We gather in this church today not just from all over Britain but from all over the world. Inspired first of all by the idealism and tireless strength of our churches and a million campaigners; driven forward as a country by the calls of justice and the urgent cries of the excluded; humbled by the faith and prayers that sustain us on our way; and today more determined than ever to discharge our duty to those who have least. Not just to commemorate what has been done but to affirm that our work is not yet done, indeed we have only just begun, and the work will go on until we achieve our aim - in the words of Isaiah: to undo the heavy burdens and let the oppressed go free.

And here today let me start by thanking this unique coalition for justice - a coalition that, let us recall, started as just the protests of a few, a coalition that gained strength because it was founded on a simple conviction that the burden of unpayable debt on the poorest in the world was morally wrong.

A coalition for justice that has grown in one short year as first a human chain that encircled Birmingham then Cologne then Okinawa to become a movement far, far greater than your numbers.

This coalition of which the history books when they are written will say they achieved more standing together for the needs of the poor in one short year than all the isolated acts of individual governments could have achieved in a hundred years.

This coalition for justice, now with its worldwide reach, has become itself living proof that we are not, as individuals, powerless but together have power. We are part of a network of mutuality bound together, all of us, citizens and nations, rich and poor, in one moral universe strong enough to change the world.

But it is because the memorial you seek is not chapters in these history books, not monuments of stone, not praise from the powers that be - least of all from politicians; it is because the memorial you will value is the transformation in the lives of the poorest of the earth - men and women who may never know us but who live better lives as a result - that we are assembled here today, not just to celebrate achievements but to rededicate ourselves to what together we have yet to do and to send a message that we want to reverberate across the roof of the world. The message that what drives us forward, what inspires us to further action is:

What drives us forward are not the achievements we can point to, important as they are, but the gains still to be made, the potential still unrealised, the vision still unfulfilled, the future yet to be born the world we can and must become, the causes yet unwon.

Our cause - for although the problems are global in scale there is a universe of pain and suffering in each individual case of deprivation and injustice - our cause: every one of the 30,000 young children fighting each day for life and today losing that fight for life because of diseases which could be prevented.

Our cause - because an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere - our cause: every one of the 200 million men and women in avoidable poverty whose lives today are lived at the bare edge of survival, where hunger is so great that a handful of food is often their highest hope.

Our cause - for as long as some are poor our whole society is impoverished - our cause: to transform the shamefully blighted existence of more than one billion of the world's people, almost a quarter of mankind today unnecessarily trapped in grinding poverty as a consequence of their country’s weakness and debt.

Did we not say to each other last year:

Did we not also say to each other:

And are we not now right to say, as in the Old Testament:

All year in the Treasury I have received letters, cards and messages; letters from all places - 300,000 in all. Letters sometimes from unexpected places. Like the day an embarrassed Treasury civil servant clasping a particular postcard asked me how I wished to respond to a Christian Aid card sent to me by my mother. And she told me: don’t waste any stamp replying to me, put that into debt relief as well.

So, conscious of the support we have, mindful of our duties to the poor, let us first renew our pledge that we will not rest from our efforts, or retreat from our work until we have achieved what all of us are here to achieve, the goals that all of us here today hold in common: to make deeper, wider and faster debt relief the essential and unbreakable foundation of - instead of a vicious circle of debt, poverty and underdevelopment - a new virtuous circle of debt relief, poverty reduction and sustainable development.

And I say to you: when the need is so urgent, the poverty so great, it is time to ensure that the richest countries who have so much should not receive any further benefit from the debts of the poorest countries who have so little.

And from today in this Jubilee year the Government will take action - and I and Clare Short hope the rest of the world will respond.

I can say to you, and to all 41 heavily indebted poor countries, on behalf of the British Government I will from today and in the spirit of Jubilee renounce our right to receive any benefit from the historic debt owed by all the 41 most indebted countries.

I say to the first 20 countries: 100 per cent debt relief this year means that all the money from debt relief can, for 200 million of the world’s poorest people, go to poverty relief now.

I say to those in conflict, in civil war or without agreed poverty reduction programmes at decision point - countries of 140 million of the poorest people owing Britain £1 billion in historic debt: from today all debt payments received by us will be held in trust for poverty relief in your own country, paid when poverty reduction plans are agreed, backdated to this day in December when this final Jubilee 2000 rally has been held.

And today from here in London I ask our neighbours and friends who too want debt relief to lead to poverty relief, also to renounce their right from this year on to any benefit from the historic debt owed by these 41 heavily indebted countries.

So here in December we can say from London in this Jubilee year:

never again will Britain benefit from income from these historic debts. From now on all debt payments will be put at the service of poverty relief.

But we must do more. Because we know that the end of a calendar year is not the end of our work and because we know that the most successful jubilees were never one off events but continuing acts of compassion, my second plea is that from today we build together a new global alliance of governments and civil societies that makes a reality of the virtuous circle of debt reduction, poverty relief and sustainable development.

If you come with me on my travels and see what I and so many others have seen: young children in Asia, their lives lived out above open sewers and yet still their eyes bright and full of hope; young men in Southern Africa urgently waiting for their new political freedom to bring economic freedom from unemployment and poverty. If you could see what a Christian Aid worker told me she had seen all too often: the young mother in Sub-Saharan Africa using all her energy desperately fighting to save the life of her young son and in doing so losing hers - a tragedy multiplied thousands of times over every day; then you will agree with the second commitment I make today, the pledge that here from Britain we will do everything we can to realise in the years to 2015 the global aims:

And to achieve this we will - starting in January leading to the UN Special Session on Children - seek to build a worldwide alliance against child poverty. All of us - the United Nations, the IMF, World Bank, UNICEF, UNDP, the developed countries governments and developing countries - all of us bound together to discharge the shared responsibilities we owe that the lives of the poor, the uneducated and the sick shall no longer be without comfort and hope.

And because we can only advance if we advance together we want to invite civil society - churches, NGOs, citizens everywhere - from January 2001 to both hold us accountable and participate.

Showing, as with common endeavour in Jubilee 2000, how one small victory in one place can inspire a bigger victory in many places. How one limited success amongst one group of people can inspire more and even greater successes among millions of people so that, in the decade to come, we see reverberating across the world in community after community, country after country, eventually across whole continents, thousands of acts of compassion flooding forward to become a cascade of economic transformation, social regeneration and humanitarian triumph.

And so the candles you lit in the darkness at St Paul’s in 1999 whose glow reached conscience after conscience throughout our country; and then, radiating outwards across the continents, sent out a light more powerful than eyes could follow and ignited in every part of the world, beacons of care and commitment that in this Jubilee year from Birmingham to Cologne to Okinawa have shone across the world.

This light, these flames, radiating outwards again with even greater power, can cut through the darkness and shame of injustice and debt and emblazon across the world your message of faith in the future.

Faith in the future because if you have seen what I and many others have seen: the best of human nature - people who have nothing but yet feel they owe obligations to their neighbours; you will agree there are millions who feel, however distantly, the pain of those in need and can be moved to action.

Faith in the future because there are millions like you who "see wrong and seek to right it, see pain and seek to heal it, see suffering and seek to triumph over it and see injustice and seek to overcome it."

And with that faith in the future ours can become the generation that built the virtuous circle of debt reduction poverty reduction and sustainable development; ours the generation that realised the ancient text of Isaiah ‘so the oppressed go free’; ours the generation that triumphantly fulfilled Tom Paine’s call for justice that still rings across the centuries: to make this world anew.

This is our task, the challenge to all of us. Working together from now and into the future it can be our achievement.