International Development Inquiry
Our final agenda item is evidence taking from our second panel of witnesses in our inquiry into international development. Although we kicked off the process last week, we had a round-table discussion on the subject some time ago, at which at least one of today's witnesses was present.
I welcome to the meeting Dr Neil Thin from the University of Edinburgh, Dr Mozammel Huq and Professor John Struthers from the Scotland study group of the Development Studies Association, Professor John Briggs of the University of Glasgow's centre for international development and Dr Maurizio Carbone from the University of Glasgow. You make a highly distinguished panel and we are very pleased that you have come to give evidence to us.
Let us move straight to questions. I will get the ball rolling with a general one. Does the panel have a view on how a Scottish international development policy can maximise what it can achieve, given what we recognise is its limited budget? We will let Professor Struthers start as he has been here before and so is used to it.
Professor John Struthers (Development Studies Association):
I feel compelled to open on this because I have been here before. The issue that came up when I was here in October that should probably exercise the committee is the degree of focus that the strategy has. Given the limited nature of the budget, the issue will be whether you focus on a particular geographical area, a particular set of themes or do both to some extent. As people are aware, the Parliament has had a number of years' contact with Malawi. One of the questions that came up the last time I gave evidence on this is whether we should continue to focus the bulk of the funds on Malawi.
The other issues that I will raise concern the nature of the various stakeholders' involvement. We represent the academic community. At the previous committee meeting, you had other stakeholders, particularly non-governmental organisations. The Development Studies Association is not an advocacy group; it is essentially a research body, as I think we made clear in our written submission to the committee. That is probably also true of the other contributors.
I suggest that the main question on the overall thrust of the policy is whether there will be a geographical focus and/or a thematic focus. In the notes that you sent us for the meeting, you suggested that a geographical focus and a thematic focus are two of the key issues. There is a suggestion that there might be a thematic focus on education, health or civil governance. There should be a thematic focus, but I do not have a strong view on a geographical focus. That may come out as the discussion unfolds.
This is a good opportunity to let all the witnesses make an opening statement on their view on that general question. We will start with Dr Thin and go round the rest of the witnesses.
Dr Neil Thin (University of Edinburgh):
Thank you for the chance to come back and talk to you again.
We all have before us the summaries of the submissions from a range of stakeholders. They indicate strong consensus in a lot of areas. Before we get into the content of those submissions—most of which I have strong sympathies with and most of which echo the sentiments that were expressed at the meeting that I was at in August—I will make one point about stakeholder representation.
John Struthers pointed out that you are hearing from academics, not the full range of stakeholders. Although the submissions represent quite a healthy range of organisations, I was a little disappointed that there is so little representation beyond civil society organisations. In most of the discussions that I have had since the policy was first devised three years ago, the people to whom I have talked have agreed in principle that, if there is to be a strategy or policy, it needs to get beyond small projects and civil society. Although the stakeholder submissions are sensible and show consensus, they do not reflect strongly enough Scotland's strengths in business and finance, which, as we must not forget, have a far bigger impact on poverty and world development than charitable organisations.
The other background point that we should bear in mind is that, in financial terms, the budget is a small fraction—perhaps a tenth of 1 per cent—of the United Kingdom aid budget. We all know that but must not forget it. We need to have due humility when we think about what can be achieved, so focus is crucial.
Dr Mozammel Huq (Development Studies Association):
As John Struthers and Neil Thin have mentioned, a few things are important: the geographical focus and the nature of the thematic focus. With John and a few others, I have been closely involved in developing studies north of the border. North of the border, our objective will obviously be to raise the Scottish profile.
Until now, the geographic focus has been on sub-Saharan Africa—on Malawi, to be exact. I come originally from Bangladesh, which had a connection with Dundee because of tea; through James Finlay, the tea in Bangladesh is of Scottish origin. If the focus is not taken out of Malawi, there will be concern, but members will discuss that once the budget has been raised—it is small, as Neil Thin said.
On the thematic focus, it is nice that the Parliament has extended its support to people like us. In our submission, we have listed suggestions. Can we play a part in helping bright, poor students from third-world countries? Can we involve our Scottish academics in playing roles and making presentations at national and international conferences? Through established links with other countries, can Scotland play a role and raise the Scottish profile? I am sure that the committee will consider that in reaching its conclusions.
Professor John Briggs (University of Glasgow):
The point has been made about focus, focus, focus. I am sure that members are more than aware of that. On the two questions—they raise the two key issues—we need to be careful about the thematic focus. I always worry that, in international development, the thematic agenda is too often defined from up here in the north. Rather than our saying that the focus is on health, the environment or governance, much greater dialogue is needed with partners in the global south. In my experience, too much of development policy has been defined in the north, so the right questions have not always been asked of recipient countries.
If we proceeded in the way that I suggest, that would raise the question of where the target countries are. I do much work in Malawi and Rwanda. Those countries are relatively small and feel comfortable. It has really intrigued me when people have told me numerous times that they feel comfortable working with partners in Scotland because of the scale issue. That is important to bear in mind, but that is not special pleading for Malawi or Rwanda—far from it. All I am doing is raising such issues.
It is interesting that, in work elsewhere in Africa—including bigger countries such as Tanzania and South Africa—when people are asked about donors and donor agencies, the Scandinavian countries, which are smaller countries, get favourable press time and again. The Department for International Development is often seen as too big a partner. With the limited budget that is available in Scotland, we can do something on such matters. We have positive press in some smaller countries.
The focus needs to be established. It needs to be on a bit more than Malawi, although we must focus on particular countries. However, the most important point is that I would like to think that the committee will think about partnerships with people in the global south and about working with them so that they identify the agenda, after which we can see how we in Scotland can help through partnerships in the university sector, the civil sector and the business sector.
Dr Maurizio Carbone (University of Glasgow):
My expertise is relations with the European Union, so I might talk about that. I am new to Scotland, so perhaps I see things differently. I understand the concentration on Malawi. I completely support the idea of a focus, considering the limited budget.
The main point that I would like to raise is the distinction, which has been made recently in the literature, between aid darlings and aid orphans. Aid darlings are countries that receive aid from many donors and that may even face issues of aid dependency and absorption capacity—whether the countries can absorb all the aid they receive. The issue is not only absorption capacity, but co-ordination. I hope that we can come back to that during our discussion.
I am new to Scotland, but I understand and support the links with Malawi because I visited Malawi when I worked for the European Commission. I evaluated the programme that was being run there by the European Union and Malawi. I would like to consider all the countries that may be aid orphans. I understand that the budget is limited, but I will concentrate on countries that receive much less aid—the forgotten states. I hope that we can return to that, too.
My second point is about the thematic agenda. I see that it includes health and education. That is fine, but just as there are aid darlings and aid orphans, there are sector darlings and sector orphans. The same principle applies. I would like to ask whether health and education are the primary concerns or whether Scotland has a comparative advantage in other sectors—maybe in agriculture or rural development—that would be useful if it could be exploited through the transfer of knowledge and know-how. I support strongly what John Briggs said about partnership. Often, the development paradigm between north and south may be different.
I will stop there, but I would like to come back in during the discussion.
Okay. Thank you. Those were all useful opening statements.
You have all expressed a view on the geographic focus. I want to widen the discussion a little. With a limited budget, we must direct resources clearly. The committee has been taking evidence on that. Several submissions have highlighted the value of links—community to community or school to school—between organisations in Scotland and organisations in southern countries. Others have expressed concerns that those links do not bring equal benefits to both communities. What is the panel's view on such links? We have heard about projects that link schools that are not just about raising awareness, but have practical implications through the installation of water supplies and so on. Does the panel feel that such links are appropriate? Does any panel member have personal experience of that kind of school or community link?
As with all questions, you can all choose to answer if you wish, but if you choose not to answer that is equally acceptable.
I do not have any direct experience of school-to-school links, but that is a good level at which to establish community links. The little experience that I have convinces me that there is a high degree of commitment and enthusiasm at that level. School children and teachers are often very committed to their local communities and there is an excellent opportunity through the curriculum, especially at secondary school level, to incorporate the sort of infrastructure developments that you are talking about—for example the provision of water, which is an important issue for us all at the moment. If you were looking for a vehicle through which to allocate at least some of the budget, that would be a highly appropriate thing to do.
I was interested to hear Dr Thin's opening remarks about the need to look beyond small projects and civil society. I was going to ask what he meant by that, but he then expanded a little on the involvement of business and finance. How should business and finance get involved? What changes do we need to make to the Scottish Government's international strategy to encourage the business and financial sectors to get involved?
It comes back to how we understand focus. Geographical focus is one thing, but there are two primary issues that we must bear in mind. First, what is Scotland's comparative advantage in improving conditions around the world, specifically in reducing poverty? Secondly, what is the Scottish Parliament's and the Scottish Government's comparative advantage, through the Government's international policy, in making Scottish organisations link up better so that they can work better in the south?
I can provide no convenient soundbites or examples of exactly how a wider range of organisations can be involved, but the greatest good that the policy could do would be to facilitate partnerships that ought to, but do not, exist. One idea would be for the strategy to link up big, Scotland-based financial institutions that have an impact on poverty in the south with civil society organisations in Scotland and, through them, grass-roots organisations in poorer countries. That would improve financial institutions' understanding of the nature of their impact and enable them to make changes. Such changes would make a much bigger difference than small projects can make and would have an impact far beyond the impact that a £9 million per year scheme can generate.
We can maximise impact by establishing new kinds of partnerships and links between organisations that specialise in poverty reduction at grass-roots level and big organisations that work at a global level and have much more money and power. Those organisations might include military organisations. In Afghanistan, the military exerts tremendous influence and is trying to understand how it can do better by establishing links with civil society organisations. There is a range of possibilities, but when we are looking at the strategy we must not forget that the really big players—the organisations that have most impact on world poverty—are businesses, trading organisations, financial organisations, the military, crime prevention organisations and scientific organisations. Aid-based and grass-roots level organisations have relevant expertise, but they are not the whole story.
I strongly support those comments. My point relates not to Scotland specifically, but to the UK in general. Every year, the Centre for Global Development publishes a report on how the different donor countries rank in their commitment to international development. That commitment includes a number of issues besides aid. Scotland is included in the findings for the UK, which ranks very high on promoting investment abroad but very low on supporting the transfer of new technologies. I do not know whether the issue falls within the Scottish Parliament's remit, but I strongly encourage the committee to take action in this area. The UK ranks 18th out of 23 countries on transfer of new technologies, but first on promoting investment. We could benefit from action by the Scottish Parliament in support of technology transfer.
I strongly support Dr Thin's proposal to involve business and finance. I made a similar point at the meeting that I attended on 2 October. Dr Thin is right to say that we have some big companies, especially in the financial sector, but also in infrastructure sectors such as water.
With a limited budget, how do we go about linking our business community with the needs of developing countries? The answer is that that will happen anyway to some extent because companies want to trade where there are opportunities. We do not want to talk only about Africa, not least because Dr Huq is beside me and he comes from Bangladesh. I agree that we should not focus exclusively on Africa, but if we think about Africa for a moment, the rate of economic growth there was about 5.5 per cent last year. That is more than twice the rate that we achieved in Britain. There is potential for Scottish or British companies to trade more effectively with the growth sectors in African economies.
One way in which to encourage trade is to hold an annual investment forum with a focus on developing countries. I have a little experience of that through a tenuous link with an organisation in Switzerland called the Swiss Organisation for Facilitating Investments. The Swiss Government puts a tremendous amount of money into practical, business-oriented forms of development. We do not often think of Switzerland in that context, but it is very development oriented. My experience of that came about serendipitously because of my role as an external examiner for a course that Napier University established with SOFI. Among many other things, SOFI organises several investment fora each year and invites businesspeople from the developing world to attend them. The number of established business links that come from that is high. We could think about doing the same thing in Scotland, perhaps on a smaller scale.
I support the emphasis on business links. There are other priorities for the strategy, not least community links, which have been mentioned. Those priorities are not mutually exclusive, however, because when we establish good business links, they have beneficial repercussions for communities.
I strongly support the idea that at least part of the strategy should involve business communities. We need to do a bit more work on how to deliver that in a practical way.
We need to bring in some players from the business sector and encourage some involvement from the non-governmental organisation sector. I was on the board of the Network of International Development Organisations in Scotland for a number of years. Here in Scotland, we have Lloyds TSB Scotland, which plays a role, but we have not been able to get the Royal Bank of Scotland or HBOS closely involved. Ireland is a small country but it is making a major impact internationally. In an age of globalisation, we in Scotland have an opportunity to do that.
I agree that if we do not extend the geographical focus, we will miss an important opportunity. Cairn Energy is very active in Bangladesh, which needs the support. We have a major product such as Robert Burns. Can we make him widely popular all over the world? I pick up Neil Thin's point about having a competitive advantage.
Scotland's higher education sector also can play an important part. John Struthers and I are closely involved in the Development Studies Association, and we in higher education should continue to play our part.
Thank you. Just to reassure you, we will have a panel of witnesses from business.
I agree with what John Struthers and Dr Huq said, but I want to probe them a little more. John Struthers rightly said that the overall continental growth rate in Africa last year was about 5.5 per cent, but there were wide divergences in the growth rates of different countries. For example, the growth rate of Nigeria is substantially greater than that of Chad. Perhaps we should look at countries such as Nigeria in terms of trade opportunities, as Dr Huq suggested.
Should we look at countries such as Malawi in the same way, or become involved in projects—one project will see the effective duplication, with private sector support, of the Prince's Scottish Youth Business Trust in Malawi—given that the total gross domestic product of Malawi is less than the total budget of Scottish Enterprise?
I accept the point about the need to get the business community involved, but surely we have to go further than that. Should we not be asking which way is the best way in which to involve the business community in different countries or in different sectors in those countries? Within the overall framework of trying to get the business community involved, where should our priorities lie? Should we be looking to set up initiatives such as the one to which I referred in Malawi—in effect, a Malawian version of the PSYBT—or should we be looking to trade or something else?
Your point about the problems that we face in choosing countries that we want to focus on is a good one. It leads me to qualify what I said earlier about the average rate of economic growth in Africa which, as you rightly said, is heavily dominated by the big economies, and not least by the South African economy.
I return to a point that Professor Briggs made on what may be called the forgotten states. With more than 120 million people, Nigeria has a huge economy and—
And if it was better organised, Nigeria could make a much more substantial contribution to the development of the rest of Africa.
The point is an interesting one, but the answer is not simply either/or. In talking about trying to promote trade between Scotland and African economies, we should be looking not at the high-growth economies, but the medium-sized economies that show potential for growth. The rate of economic growth in a country such as Nigeria is assured, given that it is a major oil producer. Nigeria has experienced huge increases in its oil revenues, but the question about how it will use those revenues remains. Civil governance comes into play in that regard.
A number of African economies are in the middle-ranking position. I am thinking of West African countries such as Ghana and Sierra Leone. It is often the case that those countries have strong links with Scotland, just as Malawi has. The links were formed through historical connections such as church and other commitments that were made over centuries. Those links give us something on which to build.
We need to focus on countries that are in that middle-ranking position and not the Nigerias of this world. I am not saying that we should not interact with Nigeria, but that we should take a slightly different focus in our links with that country. It may be slightly controversial to suggest this, but we should look at countries that have had a significant period of political stability. Doing so would enable us to build on what is on the ground, politically and socially. If the right institutions are in place, we have a good starting point for the work that we do. If we were to hold a big investment forum along the lines that we discussed earlier, the Nigerias of this world would come along—indeed, they could fund it themselves.
Mr Neil is absolutely right: unfortunately, it is inevitable that some countries will miss out on the opportunities that we are discussing. Our limited budget means that we will have to be selective in what we do.
It is obvious from the evidence that we took last week that some people want us to concentrate exclusively on Malawi—we can understand why—whereas other people think that we should focus on Malawi but, at the same time, spread our wings. There appears to be consensus so far that, if we spread our wings, it should be to other parts of sub-Saharan Africa—particularly to those countries that are adjacent to Malawi—rather than northern parts of Africa, central America, Latin America or Asia. We have covered the question whether or not we should focus. If we spread our wings, should we do so only to sub-Saharan Africa and the countries that are adjacent to Malawi? Does anyone have strong feelings that we should try to spread our wings to other continents?
I know that Dr Huq is not prejudiced on the matter.
Yes I am, coming from Asia. We have already become involved in Malawi. However, there is something that I find disturbing. I have made Scotland my home; my two children were born and brought up here. Some of you might not like this approach—I recall the lectures that John Struthers and I gave at the request of Des Browne two years ago—but China does not need any more aid, and India is coming out a bit. Even my poor Bangladesh will not need it in 10 or 20 years' time. However, if we do not play any role in those countries, Scotland will fail to make any impact.
That is my point. Is our role in those countries already one of trade rather than aid, whereas our role in the sub-Sahara very much emphasises aid—and is not yet at a stage when we can shift towards trade?
The two are interlinked. I point out the Scottish tea connection, and the jute connection through Dundee. Cairn Energy is now playing a role. I would say that there are two roles, one of which is trade. Some big players are involved, including the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Bank of Scotland. They can come on to the international aid scene; they can get involved.
The geographical focus is extremely important. As you suggested, there is probably bias on my part—and I am involved with some non-governmental organisations. It would be unfortunate if the geographical focus was not widely extended.
Alex Neil asked where we should spread our wings to. As far as the geographical spread is concerned, I will not put my head on the block and suggest that you should do exactly this or that. However, I will say that the spread of funds is a non-issue. Of course that matters to one or two organisations, which may or may not benefit, but the spread of funds is not really the issue. Rather, the issue is the spread of attention and the reason why we spread our attention. If you focus your attention on direct poverty alleviation through grass-roots organisations, it will be drawn to the poorest countries of the world, where trade and scientific links—and bilateral aid, in some cases—are not working.
However, if you see your agenda as one of enhancing Scotland's sense of global social responsibility, improving how we contribute to social justice, reducing the harm that we might be doing, reducing our contributions to global social injustice, and improving our understanding of our environmental responsibilities beyond Scotland's borders, those issues will command our attention. Those issues, which are morally compelling, are much bigger and more important than the direct alleviation of the symptoms of poverty.
We might well argue that there is not much point in having aid partnerships with India and China although, between them, they have far more poor people than sub-Saharan Africa does. India and China are also worthy of our attention because we can forge partnerships with them that really matter and make a difference on a world scale. In considering the geographical focus, we should consider not the spread of funds but the spread of our attention and of our partnerships.
The budget is an issue, as is the business side. On trade, Mr Neil spoke about focus. I will come back to that.
As has been said, if you strip South Africa out of Africa, you will see that the growth rates are a little more modest—except among one or two of the so-called African leopards, or whatever the phrase is that people are using these days. Scotland has had contacts with Malawi at governmental level over the past few years, and if you talk to Malawians, or people from a significant number of other countries, you will learn that trade is indeed an answer to many of their problems—but trade of what?
I agree with my colleagues that greater global visibility for Scotland would be fine. We all have to strive for that, especially at Scottish national level. However, I am concerned that, if our efforts become too diluted, we will not achieve that visibility. I support the notion of having a fairly contained regional focus, in order to try to make a difference, in terms of the alleviation of poverty, to a small number of countries. How that could be done is clearly for the committee to discuss.
People in DFID are incredibly jealous. They have said to me that we get a great bang for our bucks in Scotland. Our relatively modest international budget—even more modest than the one that we are talking about now—has achieved great publicity compared with DFID's enormous budget. I would love Scotland to work on a big international scale, but realistically we have to be more modest.
One thing that you learn quickly on this committee is that, if you do not put up your hand early in the meeting, the question that you were going to ask has already been answered by a number of speakers. In response to Iain Smith right at the start, Dr Thin spoke about a point that I was going to raise. However, coming back closer to what we do in Scotland, can the witnesses suggest ways in which we can innovate to maximise the understanding of international development issues? How can we promote more widely the aims and achievements of policy on international development?
Those questions raise several issues around raising awareness of international development, which should be an objective of the strategy. As Professor Briggs hinted, it would not cost all that much money.
A part can be played by the existing structures and organisations in Scotland, not least by those in the academic world. In preparing for today's meeting and the meeting last October, I did quite a bit of research into the contributions of Scottish universities. One of the great things about Scotland is that the universities co-operate with one another very well. That happens partly through the work of the Development Studies Association but also through the new Glasgow centre for international development and other institutions in Scotland. A great deal of awareness raising is going on anyway, particularly at university level.
Even if the Scottish Government did not have its strategy, the work would continue. That manifests itself in, for example, the fact that record numbers of students are coming to Scotland. As I think I mentioned the previous time I came to the committee, that has been helped by the fresh talent initiative, which allows students to stay in Scotland for two years after completing their masters degree. That was a very good initiative by the then Scottish Executive. We see the benefits in our university, and I am sure that others see the benefits in their universities, too.
To some extent, that links in with the business community. Raising awareness and being innovative are a vital part of the strategy. That would not necessarily take up a large share of your budget, partly because a lot of the work is going on anyway in universities and other places. Being innovative in that comes down to highlighting the good practice in countries such as Malawi. Excellent links already exist.
Are other countries in the EU developing international development policies and projects? Are there ideas there for how you might innovate on regional awareness, or are we on the cusp of the issue?
Someone mentioned the Scandinavians and Ireland in that regard. There is a lot of good practice in other countries, and we and the committee can learn from that. As far as aid programmes are concerned, people quite often laud the Scandinavian model. The Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation is often held up as a model, although those of us who do research on the issue may question how good a model that is. Quite a significant degree of tied aid, for example, is associated with Norwegian aid. I am not criticising Norway in particular. Lessons can be learned by looking at other countries.
Dr Thin spoke about Scotland playing to its comparative strengths in education, business and finance. We have many things to contribute from our history, our education system and our business community. It would be useful for the committee to examine other countries—particularly the smaller countries, which have a similar budget to the one that is under discussion—and find out how they go about it.
I have two suggestions. Again, they are rather general, but I hope that they will come to something. First, on how we optimise the constructive innovation on development awareness, one of the more radical suggestions among the responses to that call was that the whole budget might be spent on development awareness. That would probably be rejected as a bit extreme, and perhaps selfish on the part of the organisation that suggested it, but I feel strongly that that is where we can make one of the biggest differences. How do we do that well, however?
Ten years ago, the United Kingdom in general was appalling at development awareness, despite having one of the biggest non-governmental sectors in international development. The British public were not interested. The make poverty history campaign changed all that. How do we capitalise on that and keep that extraordinary momentum going? Lots of initiatives are going on, although I suspect that in Scotland those initiatives are still rather too strongly focused on schools. The issue of the school-to-school link was raised earlier. There are lots of good things that we can do with that, but the capacity of schools in poorer countries to respond to the demand from Scotland for links is pretty stretched in most of the countries where it has been done so far.
Development awareness needs to expand more empathically into public awareness, particularly among the adult population. In the coming years, I would like more strategic targeting of organisations and of the means through which the Scottish public—as consumers, as prospective players in business and as investors—learn about international development.
The second suggestion, which is a practical thing that could be done to enhance development awareness, is the linking of international volunteering and development-related volunteering in Scotland with development awareness more generally. We have a network on that through NIDOS, which we developed in response to the Russell commission finding two years ago that volunteering should be strongly encouraged throughout the UK. Scotland has been a bit slower than England in responding to that challenge.
The countries that were mentioned a while ago as being good at international development partnerships and development awareness—Ireland and the Scandinavian countries—have much stronger histories of encouraging young people, as well as people who are at later stages in their careers, to volunteer internationally. Often, the way in which people develop a lifelong genuine and heartfelt commitment to the reduction of world poverty is through tangible personal experiences. We need to support good volunteering—not just school-to-school links that involve building a latrine at the back of some school somewhere, but innovative volunteering. Tremendous work is being done by, for example, Challenges Worldwide to enable people at all stages of their careers to volunteer as professionals and to learn as well as share what they know. Strong efforts must be made to link that volunteering with further efforts to generate public support for and awareness of development. That would give us a tremendous bang for our buck.
Mr Park talked about how to set up better partnerships. Speaking for the higher education sector—there is no special case for that sector in that regard, it is just the one of which I am most aware—one of the things that is happening, and for which it would be good to have the committee's support, is the creation of dialogues between the various institutions in Scotland to ensure that they can share their expertise. The Irish have done that well, as have the Scandinavians and the Dutch. Sharing that expertise enables the institutions to see where the real strengths lie and helps them to develop a pan-Scottish view of the matter. That approach has been relatively successful elsewhere in Europe and we are aware that some of our cousins in London—the so-called Bloomsbury group of institutions around the University of London colleges—are doing the same sort of thing. Sharing our expertise, knowledge and experience will enable us to produce something better than any of the universities could produce on their own.
Those initiatives are happening and they will continue to happen. However, it would be useful if the committee could express its support for those activities.
My question is about focus, but not geographical focus. I ask it against the background of the minuscule sums of money that are available.
In the written evidence that we have received, there seem to be two differing views about the way in which the money should be spent. The view that is, I suppose, coming out of Europe is that it should be spent on organisational budget support—which is to say, the money should be handed over and people should be left to get on with it. The other approach—you might think of it as the more Scottish approach—involves a project-based disbursement of the moneys. It would be useful to know what members of the panel think we should be doing with our limited funding.
From our perspective, because of the modest funding that is available as much as anything else, I would support the latter model. That is an odd thing for me to say—if my students were here, they would be surprised to hear me saying that, because I support the notion of budget support and even sectoral support, at a lower level, rather than project support. However, the amount of money that is available will be limited, even in countries with relatively modest levels of gross national product, as we heard earlier. That is why, in terms of impact, I take the latter view.
My opinion is completely different. I think that there are too many donors making too many visits to developing countries and that there is a lack of co-ordination among countries, even following the Paris agenda on aid harmonisation.
On development awareness, we have to go a little beyond the budget, which I see as a constraint in our discussions. When I talk about going beyond dealing with the budget that we have in Scotland, I mean that we can use the work of the committee to make a lot of noise. I have had a discussion with some people about organising a big event when the committee's inquiry is concluded in order to make a lot of noise not only in the aid community and with European partners, but within the Scottish Government. Policy coherence is a major concern in development circles, and development does not involve only aid, so there are a number of other issues that can increase the commitment. Scotland can play a major role in committing to international development.
We talked about migration. We are ranked low in the Centre for Global Development migration index. John Struthers argued that the fresh talent initiative was visible and played a major role, but the number of students coming from developing countries is still limited. They have to pay high fees. Something should be done across different policies in the Scottish Government. We should use the committee's work to raise awareness not only with the public—which is important—but across the Government.
My last point is about the role that Scotland can play in the European Union. As John Briggs said, Scotland has made a lot of noise despite its limited development budget. Let us build on that. I do not want Scotland to play an advocacy role or lobby, but let us work in European circles. As Neil Thin might know, there is a European Union budget devoted to raising development awareness. It is for NGOs to develop campaigns, but Scotland per se is not among the countries that benefit the most from that budget. If I was asked what I wanted to see from the committee's work, I would say that it would be to give more support to NGOs and to exploit the opportunities that already exist and of which Scotland does not take advantage.
Ireland was mentioned. I have been involved with the National University of Ireland as an external examiner, and I go to Cork often. As John Struthers said, the question is how we can learn from the Irish experiences.
Our fresh talent initiative was a good innovation and it helped greatly, but another point that you have not raised relates to our home-grown NGOs. If we do not support them equally, a number of them will feel left out. The most important point is how we can make the highest impact with our limited funds while bringing other players into the scene.
I have a close involvement with Africa. With my family, I spent two years in Ghana at the University of Cape Coast. The University of Strathclyde and the University of Glasgow have also been on the scene. That is why I have emphasised that point—let us widen the geographical net and let us make an impact.
Let me come back to Mr Brocklebank's question on whether the focus should be on particular projects. Basically, should we have a project-based approach?
This is the economist speaking: I support that approach. However, which individual projects and initiatives should we support? Do we pick winners and support activities that are already successful in developing countries, or do we branch out and develop into new areas? I think—again, this is the economist speaking—that we have to pick winners. We should build on what already exists, not least because the Parliament, as you do not need me to remind you, has to be accountable for the use of the money. The support must be transparent.
That means building on existing strengths at a grass-roots micro level. For example, is there a water irrigation project that is successful and transparent and for which there are accounts that can be examined? Those are the projects that we should support. That is a strongly held personal opinion, but it is based on solid academic research in economics. I know that it is a horrible phrase, but we must pick winners in this business.
We must wrap up the meeting now, but I thank the witnesses for coming. The session has been useful, and I am sure that you will have significant influence on our thinking on the matter.
With that, I close this morning's proceedings.
Meeting closed at 12:56.