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David Cameron is fighting plans to place a commitment to reducing income inequality in the developing world into a major UN report that will set out a series of targets to replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Amid fears that the commitment could create "perverse incentives", and actually slow down the battle to eradicate extreme poverty, the prime minister said the UN should focus on "measurable, concrete" goals. These include ending extreme poverty and hunger by 2030.
On the final leg of his three-day trip to the US, the prime minister arrived in New York on Tuesday for the last meetings of the panel that is due to report to the UN secretary general by the end of the month on the successors to the MDGs.
The trip has inevitably been overshadowed by the furore back at Westminster over a possible EU referendum.
Cameron stopped off on his way to the UN to appear on a new Routemaster doubledecker bus with Prince Harry as part of the Great campaign that promotes British culture and industry around the world.
He then headed to the UN, where members of the high-level panel are facing strong pressure from aid agencies to place a clear commitment to reduce income inequality in the report.
It is understood that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia, one of Cameron's co-chairs, has been lobbied strongly to include the plan, which would commit developed countries to meet targets to reduce income inequality.
Downing Street believes this is a mistaken approach and says the focus should instead be on agreeing 10 goals, to be achieved by 2030, which it regards as the "building blocks" to tackle poverty in the developing world.
The goals are: ending extreme poverty, ending hunger, ensuring the provision of safe and sustainable water supplies, stopping preventable deaths, ensuring a school place for every girl and boy, empowering girls and women, delivering infrastructure and energy, boosting jobs, ensuring access to justice and ensuring effective and open government.
A No 10 source said: "The prime minister wants to keep the focus on measurable concrete actions that would help you to alleviate poverty and keep the focus on being something people could judge whether or not we are delivering.
"We think it is right that we should be using this [panel] to address equality of opportunity. Obviously we want to be lifting up the world's poorest. But the best way to do that is to have more specific actions rather than some overarching high level message.
"We should not be seeking to create perverse incentives that would bring people downwards rather than lifting people up."
Aid agencies have been highly critical of the prime minister's decision to reject a commitment to reduce income inequality.
One source said: "The prime minister is on the wrong side on this one."
But the agencies have praised the way in which Cameron is insisting that the so called "zero" targets, such as eradicating extreme poverty by 2030, should be included in the report.
The agencies have criticised Dr Homi Kharas, a member of the UN secretariat who is drawing up the report, for watering down the "zero" commitments.
Downing Street says the prime minister is happy with the way the panel report is proceeding. But as he arrived in the US, Cameron indicated that he needed to maintain pressure when he said: "I need to be there in order to nail down some simple, clear commitments that everyone can get behind as we look to the successors to the millennium development goals."
Cameron's talks at the White House this week focused in part on the G8 summit he is to host in Northern Ireland next month.
The prime minister will today announce that Britain is to use its G8 presidency to agree a new international approach on dementia, which affects 35.6 million people in the world. The World Health Organisation estimates this will nearly double every 20 years, to 65.7 million in 2030 and 115.4 million in 2050.
Britain will host a G8 dementia summit in London in September, while Britain and the US are to work together to improve research into the condition. "Dementia is a devastating disease – not just for sufferers but for their families and friends too. And as more people live longer, it is fast becoming one of the biggest social and healthcare challenges we face," Cameron said.
"Families, communities, health systems and their budgets will increasingly be strained as the number affected increases and so we need to do all we can to improve how we research, diagnose and treat the disease. That's why we're using our G8 to bring together health ministers, clinical researchers and healthcare companies.
The prime minister's trip to the US, which ends in New York on Wednesday afternoon, has been overshadowed in large part by the Tory rebellion over Europe back home. Downing Street was irritated when Michael Gove bolstered Eurosceptics on Sunday, the day of Cameron's departure for the US, by saying he would vote to leave the EU if a referendum were held now. But No 10 was delighted when Barack Obama said it would be wrong to leave the EU before the prime minister has embarked on his renegotiation of Britain's membership terms.
The president told Cameron he was planning to say something on Europe – if asked – and ran his comments past the prime minister.
Speaking at a reception at the Milk photographic studios in New York on Tuesday evening, the prime minister hailed the close economic partnership between Britain and the US, though he joked that the UK falls behind in one controversial area.
Saying that Britain and the US will be beaten in the "global race" on low wages and other areas and referring to the shale gas fracking industry in the US, he said: "We are not going to be able to compete on our mineral resources, although frankly I am pretty jealous of your fracking success here in the US."
