and he told us this truth:

"The great privilege of being strong," he said, "is the power which it gives to be able to help people who are not strong."

Conference, twenty years ago Neil Kinnock inspired us to have the strength to change our party.

Over the last ten years together we have shown we have the strength to change our country.

The challenge now is to prove we have the strength to eradicate disease, end poverty, and to change our world.

That is our obligation. Our duty. And together - our destiny.