Hansard

The Government’s motion talks about a

“strong cross-party collaborative approach and support for international development in the Parliament”.

There is broad consensus, which Scottish Labour has been proud to be part of building. We welcome the strategy paper and we now want the Government to go beyond those 24 pages of good intentions and set out in detail what it will do to deliver them and how it will do so. I know that the minister will welcome the invitation to attend the cross-party group on international development to address those questions in more detail than he will have time to do today. I am glad that the Government has indicated that it will accept our amendment in the same spirit.

Discussion of Scotland’s approach to international development is always likely to start with Malawi, and the discussion has done that again today. The key early decisions in shaping a distinctive strategy for Scotland’s devolved Government included those on core funding of the Scotland Malawi Partnership and the establishment of the Malawi development programme in 2005, as the minister acknowledged. The vision of Jack McConnell as First Minister and the coalition Government was to build on the long-standing partnerships in church and civil society between Scotland and Malawi and was for Scotland’s devolved Government to add value directly in financial support and indirectly by providing a focus for the efforts of others.

That approach remains just as important today. According to the Scotland Malawi Partnership, for every £1 in official Government assistance, there is a further £8 in support from civil society, and there are more than 1,000 individual partnerships or connections between individuals and organisations in the two countries. Many of those links are long standing, but others have been stimulated by Government-to-Government engagement over the past 12 years. For example, individual congregations of the Church of Scotland have long had links with their counterparts in the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian, which have grown and developed in the context of Government support. The presbytery of Aberdeen, for instance, was twinned with its counterpart in the city of Blantyre in November 2005. The Scotland Malawi Partnership was established at the same time. There are now 18 individual twinning links between congregations in those two cities alone.

The Government’s latest strategy proposes perhaps a closer focus on Malawi and three other countries. We think that a strong focus on a small number of countries makes sense in principle. In that way, the relatively modest Scottish Government budget can make the biggest difference where it is needed most. We also recognise that development partnerships in civil society are independent of the Government and are all the more valuable as a result. Organic connections at the grass-roots level can survive changes in Government and in policy and can continue to deliver at a local level, whatever may be happening elsewhere.

It follows that the Government must not be prescriptive when it comes to development work that is undertaken by civil society. A focus by the Government on particular countries may encourage others to follow suit, but it should not discourage or downplay independent initiatives by churches, faith groups, councils or other partners that choose to support development elsewhere in the world.

Alexander Stewart made some important points. For example, he said that the Scottish Government should continue to work closely with the UK Department for International Development. The UK is one of the biggest providers of development assistance in the world, along with the United States, Japan, Germany, France and, of course, the European Union. Working with DFID and the EU institutions will therefore be essential to get the best outcomes from Scottish aid spending. It is simply a fact that Scottish taxpayers contribute far more through the UK and the EU than through the Scottish Government’s programmes.

We agree on the importance of supporting

“minority, marginalised and vulnerable groups”

in the delivery of aid. I was pleased to hear the minister’s assurances on human rights. However, Mr Stewart’s amendment causes concern in its reference to encouraging

“the move from aid to investment ... in developing economic growth”.

Aid is, of course, a means to an end, and successful development assistance ultimately puts itself out of business. However, that is quite different from making a political choice to shift the whole focus from aid to investment, regardless of how far poverty has been eliminated or the obstacles to inclusive economic growth have been eliminated.

We have heard the Secretary of State for International Development suggest that her department’s role should be more focused on trade and economic advantage for the UK, so we are bound to worry about the political choices that are being made by some of Mr Stewart’s party colleagues elsewhere. Our choice should be to work for sustainable and inclusive growth and to use aid and investment towards that end.

Labour’s amendment calls for more detail in the Government’s strategy and highlights the country strategies and policy coherence across the Scottish Government. Non-governmental organisations that are keen to support in-country work need to understand the mechanics of how applications to the international development fund and the climate justice fund will work—when applications can be made, the number of stages that will be involved in an application and whether the grant receiver will be required to part fund projects.

There are also questions about how the Government will seek to build sustainable long-term partnerships in country to make the best use of local resources and local expertise. Just as local authorities and voluntary organisations in Scotland want to be able to plan on the basis of three-year budgets rather than one-year funding commitments, NGOs would like to have certainty about longer-term support for projects that will take time to mature or, as Liam McArthur said, for core funding of the essential work that allows them to deliver individual projects. Part of that will depend on how the Government intends to assess and evaluate the projects that it supports and how it will use those evaluations to improve the effectiveness of future projects.

When the Government commits to going beyond aid, it is important to know how it intends to do so in relation to its own activities outwith the international development programmes that we are debating. For example, direct assistance from police, health and education services in Scotland for building up those same services in Malawi is important, but it is also useful and important to know how the Government intends to embed its commitments on development, human rights and global justice into its routine decision-making processes across the Government, just as with its consideration of impacts on business, the environment and equalities.

I hope that the minister will be able to respond to many of those points in closing the debate.

I move amendment S5M-03303.2, to insert at end:

“, and looks forward to the Scottish Government setting out its detailed plans on how it intends to achieve its stated aims in each of the four countries where work will be focused, and in ensuring policy coherence across all sectors in pursuit of sustainable development goals in all the countries in question.”