 Hip orders. Welcome to this Tuesday 11th meeting of 2014 of the European Exchange Relations Committee. Can I make the usual request that mobile phones are switched off? We have no apologies form the committee at present and agenda item 1 is an item in today's agenda, is the one off evidence session on the Scottish Government's proposals for an independent Scotland's international development policy. I welcome all the witnesses Felly, maen nhw'n ddiwyddiant. Rwy'n fath fwrdd, gof Nousa, yn duntrach mae nhw'n ddidechrau'n bwrthi'n ddoch hayd. Felly, fel ydych chi, ynrhyw broswyddiadau, i wneud i chi i chi ddiannod. Felly, i chi fyddwch chi'n ddych chi'n ddych chi'n ddych chi'n ddiannod, iddyn nhw'n f effectsod peir Ziq. Mae'n gweithio i gael mwynhau, i ddim nesaf, yn mynd o dweud. Before you speak that would be very, very helpful, and hopefully we'll have a very fruitful and interesting discussion. There's a table plan in front of you so you should know who's who around the table. We've all got nameplate, although I can't see the ones down aside. I've got a wee table plan here and I'll just stick to that. I'm going to ask you all, we're all going to go round the table and introduce ourselves formally, but before I do that, if I just give the apologies for Professor Book of Plants not able to join us today. He has had a family emergency. He is dealing with that. I want to introduce myself. I am Christina McKelvie, MSP for Hamilton Lart Collin Stonehouse, convener of the European and External Relations Committee. I am Hans Lamalic, vice-convener of the committee. I am Rep. Glasgow for the regional MSP. Clyr Adamson, Yng Nghymru, Sgolten, MSP. Colin Cameron. I'm from Irvine and Ayrshire. I was the consul for Malawian Scotland for some 15 years. I'm Hilary Homans, the director for the Centre for Sustainable International Development, which was set up four years ago at the University of Aberdeen, but prior to that was 13 years working with the UN and 13 with DFID, living and working in Sub-Saharan Africa for 10 years. I'm Alec Rowley, MSP for the Cove and Beath Constituency. Good morning. My name is James Mackey. I work at ECTPM, the European Centre for Development Policy Management in Maastricht. I also teach international developments at the College of Europe in Bruges. I'm Neil Thin, representing the University of Edinburgh's Global Development Academy. I'm a social scientist. I teach on international development. I'm Roderick Campbell. I'm MSP for North East 5. Lloyd Amson, director of British Council Scotland. I'm Willie Coffey, constituency member for Comanach in Irvine Valley. I'm Gillian Wilson. I'm the chief executive of NIDOS, which is the network of international development organisations in Scotland and umbrella body for international charities. I just want to apologise for being late. My name is Dave Fish. I'm from rural Lanarkshire, despite my accent. I was previously DFID director for Africa but also head of the DFID operation in Scotland in East Kilbrood. Jamie McGregor MSP, Highlands and Islands region. Thank you very much. You're all welcome along this morning. We have got until about 10.30. I think that we will hopefully get as much packed into that as we possibly can. I'm going to start off with quite a general question, quite a gentle one to get as kicked off. It's about this idea that Scotland could be a global leader in what that means and whether your experience and the work that you've done either in Scotland and the UK or around the world has actually given you any confidence in that that Scotland could be a global leader when it comes to international development. I'm just throwing that out there for the first person that catches my eye. Gillian. I think we could certainly be a global leader whatever the constitutional outcome. So I just wanted to make clear at the beginning that we're not taking a position as a charity. But I think certainly in either way there are certain areas where we could be a real leader. One is in terms of the idea that the Scottish Government has begun to talk about and there seems to be some emerging consensus in Scotland around taking a more policy coherent approach to international development. In terms of saying that aid is very important but certainly not sufficient and we would like to look across government about the actions we take and across society the actions we take in terms of making sure that we add value in terms of all our actions across. And there are some countries in the world where this is already happening and we could certainly join that group but also show where we could lead for example in renewable energy or in terms of climate justice. Scotland is already the first country to have had a really ambitious climate change bill and has also been looking at climate adaptation and being coherent across different areas of government. And I think there are certain areas in other parts of policy coherence where we could really be a leader. So I think yes. And I've got Dr Helody of the Women's. Helody. Thank you very much. I think this is a really important question and I would perhaps rephrase it differently because I think actually in many ways particularly through the higher education sector Scotland is already a global leader. Some analysis has been done about the percentage of publications, academic publications that have been done and Scotland really is up there in the league tables. We had a meeting on the April 3 which was jointly convened with Nidos and Sifl and also our centre where as part of the background for that we consulted all of the higher education institutions in Scotland working in international development and found that there were five particular areas of real expertise in terms of energy, in terms of the environment, in terms of global health and in terms of governance which is really important in terms of the justice issues and also in terms of capacity building, the long history that Scottish universities and institutes of higher education have particularly in looking at capacity building training of people from developing countries and in developing countries. And one of the things that came out of that where we felt we could be strengthened and I noticed on page 3 of your report it says the Scottish government currently provides support to two networking organisations. We felt very strongly that there was a role for support to academia higher education institutes particularly in the development of what we've called research and sustainability development, sustainable development policy hubs around those four five areas I outlined previously to get, if you like, even greater leverage from the higher education institutes in terms of being able to translate first class research into policy and practice within the development context. And then the other thing building on what has just been said by Gillian Wilson about the climate justice fund, another area where Scotland could, I think, really take the lead is providing a code of conduct of good practice for everyone from Scotland working in international development, whether it be from the business sector, corporate sector, whether it be civil society, higher education, whatever. I think this would be absolutely critical and is really needed particularly when you look at the post 2015 development agenda and the emphasis on governance, accountability, open and effective systems. So those are just two areas that I think are really important. Small areas as well, yeah? Just small areas. Colin Cameron. Colin Cameron. First of all I want to thank the convening committee for being invited along today. I do appreciate it. I would like to put three bullet points and then I have submitted evidence and I'm quite happy to answer or expand on anything that you wish. If it's all self-explanatory and there's no questions, no problems. The principle I would work on that Scotland can, in the world scene, give quality. It's not quantity we're after here. And in all aspects that anything I've been involved in, this is how quality Scotland can be decisive in showing a way forward. I'll give three points. One is Malawi. Westminster Government through DFID support Malawi its current account with budgetary support. Now I would hope that the committee and the Scottish Government and all members would consider seeing that on independence that Scotland would take over a share of that. I think it's important to show and the on-going relationship with Malawi that the current account is supported too in negotiation with DFID. The second point which I think is one which we would like DFID to follow and we would like Scotland to adopt and is in regard to capital projects if Scotland gets involved in that. In living in a developing country it's quite clear that if you have a capital project the Doni country has difficulty in filling the current account arising from that. And I feel strongly we should and the committee should put forward that on moving into a capital project there should be an element of it which is allocated to recurrent costs. Say for covering the recurrent costs of the hospital for three years on a tapering basis so that when the hospital is built people will have been recruited the wages are there for the first one, two or three years and it's on-going. The sad thing you see often in developing countries the hospital is built and it lies empty for three years so I'm trying to see if we could in-built an element to cover the current expenditure. The last thing is that I've found over the years with the Scottish Government, successive government that they had a committee of people who are interested in this not elected but have had experience and had meetings with them on a twice a year basis. We don't have a Senate and we don't have a House of Lords but there should be some group who are willing to speak openly with the Minister and the Secretary about their ideas and to speak openly. That can work. What gave me concern when involved was that it wasn't followed through. We spent some time preparing for it and it didn't work. It wasn't followed through and I wouldn't ask that that might be reconsidered and that when a group come forward men and women to speak with the Minister say that minutes are taken and the points raised by them are dealt with not accepted, that's not what I'm saying and I feel that that would be a worthwhile idea. The rest of the stuff that I've put in my evidence and I'm happy to expand on that. As other members of the committee are going to pick up specific themes that they've got so we'll hopefully cover everything that way as well. I've got Dr James Mackie. Thank you very much and thanks for inviting me indeed. I would agree with a number of things that have been said in terms of the areas where Scotland could be a specialist and I think Mr Campbell's point about we're looking for quality, not quantity, I think is obviously the key starting point. Renewable energy, education, governance certainly. The area I would add would be public finance management. I think we've got a strong financial industry in this country and this is an area which I think is becoming more and more important in international development as we move more and more away from projects managed by outside actors into work which the government itself conducts and funds are provided through budget support. That is still a limited modality for aid but I think we're going to move more and more into that as internationally we move towards more public goods and making public goods available at international level and at national level. I think the future lies in donors providing budget support to governments and then the governments themselves deciding how they use it but the condition for that is obviously excellent, very good public finance management and their expertise is very important. I mean to reassure both sides of the bargain you need that good solid management. So I would really emphasise that a lot. Thank you. David Fesh. Thank you. Can I start by saying that I don't represent DFID although I've obviously spent a lot of my working life with them. I'm here as a private individual and the issue of global leadership is one that I think is really important and I would say that Britain has been a major global leader in the development scene certainly since 1997 and Scotland through the presence in East Kilbride has played a major part in that. To be honest in the way I see global leadership it's promoting transformational change, having real impact and I'm afraid I do not see Scotland being able to exert that sort of influence in the world. Certainly Scotland would do as they do now a lot of very worthy things. The programme that I help in a way nurture from East Kilbride at the Scottish office the power was given to Scotland to have an aid programme. Everything I know about what Scotland has done by and large has been extremely worthy. But if what you're looking for is to be a global leader then you're not going to have the weight that comes with being a member of the Security Council, being membership of the board of the World Bank and the IMF because with the best women world NGOs do a fantastic job British NGOs, local NGOs do a fantastic job but the real transformational change comes when the governments in which the countries in which we're working in actually begin to run their countries properly in the interests of all their people. It applies to Britain and Scotland of course as well. But the fact is that transformational change is only going to happen when governments in country realise that the resources of the country are there for the benefit of all the people and they're going to put in place systems and processes to make sure that they deliver on those responsibilities. Now the international community not just Britain but Britain has played a leading role in developing arrangements working often with the World Bank, European Union lots of other donors internationally to make sure that there are arrangements in place with local governments to make sure that the development aid we give is used to best effect. It's a long hard slog in a lot of places and budget support which has been mentioned has been a crucial part of that effort. I very much hope that whatever Scotland does it will consider putting significant amounts of money into that sort of operation and your commitment to work with the multilateral agencies I think will lead you inevitably in that direction. But to give you my interpretation of the answer to your question is I don't really see Scotland in a position to be a global leader in the way that I interpret it although there are lots of areas where Scotland can have a really positive influence. Thank you. Jimmy. I just wanted to ask Mr Cameron where he says the needs and interests of the Dhoni country are paramount. If he could point to any examples in the past where those needs and interests have been upset in some way or they haven't been seen to be paramount or mistakes have been made. Yes, the best way is through an example. When I was minister in Malawi on independence the Donors, America, Germany, Japan all came with their wares and they asked what I would like on behalf of Malawi and I suggested that there were three bridges washed down on the Lakeshore Road and it would be a fundamental help if they would do that. That is in the interests of Malawi and could they please build it with cement mostly because that is what Malawi has a factory for and I was politely told no. We don't think that's a good idea. We think if we were going to build bridges we would certainly bring our own metal steel in. We wouldn't be using your cement and in fact what I got after that and this is without any disrespect from America was a transport survey. I think that I try and put as an example to show how the Doni interests are overlooked at a time when perhaps they're important. Thank you. A couple of other folk want to come in first. I've got Dr Lloyd Anderson. Thanks very much. Can I just preface my remarks by saying that the British Council makes a major contribution to the UK's international development targets so that in 2011-12 we spent 91.8 million pounds of our grant on development in ODA official development assistance countries and by 2015 we'll be spending 64% of our grant on development work so it is a very major part of our interest. Secondly, we have a very long and strong track record in delivering donor-funded development programmes particularly in Middle East, North Africa, Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and those being funded by Difford and EU and others. Thirdly, I just wanted to mention that obviously a lot of our cultural relations activity supports international development and it's particularly a focus on capacity building so we work to increase education on employment opportunities for young people, promote democracy, good governance and power of civil society and giving people a vote. I want to sort of lay our credentials down. I mean I do think that there is a strong belief in Scotland in public good and I think that's actually a very important driver for Scotland's interests in international development. I think I worry about the future and listening to previous comments is absolutely true. If you look at school links and we could go into this, an awful lot of schools in Scotland have links with ODA countries and there's a real interest I think through the curriculum in what's happening in the developing world. Similarly, the HE sector, we could point to a lot of HE links with ODA countries. But if you look at the flows of students, the flows are inward. The flows are to Scotland and not from Scotland going abroad and I think there's a real issue about young people in Scotland not being outwardly mobile and therefore that's going to have a dramatic effect on the ability of Scotland to be involved in international development or deliver assistance if it's young people and not that interested in travelling abroad and seeing the issues abroad. Do you want to know... I'm just conscious that everyone's had their say in... What I have to say will come in later. Canzala. Dr Mcs a very good point in terms of relationship of students and I think that's an important element for us because international activity amongst students in particular is important because it creates unpaid ambassadors around the world for both countries involved. Would there be any mileage in having an exchange system of students? Do you think we could secure funding where we could actually have an exchange of students going overseas and bringing students from there back in a reciprocal agreement as such so that that would be possibly another way of trying to encourage that activity? I think it needs kick-starting again. I think it's become dormant and people have maybe lost the idea of having Scotland as a destination so if we kick-start the system with some sort of pilot project would there be any mileage in that? Yeah absolutely and I think we've got to address the reciprocity of the student flows at the moment as I say it's very seriously imbalanced towards the flows into Scotland. Actually just mentioning the Commonwealth Games it's interesting the links that are being made between the schools and universities and Commonwealth countries because of the games but again it's tended mostly to be an inward flow so I think exchange programmes are important. You abuse and actually deliver the Erasmus programme? Yes, that's in Europe and that's successful but the uptake is still low. That committee has kept an eye on and certainly in our inquiry in teaching languages to primary school children on a sort of generational change having these multilingual kids that will go and see their way around the world and come back and share their experiences something that the Government is and this committee has taken a keen interest in. On Erasmus in Scotland is at the bottom of the table in terms of outward mobility. We've got a better promotion to do there haven't we? Dr Mackie I just wanted to come in on exactly this point of Erasmus because there is a new element of Erasmus which is Erasmus Mundus now and a co-operation between the Erasmus programme and the Nyerere programme for the African Union which is beginning to gather momentum and I would say that indeed Scotland would need to the Government could put quite a bit of effort pushing that, making it better known and the language question as you say though if you wanted to go through it from part of Africa Scottish students would have the language of English and the word would be all right. I've got Gillian Wilson I just wanted to take up the point about the students and global education. I think we would certainly support the idea that we would like the upcoming generation of people in Scotland to be well aware of our role in the world and of the need for there to be more justice in the world and certainly I think having young people go abroad and really see other cultures and other ways of life is a very valuable thing. We would widen that and ask that there is funding and support for wider global education in schools not just in terms of exchange but the wider understanding of why are there poor people in the world what are the root causes of poverty how can we work. This is one of the themes in our report on policy coherence that this is an important element of making sure that young people are aware of their role as consumers that they keep governments accountable in terms of things like tax evasion and the sort of economic system that we have so I think it needs to be a very wide system of global education where we're really looking not just at it's interesting to learn about a different culture but it's important to actually tackle the way we are as consumers what our government does in terms of the way it operates trade procurement it's a much wider issue of building other themes of justice into young people's understanding and I think our report looks into some of the really important themes that not only would we educate our children about but that we need to make real transformational change David was saying it would be really good if we're looking at transformational change not just change in terms of things that we can directly do in terms of delivering development projects but really transforming the way we are in Scotland and the way we operate with the world in terms of our economic exchange one of our members, Oxfam Scotland is particularly pushing the idea of the human kind index and making sure that the way we operate as an economy is focused much more on people and planet and the benefit of people rather than on economic growth so I think all of these kinds of aspects both in terms of doing them in a coherent way that we are actually checking how we operate as a government and as consumers and as businesses in Scotland the impacts we're having on other countries in terms of development impact we can add so much more value if we're not just giving money but we're actually operating in a way that is good for Scotland but also adds values for other countries and I think young people need to be aware of that much wider aspect of their education that it's not just exchange is good but it needs to be much wider than that I think you're absolutely right and I think all of my colleagues around this table will tell you that in the recent few years actually rather than months 10 and 11 year olds that come to this parliament's part of the democracy project have usually got questions from Syria to poverty, to hunger to climate justice to whether people have got clean water in the world and amazing questions coming from 10 and 11 year olds so if we can embed it into that age group then we can certainly be making a bit of a difference there I think we're obviously quite tight for time I've got Alec Rowley wants to come in next and then I think we'll move on to Claire Adamson who will move on to a different topic but we'll allow everyone to try and get their bit in anyway I've just wondered if Dr Thins is wanting in now so that you've got I want to make a point on this particular discussion I think we should take very seriously this warning that one way or another we're not doing as much as we could to lead a Scots towards active global citizenship to use a bit of jargon and yes schooling systems and yes university courses and yes exchange systems are important parts of the pathway towards that if you look at model global citizens people that really express global citizenship in incredibly impressive ways very often a key trigger is international volunteering in their early years it comes up in the biographies of famous people it comes up when you talk to people about how they got involved so we shouldn't neglect the role of support for international volunteering experience and there's lots of ways that you can do that there was a UK report strongly emphasising the importance of for example gap year and career break volunteering the need for support for those we would also add to that if possible if we could support international global volunteering that isn't entirely deficit oriented that is not entirely oriented towards removing a few harms or building a few school sheds but it's actually aiming a bit higher than that so the people learn not just about poverty and harm and suffering in far flung parts of the world but they learn about the good things about those societies well worth emphasising here that's all I'm saying very much Alec Rowley I think what was encouraging from all the contributions is that what we are saying is that there's a lot of good things happening in Scotland in terms of international development higher education and so on but I suppose for me the question would be that there has been a focus on international development that focuses on the amount of aid and the white paper for example highlights not 0.7% moving to a target to 1% and I know that some people are saying it's not simply about that and I suppose my question would be from a policy perspective whether it's an independent Scottish state or whether it's a Government within the UK what is it at Government level in Scotland from a policy perspective what should be the priorities do you think of a Scottish Government looking at this area of work to question direct to I'm just generally in Scotland I would just like to answer the question but also to mention go back to the question of leadership I really think we want to look at the definition of what you and I mean by leadership Scotland on independence is 5 million people and I think it will take its seat in all the different communities in this country that is of that size where our leadership is directed to I think is through our own initiative and the example we can give and I think that it's not aiming to get to the top of where we are here it's the initiative and example that we can give one example that I can show is that through the Scottish Malawi partnership and that we are endeavouring now to establish a plan all secondary school pupils in Scotland to have an individual pen pal with a Malawi pupil and vice versa and all done without cost to any of the Malawi pupils because postage in that is expensive that is the thing I think is the sort of leadership we want to see coming through and we'll see coming through after independence I've got a few people Doctor Heldie Thank you very much Alex for that question I think it is a really critical question and I think there's two sides to it one is the agreement amongst OECD countries to the 0.7% which is one issue and the second issue is the extent to which Scotland should be aspiring to that and I think I would agree with the submission by Edinburgh I think really what we need to do is to focus much more not so much on the total sum and I'm a little bit worried about aid because aid is not what a lot of governments want these days President of Malawi and Rwanda have said really what we want is not aid, what we want is technical support we want other sorts of support and I think also the point about the international financial institutions and big business they're actually contributing through their work quite substantially to the development process and I think this is where I would go back to needing this code of conduct for who's working in development because for me the main issue is around sustainability and doing good rather than sums of money and we don't at the moment have adequate systems for measuring the transparency issues, the accountability issues about how money is being spent at all different levels so I would want to link the question with what is the money for and how is it being spent who is benefiting how are we tracking that and how can we ensure that any investment Scotland is making is actually sustainable and not leading to dependence because in many countries the emphasis now is on programs which are interdisciplinary wide sector looking at issues rather than small scale projects so I think there are a whole load of issues in your questions that need to be addressed thank you David Feshenangill David Sorry Having worked for DFID and its predecessors almost 100 years the question of aid levels has always been an issue going back to the 50s and 60s and I think it's great that Scotland feels able to match the commitment that's been made after many many years by the British government to the point 7 but it is more important to ensure that what we do with that money is aid doing what it says on the tin for the people the recipients but also that you can explain to your constituents in Scotland what they're getting for their money and to go back to some of the things Mr Cameron was saying my first job overseas was in Swaziland in 1968 and we tended to do what he said we built a school but we didn't think about whether there were any teachers there we built a road but we didn't make any arrangements for making sure it was maintained and in those days we could only spend on capital we didn't have the ability to spend on recurrent money the world has moved on hugely I mean we don't invest in capital projects now without a thorough investigation of the technical feasibility the financial sustainability I'm not saying that we always get it right but there's a huge amount of effort goes into project and programme appraisal I think going back to Mr Rowley's question the trick is going to be for Scotland to focus on a number of areas where it can make a real difference I have to say that ministers given the inclination will spread money all over the place and when the Scottish programme started off ministers wanted to do activities in 20 odd countries and we helped focus them down to a very small number and I think a relatively small donor you're going to be constrained a bit by your overseas presence you're not going to have an office in all of the world's poorest countries I wouldn't have thought so you're going to have to have in place arrangements to manage programmes locally to make sure that you're in touch with the politics locally because at the end of the day investments especially through government are not going to work if the politics aren't right so my recommendation to a Scottish government would be continue to focus on a small number of countries build up your expertise in country don't try and run everything from Edinburgh or wherever decide you're going to make a real difference find a niche in those countries it may be financial management it may be technical expertise, engineering there's a whole history of engineering in Scotland but be realistic about what you can do do it very well and do it in a way which enables you to report back to the people of Scotland what you've done with that money and a friend from the European Union will tell you the international organisations and the consortium that get together to run big programmes a pretty huge amount of effort into tracking expenditure regular reviews, you look at things every three, four, five months because the world moves on you approve a project in 2002 all sorts of things have happened so the management of activity and development is hugely different to what it was 20, 30 years ago it is professional Scotland is clearly potentially capable of doing that as anyone else but I really strongly recommend you don't try and run aid programmes in 20 different countries or 25 different countries Gillian Smith Gillian Wilson, sorry We would certainly agree with a lot of what Hillary was saying in terms of needing to look at a much bigger picture we would strongly welcome the cross-party support that there is at the moment for an aid programme we would love in an ideal world that aid wasn't required and that through for example a policy coherence thing we would much prefer that the world works well and that these countries are able to generate their own revenue to have their own business growth to have their own people running their own government and that aid isn't needed like the Marshall Plan in Europe the ideal situation is that you don't need aid and we would agree with that governments don't want to be dependent and people don't want to be dependent we really welcome that there is commitment cross-party in Scotland and in the UK government for 0.7% at the moment in the short term people are in really dire need and there needs to be some aid while you're working in the background to remove the need for aid through transformational change so in terms of the aid and we very much support some of the transformational shifts that are being proposed through post 2015 for the new framework it's looking very much at partnerships, collaborations between different players the business sector, the higher education sector government, civil society it can't work with any of those players just working in isolation so we would agree with a lot of the points that Hilary was making on that one however in terms of the actual aid itself we would recommend that the government really looks at aid that changes things for the long term both in terms of empowering people on the ground various people have been making points about good governance absolutely that's important one of the things that drives good governance is people having the capacity to keep their own governments to account so we would very much see the government investing in supporting civil capacity to do that helping people to understand their rights locally taking a rights based approach to the aid program but also looking at elements of sustainability in terms of environmental sustainability economic sustainability another very important element which we welcomed in the white paper was the idea of gender and focusing on empowering women there's been so much research which shows that if you build a capacity of women then there's real transformational change so we really welcome that in the white paper but also would emphasise that and there are other things around an aid program that we would also welcome such as looking at relieving unjust debt it's important that governments have their own capacity to generate revenue and a lot of that revenue at the moment is coming back to countries in terms of of debt payments I think we recently had a visitor from Pakistan who is director of Avaaz CDS which is a civil society umbrella body in Pakistan and he was giving a shocking statistics that Pakistan 40% of the budget is spent on defence 40% on debt relief and 4% on MDG related service delivery in Pakistan so it just shows you the importance of some of these other things that need to go on around aid you know aid like I said is so important in the short term people are living in dire poverty and we can't just say well we don't need aid in the short term we certainly do but there's so many other factors that we really need to look at and we would welcome Scotland looking at either in its existing constitutional state or an independent state in terms of relationships with the UK government looking at debt relief as well as things like Scottish companies paying tax in the countries in which they operate so I think there's a lot of factors around aid but we would certainly we welcome it and we welcome the fact that it might even be legislated for in the short term I think we want to expand on that topic but I think Claire Adamson you've got a theme based on debt relief and the areas involved in that oh sorry can we get that with someone else going with the question next sorry the white paper has got quite detailed information about the no-carm policy of how it would move forward and I was just wondering if you could give me an understanding of what that means to you in terms of how we would deliver the aid or the funding anybody anybody do you have something to say? we welcome that the government has policy coherence in the white paper and that there is emerging cross-party consensus in Scotland so as hopefully some of you will know we've produced a report called Scotland's Place in Building a Just World and I have copies with me if anybody wants it it's also downloadable on the website and within that report we are calling for this policy where not only does Scottish Government give aid but it also takes a lens across government activity like very much like it would a mental impact assessment or a gender review that it takes an approach which is policy coherent for adding value to development and a pro-poor policy so the Scottish Government has taken up that idea and expressed it as to some extent expressed it as do no harm and we certainly would welcome that a government checks what it's doing for harm so we do welcome that and it's certainly a good start but we would be calling the government to be much more proactive so checking for harm is a good thing but we would be calling for something much more proactive more adding value where we would hope that the Government didn't just check for damage but looked at opportunities across government to really add value so for example I gave a quick example at the very beginning that we joined up between different departments around our climate justice work so not only do we have a bill that is trying to cut emissions in Scotland both in terms of that being good for Scotland but also in terms of the huge impacts that global change is having on some very vulnerable communities in poor countries so that's one aspect but we're also having a climate justice fund which is adding funding for climate adaptation for communities abroad we're also educating our children about climate change so this is much more about adding value than simply not doing harm we would see the government looking for opportunities to be pro-developmental in everything it does procurement is another example where the government has £9 billion of spend it could be checking that it didn't do harm but it could also be saying proactively that we have to buy products that are ethically sourced so we welcome a do no harm approach but we would expand that and ask for a much more added value approach if I could just maybe quote from the white paper in terms of Scottish Government's position it says we will not allow commercial or other considerations including military considerations to influence our approach improperly the reason I raised that is because it seems in contrast with some of the information that's in the public domain about where Westminster might be going with this and Tobias Elmwood the Prime Minister's envoy to NATO had drawn up quote detailed proposals for Downing Street suggesting that there is an overwhelming case for military spending to count towards the 0.7 per GNI target other concerns in the room about how how that target might be the different approaches to that target that might emerge from Westminster or from an independent Scottish Government James Mackay I think there is an ongoing debate in the OECD about what qualifies as ODA and there have been underlying currents for some years that maybe the debate should be reopened and I think what we're finding across Europe is that a number of governments are becoming much more prone to stating their own interests in deals with in cooperation with developing countries and those interests may also be trade whether it goes as far as trade in arms is another question one area where there is perhaps some on the military side is in peacekeeping forces in that aid money can be used for certain aspects of peacekeeping work particularly the the allowances for soldiers who are taken away from who are in peacekeeping operations away from their regular barracks and so on but obviously not on armaments or munitions or anything like that and I think it would be a great chain but I think it's hard to avoid this wider debate about we should be stating our own interests in it and this is partly because we are now more and more confronted with the South South Corporation and India Brazil, China other countries which are saying we're not here just to aid we're here to strike mutually beneficial agreements and cooperation which helps both sides now some of that may be a bit disingenuous but I think it does strike a chord with many developing country governments they prefer to be dealt with by donors who say well this is what we'd like out of this deal but we're prepared to help you with that side of it so it's not an easy area and to be pure if you like or absolute in your approach to that is fraught with difficulties Doctor Nielsen this was a point on the do no harm not on the you're happy with that so do no harm obviously needs to be interpreted not literally you cannot do aid without harm happening that needs to be clear and there is a serious point this is not just a philosophical quibble there's a serious point because the potential and distorting your aid programme in a risk averse direction is potentially at odds with the objective of actually helping those countries that need the help most so I think we should take very very seriously the possibility not just of the obvious sort of high visibility harm that Dave assures is a little bit rarer now thanks to much much better better checks but to low visibility harm that creeps over generations and that comes from things like aid fragmentation which again Dave has very helpfully warned us against you do not help countries by giving lots and lots of bits of pieces of aid and lots and lots of delegations you undermine their democratic process by doing so you do not help the poor of the world by helping corrupt regimes I notice here there was a recommendation from Mercy Corps that I did not understand that was about aligning with poverty levels fine with income inequality bit more controversial and with fragility I do not understand the fragility bit so when we choose I absolutely desperately hope that Scotland if it does have a programme an aid programme that attempts to spend a billion pounds a year that it does so with a very very small number of partner countries and that it is and that it considers looking below country level because a huge number of the world's poor are living in pockets of very very large countries that considers having partnerships with sub national level agencies and that it and that it before it embarks in any massive spending programme that it looks very very clearly at things like the code of contact which Henry suggested linking up any aid programmes with non aid channels of influence that Scotland might have in those countries last time I sat before this committee seven years ago I mentioned that Scotland's influence on international development was far far greater through non aid channels including finance and of course a year later it became clear just how badly we had been performing just how much harm we had been doing through those financial institutions so it's absolutely crucial that the aid programme is systematically linked up with the best knowledge that we have of non aid influences and the best means we have of minimising harm and maximising goods through those channels Dr Lloyd Anderson and Colin Cameron go to Colin first because he's waiting for a wee bit, both of them if I could comment on the question of debt relief I would like a statement from the Scottish Government or the Scottish Parliament that under no circumstances would any of the aid budget be transferred to any quasi military use and I think that's a fundamental principle that I would like to see Scotland stand up for I agree that debts should be identified and some of them written off that is right and I think it's a tremendous help to the don't need country if certain of the bad debts just go that has been shown in the past and taken from the aid budget to that effect I think it's also helpful if at the same time as you identify a need a debt to be written off that you have a parallel a proposal or project there which would be implemented at the same time as the debt is written off now the reason for that is to try and ensure that the don't need country doesn't immediately a debt is written off in a position then to take on a new one because that is a real risk and anyway as much as possible aid should be by grant and I find it difficult to justify always looking at loans to countries but the do no harm that is right the policy is right the only thing I would ask is that we don't use that as an excuse for not doing something we might have a problem here if we do that we have a difficulty, I think in aid we have to face up to difficulties and don't use that as an excuse not for doing it and finally I think it's important that we try and not spread our resources too thinly because they become ineffective and quantity not quality not quantity is really the key in the budget Dr Lloyd Anderson Thanks I think that there is a bit of tension with the international priorities of the Scottish Government in the sense that obviously there's a focus on emerging economies and therefore you have the breaks and you have these countries and then there's a tendency to focus on Malawi when it comes to international development and so maybe Malawi could actually be the hub for engagement wider in Sub-Saharan Africa I would say Pakistan is also now features in the international development work of the Scottish Government and that's been a good thing particularly actually with regard to gender and equality which you'll come on to and the Sunday Harold has been following the progress of the Queen's Baton Relay and you'll have seen that it's been in Jamaica and just a piece from the article that there are 2,300 Campbell's listed in the Jamaican telephone directory and there are actually more Campbell's per square mile in Jamaica than there are in Scotland and we all know I don't know where it's going I don't know where you're going with this and of course this is a heritage from the slave trade and from history and so on and at the moment 50 cents of every Jamaican dollar is being spent to pay off that country's debts there is something about the history of Scotland and its role in empire and in the world which makes one think that if you were looking at priorities and there's do no harm that there are adjustments that need to be made I've been following the Commonwealth kids programme in the Sunday Harold for the past few weeks really interesting stories coming from the young people there as well it's excellent I have got Dr Homan's and then I'm going to move on to Jamie McGregor's area of questioning because we're vastly quickly running out of time thank you very much first of all I just wanted to reiterate what several people have said about really not spreading any support too thinly and the need for focus but on the to do no harm principle I think we have to be really careful in terms of how we define harm often in many programmes there are unintended consequences which are very difficult to predict from the outset and it leads me to a point that I feel very strongly about is the need for measurement and accountability to track things I think this is absolutely critical and I think it's one of the key features of the Millennium Development Goals that the Millennium Development Goals for the first time established or enabled some systems of measurement and tracking in many countries are still very rudimentary but just taking the Millennium Development Goals I guess it's a question which often perplexes me that it seems to me particularly in some areas particularly around maternal health for example we may have done harm because we've actually increased the inequalities between women being able to access reproductive health services so the Millennium Development Goals in that area have actually benefited the middle classes and upper classes and I'm not going to say add the expense of the poor but there has been this increase in inequality and particularly in some countries like Nigeria where you actually have now moving to middle income status level you have some of the highest levels of inequalities in access to reproductive health services and maternal health outcomes so I think this means how we define harm needs to be very very carefully considered and I would want us to think very carefully about always having an emphasis on reducing inequalities which isn't strongly enough articulated for me in the white paper and in the documentation thank you very much Jamie if we move on I know you've got a couple of supplementaries but if we move on to your area of question as well allow us to just cover that whole you just knock yourself out I'll be as quick as I can on delivery of an international development policy by what Dr James Mackie describes as a new donor Scotland or a possible new donor Scotland a couple of practical questions what kind of structures and staff does he see being required and would it require a new international body what would be the likely costs of setting up the appropriate delivery mechanisms and are there concerns that the new structures and staff would use resources that otherwise would have gone directly to international aid thank you yes well I'm actually arguing that Scotland should consider not setting up a new structure and that precisely to reduce aid air fragmentation the government should consider actually using existing structures at the multilateral level the EU and NGOs but having said that you would nevertheless need some ability to scrutinise, evaluate and set policy etc but to me that can be done with a relatively limited staff if you look around the European Union and I gave some examples in my submission the staffing levels we're talking about for delivering a small aid programme so actually having delivery capacity we're talking about 200 to 300 staff etc spread over but if you really focus down and said we're not going to set up a separate agency we're going to work through existing agencies and fund the UN put money through the EU, fund NGOs you could actually reduce that even further and I think there is a big benefit to doing that it would be a revolutionary thing to do there's very few countries which work like that but I think it would really address a problem of aid fragmentation because inevitably if you become a new donor you're actually contributing to this problem even more fragmentation of aid and that would be one way around it David Fish I mean nice idea Jones but I mean the reality is that if Scotland has a very significant aid programme it's not politically practical I don't think for you guys not to have an aid agency of some description and I think the political pressure is on you to establish a mini mini DFID will be quite strong my advice to you would be that you should do it because it needs a huge amount of professionalism to make an aid programme work my advice would be to house it very close to your Ministry of Foreign Affairs and your Ministry of Defence because one of the problems we've had over many years is that there's been fragmentation in terms of policy but the reality is to go back to a point Neil was making about risk donors are becoming more risk averse and partly that's because of the accountability issues and what the man in the street things but actually the real transformation activity does require quite often significant risk so if you take a Sierra Leone for example where we had a military intervention by Britain to show the seeds of progress for that country we've had to go in and put money direct into the budget and we'll have to do for quite a long time politically quite controversial but absolutely vital that you've got co-ordination within government of government activity you are going to have a Ministry of Defence on you Scotland but there is the whole section in the white paper it's very important that whatever structure you set up you house them close together in my view so if you're tempted to take 100 people from DFID East Kilbride and leave them in East Kilbride I would say that's not brilliant idea unless you're going to put the Ministry of Defence in East Kilbride and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in East Kilbride and house them closely together I would certainly agree with James and the paper does say this you're going to put a significant amount through existing channels putting money through the EU putting money into the World Bank putting money into the African Development Bank you can be pretty assured that they're going to be dealt with professionally might be expensive but they're going to be dealt with professionally but the Scottish people to be honest if they really want a development programme they're going to want some sort of individual identity for Scotland I'm sure the Malawi programme is popular it wouldn't be popular if it was going through the European Union or somewhere else so I think politically you're going to have to have bilateral programmes as everybody's saying having five, six or seven of them would enable you to do them all extremely well I would hope but don't contract it all out to the international is my advice Gillian Wilson We would certainly agree with this idea of being cross-departmental the policy coherence approach for example the model in Sweden is where they have both a cross parliamentary committee and a cross-departmental committee so that there's a political and an administrative structure that is very that is looking at policy coherence coherently sorry so we would definitely agree with this idea of working through different departments because we as we were saying a bit earlier are interested not just in the aid programme but it being much more an approach across government so we would certainly agree with having more joined up government and there's some examples of that already in the Scottish government so for example the climate committee and the climate and energy team and the water team are already beginning to have conversations together so that they're working together so we would see an extension of that of having a parliamentary committee and an administrative cross-departmental committee looking at Scotland's impact abroad internationally we would however also agree I think if we're going to have an aid programme there needs to be sufficient capacity both in terms of numbers of experience within the staffing of the Scottish government to deliver a good quality aid programme and we are concerned at the moment that the very small but very dedicated team hasn't got sufficient capacity to do all the different roles it has at the moment the aid programme is important but often the staff in that team get pulled to other places so I think it would be very important that a Scottish aid programme was well resourced with experience people and enough people and we would also yeah, I think that's enough I think the House of Commons International Development Committee report said we're concerned that DFID doesn't engage sufficiently with Scottish organisations is there something that could be learned from current experience what do you think about that in that comment we certainly feel that if it could be doing more in terms of engaging with the Scottish I can only speak from civil society but I think that would equally apply to the higher education sector to other business players in Scotland I think they haven't been doing that as much as they could they're beginning to do it more so the event that Hilary recently referred to collaborative event that we did with Aberdeen University and Seafall Scotland they did engage, their post 2015 team is beginning to talk to people in Scotland however they could do it a lot better and I think that the learning from that is that if Scotland was an independent country or even within the existing constitution government both UK and Scottish could be much more engaged with a whole range of players in the country I've got Dr Neil Thin and then we'll go back to Jamie for you to continue to realign a question I'll just be brief following up on Gillian's point answer to Jamie's yes, I think it's very important to think as separately as we can about whatever new structure might be needed to manage this huge, huge aid programme and whatever separately, whatever structure we could devise that would actually ensure policy coherence to understand better our roles in international development and there is a little lesson here I think from the, it was a 2003 roughly 10 years ago anyway we drafted our Scottish international development policy we then following on from that started a programme that I think now spends 9 million or so so in aid terms a tiny, tiny little programme absolutely tiny but high profile and the public interest now to support that the Scottish government's office for international development we devised a committee with a couple of academics myself was one of them and somebody was one from DFID and there was somebody from the church and you know I urge that it should be expanded to include members from business financial institutions but the committee was there but the lesson that I learned from that is that even the tiniest aid programme can distract your attention entirely from the business of understanding international development the committee never never discussed what it was set up to do which was to understand how this policy could be implemented other than to discuss tiny little donative projects so we never had formal meetings to discuss policy we had cocktail parties endlessly Jack McConnell was very generous invited us to dinner lots of times and very occasionally we discussed the fine details of agreeing specific tiny projects and dealing with press inquiries about soup kitchens and then deciding whether it was a good idea for the minister to be photographed next to the soup kitchens that's the kind of level of stuff that we discussed so it's absolutely crucial if we're to be a responsible international player we're near being global leader and we certainly are I don't agree with Dave, I think we are capable of being a global transformative leader in things like science and education for example but to understand that and possibly even finance if you learn how to do finance responsibly to do those things we need the right heads around the table meeting regularly talking and actually linking that talk with action that is not just about donative projects thank you Jamie, back to you for your liner question but am I allowed to move forward to more and better aid I would be delighted if you did I'll try and be as possible to be first again the Scottish Government white paper enshrines the 7.7% for aid and hopes to move to a 1% figure which is great I think it's wonderful but I'm interested in what the people here think about the ability of Scottish NGOs to absorb that increase and to spend the increased available funding as it should be spent now does this capacity and expertise exist in Scotland at the moment or would it have to be created and what would that creation cost again is that a too broader question that was a Mikey I don't think the capacity exists in Scotland at the moment I don't have an in-depth knowledge of the Scottish NGO seen like Gillian does but it would require an awful lot of capacity but I don't think you'd be doing that I don't think you'd be putting everything through NGOs we've talked about other mechanisms and if it was set up if a bilateral development agency was set up then a proportion would go through that but there are a lot of agencies which can deliver aid around the world far too many in fact trust funds, funds of all sorts I would have thought that it would be a question of choosing ones that you felt were particularly professional worked well in areas that you were interested in and then focusing on those obviously not spreading yourself too thinly in terms of those things so you could be talking about the global fund for AIDS or TB or contributing to things like that you could be talking about the Africa EU infrastructure trust fund contributing things like that and that will shift large sums of money or you could be putting money directly to the government of Malawi or the government of Zambia or whatever and then you will need a certain amount of staff to monitor that, to manage it to evaluate the way it's done to work out the deals in terms of the finance but you don't actually have to deliver it if you like it the work in terms of development will be done by the government of Malawi or the government of Zambia so I think there is a range of agencies and international through to EU and down to partner country governments and then NGOs and it doesn't just have to be the Scottish NGOs too I mean I think you will find certainly across the EU EU NGOs apply to different governments not just their own so you will get Danish NGOs asking for funds you will get Swedish or French NGOs coming to the Scottish Government asking for funds and the way the EU is structured if you are in the EU once you have independence you would expect to be able to answer those response demands Eileen Bilsen We would totally agree that we wouldn't expect NGOs to absorb all the extra money and we wouldn't expect that we currently support a very diverse aid programme run through the UK Government for example so absolutely we wouldn't expect all that money to come through NGOs and no there is not capacity to absorb it all however we do think that civil society organisations bring a really important piece to the puzzle and we would certainly value increased collaboration with some of these other partners I think there are some really good examples of where NGOs have worked with business for example NGOs have worked with higher education institutions we obviously work very closely with NGOs and a very important point that we are making Dr Mackie about is not just Scottish NGOs it's also NGOs in the country a lot of our work is about building local capacity for civil society and so in the long run I think Scotland might look at funding southern NGOs directly as it becomes a more mature donor as DFID does DFID welcomes applications from all over the world so I would certainly see global NGOs being all for Scottish money in the long run but yeah I think Scotland should consider and certainly we encourage our members to look at how they can be much more collaborative and work with other players add the particular bit we bring which is very much around civil society voice capacity about engaging local people about local knowledge women's engagement very excluded groups their engagement so that's the bit that we really add value to and I think is a very important part of the picture and we would hope that that would continue to be a part of Scotland's aid programme and yeah Thank you very much I wonder if our guest today would be happy to continue this session until 1045 I know we're giving you about 10 to 1030 but I'm thinking you know there's a lot of really good conversation going on around the table and if you're comfortable I think we're going to get to 25 if that's okay Yep, David Fish I mean it's going to take time I think for the Scottish Government to get to the point 7, spending mark so it took us DFI 50 years to get to that point and certainly you're only going to be able to spend that money initially if you do a lot of the things that James Mackie says and work through others what you will find there I think is that NGOs will grow as the programme grows they won't be delivering programmes in country those days have largely gone they work in partnership with local institutions and in lots of ways that's a civil society future I mean one of the interesting things we do a lot of now is try and get civil society organisations in country to hold their governments to account for their performance of course they do health and education and all the worthy things they're actually funding again because I mentioned Syria because I was in how's the commons talking about that earlier in the week big problems there of the use of government funds, use of diamond money, corruption and everything else and the beginning of some really interesting work by civil society to actually hold the government to account for its expenditure both in terms of how the money is allocated but also the impact when it's allocated so I wouldn't put too much emphasis on the NGO element of it and quite clearly NGOs can't remotely spend anything approaching a billion pounds it's even more tricky I guess when you probably gathered I'm English but my kids and my wife and my dog and other Scottish so I feel at home but clearly the future economics are uncertain depending on which publication you read or which politician you listen to but the 0.7 commitment in the face of that uncertainty is an incredibly brave thing to commit to but my advice was if anything you're going to spend 0.7 in year 1 unless actually you give it both the old to the World Bank the EU and the African Development Bank so there's some tricky decisions for you to make in the middle of all that Thank you Colin Cameron Cameron I agree that on independent Scotland's aid budget will be spread further than just the NGOs as it's done just now but I think it's fair to say that the NGOs and in Scotland are relatively have a lot of spare capacity and that can be utilised and I think if we are talking sometimes of going to the bigger agencies I think we must look at that with some caution if Scotland is taking a sort of independent sort of look at things we must look at their accounts of these big company agencies on aid how much of their money is spent internally in Scotland or in Britain on their internal expenses and the way they run them if you are dealing with the smaller NGOs and allow their applications to be more straightforward there will be more NGOs willing to apply with very useful projects in Scotland saying that we don't go into bigger ones and other ones but there are things which we feel concerned about in the amount of travel that seems to be going people going business class when we're dealing with aid that seems to be a non-starter and I'm talking just as examples not but we must look at these bigger agencies if we're going to use them into parameters that the Scottish Government set out they must work within certain parameters to be able to function in the way that Scotland would like it not the way that perhaps they would like to do it and have been in the habit of doing and there's a lot of scope to look that small is beautiful at times with that but you'll need bigger projects but there must be real scrutiny on records of the bigger agencies that you want to use and I think there is a lot of spare capacity in Scotland and before we talk about moving into Denmark and other countries which is fair enough I think there are organisations throughout Scotland who are able and willing to participate and I think the Scottish Government should look at that and try and facilitate the way that they can do so in the interests of the Doni Doctor Hulmans Yes, and thank you Colin Cameron for reinforcing the perhaps of call for a code of conduct across all agencies working in development because I agree entirely it's business, it's NGOs, it's anyone who's working in development but on this issue I think we should be looking at being more responsive and not sitting in Scotland saying what we think we should be doing but actually responding to the needs of the countries and I think this is really critical because at country level you have your country cooperation agreements where governments and others have sat round the table and agreed what is good for the country and I think then we should be responding to that there are examples of basket funding where many countries put money into a basket, they don't necessarily know where it's going to and for some countries that's problematic because they like to have their emblem on a particular project I think it's much more adventurous and also worthy to be if you recognise that the government you're working with is accountable and has those measures in place then I think it's much better to be starting this more equal partnership where we respond to what they say they need and I think that's absolutely critical but again that does call for all of these measures around accountability, transparency and we have to do a lot of work on that because that's one of the missing pieces at the moment and the other thing I think that can be called for and some countries are doing this is they actually have in-country budgets not only for gender spending but also for civil society and I think that's something we should be pushing for so that they governments themselves are building up their own capacity within the civil society networks and as somebody previously said it's often the civil societies who are the monitors of how money is being spent and accountability Explain that to me a bit more Rod Campbell There was a couple of points I wanted to make just on the point 7 point I wondered what the panel's view was on why it took 43 years and really what could be learned from international experience in other countries and therefore really what can Scotland learn from that point and then moving on to something that was touched on a question of gender equality which is a millennium goal and which the Scottish Government want to put it to the forefront of their plans Just really to ask Dr Finn you mentioned that you thought there should be a more nuanced approach to that and we just wanted if you could develop that further so there's a couple of points I don't know which one maybe you want to go first with yours and then we'll come back to the point 7 one That's fine yes on the gender equality it says that we at Edinburgh University obviously a lot of us have worked under the rubric of gender equality it's a strong and widely understood rubric so it's lots to say for it but it absolutely it's a bit like the do no harm it doesn't make philosophical sense because in practice if you push it too hard people don't understand what it could possibly mean in practice so gender justice gender equity in specific sectors tend to work better as procedures and as rubrics the other point about the querying of gender equality as a kind of utopian giant overarching goal the other point that lay behind that was I think it would if you're going to bring the Scottish public behind a big ambitious programme you need ambitious energising overall inspiring objectives inspiring goals gender justice could form such a goal but if you just leave it as something that isn't explained gender equality as a principle you would have to work an awful lot harder to actually explain to people in practice what kinds of changes would you bring about that's where the millennium development goals really work very well because they started specifying for a global public under these kinds of global objectives that are achievable we really think these things can be achieved on the point 7% perhaps why it took so long there's a whole history for that which I don't think we want to go into in terms of international relations and the cold war the disillusionment with aid and so on I think the rise of security concerns international security concerns pushed certainly European government to realise that actually it was important to make much bigger effort on development, the arrival of the MDGs that finally we had a sort of set of goals internationally which people could rally round and therefore it made sense to have the money but I think what we need to get in context is that the needs are actually much much greater international development particularly when you factor in climate change issues we're talking about much larger sums of money and 0.7% is not going to get us there I mean and if you look at ODA at overseas development assistance it's actually only a small fraction of the major flows of international finance etc and we need to keep those in mind remittances for instance outweigh three to one development corporation funds so that is also an area you could be doing something about making sure that Scottish banks transfer remittances at low cost and safely international financial flows investment there are codes of conduct there Dr Hollands has referred to that the importance of that international illicit financial flows Gillian Wilson referred to the need for coherence on those areas so there is a lot of areas that come under development finance and there's a very interesting debate going on at the moment at the level of the UN parallel to defining the goals for the post 2015 is how are we going to pay for it and there I think we see all these factors coming in what is special about aid is that it is it tends to be less strings attached to it there are always some but it tends to have less strings attached and if you pass it over to governments or to beneficiaries on the ground they have a say how they use it they have much more control of it and that is important is also about what are the other means of implementation other than finance which are important and that's where we get back to the point about policy coherence that there are all sorts of policies which actually can reduce the need for finance you can if you have for instance just to take the example of drugs for AIDS as long as the pharmaceutical companies wanted to sell them at a profit then it was exorbitant, you couldn't afford to have those drugs on the market but once you get to an agreement that these drugs can be sold at a lower price then suddenly it becomes affordable to spread them across Africa so I think aid is vital and we're not I disagree with Gillian there I don't think we will ever get rid of aid it's one of the only mechanisms we have for international redistribution of funds if you think about it in the hands of government so we will probably always want that it may not go in the future may not go down to individual projects and programs we may be talking much more of the sort of public goods level but we governments will need to support that but I think there will always be that need for making for making financial contributions to an international public good and so I see that continuing but if we can surround it by transparent policies policies which are conclusive development if we can design our fisheries policy so it doesn't impinge on African fishery grounds if we can design our trade policy so it doesn't undercut local markets etc all that can reduce the need for aid and promote development thank you Gillian Dwebson I just want to come back on two things so in terms of the point that Colin made about large NGOs absolutely I think NGOs along with other players ought to be accountable and one of the big programs that NIDOS has is an effectiveness program so the Scottish government has funded us to develop a toolkit and we are actively engaging our members in use of this which reviews how they operate both philosophically in development but also in terms of resource use etc and we are increasingly getting the engagement of our members to be self reflective, self critical so I think that's absolutely important for us as well as other players however I am a bit concerned that people have a kind of blanket thing that big organizations are wasteful of money I think there are some large organizations that spend money inefficiently but however there are some large organizations that are using money that may be seen to be not happening in the field but for some very vital and important things around campaign and policy development globally so I think it's absolutely vital that we have a diverse international NGO sector in Scotland that has large players medium players, small players doing all sorts of different things because some of the larger organizations for example last year quite a few of you might have heard of the IF campaign looking at the issues of food security, land grabbing tax evasion, all those sorts of things like there's plenty of food in the world but people aren't accessing it we need some players to be spending both public donated money but also campaign money from whoever will give it to us to really be pushing some of these issues and I think sometimes large organizations are misrepresented when they say large sums of money are wasted in the UK these sums of money are often invested in changing public attitudes so I think whenever people refer to large organizations in a very general sense of being wasteful of money I think that's unhelpful I think it's good if people are critical about specific wastes of money and our sector will put its hand up and say yes there are a misuse of resources as there are in bilateral agencies, the UN government, businesses etc so absolutely effectiveness is important we very much welcome the Scottish Government supporting the development of a diverse NGO sector in Scotland so the Scotland and our partnership and ourselves very actively lobbied for a small grants program under the international development fund for a number of years we're very happy to have seen the first year of a three year pilot running just in the last year and we think this is the way to go is to have a diverse aid program that supports the diversity of NGOs builds the capacity of smaller organizations to grow absorb some of the capacity of an increased aid program if that is what happens but also to do it much better and to be more collaborative but I think I also wanted to come back on the aid issue 0.7 and how we use aid I think our sector would be very clear in saying that we don't agree with tied aid and the way in which aid might creep into the military spend we feel that however well intentioned the military might be they have real conflicts of interest when it comes to developing relationships and aid programs they don't have a lot of experience and the aid that they deliver is often not of good quality and so I think it's very very important that the Scottish Government keeps ODA within its bounds and doesn't use aid to support domestic business growth we should be giving aid that is in alignment with what local people local governments need and want and we should be driven by their priorities not by what is good for Scottish business but the policy coherence side gives that opportunity for Scottish business to add its value to good in the world to adding value to other people's economies and I think that's the area which is interesting to develop in the future is that wider picture but I think aid itself shouldn't either be used for military purposes or for pursuing Scottish commercial interests It was just on the question of gender inequality to mention that Hamza Yousaf as Minister for International Development had initiated the setting up of the Pakistan Scottish Scholarship Scheme for Women and we're managing this British Council in Pakistan so it's funded by the Scottish Government promoting women's access to higher education 70 women have been awarded scholarships for two years of study across 25 higher education institutions in areas education, food security agriculture and sustainable energy there has been a focus on women from rural and underprivileged urban areas who have some social disadvantage and financial need but also showing academic promise so that scheme is going well Thank you Thank you Thank you very much Court of Conduct International Aid Overseas Development All fancy words but they all mean the same thing and that is that how do we support human beings across the world that's the bottom line really However the most important and the most fundamental issue of all of these is where the money actually ends up and what percentage of that actually ends up to the coal face and I think that's important and you know we've heard outrageous stories about people travelling first class and living in five star hotels and it's charity money and yes that's absolutely crucial however that said one needs to be a bit careful when one becomes to start to dictate whether any of the armed forces can use any of the money because some of these countries are on a knife edge in terms of security some of that security doesn't only affect them it actually indirectly affects us so I think sometimes we need to be a bit more guarded of how prescriptive we want to be for countries which security services may use some of that aid indirectly now I know that in terms of history we in the UK have been guilty of propping up governments which are not democratically elected and I wouldn't want to see that repeated in Scotland I think that's important that we only support democratically elected governments around the world but numbers is also important I don't think we want to overstretch ourselves so that today it actually becomes meaningless because it's so so little but I think one of the things that I'm quite encouraged to hear today from my colleagues and people on the table that we seem to have learned enough lessons from history that we can actually improve on what we've been doing historically and I would like to see a reduction in costs of administering any overseas budgets and so far in the Scottish Government we seem to have done not a bad job and not overly spend on the direction of funding and how we use that funding however I need to say that if it is something that we would have to revisit if there was an independent Scotland how we would deal with that element of the funding because that is quite technical and it is also perhaps a percentage we would want to look at or even realign the aid that is going places but I take on the point about Malawi and other places where it's unhelpful if we stop funding in middle of stream so that you lose the effectiveness of that funding because if you've established a hospital university college or whatever and then you pull the plug on people I think that's actually quite cruel because it means that not only have the recipient failed but we the donor have also failed in what we've tried to achieve so although there are challenges but I think we seem to have learned a great deal historically and I think we can use that to our advantage so I've heard a lot of very positive things today and I hope that we can continue to build on that and thank you very much for your insights and your sharing the experiences that you have with me today I've picked up a lot today, thank you David Fesh Three very quick points The running costs one is very important and I would agree with Gillian the world has moved on a lot in terms of the scrutiny that we give to organisations that we have a partnership with I spent my whole career travelling business class as you can see I'm not built for economy so when that change came in it was not something I personally necessarily agree with but DFID for example now you do normally travel economy you'd be pleased to know but it is very important that whatever you do and whoever you work through you get a grip on their running costs and that applies to international organisations in particular in some ways The second point I'll point about the military is exactly right if you go to a refugee camp in Syria and you ask the people what do you most want I'll guarantee you they will say I want to wake up in the morning they don't necessarily say I want health education and water vehicles they do but peace and security absolutely vital in a lot of these countries and one of the things about budget support for example clearly we shouldn't be putting aid money into buying weapons and things that aren't appropriate but budget support whether we like it or not does go to run the military in the countries we're working in the interesting thing about that it gives us a legitimate voice in discussion with the government about what is the level of their military investment that's appropriate given the size of the country given the security situation in the country it's a really important part of the development and we should never forget it the final point I'll make relates a bit to the point 7 there's not a lot of votes for you guys in international development that's the brutal truth as I said I live in a small world to do village in Lanarkshire where all the people are very socially conscious and care about each other but it's really difficult for me to persuade them that I use their taxes efficiently, effectively and get results and one of the things that a lot of people I can say it now, I'm not there that people in DFID would say we've not been very good at getting our story out we've not been very good at persuading people that actually at this point 7 we're spending on your behalf so one of the things I would do to Scotland to do is really develop a programme of telling the people of Scotland what they're getting for their buck Scottish people in my experience are pretty caring about each other the stories that we can tell I know we get people saying well, that's alright then let's say I don't think the British aid programme has done enough of that partly it's because it doesn't sell newspapers but it will never sell the daily mail but it could well help sell the daily record if you present it in the right way so if you're going to go to point 7 you're going to need public support for it and the best way to do it is to get the story out there and do some of the development education that people were talking about 1978 I was the head of DFID's development education unit and we mounted a major programme of going into schools including in Scotland and telling kids about issues in the third world telling them what development issues were and it was hugely successful there was a massive take up probably not old enough to remember but you know centres of development education were springing up all over the place we did quite a lot of work in schools primary schools even but secondary schools and some of the universities when the Tories came in in 1979 they scrapped it I think they didn't want a particularly strong voice in favour of development but nevertheless I could see in the two years that it really ran that it was having an impact so running a development education programme I would recommend it I think we're missing a bit of a point here the whole thing in the nice to say Scotland is a country of principle and our principle is as to how we use on independence the money that Scotland is going to allocate when whose hands are safer to use our money and we I think it's only fair to say that we've had the unions in 1777 and it's never been fully blown because there's always been things retained to Scotland whether it's education law banks, charts or whatever and then we've got more with the evolution here we've got more coming out now before the 18th of September of all the things that are being offered my own feeling is that in order to get the international aid side fully in Scottish hands and safe is to try and bring both sides together the yes and the no and maybe bring their slogans together and if the slogan was yes through independence we're better together I think that is what we should be aiming for for Scotland and obviously for the rest of Great Britain I think the case is unanswerable and I think we all know it makes sense and that's the one way that we can identify that Scotland's aid will be in safe hands that's just a personal view Adamson I'd just like to address the comments of Mr Fish there about not many votes it's not my experience in a politician at all that there isn't votes in international development in where Scotland stands as a country in this area whether that's at church hustings Scottish Malawi partnership did an excellent amount of work and discovered that there are tens of thousands of people in Scotland involved in Malawi raising money, visiting schools all over Scotland and I think the experience of the Mary's Meals issue with the young lady who was blogging about her school dinner is that I think there's an incredible amount of interest in Scotland in international development and where people want to see our country and the world stage in this issue Willie Coffey finally sorry Mr Coffey but we've even stretched the extra time that I'm having one of the disadvantages of sitting away doing here in the left-hand side is that you can't attract the convener's attention and a number of the points have been made by many colleagues around the table but I wanted to make three brief points then because we're at the stage we are on the discussion convener the first and the point 7% I'm pleased to see that commitment by the Scottish Government to enshrine that in legislation in the value of it members have mentioned could be around £1 billion a year and I don't see that commitment from the UK Government to maintain when somebody mentioned it they've just actually managed to reach the point 7% after about 40 or 50 years so if that's an example of leadership then it's not one that I would hope that an independent Scotland would follow so I would hope we would maybe get to that point much quicker on the point about leadership and so on I think that Mr Fish got the wrong end of the stick there it's not about bigness it's about demonstrating leadership and I think that that can be adequately demonstrated by even the smallest countries particularly in Europe particularly Luxembourg who do live up to their obligations and make the level of commitment to venture it with their size and exceeds what the UK has contributed I'm left, convener I wanted to open up a wee chat about the connection between aid international development and the debt relief cycle and how we might break that cycle because it seems to me and it might seem to people outside that we donate money through international commitments only to get it back in debt repayments and I think Dr Anderson you mentioned visited Jamaica's case will they pay £0.50 in the dollar in terms of debt possibly for the future meeting convener is how do we break that cycle who collectively should get together to look at issues like that about debt relief and unfair debt and how do we address that and what the impacts might the practical impacts of that might be for countries that are suffering that debt and how might we best advantage them to take their own futures and their own hands Is there anybody who wants to come back really really out of time I think we are really out of time it would be great to spend much more but we have other things on our agenda this morning and it would be wonderful to sit and talk more if we are continuing these one-off inquiries until the end of June if there's anything that we've not covered today that you are really keen to say can you please send it in because every single piece of evidence we get is very very valuable it's very relevant and we may have missed a whole section hopefully we've not, I think we've covered all the main and general points as well but if there's anything that you think would help us in our deliberations to take forward our inquiry that would be very helpful indeed and can I take the opportunity if I have the committee to thank you all this morning we really could have sat with you for hours and maybe we'll have other opportunities but we're very very grateful for your participation this morning and your very very very very interesting and very relevant contributions to the committee and we look forward to working with you all in the future thank you I'm going to take a 10 minute recess so if you may be back in your seats for 11.05 please welcome back to the European External Relations Committee agenda item 2 is Brussels Bulletin Members have a copy of the Brussels Bulletin in their papers and just to remind members that the European Parliament is now in campaign mode so the Brussels Bulletin is quite quite light can I ask for any comments questions, clarifications on the Brussels Bulletin Jimmy just the thing about cross-border pensions contrary to expectations the proposal maintains the requirement that cross-border pensions be fully funded at all times we were led to believe there was something different that something different was going to happen I just wondered if there were any reasons for that having happened interestingly the draft that came out I think was that there was going to be a change to that but the final result was that there wasn't a change to it I don't know whether we can get some further clarification on that yet we can seek some clarification yet do that Jamie I'll let you to it when it comes in Rod I just noticed in terms of the timetable European Parliament update there's a televised debate between European Commission president candidates nominated by EU level political parties but can anyone or can we get information as to how this is being televised is it going to be on BBC or what or do you have to watch it on the internet or something just for general information if we can find that out we can find out the details for that and make sure you get get those any other questions nope willy coffee not waving drowning I'm going to sit in here again could I mention something convener on innovation investment there's a wee paragraph down there about 5 of the bulletin talks about innovation investment and 22 billion euros and so on and it covers a number of areas and one of them is medicines and I raised this because of the event we had last night in the Parliament on MS and I regularly hear and I'm sure members regularly hear about the availability of medicines and the different jurisdictions Scotland being one of them of course and there's quite a variety and approach to which medicines are available in which countries are licensed and so on and so forth is there any thinking does anyone know within Europe to try to standardise this in any kind of way so that people throughout Europe even for example couldn't have the same kind of equality of access to licensed and approved medicines that might be available because you hear about people scanning the internet for this drug or that drug and you can buy that drug over the internet and that's probably not the best way to do this kind of thing so I just thought and flag this up because it's a really important topic for people out there and if the European Union is doing something on that on that area then it might be something that's worth picking up at the committee at a future date we did some previous work a while back on cross-border healthcare which seems that would be a logical extension to that so we'll do some research on that and come back okay, Alec Rowley sorry, convener for me to come back see on the brief here the pensions and the fact that contrary to expectations the proposal maintains the claim on the cross-border pension will be fully funded at all times have we previously done any work on that in the committee or is it possible to get a more detailed brief of what that actually means in terms obviously to come on independent state what would it mean for people in Scotland who have these pensions Jamie, beat you to the crunch on that one I didn't ask exactly that question exactly that question both the clerks are going to do some research on that and come back to us on it okay, anything else? happy to make the Brussels bulletin available to other committees will we alert the health committee in particular about the health issues the medicines okay if you're happy to do that okay, thank you very much agenda item 3, we have agreed to take him private so we now move into private