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Melissa Fleming 00:00
My guest today has a powerful vision - education for all children everywhere.

 

Gordon Brown 00:06
There is talent, there is potential, there is brilliance in all parts of the world. There's a new Einstein, there's a new Malala, you name the brilliant people around the world. But some of them have been denied the chance, even now, to have even the most basic education at school. And so, if 260 million school aged children are not going to school today, or any day, what a waste.

 

Melissa Fleming 00:38
Gordon Brown was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. These days, he is the UN Special Envoy for Global Education and also serves as the WHO Ambassador for Global Health Financing. From the United Nations, I'm Melissa Fleming. This is Awake at Night. Welcome, Gordon.

 

Gordon Brown 01:05
It's great to be here, Melissa.

 

Melissa Fleming 01:07
What made you choose public service in the first place?

 

Gordon Brown 01:10
Well, I've been very fortunate because, you know, the reason I'm committed to doing things in public service - whether you're in government in the United Kingdom, my home country, or whether it's with the United Nations - is because there are so many problems that need solutions. And now there's a very distinct category of problem which is a global problem. So, you can have common problems and shared problems, but a global problem is one where you need globally coordinated action to deal with it.

And that's why climate change is so important. You cannot deal with it unless you can bring the world together. That's why pandemics... You've got to have the whole of the world because nobody's safe till everybody's safe. And if one country fails to vaccinate or one country doesn't tackle infectious diseases, the diseases can spread around the world. Financial stability is the same. Contagion can spread right across the world from one country to lots of countries. And so, you need globally coordinated action. And that's why I want to work with the United Nations, and I want to work with all the organizations that are associated with the United Nations, because in my view, the case for globally coordinated action is even stronger than when the United Nations was built in the first place.

 

Melissa Fleming 02:22
Going back to when you entered politics, and you weren't looking at the whole globe at that stage. You were looking at local politics, national politics. What made you choose to go into politics in the first place and not some other profession?

 

Gordon Brown 02:37
Well, I grew up in a mining and textile town, and when I was growing up, I saw around me poverty that I just could not see was justifiable in any way. And I saw unemployment. As miners started to lose... The coal miners started to lose their jobs, people who were linoleum workers - because my town was one that was a centre of what was the linoleum industry - were starting to lose their jobs. And I remember the closures and I remember children from my own class having to emigrate or having to go to another part of the country. And we were a town where every year there was floods because the seawalls weren't strong enough and people were made homeless. So, there were things that were wrong that you felt something had to be done about.

And fortunately, I grew up with an older brother who was very concerned about these issues, but also about international issues. And the first campaign I remember that he brought me into was Freedom from Hunger, which was a United Nations campaign led by the Food and Agricultural Organization. I was aware of the social problems in my own area. I had never visited Africa or visited any of the countries that we were talking about, but he started a newspaper and ways of raising money for the Freedom from Hunger campaign. And I was very much involved in that when I was maybe ten years old. And he was drawing me in to that. So, I got a sense of what were both local problems and international issues that had to be dealt with. And these sort of influences in your early life, they never really leave you because it does shape the way you think about things. And I could see that there were so many things that were wrong that something had to be done. And I suppose that's what made me more political than perhaps some other people.

 

Melissa Fleming 04:23
But you also grew up in a family where your father was a minister, I believe. How much did that influence you in the path that you took? And also, the way perhaps you preach yourself. In a way you¡¯re preaching...

 

Gordon Brown 04:42  
I don't think it's the job...

 

Melissa Fleming 04:43
Inequality, no to inequality.

 

Gordon Brown 04:44
I don't think it's the job of people in politics to moralize. But I think it's very important that people understand the values that you stand for and represent. I mean, my father was a Church of Scotland minister. He was a Presbyterian minister. And the emphasis in the Church of Scotland is on the spoken word about what can you do about the things that are wrong in your society. And it was very much a social Christianity that I was brought up to learn about. So, you know, 'Blessed are the poor.' I mean, that was the sort of soundbite of the, you know, the Bible in my view. So, yes, religion provides a strong sense of community. It also gives people comfort in terribly difficult situations. But I think it also represents a cause. You know, the New Testament for me is about social justice. And I was certainly brought up to believe that the inspiration that religion gave was actually for doing what you could to help people around you, particularly those people in need. So that was very much the background to growing up.

 

Melissa Fleming 05:55
I wonder, you know, zooming back to when you were entering British politics, did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to achieve?

 

 

Gordon Brown 06:03
It's very funny because I didn't think I was going to be in politics at all. I mean, I grew up as going to university. I was doing academic subjects. I thought I might be a lecturer. And then at the age of 16, just as I went to university, I was very influenced by... I got an injury playing rugby. I was a sort of big rugby sort of enthusiast and played football and all these sports, and suddenly I landed up in a hospital with a detached retina, which at that time was almost impossible to deal with.

And so, I was 16. I was in hospital. My first eye, left eye, went blind as a result of the injury. And they couldn't... I had lots of operations and they couldn¡¯t do anything about it. And then my second eye, my right eye, I had the same problem. And I was so lucky, so fortunate. I was at the cusp of the new technology. And whereas when I was... My first operations, only 20% were successful and they hadn't caught my problem quickly enough. So, it was never going to be successful. But by the time we get to now, technology has made this 90% successful. So, I was very lucky. I was at the cusp and got that. But of course, I couldn't do any sport. I spent ages in hospital. I was lying blindfolded for a long time, and I was using the talking book service to hear books. So, it made you rethink what you were doing. And you suddenly thought you've got to use your life to do something. And if I can do something a bit more purposeful than be an academic, then that's what I should think of doing.

 

Melissa Fleming 07:39
So, it really had a deep effect.

 

Gordon Brown 07:42
I think so. I think... Robert Frost has got this poem, you know, The Road Not Taken. It's such a powerful poem because it makes out there are turning points in your lives. You don't choose there to be turning points, but you come to that turning point and then you've got to make a choice. And I think that has an effect on lots of people. And I do think that for me that was the sort of stage at which you've got to make something of what you're doing. You can¡¯t just hang around and you never know what's going to happen next. And, you know, I felt very lucky that I'd saved the sight in one of my eyes.

 

Melissa Fleming 08:16
Very... And part of that poem is also the road not taken.

 

Gordon Brown 08:21
Exactly.

 

Melissa Fleming 08:21
And it makes you reflect on, you know, had you not had that accident, that rugby accident, would that have changed the course of your life? Have you ever thought about that?

 

Gordon Brown 08:30
Well, I had a long time to contemplate. You know, when in the old days when they did these retinal detachment operations, you had to lie flat and blinded for quite a number of days. And I had to do that on three or four, well, four occasions. And it does make you think. And you think, 'Well, I can't do these things anymore. I can't play rugby. I can't play football. I got to be very careful about what I do.' Well, you know, it does... You reach a point at which you're making a decision about what you do next.

 

Melissa Fleming 09:00
I think that would be incredibly difficult for anyone at any age but as a 16-year-old boy.

 

Gordon Brown 09:07
I was 16. It was also... It was my first week. I'd gone to university very young at 16.

 

Melissa Fleming 09:13
16, you went to university?

 

Gordon Brown 09:14
I went to university at 16. I was in an experimental programme that I ended up going to university a year earlier.  Scotland, you usually go about 17 or maybe early 18, but 17. I went a year early, but it was... I just arrived at university, start my course and they discovered I had this eye problem. So, I missed the first term. Then I missed much of the third term, then the first time the next year. So, it was quite a traumatic experience at 16. But I was lucky, and I feel very fortunate because, you know, the technology has advanced and so many people can now just in so many other areas of medicine, can now get great benefit from the advances.

 

Melissa Fleming 09:51
So, you can see perfectly out of your second eye, your right eye?

 

Gordon Brown 09:55
I've had to deal with a few problems associated with that, but nothing's ever perfect once you once you have a retinal detachment. So, you make the most of it. And it's... Look, I've been very fortunate. I've got no complaints. I've had a few sort of scares, but I've been very lucky. Funnily enough, the surgeon who treated me, first of all, I was probably one of his first operations. I still talk to him and see him every few months because he does [inaudible]. And he had gone to Chicago and been trained in retinal surgery and come back to Edinburgh and he was about to go on holiday. And I met him the day before he went on holiday. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have had the operation that saved my sight. So, you know, there was a lot of things came together. But a brilliant surgeon who transformed the treatment of retinal detachment in Scotland. You know, so you feel very fortunate.

 

Melissa Fleming 10:51
Absolutely. And it certainly didn't hold you back because you were Prime Minister in the UK and before that the longest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer or finance minister in British modern history.

 

Gordon Brown 11:03
That's a funny story because the previous person who was the longest serving chancellor... And he did 13 years. I think I did ten. Was in the 1810 to 1820s. And the only reason he survived for more than I did was halfway through his term of office he was about to be sacked and then he announced he was abolishing income tax and kept his job. So, this is one of the things that I couldn't do was to announce I was abolishing income tax, but that's how he kept his job. And they say about finance ministers, you know, there's only two kinds of finance minister. There are those who fail and then those who get out just in time. So, I was probably lucky to get out after ten years.

 

Melissa Fleming 11:43
Well, I wasn't going to ask you how you survived that long. I was actually going to ask you what you were most proud of from your time in politics, but maybe I will. How did you manage to last that long if...?

 

Gordon Brown 11:53
Well, I...

 

Melissa Fleming 11:54
It was almost a record.

 

Gordon Brown 11:55
I was very fortunate. I mean, obviously we had a government that won three elections. The challenge of being chancellor was to try to do something about poverty and inequality at the same time as you were trying to manage the economy. Because, you know, you can talk about the role of a finance minister as being to achieve growth and to achieve financial stability. And that's definite. You've got to be able to do that, but you need to make advances against what was rising inequality right across the world at the time and of course, there's still high levels of poverty.

So, I made the eradication of child poverty and our objective to abolish it one of our missions in government. And in the first few years we halved... Our attempt was to halve child poverty and got very close to that. And then the financial crisis came, and it became more difficult. But I still think that no sensible and successful government can really claim to be representing the interests of the country if they can't do something about children growing up in poverty. And to me, it's one of the essential elements of being a finance minister. That you're not just talking about growth, stability, financial probity, and everything else. You're actually talking about what effect what you do has on the lives, particularly of children growing up.

Because, well, pensioner poverty was... Poverty amongst the elderly, of course, has been a huge issue the last 100 years. But we had managed to make a lot of progress from that. But child poverty is still in Britain at the moment rising and of course, it's rising in many countries in the West, including America at the moment. And we've got to do more about it. You cannot have children thriving. If they don't have the best possible start in life, and they're denied the chance of proper nutrition when they go to school, they can't concentrate, and they don't have the advantages that many other children have. That they've got access to books, and they've got access to the chance to learn at home as well as in school.

 

Melissa Fleming 13:54
And you seem to have from the beginning of our conversation today, I have the sense that you have a very strong sense of social responsibility. Is that ever¡­? Does it ever feel like a burden to you?

 

Gordon Brown 14:06
I don't think you can be in public life without recognizing that there are wrongs have got to be righted. I mean, I wouldn't see any purpose of being in public life if it was just to hold a position or to have a title. I mean, the truth is there are so many challenges that have got to be met. And what I'm struck by is not what governments achieve, but what you leave unachieved and how much more needs to be done. And of course, we're at a particular point in our history where, as I said at the beginning, there are global problems that need globally coordinated solutions.

And the sadness is that the need for these answers is so much greater but our capacity and willingness to do so has been diminished by some of the events happening around the world. Whether it be war or whether it be conflict or whether it be standoffs between countries. And my worry is that you've got this rising tide of nationalism. You know, you call America first under President Trump, but you could talk about Russia first, China first, India first. You know, every country taking quite a narrow view of what its self-interest is. And we've got to persuade people that you can't actually succeed in solving the problems that you claim to want to solve unless you can work cooperatively with other countries to do so.

 

Melissa Fleming 15:24
And that's a lot. How do you...? I mean, it must be frustrating sometimes for you when you see backtracking, when you see...

 

Gordon Brown 15:33
The real...

 

Melissa Fleming 15:33
Things getting worse. So how do you deal with this stress? How do you deal with the frustration?

 

Gordon Brown 15:37
The real frustration out of government is that you feel that some of the things that take years and months to deliver, you could have done something about within a day in government. So, you're trying to persuade people to do things that you think should be done immediately. And it takes time because, you know, it's got to be dialogue, it's got to be discussion, it's got to be [inaudible]... But you know, in government it was a lot easier to do things quickly.  Now you've got to persuade a whole range of people. And of course, that's the way the political process works. But it is very frustrating. And we've been trying to create an education fund that is quite innovative because it's based on guarantees given by governments for the last few years, and it's now being created. But I felt when we originally proposed it in 2016, it should have been set up by 2017 and now it's actually coming to fruition, but it's taken time to persuade people.

 

Melissa Fleming 16:27
Well, you have quite a record, though. In 2009, you were credited with preventing a second Great Depression at the G20 summit in London. Can you tell us what happened?

 

Gordon Brown 16:37
We knew that once the global financial crisis started, it couldn't be solved just in America or just in Europe. We knew that we needed China. We needed all countries to recognize that this was a global problem that needed global answers. And so, we brought together the G20, which is the organization that is now credited with being the forum for some of these big economic issues. And there had been a finance ministers G20, but there had never been a leaders G20. So, we brought the leaders together first in America, then in London, then actually in America again. In the course of a year, three meetings. But the main one was in London in April 2009, where we said, 'Look, we've got to underpin the world economy by about a trillion of resources to give people confidence that we are not going to allow trade to further sink. We're not going to allow growth to deteriorate. We're not going to allow more people to be put out of jobs.'

And the one way to do it was to say where there is a problem, we can actually provide the finance that is necessary to solve it. So, governments ought to work as if we are now moving to a position where instead of banks being completely undercapitalized, they will have the capital. And instead of governments being unable to start trade and so on and so forth, they will have facilities to do so. So, the G20 summit in 2009, you start with this problem. Basically in 2008, as the banks started to collapse, capitalism was running without capital. That's a very simple thing to say that the banks did not have the capital to meet the obligations that they had entered into. And something had to be done.

So, we nationalized one or two banks. Other countries put finance into the banks, and we had to get the system moving again. But then you had to restore confidence because people had lost confidence that the system could work. And so, by underpinning the economy in 2009, we got the resources that were necessary to persuade people that we would leave no stone unturned to get the world economy moving again. In actual fact, we didn't have to use all the resources we made available because the confidence returned far more quickly than it did in 1929 or in other previous crises. Because we had this common approach. We were coordinated. We were cohesive. People saw the world moving in one direction. And when we're going to solve some of the biggest problems, it's really essential that countries can move in the same direction.

 

Melissa Fleming 18:57
How can you transfer that experience to what you're doing now for the UN? It all or much of it comes down to finance.

 

Gordon Brown 19:04
It does come down to finance. And one of the reasons that we formed what is called the Global Education Forum. We brought together all the countries that are providing development aid, and we brought together all the multilateral institutions in one room and said, 'Look, we've got to coordinate the way we use money more effectively. We've got to persuade people that if we can come together and show how resources can be better used, it is worth your while as a country investing more in education.' We could pool our funding. We could coordinate our approaches to digitalization and everything else.

And that's what we've tried to do. The lesson for me of all the recent crises is [that] cooperation is an essential element of the new world we're in, because if we waste our resources by everybody doing their own thing, rather than people coming together to say, 'Look, we've got all these children not at school because of child labor, child marriage, child trafficking, child slavery. All these things are still happening. We've got to outlaw these things around the world, and we've got to work together to do so.' And it's only by persuading countries to take the legal action and then the policing action that's necessary that we can, in some cases, get children to school at all.

 

 

Melissa Fleming 20:15
And back to school. I mean, you are the Special Envoy for Global Education. What is it about education that you find so important?

 

Gordon Brown 20:27
I think it's about potential. And it's bridging the gap between what we are and what we have it in ourselves to become. And for me, education is the unlocking of that potential. And there is talent, there is potential, there is brilliance in all parts of the world. There's a new Einstein, there's a new Malala, you name the brilliant people around the world. But some of them have been denied the chance, even now, to have even the most basic education at school. And so, if 260 million school age children are not going to school today, or any day, what a waste of talent. What a waste of ingenuity. What a waste of potential dynamism.

And so, I'm struck by the fact that when you start the process of educating people in countries where education has not been taken seriously for years, you start to release this talent, the potential. And the countries that are doing best at the moment are the countries that have invested in the children. The countries that are still struggling as middle-income countries are generally the countries that have not invested enough in education and skills and in the talent of the people.

 

Melissa Fleming 21:35
I mean, beyond being incredibly important for economies and development, what happens when you don't educate children? Are there other dimensions that are consequences?

 

Gordon Brown 21:48
And I mentioned child marriage because 10 million children, girls, are married at school age every year.

 

Melissa Fleming 21:57
10 million?

 

Gordon Brown 21:57
Yes. And the trouble is that when you have displacement and when you have a refugee crisis and when you have a breakdown of society as a result of droughts or floods or something, then one of the answers, I'm afraid, is that child marriage rises because it's for families who cannot afford to keep the children. One way out is to is to marry them off. And then you have child labor because there are millions of children who are either not going to school or only part time at school because they're working in mines or in factories or in domestic service. And that's something that you can pass a law against.

But if you don't administer the law... We found in Britain in the mid-19th century that you could pass a law to make education compulsory, but if you don't police that law, then people still avoid the implementation of it in their case. And then you've got this child slavery and trafficking. And it's the most insidious thing of all because you've got young children who you can never track. And what strikes me is that the numbers of prosecutions are so low that it's almost a crime that people are practicing with impunity. So, you've got hardly any prosecutions for trafficking around the world.

We've not only got to pass laws because countries are passing laws against slavery, but we've got to implement these laws and make sure the policing works effectively. And the only way we get children to school, in some cases, is by being...enforcing these laws, because as long as either parents in some cases, but ruthless exploiters of labor feel they can get off with this, they keep children out of school in many countries. So, these 260 million children out of school who are school age, some of them obviously are where there are no schools. And so, we've got to build the schools. And some of them where even if there were schools, there are no teachers. So, we've got to get the teachers.

 

 

Melissa Fleming 23:51
It seems that children are a real passion and focus for you. When you think about these children around the world, I mean, what's keeping you awake at night these days?

 

Gordon Brown 24:02
You know, Ajay Banga has just become President of the World Bank. And I was talking to him a few weeks ago and he said that what kept him awake at night - and I don't think he¡¯ll mind me saying this - was he was going around the world and xenophobic nationalism. He said people turning in on themselves. And he said, because every other problem we have... And this is why the United Nations is so important. Every other problem we have - climate change, famine, all the other problems associated with poverty and even war - they can be solved if people are prepared to come together. But if you've got xenophobic nationalism, people don't come together. And that's why it's such a big problem. And if we allow it because nationalism in its sort of aggressive sense is really seeing the world in terms of a struggle between the ¡°us,¡± that's us, and the ¡°them.¡± Between insiders and outsiders, ins and outs.

And of course, it encourages people to think that cooperation is pointless because you've got your own view of your world. You you've got your own view of your self-interest. You become protectionist. You become mercantilist. You become isolationist and everything else. And I think he made a very important point that I will always remember. There are other problems that are big and huge. And we could mention them today. And we've mentioned some of them. But if you've got people together around the table and if you have the cooperation that is essential in an interdependent world, you could do something about it.

But if you allowed nationalism to get out of control... And it happens in so many countries where you have conflicts at the moment. I mean, there are still civil wars that are still in existence. And then the number of secessionist movements because there are still disputes over borders. And then of course, you've got people building walls that separate countries from other countries. And there's more walls now than there were at the time the Berlin Wall came down. But if you can get people to cooperate, get people to work together, then you can achieve so much more.

 

 

Melissa Fleming 25:57
And that's what the United Nations is for. Is it an antidote?

 

Gordon Brown 26:00
Exactly. And that's why all the people who say, you know, that things are so bad and so on. You've got to remember that we have this institution that was built in the 1940s that had a dream that is still something that we should hold onto. That if you can get people to come together, the problems that you've got are not insoluble. You can actually make the impossible possible. I think the United Nations is there because there are circumstances which look hopeless, but where you've made a difference.

 

Melissa Fleming 26:36
A lot of people may have felt hopeless during the COVID-19 pandemic. You have accepted a role as WHO Ambassador for Global Health Financing. What made you choose to accept that role?

 

Gordon Brown 26:49
Because there were so many people in Africa and elsewhere who have been denied vaccines when they were readily available in the West. It just seemed to me an outrage that all the Western countries were ordering vaccines far beyond what they needed so that they could be sure that they would have enough. And then they had excess vaccines, and we weren't getting them to people quickly enough. And so, vaccines were running out. They were passing the use by date at a time when people were desperate for them in other parts of parts of the world.

And I felt Africa particularly had a right to be angry about the failure because the technology was being held in the West. But I think the lesson of that crisis is that one, you have to develop manufacturing capacity in every part of the world. And secondly, you've got to have a burden sharing agreement, because one of the reasons that we weren't able to get vaccines to people quickly enough was that we hadn't allocated money so that these vaccines could be paid for and got into countries that desperately needed them but didn't have the resources on their own to do something about that.

And the more you look at the global problems we deal with - whether it's climate change finance or whether it's education or whether it's health finance or whether it's all the anti-poverty programmes and the humanitarian aid that the United Nations leads on - the more you see that you need burden sharing. You need countries... If there's a crisis, passing the begging bowl round in an emergency, of course. But you can't build a whole system of humanitarian aid that is necessary year to year by relying on appeal after appeal after appeal. There's going to be some burden sharing agreement. You have it for peacekeeping. So, the United Nations peacekeeping forces, there is an allocation of responsibility by country, but we don't have it for humanitarian aid. We don't have it in the main for things like vaccines. We're trying to develop a system for climate finance that would make sense. But that means the historic and current emitters have got to pay their share. But we don't have a burden sharing agreement.

So, you go along to a conference, and you clap when someone announces this amount of money or that amount of money. But that's not a system to solve the problem. That is a patchwork way of dealing with the problem. Passing the begging bowl round.  We need burden sharing agreements for all the vital problems that we face. And again, that needs negotiation. It needs countries to be able to sit around the table together and look at it. But I think based on capacity to pay, which is your national income per head. Based on your historic emissions and the responsibility you have to do something about it, you could get these burden sharing agreements. But otherwise, we will stumble from crisis to crisis without having the proper allocation of money, particularly when it's desperately needed. At the outset of a crisis, you really have to get the money in quickly and therefore appeals that come weeks later may be too late.

 

Melissa Fleming 29:46
Exactly. And health care in particular.

 

Gordon Brown 29:49
What...

 

Melissa Fleming 29:49
Costs money. And everybody has a universal right to health. And it's clearly perhaps personal for you, given what happened with your eye. But also, almost 20 years ago, you and your wife, Sarah, set up the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh in memory of your first child, Jennifer, who died just a few days after she was born prematurely. How did you cope with such a tragedy?

 

Gordon Brown 30:16
I was still the finance minister at the time and obviously it¡¯s your first child and she didn't survive. And we... After the grief you feel that something good is going to come out of something that's a tragedy. So, we wanted something to happen. So, we set up the Jennifer Brown research trust, and the aim is because she was premature that other babies who are premature, we can get the¡­ more medical science, we can get more research. We can help people, particularly in all countries, not just in the richest countries, to survive, even if there is huge pressure from premature birth.

I mean, one of the things that's really interesting is one of the last things to develop is sight. And a number of premature babies go blind. But it's so unnecessary because it's about the level of oxygen that they're given at the time of birth. And so, if you're given too much or too little oxygen, it affects your health. And so, someone... I think I remember reading about Stevie Wonder, the singer who's one of the best-known singers, but also blind. But he was not born blind, but the oxygen levels were not the right ones, and therefore he went blind. So, all these things that affect people, if there's medical science available and the research is available, you can moderate the levels of oxygen. And that can happen. That can happen not just in the rich countries, but in all countries if the information is available. So, these are the sort of changes that I think are starting... well, are being made in medicine as a result of research that's been done. And we just wanted to contribute to some of that research.

 

Melissa Fleming 31:57
And also, I think you're a big supporter of the national health system in the UK.

 

Gordon Brown 32:03
Yeah, the national health system. I mean, I keep saying... I used to go to many African countries when I was chancellor, and they were struggling to develop health care systems. And of course, it was about money. I kept saying that although it looks as if it's more expensive, the far more cost-effective way of delivering health care is to make it free at the point of need. So, we made a point as a government of helping African countries that wanted to create health systems free at the point of need. And I don't think that when you are ill, the first consideration that you should have and have to have in mind is how you can pay for your care. You've got to be able to have it guaranteed, not on the basis of your ability to pay, but on the basis of your need.

And that's why I think the vision of the health care system that we created, created by people in Britain in the 1940s, that you don't have to pay at the point of the receipt of the care. It's paid for by general taxation. I still think that's the best way forward. And if we could help, particularly countries that are thinking about how they could develop their health care systems and be able to show them that although you need resources to start this off, it actually is less costly in the long run when you don't have to bill people, you don't have administration, you don't have... Of course, in private care sometimes people getting treatments that they don't really need. I think health care should be that human right. I don't think it should be dependent on your ability to pay.

 

Melissa Fleming 33:31
Well, I think I know we agree with you here at the UN. Everybody should have the right to health care. And I wonder, are you satisfied with what you've achieved in life, or do you feel like there's always more to be done?

 

Gordon Brown 33:45
I don't think given the way the world is at the moment anybody can be content. I mean, there are some great people doing great things. I mean, I'm very struck by the idealism of young people and the sense that our generation hadn't done well enough and that they, I hope, will be able to do better. The concern about the environment is something that obviously they've pressed the older generation to take care of, something that probably we were all far too careless about in past years. So, I'm hopeful about the next stage. But obviously you can't be satisfied about the state of the world when you see so many problems that remain to be addressed and resolved in future years. And I do think that the next generation will learn from some of our mistakes because we've made mistakes, and I think they want to learn from that to do things better.

 

Melissa Fleming 34:38
What would you say to someone starting out in a career of public service today, one of those young people who is deciding their path? Should they serve or...?

 

Gordon Brown 34:48
Of course, because public service is not a job. It's a vocation. You've got to feel that you want to encourage people to make a difference. And I think you can prove that people can make a difference. I mean, I never wanted public service to be a platform for private gain, so I've stayed away from anything that is commercial since I've left public life. At the same time, we need to encourage people into public service by showing that all the things that people talk about - the disputes and the controversies and the conflicts and the personalities and all that sort of stuff - is not that important in the end. It's what you achieve. You can make a difference.

 

Melissa Fleming 35:32
Gordon, thank you very much.

 

Gordon Brown 35:34
Thank you.

 

Melissa Fleming 35:36
Thank you for listening to Awake at Night. We'll be back soon with more incredible and inspiring stories from people working against huge challenges to make this world a better and safer place.

To find out more about the series and the extraordinary people featured, do visit un.org/awake-at-night. Do subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please take the time to review us. It helps more people find the show.

Thanks to my editor Bethany Bell, to Adam Paylor, Josie Le Blond, and to my colleagues at the UN: Katerina Kitidi, Roberta Politi, Geneva Damayanti, Tulin Battikhi, Bissera Kostova, Anzhelika Devis, Carlos Macias and the team at the UN studio. The original music for this podcast was written and performed by Nadine Shah and produced by Ben Hillier. Additional music was by Pascal Wyse.