International Relations and Defence Committee
22 July 2026
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Committee Actual start House of Lords
24:16 - 25:52
Speaker 1
Welcome to this, the eighth session of the committee looking at the issue of multilateralism, and welcome to our two expert witnesses here today, and we look forward to this session.
It's live on Parliament television and I believe that there is an audience for it apart from the large public gathering we have today. You'll get a transcript in due course which you can change for any minor defects that is there and I ask members of the committee to declare any interest that they have before they ask any questions. I would ask the first question. I was the lead reviewer of the strategic defense review last year and I think it's probably the only relevant interest to this particular inquiry.
So both of you have a lot of expertise in this area, and I just wonder whether in introducing yourselves to the committee, you might also look at the main characteristics that you believe of the existing multilateral system, and whether or not you believe that it is, as a number of witnesses have said to us, is actually in crisis, and if so, why? So I will ask Professor Dercon to start off with.
25:52 - 26:17
Speaker 2
Thank you very much, and thank you for asking me to comment on this. So my background is that I'm an academic at the University of Oxford. I was also the chief economist of DFID for a considerable period of time in the 2010s, and subsequently I advised various ministers in FCDO as well.
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