In a debate to mark his departure from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) after ten years as Director, Lawrence Haddad called for the UK to show more leadership in driving the collective action required to solve the world’s most pressing problems including climate change and extreme poverty. Professor Haddad joined BOND Chief Executive Ben Jackson, Lord Jack MccConnell, IDS Trustee and Professor Emeritus at Oxford University Frances Stewart and IDS Head of Communications James Georgalakis to debate what UK aid and development policy would need to look like in 2015. A year in which the world will have a new set of global development goals and the UK will have a new government.

Lawrence Haddad also called for UK aid and development policy to focus more on the quality of growth and inequality and to strike a better balance between ensuring it has the flexibility to respond to a rapidly changing world and ensuring value for money and accountability.

In a lively exchange, the panel also discussed the risk of the post 2015 discussions failing to result in any clear agreement on a new set of global goals, the role of the rising powers as donors and in defining the development agenda and what a new UK government would need to do to address growing public scepticism around aid and development.