Hansard

I join other members in thanking Karen Gillon for securing this lunch time debate. All of us who have been to Malawi, including the minister, have been deeply inspired and affected by our visits. One of my overriding impressions of Malawi, after my visit, was that in many ways it is a fantastic place to live—the spirit of the people is incredible. I was also left with the impression that it is a frightening place to live, because there is a very thin safety net for citizens of the country. There is an urgent need to improve public services, especially education and health. It should be clear to us all that the only way to achieve that in the long term is to have a period of sustained and sustainable economic growth in Malawi. I am pleased that, through the partnership agreement, the Executive is focusing on delivering growth.

It is clear that Malawians have a huge capacity for economic growth. Each year, the average Malawian emits in greenhouse gases the equivalent of what individuals in this country produce every two and a half days. Malawians are well within their ecological limits—in many ways, Malawi's emissions need to rise as ours decrease. We need to give Malawi room to breathe and to develop its economy.

A crucial element of economic growth on which we in the Scottish Parliament can focus is fair trade. There is growing consensus on the role that public procurement can play in that regard. I am pleased that the Executive recently funded development work on fair trade in Malawi, which is significant. When I travelled around Malawi, I noticed the difference between producers such as the Kasinthula sugar producers in the south, who produce the little white sachets of sugar that we get in the Parliament canteen, and the coffee producers in the north, who do not get the fair trade premium. Through that premium, the sugar producers were enabled to put electricity into their homes and to stock drugs in their local medical centres—things that the coffee producers were unable, unfortunately, to do in their communities.

However, positive changes are happening even in the coffee-producing areas. Women are coming together to form workers' co-operatives and processing initiatives are starting up. The coffee producers whom we visited in the north are tantalisingly close to engaging in the fair trade supply chain, getting premiums and bringing wealth into their communities. I am pleased that the Executive is supporting a programme that will enable those producers to get involved in the fair trade supply chain for the United Kingdom, to access distributors and retailers based in this country and to get into dialogue about how we can supply fair trade products here.

In answer to the "Frontline Scotland" accusations, I think that we need to spend some of the money in Scotland to set up trade fairs here and get Malawians to meet retailers and distributors in Scotland so that they can establish the trading relationships that in the long term will bring real economic development and wealth to Malawi. There is a multiplier effect in using our public spending to develop the Malawian economy in the best possible way. The impact of our doing that will be substantial.

Let us consider what Cafédirect has achieved in the Rungwa area of Tanzania in recent years. Over three years, it has invested the fair trade premium in local schools development, setting up 140 new schools in the district. That is a prize that we have to help the Malawians to grasp: stable public services and a vibrant economy. We can do it through the great international partnership that we have between Governments, Parliaments and our civic societies.