Four years ago at Gleneagles, as the G8 leaders announced their plan to tackle global poverty, Bob Geldof welcomed the move giving the G8 "10 out of 10" on aid. And whilst not everyone agreed with his assessment, there was no doubt that the promises made at Gleneagles were a step forward with a pledge to spend $50 billion in aid by 2010.

Fast forward four years, with one year left to that self-imposed 2010 deadline, and the G8 are far from meeting their own target and keeping their promises to the world's poorest and most vulnerable, indeed the OECD estimates they may fall a mammoth $23 billion short. This coming just at the time when the global economic recession is plunging millions more into poverty, making aid funding more essential than ever. Italy, the chair of this year's summit, is the biggest promise breaker. Furthermore, the iconic 39-year old UN target of 0.7% of Gross National Income to be spent on aid has still not been met by any G8 member. Not one of the world's most powerful countries has ever met it, although smaller nations such as Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands have all reached and exceeded that target.
It is easy to forget, as we go about our lives in Scotland, with our attention caught by job cuts, swine flu, MP's expenses and Andy Murray's Wimbledon exploits, just how different life is for millions of the world's poorest and just how deep and widespread the poverty crisis is. Here the financial crisis is costing jobs, and for many of the poorest in this country it is particularly challenging. In the developing world the poverty crisis costs lives every second of every day, yet the political will has yet to arrive to take action.

The statistics remain frightening and shocking when you think about what they actually mean for the lives of millions of our fellow global citizens: one in six of the world's population lives in hunger, 1.4 billion live in extreme poverty, over 10 million infants will die because of poverty.this year and access to basic services that we take for granted, (and indeed moan about!) such as healthcare and education, remain out of reach for millions of people.

As the G8 leaders meet there are concerns that aid is not as high up the political agenda as it was four years ago. The danger is that the current economic crisis is used as an excuse by the leader's of rich countries to wriggle out of their Gleneagles promises, as they focus on the domestic agenda. Yet the economic crisis makes the need for more and better aid more urgent that ever. Poor countries are being hit hard by a succession of factors linked to the crisis. For example, as we reduce our spending on the High Street, falling exports in light manufacturing such as textiles is leading to thousands of layoffs in countries like Cambodia, with women particularly badly affected. The slump in global demand for commodities such as copper, diamonds, oil and timber are resulting in layoffs, such as 8,000 copper miners in Zambia, and 90% of Sierra Leone's diamond miners. Botswana, the country best known here from Alexander McCall Smith's novels, was forced to mothball its diamond mines that generate 80% of its exports. And of course one of the big differences between most poor countries and the UK, is that if you lose your job you have no welfare state to fall back on.

Faced with lower growth rates, falling tax revenues and reduced sources of finance, only aid can prevent many poor country governments from having to cut back health and education budgets which are already too low. Certainly few have any funds to invest in economic stimulus packages that have been the talk of the economic pages for months in rich countries. In Africa, only Gabon is in a position to undertake a fiscal stimulus according the IMF, whilst very few other countries - Mozambique and Tanzania among them - are placed to maintain fiscal spending. For the rest spending cuts are almost inevitable.

So could the G8 change all this even if they wanted to? One thing the economic crisis has shown is that when they want to the leaders of rich nations can find the money to respond. What if the money spent on bailing out banks had been spent on aid? It is estimated that the $8.42 trillion promised by rich country governments to bailout banks would be enough to end global extreme poverty for 50 years. The amount being used for US bank bailouts would have covered meeting the cost of all of the Millennium Development Goals eight times over. This would save millions of lives and would of course boost economic growth, as people get better healthcare, get better educated and are better able to take and create economic opportunities. The economic crisis highlights yet again how quality of life for the citizens of rich countries is considered far more important than the deaths of citizens of poor countries. Bankers' bonuses, that seem totally obscene to ordinary Scots, would be totally unbelievable for some of the people I met in Malawi last year, who were struggling to feed their families one meal of maize a day as food prices rocketed.

What does all of this mean for those seven men and one woman enjoying their pizza and pasta in Italy with Silvio Berlusconi at the head of the table? It means they must stick to their Gleneagles promises, and indeed exceed them. It means they should be meeting the 0.7% promise now. It means they need to take urgent action to curb the effect of the economic crisis on the developing world if their ambition to show any sort of global leadership means anything. If they are ever going to be worthy of 10 out of 10 on aid, and have any chance of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, they need to do much much better.