Lord Malloch-Brown, the Prime Minister's Special Envoy for the London Summit and the Foreign Office Minister for Africa, Asia and the United Nations, answered a range of questions about the impact of the financial crisis on the world’s poorest countries and what those nations were looking to the London Summit to achieve.

Phil Thornton, an editor of the Summit website, began by asking whether developing countries outside the G20 would be fully represented at the summit and what those countries wanted the Summit to achieve on 2 April.

Lord Malloch-Brown said developing countries that were members of the G20 saw it as a 'matter of pride' to make sure they represented not just their own interests but those of poor countries generally. He pointed out that the Summit would include the chairs of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the Chair of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Poor countries were 'thinking very big', Lord Malloch-Brown said. While initially many had thought the crisis would be confined to the Western financial system, it was clear their economies were badly affected. 'Since then it has clearly become a global economic crisis that affects households and families everywhere,' he said. 'They have big ambitions for this and they see the world at an economic crossroads. The economic affects are coming through in all sorts of ways and they are looking for big solutions.'

So how badly affected are poor countries and what can they do to influence the debate, Phil Thornton asked.

The Minister said the impact on poor countries was 'bad and uneven' He said he seen personally the problems that countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America faced in terms of falls in demands for their exports and tighter conditions in the international financial markets. 'Anyone who exports anything from textiles to radio to even foodstuffs in feeling a contraction in their overseas markets,' he said.

Developing countries are taking steps to bolster their own economies and to influence the debate. Lord Malloch-Brown said they had responded to his appeal to come up ideas. He highlighted the African Group of 10 made up of five finance ministers and five central banks chaired by the South African finance minister that is pulling together an emergency recovery plan for Africa. 'I hope that will be shared well in advance of the Summit and will be a chance for the traditional donor countries to respond,’ he said.

Finally Phil Thornton asked whether poor countries could be forgiven for feeling angry that Western failures had brought economic hardship to their citizens and about the importance of rich countries hitting the Millennium Development Goals on combating poverty and disease.

Lord Malloch-Brown said members of the African Union had contrasted the billions 'thrown' at bankers by Western governments with the failure to meet aid targets. 'There is an underlying incipient anger about the double standard of 'we rescue our bankers and our banking system. Where we when it was a matter of rescuing their economies and their poor?' But he added that poor countries were still ‘invested’ in the global economy. 'It has not turned them into critics of capitalism. It has had made them more cautious capitalists.

The Ministers said that one of the most efficient ways of delivering a global stimulus was to put more money into the hands of the poor family that could not afford to save but have an ‘immediate need to put a school uniform on the back of their kid'. He added: ‘Making sure that we go on towards reducing world poverty is arguable not just a matter of conscience at a time like this but is also good economics.'