There is a spring in the step of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, which is now daring to hope that a historic bill will pass through parliament this month.
The bill will curtail the ability of so called “vulture funds” to sue poor governments in English courts for millions they can’t afford.
But as I will explain, an MP’s pneumonia and the general election season could derail the whole thing.
I got interested in vulture funds last November, when we reported on a High Court case against the government of Liberia. The case was brought by two shadowy offshore funds in Caribbean tax havens – one in the British Virgin Islands, the other in the Caymans.
The two vulture funds had bought the rights to a $6m loan which Liberia took out from an American bank in 1978.
And what with interest added for non-payment, the funds said they were now owed $20m by Liberia and wanted to be paid.
Even the High Court judge did not like enforcing the law against Liberia.
“The only issue raised is plainly a sad one,” Mr Justice Burton said glumly. “Liberia is a poor country, and cannot afford it”.
Liberia is refusing to pay, not least because the World Bank scores it as the second poorest nation on the planet.
Most Liberians scrape by on about one dollar a day, and any money the country has is surely better spent on health and education and on reconstruction after years of civil war, rather than on paying a ballooning decades-old debt.
Andrew Gwynne MP has now introduced a Commons Private Member’s Bill which effectively forces vulture funds to reduce their commercial debt claims by 90 per cent. The bill specifically protects countries which are already internationally recognised as eligible for debt relief.
This automatic write-down should in theory deter the funds from pursuing vulnerable but fiscally responsible foreign governments through English courts.
There is cross-party support for this – Lembit Opik for the Lib Dems and Nigel Evans for the Conservatives were at today’s Westminster launch.
But two problems remain. Mr Gwynne, a Labour MP in Cheshire, has gone down with pneumonia, so the Speaker has been asked if another MP can pilot the bill.
The bigger problem is whether enough MPs will vote come the day.
Over 170 of them supported an early day motion, but the vote itself apparently falls on 26 February. That’s a Friday, when most MPs are back in their constituencies – especially when a general election approaches.
But this is important business.
The high commissioner to Mozambique, Antonio Gumende, told us what Britain’s write-down of his country’s £80m debt in 2005 had already helped achieve, with Mozambique’s infant mortality rate slashed and millions more children in school.
So if you want Britain to re-take the lead in reducing the commercial debt owed by the world’s poorest countries, it may well be a case of persuading your MP to be in Westminster on 26 February.