America and Britain should join forces to end poverty: both nations "believe that peace and security are the foundation of any progress … that creating the right climate for economic growth … is the best way … to raise the finances needed to defeat poverty."

The most prominent private expression of this has been the work of Bill and Melinda Gates and, most recently, Warren Buffet, who is giving away most of his fortune. These are acts no different in kind, only in scale, from those of many millions of Americans who give so generously to those in need. All have made a huge difference. It was French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville who, nearly 200 years ago, identified this characteristic: "When an American needs the assistance of his fellows, it's very rare that it be refused."

As governments, we have to do the same--and we are. Over the past decade, UK aid has more than trebled. Under this Administration, American aid has more than doubled; in new ways, too, with PEPFAR and the Millennium Challenge Account. It is taxpayers' dollars and pounds that are dropping the debt and bringing new money for health and education. However, is it enough? I do not think so. In the UK, we are committed to achieving the long-held global target of allocating 0.7% of our national wealth in aid by 2013. Europe has committed to do this by 2015; that is an extra $100,000,000,000 a year. If the U.S. did the same, it would mean yet another $100,000,000,000 a year. Think what a difference that would make.

The other issue here is how we work. Let me take two examples: the way we give our aid and the fight against HIV and ADS. In the UK, we now ask three questions of our development partners: Are you serious about reducing poverty? Do you uphold human rights and international obligations? Do you promote transparency, reform of public financial management, good governance, and the assurance that the money goes where it is intended?

Based on the answers, we distribute our aid in different ways. In Zimbabwe, we do not give aid directly to the government, but we do provide food and run an AIDS program. In Tanzania, on the other hand, we give a lot of our aid in the form of support to the government's budget--to its treasury. I understand the arguments about budget support; we in the UK have them, too. There always is concern over tracking where the dollars and pounds went. The fact that the U.S. does not engage in budget support is one of the differences in our approaches, and it does separate America from other donors. In the right circumstances, though, it is quite a useful tool, as the recent independent evaluation carried out for the UK by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows. One of its benefits is that it helps to build that very capacity and promote improved financial management, something that is at the heart of the U.S.'s policy.

If our shared goal of accountable government is to be realized so that people in developing countries look to their own governments to sort out their problems, and not us, then we need to help build the capacity to do exactly that, which is why I was so heartened to hear Ambassador Randall L. Tobias' recent speech to the Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid, where he spoke about the parallel systems of service delivery that have "allowed governments to shirk their responsibility.... Citizens must understand that their governments are responsible; they must make demands of their governments and reject excuses for failure."