UK minister seeks cross-party support for bold roadmap on development goals

Andrew Mitchell announces white paper to get Britain back on track for UN 2030 targets after years of aid cuts

The international development minister, Andrew Mitchell, is taking the unusual step of trying to build explicit cross-party support for a white paper due to be published this autumn amid a string of critical global summits.

Announcing the initiative this week, he told the Guardian: The white paper will be a parliamentary command paper by the government, but it does not work unless you have agreement across the political parties. After all, international development and British leadership on this is not a Labour or Tory thing. It's a British thing."