 The final item of business today is a member's business debate on motion number 11093, in the name of Alex Ferguson on mum's last big challenge. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put, and I would invite those members who are leaving the chamber to do so quickly and quietly, and also to invite members who are staying if they wish to speak to press the request-to-speak buttons now. Alex Ferguson, to open the debate, Mr Ferguson. Seven minutes, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would just say that I am absolutely delighted to have been able to bring this motion to the chamber this evening, not simply because it allows us to focus on what I think is a very worthwhile topic, but particularly because it allows me to highlight the work of two of life's true angels, one a Scot, one a Malawian, who seemed to me to have been put on this earth with a predetermined aim of making it an infinitely better place to inhabit. The first will, I think, be acutely embarrassed because, if my eyesight is right, I think I'm pleased to say that she's been able to join us in the gallery this evening. Linda MacDonald, along with some of her key volunteers who have made her charitable trust better known to all of us as mums, she's made it work so effectively since it was founded in 2005. Linda started the charity after seeing photographs of bottom hospital in Llongwy, the capital of Malawi, photographs that clearly showed the filthy, unhygienic conditions into which pregnant mothers were supposed to be able to deliver their babies. I think it's worth noting that in the UK in 2013, one in every 4,600 women could be expected to die in pregnancy or childbirth. In Malawi in that same year, it was one in every 36. One in every 36 women could expect to die simply because they had become pregnant. So no wonder that Linda, who is a practising midwife, was so shocked by the photographs she was shown. Every single one of us would have been, but I suspect very few of us would have thought, well that's enough, I'm going to go and do something about this and try to make a difference. So mums was born. A recipe book was produced the first in a series, Jack McConnell, our former First Minister, brought mums the attention of this parliament and mums became instrumental in raising the £100,000 that saw a new purpose-built maternity unit being built at Boiler hospital. Once that unit began to operate, the book that previously recorded the daily deaths of babies and the weekly deaths of mothers was barely required any longer. I had the enormous privilege of visiting Boiler hospital in 2011 and I could only marvel at the charts of infant and mother mortality that had been so meticulously kept since the new unit had been built and which had proved so vividly that the £100,000 investment had produced a return that could never be calculated in financial terms. It had produced a safe environment in which you could give birth, but mums couldn't and didn't stop there. It had well and truly taken root and over the years it has raised huge amounts of money that has been thoughtfully and carefully targeted at improving the lives of mothers, babies and families in Malawi. Feeding stations for under five-year-olds have been set up, nursery teachers funded, drinking water source, basic toilet facilities researched, all this and much more has been achieved by mums and somewhere along the way a very fortuitous contact was made with a lady called Charity Salima, the second angel that I referred to earlier. I also visited Charity at her acicondi clinic in 2011. I did so again in 2013. I'm not actually sure I could ever visit Malawi again without visiting that clinic. The name literally means a caring home, because both the clinic and the story that led up to its establishment are truly inspirational. Charity Salima was a research nurse working for the Malawi Government, but so appalled did she become the type of death rates that I referred to earlier and through her increased knowledge and experience of the conditions that pregnant women in Malawi had to survive that she, just like Linda really, just came to the conclusion that enough was enough. So in 2008, using her own meager resources and with the backing of the national organisation of nurses, she rented a property in district 23 and established her own maternity clinic, though I suspect you and I would probably not recognise it as such if we happened upon it, but that clinic and Charity Salima are now well on their way to delivering their eight sixth thousandth baby without having to record a single death of either mother or child in the six-year history of that clinic. Charity being Charity doesn't stop at that. She also provides anti-natal and post-natal care to mothers and babies. She runs an under-fives clinic and feeding station. She provides HIV testing and runs a family planning advice service, all done and achieved without any government funding whatsoever. I can say with total sincerity that she, Charity Salima, is one of the most remarkable human beings that I've ever come across. And since 2009, mums have supported Charity through a monthly donation and in addition has funded a badly needed ambulance to increase the catchment area from which pregnant mothers can access this extraordinary place. But now a new challenge has emerged and it's the one that I want to highlight through this debate this evening. The owner of the Achey Condi clinic has increased the rent. On its own, that might have been bearable, but in a particularly unhelpful move, he has begun to build a house just seven feet from the front wall of the clinic itself, compromising obviously the access, but much more importantly, the privacy that the clinic currently enjoys. The clinic simply could not continue to operate under those circumstances. So in typical Charity's style, she has bought a plot of land and with the assistance from the Norwegian Nurses Association begun to build a new purpose-built 17-bed clinic, but she's run out of money, which is where the title of my motion Mums' Last Big Challenge comes in. Mums is looking to amalgamate with another charity for the most understandable of reasons. Its success has been such that it has become a more than full-time task to administer and the trust has decided that amalgamation would best secure its aims as we go forward. But it set itself one final challenge of raising the £15,000 that Charity needs and in doing so by Christmas. It's produced a donate to charity pack of which I have one and I can get more, giving all the advice needed to individuals and organisations to raise just £100 each towards the total, and everyone who does so will be immortalised on a plaque on the wall of the new clinic when it opens. So through this debate, I hope that perhaps we MSPs can do a little to help to raise awareness of this initiative in our constituencies and regions. I have some of the packs with me and can get more, as I say. And if members are wondering perhaps how to dispose of the charitable fee that we're sometimes offered for participating in some of the surveys that seem to proliferate at this time of year, I can think of no better cause to donate to. But that aside, Presiding Officer, the motion I've tabled before us gives us an opportunity as a Parliament to say thank you to Linda MacDonald and Mums for the truly remarkable work that they've undertaken over the years. Work that is not done for glory, for gain or for recognition but for the simple satisfaction of doing what is right and in doing so to improve the lives of so many others who are so much less fortunate than we are beyond all recognition. I feel very privileged to move the motion in my name. It's a pleasure always to be able to speak in a debate about Malawi, but this particular debate is one that I think says everything about the relationship between Scotland and Malawi. As many colleagues know and as Alec Ferguson is so eloquently put forward in his motion this evening for which he deserves congratulations for securing both the motion and the debate, the situation in Malawi with regard to child maternal mortality has been and still challenging. However, the fact that when I first visited Malawi in 2006, one baby was dying every day and one mother every week was a shocking figure to hear about and a shocking situation to witness. To know that now in some of the hospitals in Malawi where Mums and other organisations have been so active, there is now no need to record that kind of information on that kind of scale and that instead it's the progress of the babies and the Mums that's being recorded is something that is really quite remarkable. No word could really do it justice but remarkable is probably as good as any. The efforts of Mums have been particularly inspirational in my view because what sounded like a relatively small idea at the beginning to have a book of recipes, some of which I still used to this day, I have to admit, which was very useful in my particular home, but the fact that a book of recipes would be used in this way to raise money for such an important aspect of Malawi in life is really quite an interesting concept in itself and demonstrates that it is those personal contacts, those personal relationships between Scotland and Malawi that are helping to make such a difference. As we know, Mums have contributed large sums not just to helping Mums delivering their babies and having postnatal care but also again equally large sums of money helping to prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission and to help health workers who have become infected through their work. They fund feeding stations and they boost the chances that children born in Malawi now have of living full, long and fulfilling lives. The latest project that Mums is supporting, as we have heard, is the work of Charity Salima and never was someone better named. That work has been highlighted in a number of ways to date and her work is significant. The results achieved in her clinic are fantastic. I have not had the opportunity to visit that particular clinic myself but I have read a number of articles and comments about it and it clearly is making a huge difference for the Mums in that particular part of Malawi. A few years ago, a book was written when the rains come by the writer Tom Pau, which was, frankly, just a delight to read. It was a lovely book. It was happy and uplifting and it was beautifully illustrated too. It was one of those books that just told the story of an ordinary family in Malawi or anywhere—it could have been anywhere in Africa for that matter—going about their lives and living that life to the full. Of course, as in any family there was an indomitable grandmother and it was good to see the similarities that were coming to play there. That book raised significant sums of money—I hope that it is still available now—and can help towards the fundraising that Alex Ferguson mentioned. As I said at the beginning, the relationship between Scotland and Malawi has, I think, been significant but it has also been one of the hallmarks of the Parliament that we recognise that there was work to be done and that we set about doing it. However, in some ways, while our and the Government's good efforts have been worthwhile and have been very important, to me, as much as anything else, it has been the spotlight that this Parliament and the Government over years have now been able to shine on the work that is going on in Malawi and the need in Malawi that has been most important. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the work that is being done by mums and particularly by Linda MacDonald since 2005. I very much hope that they raise enough money by Christmas to be able to fulfil their ambition. I hope that I am sure that, with this Parliament's help and support, they will do that. Thank you. Thank you very much. I now call on Maureen Watt to be followed by Liam McArthur. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and can I draw the Parliament's attention to my register of interests as convener of the cross-party group on Malawi in this Parliament? Can I too congratulate Alex Ferguson on securing this debate this evening to highlight the work of the charity Malawi underprivileged mothers or mums as we have all come to know it? I commend Alex in his continuing interest and enthusiasm for all things related to Malawi. Among other things, we had to do during our cross-party visit to Malawi in January 2011, was a kind of wrecky to see which projects Annie Lennox should visit the following month when Alex, in his role as PEO, was accompanying her. Like many others, Alex was captivated by the warm heart of Africa and the projects that he visited and his commitment continues hence the motion in his name today. Obviously, he was really captivated by visiting the mums work in Malawi. The latest effort of Mums and Linda, the founder, to build a 17-bed capacity purpose built clinic is truly remarkable and commendable. I know how difficult it is to raise money for Malawi, but Mums fundraising capacity is legendary in this place, as other people have mentioned. Mary Scanlon had a debate in 2009 when Jack McConnell spoke and he was the one who was distributing the cookbook at that time in this place and badgered us all to buy it and contribute to it. Prior to that, even in 2008, Mike Pringle said in a debate that I have found that one cannot say no to Linda. I am sure that he meant only in relation to stumping up money and helping the projects, rather than anything else. Malawi is making progress in meeting the millennium development goals, particularly in relation to poverty reduction, access to improved sources of water and improvement in the lives of slum dwellers, but in relation to infant mortality and maternal health, there is still much to do. Many other people, like Linda in Scotland, have taken up the challenge. Patricia Ferguson mentioned some of the problems facing people as they try to reduce child mortality and maternal health and maternal death. One of them is providing a safe environment for birth to take place and making sure that the mother's health during pregnancy is the best that it possibly can be. Obviously, one of the things that is really important is making sure that the proportion of births attended by skilled health personnel is as high as it can be. While in urban areas it is improving a great deal, there is still a bit more to be done in the rural areas. I would like to take the opportunity to mention a project run by the University of Aberdeen Institute of Applied Health Sciences, whose objective is to encourage the integration of rural midwives in the local health system in order to maintain their skills and to increase their job satisfaction in local communities. I know that there is still much work to be done in that area, but we must commend and support the many people, like Linda and Mums, who are continuing to work in the area in Malawi. It is much appreciated. I know that there is some disconnect between the work of the charities and the Scotland-Malawi partnership, which is trying to ensure that they are in tune with the Government of Malawi. It is perhaps something that you could take up, minister. I look forward to hearing your contribution. Thank you very much. I join with my colleagues in congratulating Alex Ferguson on the motion in securing the debate, as others have testified Alex Ferguson's commitment to and passionate support for this Parliament and this country's links with Malawi is a matter of record. To the point where he has been prepared to be Annie Lennox, he is a bank carrier, which is above and beyond the call of duty for most Presiding Officers. Like Patricia Ferguson, Maureen Watt and Alex Ferguson, I have felt very fortunate in being able in the role of MSP to develop my own links with Malawi, which is often borne of the links that community groups, schools and others in my constituency have fostered over the years. I think that that has developed an awful lot of excellent work, whether in the area of education or health or indeed economic development. The project Mums was one that I was less familiar with, and I think that in that sense today's debate serves a further additional useful purpose. Raising awareness is the easy bit, as Alex Ferguson in his opening remarks made clear, the really remarkable work of what he called the true angels is the hard stuff. Linda MacDonald has been said much of her. I have to say that, if anybody can get Mike Pringle to do what they ask, where on earth were they when we needed a Liberal Democrat chief whip in previous parliaments, Charity Selima likewise, the sort of work that humbles all of us. I think that Alex Ferguson was right to pay eloquent testimony to that. I was on the same visit as Maureen Watt to Malawi back in 2011, and I think that one of the most striking aspects of that trip was the visit to a settlement in the outskirts of Llongway to visit a mother who had been diagnosed as HIV positive during the course of a previous visit by a Scottish Parliament delegation. I think that truth be told, no one really expected her to still be alive in 2011. It was remarkable to see the recovery that she had made. It was evidence that the anti-retroviral programme but the fertiliser programme that was ensuring that markets at least had food that could support the anti-retroviral programme was available and the education investment that had gone in. All of those were coming together to start to move things in the right direction. It is too easy to succumb to a council of despair. As Patricia Ferguson suggested, we should not lose sight of the fact that some of those projects are delivering real benefits here and now. Not that there is an awful lot still to do but should give us confidence that the interventions that we are making work. Despite that progress, the figures are very bleak. Life expectancy in Malawi is still around 37 years. The paternal death rate is still eight in every 1,000. One child in 10 dies before the age of 10. Two nurses die every week from HIV. Again, the parallel with that and teachers where the attrition rate of teachers passing way through to HIV aids is undermining efforts to build capacity in the school sector just as it appears to be happening in healthcare. That is a source of real concern. It underscores the need for projects such as MUMs and the work that is being done by Linda McDonnell, Charity Salima and their colleagues. The objectives of that and Malawi's children should be well nourished and have educational opportunities. All mothers deserve safe and caring maternity provision. Supporting nurses with aids at risk of contracting aids or simply concerned about the risk of working closely with local communities and giving them the confidence and the capacity to help themselves. All those objectives are ones that we should be supporting, raising awareness and encouraging others to support. The Deputy Presiding Officer last year, the MacArthur family agreed to forego a few presents at Christmas in order to adopt a snow leopard. This year, I can think of no better cause than supporting Linda McDonnell, the MUMs, towards their target of £15,000 to complete their clinic before the end of the year. Immortalising on plaques seems to be very much in the zeitgeist of this week, but in conclusion can I congratulate Alex Ferguson again on securing this important debate. I promise to see him afterwards to settle my debts and offer my thanks to the true angels doing so much good work in the warm heart of Africa. I thank Alex Ferguson for securing this very important motion to the chamber. I thank Linda McDonnell, Charity Sleema and all the hard team at the AchaCondi clinic for all the good work and hard work that they do. There is nothing like impending government reshuffle to focus the mind on the portfolio. I can say without any fear or favour that the portfolio is by far the best in the Government—it might be the best-kept secret in the Government. The reason for that is that I get to see, talk about and engage with those who are making some of the best change in the world. Mum's is an example of giving a gift that you cannot put a price on—a gift of life, a gift of a healthy child and a gift of life to a mother is something that you cannot quantify. I often talk about—when we speak about Malawi—the historical context of Malawi. It is very important that it helps to set the foundation of that relationship that we have in the present and will continue to take forward. In the future, that historical context usually centres around that amazing Scot to Dr David Livingstone. He was an explorer, we know at heart, but he was also a medic, a missionary, of which he was not particularly good at—only converting one person, apparently to him, in that person becoming a lapsed Christian. Nonetheless, he also talked about the three Cs, Christianity being one, commerce being the other and civilisation being the third. I always think that there is not enough attention paid to the civilisation part. That civilisation, if you read some of his manuscripts, was, of course, talking about the slave trade, but generally the discussion that humanity is one humanity and that we should come together to face global challenges that affect us all, regardless of your race or your colour or your religion or where you come from. That is ultimately what Dr David Livingstone meant by civilisation. I am delighted that his legacy that he taught us is being carried down this day by people like Linda, by her colleagues in Malawi, but also our children as well. I still keep very much in touch and a close eye in the good work of people like Martha Payne, a young girl who, of course, is helping with Mary's meals and feeding young school children in Malawi. However, the point of the historical context of that relationship is that it helps to inform our present relationship. I just came back from Geneva. I was in Geneva last week for a couple of days talking about our international development work. We were very interested in the United Nations about what Scotland was doing. All of the officials that I spoke to said that it is not about the size of your contribution, of course, as important as that can be, but it is about the impact and the leadership that Scotland is showing. When we had this relatively modest international development programme, £9 million a year of which £3 million is ring-fenced, from Malawi, but from that small pot we support over 50 projects in Malawi. Unique—not because of the top-down relationship, as important as that Government-to-Government relationship is—but unique because of that bottom-up relationship, where the entire civic society of Scotland is involved from the very north of our country, from the constituency of—I was going to call him General MacArthur, from earlier contributions of Mr MacArthur and Liam MacArthur's constituency in Orkney, of which I have met some of those who are involved in the relationship right down to the borders and through to Selkirk, where I have met those who are involved in the relationship with Malawi, too. Not only does it cover the country in terms of its geography, but in terms of its demography, too. I have met people—teachers, students, nurses, professionals, business people—all involved in that relationship. In fact, a study from the Scottish-Malawi partnership showed that 84,000 Scots are involved in the relationship with Malawi. A country of 5 million people, 84,000 of them, are involved in helping to improve the lives of their fellow man, woman and child in Malawi. 50 per cent of people know somebody who is involved in the relationship in Malawi, according to that survey. 97 per cent of people think favourably about the relationship between Scotland and Malawi. Here, in this time of financial restraint, economic austerity and food banks are difficult times for people, yet they are still in favour of committing their resources and our energy and our efforts to improve the lives of those who are much worse off than us. Like those who have spoken already, I, too, have been to Malawi. It is quite difficult to understand the realities of abject poverty until you witness it yourself, until you speak to a mother who has had to bury her child because of malnutrition, because when you speak to a child who has been orphaned because his parents have such a low-life expectancy, as Liam McArthur was saying, in a world of plenty, we have to watch and we see and we hear the figures that were quoted by Patricia Ferguson about those mothers who still die simply because they have become pregnant in this 21st century. It is a great disgrace and a shame on us all. In the 21st century, women will have to walk up to 30 kilometres while in labour having to suffer through the pain of a fistula, a delayed labour that not only causes their child to be still-born but causes them internal damage, tissue damage, which affects their rectum, bladder and leaving them incontinent. No way they can have another child if that fistula is not repaired. Some of them, unfortunately, are divorced because they will not be able to produce children outcast from entire communities, imagine, in the 21st century. Maternal health is incredibly important to the Scottish Government on the issue of maternal health. We fund eight projects in Malawi, including one in Bwela hospital in Longway, and I visited the Fistula care centre in Bwela hospital where Linda, Charity and the team also work. Working with the Angloog Freedom from Fistula Foundation, I got to see how women who suffered from fistulas and various complications of maternal pregnancy, how they get their lives back by being given the opportunity of having a solar-powered battery, where they can charge other people from the village and from their town to come to use it, have an income for themselves and therefore go from outcast to being business leaders in their communities. I note and commend the range of good work that is done by mums that others have mentioned from the anti and postnatal care to the HMV testing to the family planning advice, which is simple but also incredibly important. I hope that individuals and organisations will dig deep to support them. Linda MacDonald's personal drive that we have heard much about. I would be looking forward, hopefully, if I can catch in after this debate to say a quick hello, but from everything that I hear she sounds like a phenomenal fundraiser. She should be quite careful, because a political party might snap her up if she continues such a record. Also, of Charity's lima, she is quite rightly described as a miracle nurse. Thousands of babies and not one death since 2008. I agree entirely with Alex Ferguson's description of them as angels, and I simply say that every single member of this Parliament should certainly see what they can do to help mums. I certainly will be happy to do that as well, but those two women and their team through the work that they do with mums certainly help to re-establish my faith in humanity in often a very difficult world. I end on those words that the greatness of a nation is not measured by its economic wealth or its military might, but by how it treats the most vulnerable in its society, and in this globalized world that we live in today, we can demonstrate our greatness through the work that is done by mums and many other charities and the good people that helped to improve the lives of the least fortunate and the most vulnerable on our planet.