Campaign and petition email responses

Global debt crisis

Some of the world’s richest banks are refusing to cancel debt.

Developing nations are in the middle of a huge debt crisis. Debt payments were already higher than health, education and social spending combined. But then, during the pandemic, Blackrock bank has refused requests to suspend debt repayments, along with other big global banks.

Now it is people who are paying the ultimate price.

The SNP have long supported the cancellation of struggling countries’ debt, thus empowering them to better alleviate poverty and channel the money they do have into improving infrastructure.

The SNP also agree that, as an Executive Board member of the IMF, the UK is in a prime position to raise this sensible and just proposition in the international monetary field.

Recent analysis from the Jubilee Debt Campaign found that 34 of the world’s poorest countries are spending £21.4bn on debt payments a year compared with £3.9bn on measures to tackle the climate emergency.

In our submission to the government's long-awaited integrated review the SNP called for the government to use debt relief as a tool to work with our partners in the G20 to secure the cancellation of debt payments for countries in the Global South suffering from the economic impacts of coronavirus.