 Wrth gwrs, mae ein debyg o Morheigol 1-5261 o oedden nhw yn yfel ein graif iawn sgwlad am ddysgu o gael a yn ymlaen nhw'n ddylch ni fel hwnnw o'n ddylch! Rhaid i amgylcheddol i chi ffluio gwaith i ddalunau, ond rydw i'n bryddu cyfnodol i fod yn blaen. Fel gweithreffaeth y fflufio ar gyfer sgwlad y mae'n rhaid chi'n dderefu i gael i fod yn pwg. I now call on Ian Gray to open the debate. Mr Gray, you have seven minutes or thereby please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I was asked to lodge this motion today by one of my constituents, Heather Cameron, who was one of the leading action 2015 ambassadors. Heather Cameron comes from Dunbar Grammar School, and throughout last year in her ambassadorial role campaigned tirelessly to promote a commitment to and understanding of Scotland's role in meeting the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN at the 70th regular session of the General Assembly in New York last September. Those goals commit members to the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, and I welcome Heather and her classmates to Parliament this afternoon. Heather was one of 15, 15-year-old ambassadors who helped in the UK's launch of action 2015 in London, meeting with politicians including Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, but also delivering a petition to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street in a campaign launch that mirrored similar launches of action 2015 by young people all over the world. Heather organised a light the way march in East Lothian with fellow Dunbar Grammar School pupils and local community leaders. That took place on the eve of the UN summit meeting discussing the development goals as part of a final call for commitment from politicians to support the goals. Then Heather met with Kezia Dugdale towards the end of last year to ask for Parliament to consider a motion such as we do this afternoon. I have always been proud of the United Kingdom's significant contribution to global aid in supporting those around the world who need our support the most. Britain is a significant contributor, and last year became the first country in the G7 to honour its commitment to ring fence 0.7 per cent of gross national income for foreign aid. Through successive UK Government support for the millennium development goals, the predecessor goals from the UN, we know that we have today 17,000 fewer children dying for reasons of poverty. Nine out of 10 children in developing countries now attend primary school, which is a significant improvement in education globally. However, it is still unacceptable that more than 1 billion people still live on $1.25 a day or less. That is not just about Government. In fact, in some ways it is not about Government at all. Many years ago, I worked as a teacher in Mozambican. For 12 years, too, I worked for Oxfam. In those jobs, I have seen the impact of poverty through war, drought, famine, dictatorship and even genocide in countries as far apart as Cambodia, Chile, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. The thing that I learned was that no matter how difficult the circumstances, even in situations where I confess that I would have given up long before, you will always find people who will work together in order to find a way through to improve lives for themselves, their families, their communities and their countries. It is they who will deliver the Sustainable Development Goals. Our obligation is to support them individually in government and in international bodies such as the UN. That is the importance of the UK budget and the Scottish Government Development programme in countries such as Malawi. Presiding Officer, this problem is neither small nor far away. Sustainable Goal 1 is to end poverty in all its forms everywhere. I know that Heather herself is passionate about explaining to people that that means ending poverty here, too. After all, one in five children in Scotland live in poverty. Tens of thousands of our fellow citizens depend on food banks, and a third of our households are fuel poor. When I worked all those years ago in Mozambique in a rural school, young people from all over that country came to school and lived in the most basic of conditions in spite of war and famine and why, because they believed that education was their route out of poverty. That is a theme that runs through the Sustainable Development Goals, and it is true here in Scotland as it is anywhere in the world. The most shameful of the statistics that we know of Scotland about poverty is that it is still the case that your success at school will depend more on how much your parents earn than any other factor—your talent, how hard you work or which school you go to. That is why, across this chamber, we agree that that attainment gap in our schools must be closed, because that is the greatest single step that we can take to ending poverty and delivering those sustainable development goals here in Scotland. In closing, I want to draw attention to another theme that runs through the Sustainable Development Goals. That is summed up in the goal that calls for urgent action to combat climate change. Around the world, we see the impact of climate change be that in drought or, indeed, in flood. We even see it in changing weather patterns here, which has its own impact on agriculture around our own country. I think that it is appropriate to draw attention to that, because it was, of course, a previous pupil from long ago in Dunbar's schools—one John Muir—who was the very first to recognise and understand that, to end the impoverishing of humanity, it is necessary also to end the impoverishing of nature. I think that John Muir would approve of the sustainable development goals. I am sure that he would be proud of Heather and her classmates from his home town of Dunbar. Many thanks. I now call on Kenneth Gibson to be followed by Kezia Dugdale. Thank you, Presiding Officer. First, I thank Ian Gray for lodging this motion and securing this debate, which will undoubtedly help to raise more awareness of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Of course, exchanges in this chamber often revolve around details of very specific policy issues, and it makes a welcome change to take a step back and look at the much bigger picture elsewhere. I am pleased to speak in a debate that takes us back to what has motivated many of us in this Parliament to become involved in politics, even in a small way to make the world a better place. When the United Nations set its eight millennium goals 16 years ago, it directed its efforts to eradicating extreme poverty, or at least by 2015 significantly reducing it across the world. The millennium development goals rightly focused on matters such as education, maternal health, reducing child mortality and improving debt sustainability as separate goals alongside eradicating extreme poverty. I believe that this more holistic approach has contributed massively to its relative success. I say relative because, as Ian Gray pointed out, despite the enormous progress that has been made, there is, of course, still a long way to go. Of course, as we know, civil war and anarchy in countries at the moment such as Libya, Syria and Yemen make it increasingly difficult for these countries to sustain the development progress that they had already made and, indeed, they are slipping backwards. To truly empower people's lives, it takes much more than simply keeping them alive. The key to sustainable improvement is peace and development. Outcomes described in the millennium development goals report 2015, which struck with me most, is that the number of out-of-school children of primary school age worldwide has nearly halved during the programme, from £100 million in 2000 to an estimated £57 million last year. That was achieved at the same time as a significant decline in the number of people living in extreme poverty from £1.9 billion in 1990 to £836 million in 2015. As Ian Gray pointed out, almost a billion people in extreme poverty is still horrific in this day and age. People desperately trying to eek out a daily existence in a world that has more than enough to go round. Millennium development goals have, of course, now been succeeded by the all-encompassing 17 sustainable development goals. I am proud that the Scottish Government takes its role in this extremely seriously and is determined to be at the forefront of achieving those new goals. Last July, Scotland received praise for being one of the first countries in the world to sign up to the UN's sustainable development goals. That time, with Scotland's own sustainable development programmes, which were already in place, such as the national performance framework and Scotland's national action plan on human rights, it has allowed Scotland to hit the ground running when it comes to implementing, measuring and reporting progress. Much of the support that Scotland provides for developing countries is in Malawi, a country that many people have a strong emotional attachment to in Scotland, given their historical connections with that country. The delivery of objectives and outcomes set out in the national performance framework is one of the key priorities in the Scottish Government's proposed budget for next year. When it comes to the budget for Europe and external affairs, it also contains a commitment to continue working across ministerial portfolios to support international aims, including on water management, climate justice, the UN's sustainable energy for all initiative and the UN's sustainable development goals. However, it is important, as Ian Gray has already done so, to acknowledge that poverty is not just beyond our shores but that we have poverty not to the same degree but certainly consistently within Scotland. That is why I am pleased that the sustainable development goals applied to all countries, including Scotland where the millennium development goals were strictly focused on development countries. We have inequality and poverty, and I know that addressing that remains a priority for the Scottish Government. There is much more work, of course, to be done in meeting sustainable development goals internationally and here in Scotland, Presiding Officer, but I am hopeful that Governments, organisations and individuals such as Heather Cameron will continue to work towards those goals so that in 2030 we can look back at an even more successful campaign than the millennium development goals that have been achieved. Iain Gray congratulates me on securing the debate. I also welcome Dumbarr Grammar to the chamber. I also thank Save the Children for providing a briefing for the debate. I am here today because, bluntly, Heather Cameron asked me to. She is such a persuasive young individual that I am defying what is, in a way, a parliamentary convention that leaders of parties come and participate in members' debates, and it is a pleasure to do so. I wanted to share with you how I met Heather Cameron. When I first became leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, we organised a competition called My Scotland. We wrote to every S5 and S6 people in Scotland and invited them to take part in an essay competition to share their vision for the future of Scotland, whether that be 10, 15 or 20 years. Heather Cameron made the final of that competition by writing an essay about how important the sustainable millennium goals were, not just to Scotland but to other countries around the world. It was that passion and dedication that brought her to our attention. The 10 finalists of that competition all came together one day and were put through a number of training exercises. They were exposed to some first-class leading journalists here in Scotland, including Lindsay McIntosh from The Times and Patrick McGuire from Thomson Solicitors, who helped each one of the finalists to develop their ideas, develop their campaigning abilities to come up with new ways to communicate what they believe in and what they stand for. Heather's talents shone through on that particular occasion. I wanted to commend Heather Cameron for the work that she has done, not just to highlight the work of Action 2015 and to do everything that she has done around leading marches through Dunbar, but never giving up on making the case on a day-to-day basis as to why that is so important. If I could refer you to the UN Sustainable Development Goals in detail, there are 17 in total, and I'm not going to go through them all, but three in particular stand out for me, to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls, and to promote sustained, inclusive, sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all. I know that many of us in the chamber stand for all of those things. I was reflecting in preparation for today's debate about my own views on gender equality and how important that is to my own politics. I've stood many a time in this chamber and talked about the need to progress gender equality, because if we don't do that, we will lock women and girls out of the jobs of the future and lock them into low-paid, low-skilled work. It's very important that we tackle that here in Scotland, but it has to be set against the context that Ian Gray outlined in his opening remarks about the circumstances that women and girls find themselves in in so many countries around the world, where they are still fighting for the right to go to school. That is what is so important about the work that Heather Cameron is doing and that all of the ambassadors involved in action 2015 are taking part in on a daily basis. On that note, it's a pleasure to participate in this debate, and I wish Heather and all her colegies the very best with the campaign ahead. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I would like to thank Ian Gray for what I thought was an absolutely excellent speech. I would probably like to thank Heather Cameron for securing this debate. I had my own debate on millennium development goals 4 and 5 on International Midwives' Day in 2009, which called for more to be done to tackle infant mortality and poor maternal health, both in Scotland and overseas. I also spoke on the issue of millennium development goals in members' business by Labour's Desmond Nulty back in 2005. As Ian Gray said, the millennium development goals are proving that when the international community works together, we can tackle some of the world's most pressing problems. I would like to put on the record that my party would fully agree that education is without any shadow of doubt the route out of poverty. I want to acknowledge at Westminster that the Government has taken a leading role on the post-2015 framework, working alongside other UN member states, securing international agreement on its ambitious and compelling sustainable development goals, centred on eradicating poverty. The United Kingdom was the second-largest OECD donor of overseas development aid in 2014 spending £11.7 billion, which was an increase of £2.6 billion on the previous year. In fact, the foreign aid programme even drew praise from the SNP at Westminster. Marie Black was apparently on a visit to Kenya last week, and her quote is, Britain is one of the better countries in terms of commitment to foreign aid. Having seen the difference that makes to people's lives, I think that it is highly important that we maintain this level of support. However, the UK has enshrined, as Ian Gray said, the 0.7 per cent commitment to overseas development aid in law when the international development bill received royal assent in March last year. Ian Gray has deservedly congratulated the work of Heather Cameron, and I have no doubt that she would not have been as successful if it was not for the support of Dunbar grammar school. However, as an MSP for the Highlands and Islands, I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the pupils of Forrest academy in Marie, whose human rights day petition I signed last week and, among other things, they are campaigning for the right to education of the 57 million children worldwide who have no access to education. When I looked back at Millennium Development Goal 5, which is to support pregnant women through birth and reduce infant mortality, more than a million children are left without mothers due to maternal death, and 20 million women experience potentially fatal complications during child birth. In 2005, in eastern Africa, only 34 per cent of births were attended by skilled health attendants. Millennium Goal 5 set the target to reduce maternal mortality by 75 per cent and to achieve universal access to reproductive health by 2014-15. The conclusion is that progress has been made, but it has been too slow to achieve all the goals. Nonetheless, I think that we should acknowledge the progress. Fewer children under 5 are dying from preventable causes, but given that around 800 women die from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications around the world every day, we also need to be aware of the campaign to end fistula. I am sorry that Richard Simpson is not in the chamber because he is hugely supportive of the issue. Fistula is a rupture in the birth canal that occurs during prolonged, obstructed labour, and it leaves women in continent, isolated, socially excluded and ashamed. For every woman who dies of maternity-related causes, it is estimated that at least 20 women experience maternal morbidity, one of the most severe forms of which is obstetric fistula. Nine out of ten fistulas can be successfully repaired, so that is also an issue that needs to be addressed. In my final minute, Presiding Officer, I would like to mark other two points of progress. One is the global measles immunisation coverage, which is now 84 per cent among children between 12 and 23 months. That has to be acknowledged. A country such as Afghanistan, the under-five mortality rate has dropped from 257 deaths for every 1,000 live births to 97. That is between 2002 and 2012. I thank Ian Gray for securing the debate and I appreciate more needs to be done. I now call Minister who is a USAF, Minister of Seven Minutes, all thereby. My thanks to Ian Gray for bringing this motion to the Parliament. My thanks to Dunbar Grammar for Heather Cameron, who I look forward to meeting, if I can, after the debate. I have not met her already and she seems like a force of nature by what everybody has already said and by her emails that I have read in my inbox just yesterday with some additional briefing. I absolutely agree with what Ian Gray and Kezia said that it is incredible to see our young people taking these initiatives forward. It gives you great hope for the future, because you can often be downcast at the scale of the challenge. However, when you have young people like Heather there are many more across the constituencies in forests and up and down Scotland, as people have already said. There are taking forward these initiatives, not being defeated by the scales of the challenges, giving hope where often there is not much hope at all. It is with that that actually drives us, because if Heather had not approached Kezia, had not approached Ian, then who knows whether we would be discussing the sustainable development goals and the global goals at all. Credits are absolutely where credit is due. Who knows, she may be a future politician in the making. That was meant as a compliment, by the way, not as an insult, as some might perceive it. It is a pleasure to be talking about the sustainable development goals. I was struck by what Kenny Gibson said at the very opening sentences of his remarks, where he said that this is why most of us got into politics in some way, shape or form, and he is absolutely right. If all of us cast our mind back to when that seed was planted in our head about entering front-line politics, whether it was as a councillor, as an MP, as an MSP, whatever position it was, we would have gone back home and talked to our partners about it, our friends about it, our family about it. We would have reflected on it internally, of course, but ultimately we are sure that all of us that are here would have chosen to do it because we wanted to make the world a better place, whether it was here in Scotland or whether it was the world at large. That is a good reminder that we can get lost in the debates and the robust debates that we have in this Parliament, often over things that are, of course, very important but not quite on the same scale as the global challenges that the global goals face to take on. The point has been made by everybody around the chamber, but it is worth re-emphasising and reiterating that the global goals are unique, not just in the goals themselves, but by the fact that they apply to all countries across the world. Different from the millennium development goals, they are predecessors that just apply to the developing world and to the countries across the world. That is exceptionally important because of the fact that we have poverty and inequality in Scotland that we must challenge. Therefore, from the Scottish Government, I was delighted that, in the summer of 2015, the First Minister, one of the first leaders across Europe to commit herself inviting in an article that she wrote for the Sunday Herald, that we would be most definitely incorporating the sustainable development goals within our national economic strategies and so on and so forth. There is work to be done on that. How do we do that? We are already working in regard to our national performance framework to see how we can incorporate that within our own legislation and practices in Government. I also want to touch on a couple of the goals. I will not go through all 17 of them, but there are goals that we are helping already to assist with and to take on and to challenge through the Scottish Government's international development fund. I would not have been surprised—I should seem to be surprised when Mary Black was praiseworthy of the UK Government's efforts. I do not think that I have been anything other than effusive in my praise of the work that differed. Yes, I have some differences in terms of often how it is carried out, but it is incidental, really, in the grand picture. I think that the UK has a good record and successive UK Governments have had a good record when it comes to their commitments on international development. We should support them absolutely where we can. We should also be very proud of the NGOs, the schools and the public agencies that do international development work. Regardless of how small that might seem in scale, the impact is undoubtedly huge, and we should be very proud of that. In terms of the work that we are doing in Scotland, we have a £9 million international development fund that is spread over seven countries, and Malawi is probably the primary relationship because of those people-to-people links that exist. We do work alongside in tackling a number of the goals that are there. Goal 5—people have already spoken about achieving gender equality. It is hugely important. It is important, because all of us recognise that we get more bang for a development buck if we are helping to tackle and reduce the inequality gap between men and women. We know that if you educate a man, you educate a single individual, you educate a woman, the chances are that you educate an entire family and an entire nation as a result of that. There is a lot of work to be done on reducing gender inequality, and we are committed through our international development fund to do that. Ian Gray touched on climate energy, climate justice and climate change. Goals 7 and 13 are particularly pertinent to those. I would like to reiterate that, from a Scottish Government perspective, we are very committed to ensuring that we tackle climate change and take on the issue of climate justice. I have been to Malawi a couple of times and I have been struck by what a difference renewable energy and sustainable energy can make to people's everyday lives. Whether it was the women or the project that I viewed where they were providing micro hydroelectric from the Melangey mountains right down to villages in that area whereby a woman was the first in our village to give birth in a room that had a light in it—incredible. That was in 2014, the 2013 visit. Or more recently, when I visited villages in Malawi, where instead of having a paraffin or kerosene lamp, people had this sustainable solar panel-lit energy-efficient light bulb, which meant that the children could study for longer and there was no smoke inhalation. I was struck by how small things can actually make a huge, huge impact. Lastly, I want to end on the two points. Going back to Heather Cameron and the people at Dunbar, it is so important that we teach our young people about the challenges that the world faces. Any country can lose itself from being too insular Scotland is not immune to that, so we have to ensure that we teach our young people about the challenges that exist out in the world. We can do that through the Crickham for Excellence, which has global citizenship as one of the modules. I have seen the development education centres in action teaching our teachers on how you can make an impact through that module, but we have to because I too often pick up some newspapers, I too often read blog posts, I too often look at Twitter posts, Facebook posts, that tell me why and ask me why we are giving money to other countries across the world that are suffering when we have challenges here. We have to communicate to our young people why it is important that we continue to tackle some of those issues. The very last point that I want to make is one that I thought was very well made by an excellent contribution by Ian Gray when he spoke about his own experiences and he made the point that we should never lose hope. I think that that is a really important point. I, like many other members here, watch a news and a constant news cycle and it would be easy with all the challenges that the world faces to commit ourselves into a downward spiral, but Ian Gray is absolutely correct that so long as we have good people and there are more good people that outweigh the band people, as long as we have people there like Heather, like many others, who are willing to always stand up against injustice, stand up for humanity and for compassion, then we do not need to be in a downward spiral. They will always be hope and they will always be goodness. I thought that that was a great point and very well made and probably a good point to end on. My thanks again to Ian Gray for bringing that motion, but my thanks especially to Heather Cameron and Dunbar grammar and all the good people across Scotland and beyond who are doing work to help to promote the global goals, wherever they may be. I thank you all for taking part in this important debate and I now suspend this meeting of Parliament until 2 o'clock.