Hansard

I confess that when the whip told me that I had to speak this afternoon, I had a slight sense of “Oh my goodness—not another debate on Brexit.” I gratefully realised that the minister was not promoting yet another debate on Brexit and that instead we were to debate the international development strategy. However, I cannot resist mentioning the tweet that I saw this morning on the aforementioned subject, the name of which we will never hear again, which said:

“Fearing her position on Brexit was starting to emerge, Theresa May has decided to un-clarify it again.”

I thought that that was a fairly accurate summation of the running commentary that we have seen in the past few days. In fairness to my Tory friends, we will say no more on Brexit—and no more on tweets, either.

The tweet now appears to be the mechanism for foreign policy announcement by the President Elect of the United States, which will cause most of us some concern. I see that his nominee for Secretary of State is being scrutinised in the Senate today—I think that it is happening later today, our time. That will be worth watching, and I hope that he gets a few questions on Africa. I suspect that Mr Tillerson’s knowledge of Africa is probably concentrated on Angola and Nigeria, given that ExxonMobil has fairly significant oil interests in those countries. However the Trump Administration begins to act internationally, international aid—and how it responds to the issue—will be important.

This is a young Parliament. New institutions around the world have to consider the most effective way in which they can invest limited resources—particularly in tougher economic times—and contribute, help and offer assistance.

Alasdair Allan and others have been generous today about Governments in the past that began a journey that is certainly being continued. On concentrating resources, I suspect that the Government of today had exactly the same challenges that Lewis Macdonald and I shared in previous years. The first is how we win the argument for the budget to be spent in a certain way. I do not think that that should be ignored in the context of the political world that we are in—in fairness to some of my Conservative friends, they have made that observation as well. The second relates to the importance of concentrating the resources that Alasdair Allan, in this case, may now have.

Others have talked about international events more widely, but the other role that we can play is that of being an active part of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. Many countries that have been mentioned today are very much part of that Commonwealth family.

Some of the best things that I have been involved in as an MSP have also involved parliamentary colleagues from different legislatures, and from legislatures in Africa in particular. When we meet Canadians, Australians and Kiwis, we all tend to talk the same talk, in terms of audit, parliamentary scrutiny and so on. We all do things differently, but there are similarities. However, to meet colleagues from Africa is to meet people who have profoundly different issues. Colleagues who have been on parliamentary delegations to Malawi, in particular, are all too well aware of that.

I believe that in building and helping to clerk Parliaments such as that in Malawi, the CPA branch here in Edinburgh can bring an aspect of practical democracy into play. As Kate Forbes said, that is not in essence like the colonial reach that this country and other European nations tried to impose in the past; rather, we are saying, “Look, here is a way to do it. By all means, go and talk to the Kiwis and to the Canadians about how they do it as well, but here are some thoughts that you might want to have”.

Others have mentioned the UN. I must confess that I struggle a bit with the UN in the modern world. This morning, I read on a website a terrifying account of the reality of Syria and Aleppo right now. The problem with being critical of the UN is this: what is the alternative? None of us can get past the fact that the United Nations Security Council has not covered itself in glory after six years of atrocity after atrocity after atrocity in Syria. I find it very difficult to contemplate that no grouping in the world has been able to find some way forward, but none has.

A general practitioner I know well works in Uganda for Médecins Sans Frontières. The other day, she sent me an email about the 2.2 million people who have fled from South Sudan and the civil war that is going on there into neighbouring countries—some have been mentioned this afternoon, and some are mentioned in the Scottish Government’s strategy. That GP said:

“your husband was killed in front of you and your teenage son was forced to stay and fight in South Sudan, you’ve brought your other 3 children plus a couple of orphans you picked up on the way into another country”—

a country that the woman she described as presenting an immediate challenge to her as a doctor has never been in before—

“you might have been raped on the way, and as it starts to get dark, you go into labour. This is daily reality.”

We lead sheltered lives compared with the life of a Scottish GP who happens to be working in an aid camp in Uganda—never mind that of the woman she was describing. If we can do a bit more on the medical front, perhaps we should. If we can occasionally be a bit more reflective about our own health debates, we probably should do that, too.

The GP also described the life-saving interventions for 50,000 people that she is seeking to co-ordinate in a mobile clinic—incidentally, it is a tent—providing

“healthcare, ... vaccination, mental health, care for rape survivors, a network of community health workers, maternity and an inpatient ward”.

That ward is in yet another tent. There is much that we can do in that regard as well.

I want also briefly to mention two constituency examples. A brilliant woman who was a nurse in South Africa many years ago runs From Shetland with Love, a charity for children orphaned or abandoned because of HIV/AIDS-related illnesses and violence. She is quite a woman. She delivered two of Nelson Mandela’s grandchildren and met him on several occasions—there is a fine photograph showing that at her home in Shetland. From Shetland with Love provides help for a charity that is doing simple things such as restoring a school whose dining room roof blew off during a heavy storm. There are many such projects for which the money is all raised locally by people who want to do their little bit to help in different parts of the world.

The other example is a brilliant project that is run by a retired arts teacher, Peter Davis. That non-profit-making charitable trust is based in Shetland and provides money for Ghana in west Africa. It supports similar educational programmes and is similar to From Shetland with Love. It is all about putting money that comes from our rich part of the world into places where there is none or little. That is the role that we can play, and the strategy that the minister has outlined today is an important part of that.