Hansard

As we have just heard from the First Minister, the Covid pandemic is far from over, but the challenges that the virus continues to present for wealthy countries such as Scotland can in no way compare to those that the virus continues to present to some of the poorest countries in the world. It is therefore incumbent on wealthy nations such as ours to work together to ensure that those with the least are not failed by those with the most. As United Nations secretary general António Guterres noted in March of last year,

“This is, above all, a human crisis that calls for solidarity.”

Covid-19 has tested humanity, whether in Blantyre, Malawi or in Blantyre, Scotland. The pandemic forced Governments globally to act swiftly in order to save lives.

Our international development partner countries, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Pakistan, each have a different starting point on their recovery journey from the pandemic. To ensure that we do no harm and that we contribute impactfully, we must therefore listen to the needs of those in the global south and act on their ambitions for recovery. On behalf of the Scottish Government, I reiterate that we remain fully committed to playing our part in tackling shared global challenges and to international solidarity.

Our international development offer was first introduced under the previous Labour-Liberal Government and it has enjoyed cross-parliamentary support since that time. That legacy is an important one, as we build on and develop Scotland’s offer further—and I very much look forward to working with Opposition members on how we do just that.

In September 2020, our programme for government committed us to carrying out a review of our approach to international development in light of the Covid-19 pandemic, so that we could focus our work where we can make the biggest difference in our partner countries against the new reality of Covid-19. I announced the results of the review to the Parliament in March this year. Today, I will give a further update to the Parliament, focusing on the Scottish Government’s response to Covid-19 in our partner countries.

Since the start of the pandemic, we have committed £3.5 million from the international development budget to provide overseas assistance on Covid-19-related support. Most of our international development-funded projects were able to continue throughout the pandemic, delivering vital work on the ground. At the very start of the pandemic, we sought to support existing partner organisations, where that was possible. That allowed projects to pivot their funds and adjust their programmes accordingly. For example, the MalDent project, which runs in conjunction with the University of Glasgow, was able to pivot £20,000 to support the purchase of tablets and data bundles for remote teaching at the Malawi Kamuzu University of Health Sciences. That teaching for trainee dentists was absolutely essential in a country of 19 million people that has fewer than 50 qualified dentists.

Perhaps one of the most important decisions that we took last year was to devote a fifth of the international development budget to one particular initiative. In November last year, following discussions with our partner countries, we partnered with UNICEF to support the Covid-19 response by providing £2 million, split equally across Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia. At our request, UNICEF targeted some of that funding to vaccine preparedness, helping to prepare health systems for distribution.

Listening to the voices of the people who live in our partner countries was vital to ensuring that we got our Covid response right. One of the key drivers of last year’s review was the need to hear directly from those who live in our partner countries. The review therefore committed to establishing a global south panel, which will directly advise and challenge Government on our international development offer. I am pleased to announce today that the first two members of the panel that I will be appointing are UN Women Malawi’s country director, Clara Anyangwe, and Professor Emmanuel Makasa of the University of Zambia. When speaking with representatives of our partner countries directly, it became clear that the particular challenges that they faced concerned a lack of oxygen supply, the energy infrastructure to support health centres and the delivery of education.

The way in which we have experienced Covid in Scotland is not the same as how our partner countries have experienced it, so we had to ensure that our offer met their needs. In March this year, I announced a further and final tranche of international development funding for the 2020-21 financial year, with more than £500,000 to support vaccine roll-out, online learning and research to improve resilience on Covid. That funding provided support to Chitambo hospital in Zambia for installing an oxygen plant facility and an off-grid solar energy system in order to ensure reliable access to electricity. It also funded Kamuzu University of Health Sciences to implement genomic sequencing capacity work in Malawi, which will help to identify new variants of the virus and to improve disease resilience.

The funding also provides further support to the British Council for our existing Pakistan women and girls scholarships scheme, providing laptops to ensure information technology resilience and enable online learning. There is also funding for a surgical scholarship through Kids OR—the Kids Operating Room; a clinical officer training post in Rwanda; and for the Community Energy Malawi partnership so that it can install back-up solar power systems at health centres in Malawi. That latest Covid funding to our long-term renewable energy partners in Malawi—CEM and the University of Strathclyde—is targeted at health facilities and we have already seen the positive impact that the additional funding has realised in Malawi. Energy systems were designed by Community Energy Malawi to address specific and wider needs at each hospital, including at a clinic that is also an HIV treatment centre and at a tuberculosis isolation unit. The benefits of those back-up solar power systems, which were installed in response to Covid, are therefore wide-reaching and will have long-lasting benefits for the people of Malawi.

Most recently, in this financial year, we announced further support to our partner countries, including £270,000 allocated to Kids OR to send 300 oxygen concentrators to Malawi, Zambia and Rwanda; funding to transport 40 NHS Scotland ventilators, valued at £750,000, to those countries; and £250,000 to leverage the provision to our partner countries of £11.2 million-worth of personal protective equipment to aid the Covid response—our biggest-ever single donation.

I confirm to the Parliament that, this financial year, I am committing a further £1.5 million to be used specifically to target initiatives responding to Covid-19 in Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia. Our Covid investments, totalling £5 million to date, have also leveraged additional support worth at least £13 million, meaning that, by the end of this year, the Scottish Government’s contribution to overseas support specifically to tackle Covid-19 will be worth in excess of £18 million. I am very proud that we have made the political choice to do that.

In addition to the outlined support for our partner countries, £240,000 of support from our humanitarian emergency fund went last year towards Covid-19 response efforts for vulnerable communities in countries such as Syria, Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan, Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As the global pandemic continues, now is not the time to turn our back on the global south. The United Kingdom Government took a deplorable decision, during the worst excesses of the pandemic last year, to cut international development spending. Although the recent shift indicated by Rishi Sunak to restore the 0.7 per cent official development assistance commitment is welcome, that will not be realised until at least 2024 or 2025. We also know that certain spend will be newly badged as ODA, further reducing the spend to those who need it most. That simply is not good enough. According to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, Malawi will see a 51.5 per cent reduction in UK aid spending; for Zambia that will be 59 per cent, for Rwanda 42 per cent and for Pakistan 39 per cent.

Earlier this year, the UK Government announced an 85 per cent cut in its payments to the United Nations population fund, which provides reproductive health programmes globally. That will have devastating impacts for women and girls. McDonald Makwaka, the executive director of the Family Planning Association of Malawi has noted:

“Malawi has already witnessed a sharp increase in teenage pregnancies and child marriages during the Covid-19 pandemic; if the UK continues with its decision to reduce its resources that equip basic health infrastructure for women and girls to access family planning, more girls and women will die of unsafe abortions.”

We know that the pandemic has been gendered in its impacts, yet the UK Government has taken a political choice that harms women in developing countries at a time when they need our help most. It is also clear that the pandemic has been used as a political opportunity to slash funding for the world’s poorest. If the Prime Minister is serious about global Britain he must take Britain’s global responsibilities seriously. He could start by ensuring that the commitment to overseas aid is immediately reinstated at 0.7 per cent. The women and girls of Malawi cannot wait until 2025.

I was very pleased to meet the President and Foreign Minister of Malawi and the Vice President of Zambia during COP26—the 26th United Nations climate change conference of the parties. The need for equitable access to vaccines was high on both countries’ agendas. Indeed, according to the World Health Organization, Africa has fully vaccinated 77 million people, which is only 6 per cent of its population. The President of Zambia recently highlighted the fact that only 3 per cent of Zambia’s population has so far been vaccinated. It is therefore vital that we create the conditions for equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines. We in Scotland have an opportunity to share our knowledge to support our partner countries with their vaccination programmes. Although Scotland is not a member of the COVAX scheme, we will continue engaging with the UK Government on that matter.

Listening to our partner countries is also key to our response to the climate emergency. Members will be aware that, during COP26, the Scottish Government announced a ground-breaking commitment to loss and damage funding. We also plan to treble the climate justice fund to £36 million during the course of this parliamentary session.

COP26 remains fresh in our minds, as does the need for international solidarity. When I asked Malawi’s Minister of Foreign Affairs how the Scottish Government can support Malawi in its recovery, he told me that we must ensure that we build back stronger in a way that is sustainable. When I reflect on what has been achieved in this past month, it clear that internationalism has never been more important. The world united at COP26; now we must unite in a truly global response to Covid-19.