Hansard

Alex Johnstone need not say that to me, because I am known for being independently minded. Of course we support the policies, because the partnership agreement is a good piece of work. It was negotiated over three weeks and unanimously passed by our party executive. We are a democracy; we consult our party. Michael Fry, the former Tory candidate and great Tory historian, says that the Tories have a part-time leader. He says that Mr McLetchie needs to go out and speak to some Tories so that he can represent his grass roots rather than just the ramshackle platoon that is left in Bournemouth.

I welcome the fact that, in his keynote speech earlier this year, the First Minister said that substance is more important than style. I want to be constructive. The Opposition parties must learn that it is no use coming to the Parliament just to oppose, because they must propose as well. Debate is not about being negative, knocking everything down or squabbling about flags; it is about making proposals as well and I intend to make constructive proposals for the First Minister.

This is an interim debate, because the European and External Relations Committee is conducting a lengthy inquiry into promoting Scotland overseas. The inquiry is worth while and I hope that the committee's report will be constructive and will come up with ideas that will contribute to the international strategy that the Executive has been developing. We are learning from what other countries are doing: members of the committee have been to Flanders, France and Ireland and I have no doubt that we will also learn from our forthcoming trip to the United States of America.

It is important that we should be constructive, because, as the First Minister said, we will be judged on substance. We must not be unrealistically ambitious and try to do too much and we should not depend on the past. I agree with the First Minister that we must try to think of and present our nation as an agile and vigorous small country—and the best of the small in specific areas. Our reputation—I prefer that word to "image", because that is what it is—is high in certain areas, such as higher education, the life sciences, renewable energy and financial services.

On higher education, research shows that we are regarded worldwide as having centres of excellence in our universities. However, we must examine what others are doing, not least the Australians and Americans or our neighbours south of the border. For example, the University of Nottingham has become a leader in the field by establishing campuses in Malaysia and China.

I welcome the First Minister's trip to China. I hope that he will also go to India, where there is strong economic growth and significant potential for us. The First Minister is right to say, as he did earlier this year, that we have to catch the moment between the opening of the Parliament building and the G8 summit next year in Perthshire, which is part of the region that I represent.

I congratulate the Prime Minister on the international commission for Africa and I agree with the chancellor's international finance facility initiative. I also agree with all the work that the Prime Minister and the chancellor are doing together in trying to achieve the millennium development goals, which should find cross-party support.

The First Minister said earlier this year that we must connect the past with the present. We have a long-standing connection with sub-Saharan Africa. In the summer recess, I went to the 15th international AIDS conference, in Thailand, where I had the privilege of hearing Nelson Mandela three times in 24 hours. I heard about the crisis in sub-Saharan Africa—in Botswana, for example, 38.9 per cent of the population are now HIV positive.

I congratulate those in Scotland who are undertaking initiatives in Africa. For example, Lothian NHS Board has established a link with hospitals in Zambia and Fife Council has deputed one of its primary school headmasters to go to Malawi to help to restructure the educational system, in which class sizes are now 300 or 400 because of the number of teachers who have fallen victim to AIDS. We can take forward such initiatives through the Network of International Development Organisations in Scotland, as I hope Ms Ferguson will do. There is a real opportunity for us—particularly with the G8 meeting focusing on the Prime Minister's commission for Africa—to highlight these issues, on which Scotland can make a contribution to the wider world.

We must look at what others do. For example, Hauts-de-Seine, a département just outside Paris, has an imaginative scheme for economic volunteers. Participation in the scheme is an alternative option to national service and the volunteers are sent overseas to help. Flanders has an international youth work programme, under which young people between the ages of 16 and 25 can apply for a subsidy for international projects anywhere in the world, except for dangerous areas—other than that, there is no limit to the place that can be chosen. The project lasts for between one and three months. The young people develop a business plan and one in three of the proposals succeed. That is an excellent way in which those young people can show their country to the world and show what they can do to help others in much greater need than themselves. Those are effective projects that promote one country in other countries.

We should not only have such schemes for the young, because we have a huge resource in our retired people. My father retired as an anaesthetist and went to work overseas. That is an example of what we should be doing. Older people here are important. The Chinese are right: we are too agist. We must use older people by enabling them to go to help as doctors and nurses in Africa. In Bangkok, I spoke to a representative of Médecins Sans Frontières who works in South Africa. I asked what we could do to help and he said, "Stop poaching our nurses." We should send some of our retired nurses and doctors, who have immense experience, out to sub-Saharan Africa to help. I believe that we can carry out such schemes successfully.

I am glad to say that my colleagues in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association have kindly put me on its international executive, which is the governing body for the association worldwide. I hope that we can take forward some of the schemes that I have mentioned within the CPA. This is the first time that a representative from the Scottish Parliament has been on the international executive and that is an opportunity for us.

We can all play our part. As I said, we want to be known for our centres of excellence in higher education, in research and in other specific areas. However, as the First Minister stated, substance is what people will see; that is what they will experience at first hand. We must stand by our reputation and build on it. That will be done slowly, in incremental ways, but we have a huge opportunity.

In the old days, people used to say that, if they went to any country in the empire, they saw the Scots at the top of the tree and all the way down it. It does not matter where we are in the ranking. What matters is that we make a full contribution, which we can. We can do so as parliamentarians. We can give the lead to people: from the young to the old, doctors, nurses, students or whomever. We should again send people out to the developing world, including to sub-Saharan Africa. We should show that Scotland is playing its part and that we are Scottish internationalists rather than nationalists. That will make our name.