Hansard

I am pleased to take part in today’s debate. In the 1980s, when I lived and worked for three years in Nepal, it was one of the six poorest countries in the world. That immediately raises a question about the strategy. What about all the other countries that Scotland has links with? Nepal has links through the Gurkhas and the British Army; Jamaica, where we were involved in the slave trade, has a yellow saltire in its flag. The list could go on and on.

However, on balance, it is right to focus on a few countries. We are a relatively small country and I accept that we are really only supplementing the main UK development budget. The risk is that we would otherwise spread ourselves too thinly and have less effect but, as others have said, I hope that we can at least keep some interest in other countries through, for example, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association and exchanges with Parliaments more widely, which are valuable.

I welcome the focus on education and the links between education institutions. In that way, we can certainly make the money go further, as other organisations get involved in sharing the costs. An example of that is the work that is taking place in schools in my constituency. As other members have mentioned schools in their constituencies, I will mention Bannerman high school, in my constituency, which has raised funds to take youngsters from Scotland to Malawi and bring youngsters from Malawi to visit Scotland.

There are those who argue against Scotland having an international development programme at all. I meet people with that view in my constituency and in Twitter land, where I enjoy spending some of my time. Such people say that we have so many needs here that we should focus on them, but I have a couple of points in response to that.

First, it is not the poorest people in my constituency who say that kind of thing. I see pensioners and others who are not well off running coffee mornings or other fundraising events and sacrificing their own money to help people in other countries who they know are less well off than them. Secondly, we live in an interdependent world, so we cannot separate what is good for Scotland from what is good for Malawi, Pakistan, Zambia or Rwanda.

To put it in crude economic terms, if we want to sell Scottish goods such as whisky to countries around the world, it is to our advantage if they have stronger economies and if more of their residents can afford to buy our goods. That is why I am keen on supporting fair trade, on which we just heard Colin Smyth speak eloquently. It is not only morally right that people earn a decent wage for their work, but fair trade—if it works—benefits both other economies and ours.

Another argument that is sometimes used against Scotland engaging in international development is that there is already wealth in some of the countries that we help. For example, Pakistan has some very wealthy individuals and the country spends a lot of money on sophisticated military weapons. However, there is still extreme poverty in Pakistan, and we have a responsibility to help those who have the greatest need. That is why I particularly welcome the strategy of working in conjunction with Governments but not giving them cash.

On working with others, of course we want to help the four countries concerned as much as we can, but there are aspects of life in all those countries that are better than similar aspects in ours. We therefore can and should learn from them, too. I have visited three of the four countries, and one example of the strengths that I have seen there is in strong family bonds and care for the elderly. I mean not better material care but a sense of duty to the older generation, which we used to have generally in Scotland. We still have some of that, but we are in danger of losing it because we expect wider society to shoulder most of the responsibility for our elderly relatives.

We should also hope to share some of our values with the other countries. I hope that, as one or two members have said, we can do that from a position of mutual respect so that we do not talk down to those countries, as has often been done in the past by western countries, including ours.

Briefings for the debate encouraged us to remember the most marginalised in the societies of the four countries. I certainly agree that we should do so, but that is not entirely easy, as we have a limited budget and limited influence. We need to get the balance right between respecting different values and traditions and calling a spade a spade if we think that something is wrong. Mary Slessor is still respected in Nigeria, although she challenged the tradition that twins were bad. Obviously, she went about that in the right way and, in the long run, she has been respected for her challenge.

A concern that I hope that we can work on is the treatment of those who are of a minority religion or of no religion. People should be free to worship in the faith of their choice, to change their religion or faith or to abandon all faith. However, Christians in Pakistan can be treated very much as second-class citizens. They have little protection in the legal system and are often open to empty charges of blasphemy. Pakistani Muslim leaders who challenge that system can put themselves at great risk. I hope that, through sharing in education and in other ways, we can discuss such issues with our partners while still respecting their culture.

In relation to Pakistan, I was extremely disappointed when the UK Border Agency refused visas recently for Pakistani church leaders to visit Scotland under the auspices of the Glasgow presbytery of the Church of Scotland. I am glad that that position has been reversed, which was partly because of the intervention of the minister and his colleagues. I hope that, going forward, it can be agreed with the UK Government that Scotland has a relationship with the four countries concerned and that, at the very least, the UK Government will not put obstacles in the way of visitors from there coming here. It is important that the third sector in general and churches and religious organisations in particular take forward our relationships around the world.

Finally, we often come up against the question whether there should be sustainable development or short-term emergency aid. The strategy clearly says that there should be both, so we have the humanitarian aid fund as well as the international development fund. We should be aiming for each country to be as self-reliant as it can be but, if children cannot go to school because there is no food, we need to tackle that problem, too. I therefore welcome the likes of Mary’s Meals, which does so much in that regard.

Much more could be said, but the key point is that it is great that Scotland has an international strategy. Although we might debate some of the details, there is broad agreement that we should be going in the proposed direction.