THE BIRMINGHAM SUMMIT: G8 costs pounds 10m: enough to save a million lives

BRINGING the world's leaders together in the same room in Birmingham cost more than pounds 10m - enough to save the lives of a million children.

"While the richest countries in the world quibble over how much they are prepared to relieve the debts of the poorest, they should be aware that the money spent on this summit alone could have prevented death in the Third World," said Fiona Fox of Cafod, the Catholic aid agency. Her organisation is part of Jubilee 2000, a coalition of charities campaigning for all Third World debt to be wiped out to mark the Millennium.

According to Unicef figures, the pounds 10m would have paid for at least a million children to be immunised against the six main preventable diseases, including tuberculosis, measles and malaria. The latter kills two million people a year, 90 per cent of them in Africa.

For the same amount of money the G8 members could have provided clean water and sanitation for 15,000 schools in Tanzania, said Ms Fox. Or they could have cancelled the entire debt owed to Britain by Niger, the central African nation whose economy is crippled by repayments and where the average life expectancy is 47.

Each of the G8 countries takes its turn hosting the summit, which means providing food, accommodation and a place for each leader and his entourage to stay. This time the Foreign & Commonwealth Office was understood to be expecting to spend around pounds 8m of British tax-payers' money. "The host country pays for all in-country costs," said a spokeswoman. "It's like buying a round of drinks - eventually it comes out even."

Food and drink were, of course, a major item on the G8 bill - including copious coffee during the negotiations and fine wine served with dinner. Each of the nations was offered a choice of places in which its people could stay, including luxury hotels and country homes. Britain also had to pay for the transportation of delegates from the airport and back, and around the West Midlands.

Among the other major costs were the provision of press facilities, including internet access, and the redecoration and dressing of the conference venues.

Rover and British Telecom were among the companies that provided sponsorship worth pounds 500,000, while technological support was offered by Canon, Dell and Fujitsu. Group 4 provided trained uniformed security officers in the venues, but did not deal with the protest, which was considered a matter for the police.

West Midlands Police would not discuss the additional policing arrangements that had been made, but said they would be paid for by the Foreign Office.

Birmingham City Council prepared for the summit by spending pounds 800,000 on a variety of projects, including "the cleaning of statues and tidying up of street furniture". It also chose to use green paint to cover up an unsightly patch of dead grass on one of the roadside verges due to be seen by the leaders. Around pounds 220,000 went on renovating the Council House, which was built in 1870. About half of that was spent on the Birmingham Art Gallery & Museum, venue for a working dinner on Friday.

"A lot of this is stuff that we would have done anyway and it has just been brought forward," said a spokesperson, who promised that the council tax would not rise as a result. Local businesses had provided sponsorship worth pounds 300,000 in cash and kind.

There were 2,000 delegates to the conference. Individual countries would not discuss how much they had spent on travelling to Birmingham, so the Independent on Sunday asked British Airways to provide the prices of flexible return flights from each of the capital cities.

Making the dubious assumption that the delegates flew economy class, the average price per head was just over pounds 1,000 - a total of approximately pounds 2m.