The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-15261, in the name of Iain Gray, on new global goals—leave no one behind. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion moved,
That the Parliament believes that 2015 was a critical year for people and for the planet, the year that countries around the globe committed to adopting what it considers an ambitious new development agenda that builds on the success of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); understands that the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) constitute a promise to leave no one behind and place a deadline on global commitments, including goals to eradicate poverty, reduce inequality and tackle climate change by the year 2030; congratulates the worldwide campaign, Action/2015, on what it sees as its continued advocacy of the importance of SDGs, its success in securing ambitious SDGs and calling on politicians to commit to them; commends Heather Cameron, an Action/2015 ambassador from Dunbar Grammar School, on her campaign to promote commitment to and understanding of Scotland’s role in meeting the SDGs; recognises that young people can be important ambassadors for the achievement of the goals in Scotland, and recognises that the Parliament, businesses, schools and communities can all work together to achieve them.
12:36
I was asked to lodge this motion 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 she campaigned tirelessly to promote a commitment to, and understanding of, Scotland’s role in meeting the 17 United Nations sustainable development goals. Those were adopted by the UN at the 70th regular session of the general assembly in New York last September, committing members to the 2030 agenda for sustainable development.
I welcome Heather and her classmates to the Parliament this afternoon. Heather was one of 15 15-year-old ambassadors who helped in the United Kingdom’s launch of action 2015 in London, meeting politicians including Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, and also delivering a petition to the Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street. The launch mirrored similar launches of action 2015 by young people all over the world.
Heather then 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 at which the development goals were discussed, as part of a final call for commitment from politicians to support those goals.
Heather met Kezia Dugdale towards the end of last year to ask for this Parliament to consider a motion, which we are now doing this afternoon.
I have always been proud of the UK’s significant contribution to global aid and supporting those around the world who need our support the most. Britain is a significant contributor, and last year it 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 the support of successive UK Governments for the millennium development goals—the predecessor goals from the UN—we know that every year 17,000 fewer children are dying for reasons of poverty and that nine out of 10 children in developing countries now attend primary school. That is a significant improvement in education globally, but it is unacceptable that over 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 Mozambique, and for 12 years 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. What I learned was this: no matter how difficult the circumstances, even in situations where I confess that I would have given up long before, there will always be people who will work together to find a way to improve lives for themselves, their families, their communities and their countries. It is those people who will deliver the sustainable development goals.
Our obligation is to support those people, individually, in Government and in international bodies such as the UN. That is the importance of the UK aid budget and, indeed, the Scottish Government development programme in countries such as Malawi. However, the problem is neither small, nor is it far away.
The first sustainable development goal is to end poverty in all its forms, everywhere. Heather Cameron is passionate about explaining to people that that means ending poverty here too. One in five children in Scotland lives in poverty, tens of thousands of our fellow citizens depend on food banks, and about a third of our households are fuel poor.
When I worked years ago in Mozambique in a rural school, young people from all over the country came to school and lived in the most basic conditions despite war and famine. Why? Because they believed that education was their route out of poverty. That theme runs through those sustainable development goals, and it is as true for Scotland as it is for anywhere in the world.
The most shameful of the statistics about Scotland’s poverty is that someone’s success at school still depends more on how much their parents earn than any other factor—their talent, how hard they work or which school they go to. That is why we agree across the chamber that the attainment gap in our schools must be closed. That is the greatest single step that we can take to end poverty and deliver the sustainable development goals in Scotland.
In closing, I draw attention to another theme that runs through the sustainable development goals. It 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 in droughts and floods. We even see it in changing weather patterns here, which have an impact on agriculture.
It is appropriate to draw attention to that point. It was a previous pupil from long ago in Dunbar’s schools, John Muir, who was the first to recognise and understand that, to end the impoverishing of humanity, it is necessary also to end the impoverishing of nature. John Muir would approve of the sustainable development goals. I am sure that he would be proud of Heather Cameron and her classmates from his home town of Dunbar. I certainly am.
12:43
First, I thank Iain Gray for lodging the motion and securing the debate, which will undoubtedly help to raise more awareness of the UN sustainable development goals.
Exchanges in the chamber often revolve around details of very specific policy issues. It makes a welcome change to take a step back and to look at the much bigger picture elsewhere. I am pleased to speak in a debate that takes us back to what motivated many of us in the Parliament to become involved in politics—making the world a better place, even in a small way.
When the UN set its eight millennium goals 16 years ago, it directed its efforts at eradicating extreme poverty or at least reducing it significantly across the world by 2015. 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. That more holistic approach has contributed massively to their relative success. I say “relative” because, as Iain Gray has pointed out, despite the enormous progress that has been made there is still a long way to go.
As we know, civil war and anarchy in countries such as Libya, Syria and Yemen at the moment make it increasingly difficult for those countries to sustain the development progress that they had made; indeed, they are already slipping backwards.
To truly empower people’s lives takes much more than simply keeping them alive. The keys to sustainable improvement are peace and development. The outcome described in the 2015 report on the millennium development goals that struck 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. However, as Iain Gray has pointed out, the fact that almost a billion people are in extreme poverty is still horrific. People are desperately trying to eke out a daily existence in a world that has more than enough to go round.
Of course, millennium development goals have now been succeeded by the all-encompassing 17 sustainable development goals. I am proud that the Scottish Government takes its role in that extremely seriously, and that it is determined to be at the forefront of achieving the 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. The UN goals tie in with Scotland’s development goals—which were already in place—and include the national performance framework and Scotland’s national action plan on human rights. That 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 provided to Malawi—a country that many people in Scotland have a strong emotional attachment to because of the historical connections.
One of the key priorities in the Scottish Government’s proposed budget for next year is the delivery of the objectives and outcomes set out in the national performance framework. For Europe and external affairs, it also contains a commitment to continue working across ministerial portfolios to support international aims, including water management, climate justice, the UN sustainable energy for all initiative and the new UN sustainable development goals.
It is important to acknowledge—as Iain Gray has already done—that poverty does not exist only beyond our shores but that there is also poverty consistently within Scotland, although not be to the same degree. That is why I am pleased that, whereas the millennium development goals focused strictly on developing countries, the sustainable development goals apply to all countries, including Scotland. There is inequality and poverty in Scotland, and addressing those issues remains a priority for the Scottish Government.
There is much more work to be done towards meeting sustainable development goals both internationally and here in Scotland. 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 was achieved by the millennium development goals.
12:47
I congratulate Iain Gray on securing this debate, and I welcome Dunbar grammar school to the chamber. I also thank Save the Children for providing a briefing for the debate.
To state it bluntly, I am here today because Heather Cameron asked me to be here. She is such a persuasive young individual that I am defying what is—in a way—a parliamentary convention that party leaders do not participate in members’ debates. It is a pleasure to do that.
I want to share how I met Heather Cameron. When I became leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, we organised a competition called “My Scotland”. We wrote to every secondary 5 and 6 pupil and invited them to take part in an essay competition to share their vision for the future of Scotland—whether that be in 10, 15 or 20 years.
Heather Cameron made it into the final of that competition by writing an essay about how important the sustainable millennium goals were, not just to Scotland but to countries around the world. Her passion and dedication brought her to our attention.
The 10 finalists of that competition came together one day and were put through a number of training exercises. They were exposed to some leading journalists in Scotland, including Lindsay McIntosh from The Times, and Patrick McGuire from Thompsons Solicitors. They helped each of the finalists to develop their ideas and their campaigning abilities, so that they could come up with new ways to communicate what they believe and what they stand for. Heather’s talents shone through on that occasion.
I want to commend Heather, not just for the work she has done to highlight the work of action 2015 and all that she has done on leading marches through Dunbar, but also for never giving up on making the case—on a day-to-day basis—for why this issue is so important.
I will refer in detail to the UN sustainable development goals. There are 17 in total. I will not go through all of them, but three stand out to me:
“Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”,
“Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls”,
and
“To promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all”.
I know that many of us stand for all of those things.
In preparation for today’s debate, I reflected on my views on gender equality and how important they are to my politics. I have stood in the chamber many times to talk about the need to progress gender equality. If we do not do that, we will lock women and girls out of the jobs of the future and in to low-paid, low-skilled work. It is very important that we tackle that issue in Scotland, but it has to be set against the context—which Iain Gray set out in his opening remarks—of the circumstances in which women and girls find themselves 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 the work that all of the ambassadors involved in action 2015 are taking part in on a daily basis.
On that note, it is a pleasure to participate in the debate, and I wish Heather and all her colleagues the very best with the campaign ahead of them.
12:50
I thank Iain Gray for what I thought was an excellent speech. I should probably thank Heather Cameron for securing the 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 in Scotland and overseas. Looking back, I remember that I also spoke on millennium development goals in a members’ business debate by Labour’s Des McNulty back in 2005.
As Iain 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 put on the record that my party fully agrees that education is, without a shadow of doubt, the route out of poverty.
At Westminster, the Government has taken a leading role on the post-2015 framework in working alongside other UN member states to secure international agreement on the ambitious and compelling sustainable development goals, which are centred on eradicating poverty. The UK was the second largest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development donor of overseas development aid in 2014, spending £11.7 billion, which was an increase of 2.6 per cent on the previous year. In fact, the foreign aid programme even drew praise from the Scottish National Party at Westminster. Mhairi Black, on a visit to Kenya last week, said:
“Britain is one of the better countries in terms of commitment to foreign aid ... having seen the difference it makes to people’s lives, I think it’s highly important that we maintain that level of support.”
As Iain Gray said, the UK enshrined the 0.7 per cent commitment to overseas development aid in law when the International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Act 2015 received royal assent in March last year.
The work of Heather Cameron has deservedly been commended by Iain Gray. I have no doubt that she would not have been as successful if it were not for the support of Dunbar grammar school. As an MSP for the Highlands and Islands, I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate the pupils of Forres academy in Moray, whose human rights day petition I signed last week. Among other things, the pupils are campaigning for the right to education for the 57 million children worldwide who have no access to education.
Millennium development goal 5 is to support pregnant women through to birth and reduce maternal mortality. More than 1 million children are left without mothers due to maternal death, and 20 million women experience potentially fatal complications during childbirth. In 2005, in East 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 2015. 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 that has been made. Fewer children under five are dying from preventable causes.
However, given that about 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 campaign. Fistula is a rupture in the birth canal that occurs during prolonged obstructed labour. It leaves women incontinent, isolated, socially excluded and ashamed. It is estimated that, for every woman who dies of maternity-related causes, at least 20 women experience a maternal morbidity, one of the most severe forms of which is obstetric fistula. Given that nine out of 10 fistulas can be successfully repaired, that issue also needs to be addressed.
In my final minute, I want to mark two other areas of progress. One is that global measles immunisation coverage is now at 84 per cent among children between 12 and 23 months, which has to be acknowledged. The second is that, in Afghanistan, between 2002 and 2012, the mortality rate for under-fives dropped from 257 to 97 deaths for every 1,000 live births. I mark that progress. I thank Iain Gray for securing the debate and I appreciate that more needs to be done.
12:56
I thank Iain Gray for bringing the motion to Parliament. I also thank Dunbar grammar school and Heather Cameron, whom I look forward to meeting, if I can, after the debate. I have not met Heather before, but from what everybody has said so far and from her emails in my inbox, one of which I received yesterday, which provided additional briefing, she seems like a force of nature.
I agree with Iain Gray and Kezia Dugdale that it is incredible to see our young people taking forward such initiatives, because it gives us great hope for the future. We can often be downcast because of the scale of the challenge, but when young people like Heather Cameron—there are many more across our constituencies, including in Forres—take forward such initiatives and are not defeated by the scale of the challenge, it provides hope where there is often not much hope at all, and that drives us. To give credit where it is due, I say that if Heather had not approached Kezia Dugdale and Iain Gray, who knows whether we would be discussing the sustainable development global goals at all? Heather might be a future politician in the making. Who knows? By the way, that was meant as a compliment and not an insult, as some might perceive it.
It is a pleasure to talk about the sustainable development goals. I was struck by what Kenny Gibson said in his opening sentences; he is absolutely right that this is why most of us went into politics in some way, shape or form. If we cast our minds back to when the seed was planted in our heads about entering front-line politics, whether as a councillor, an MP or an MSPs—whatever our position was—we will remember that we talked to our partners, friends and family about it and reflected on it internally, but I am sure that we all chose to go into politics, ultimately, because we wanted to make the world a better place, whether in Scotland or the world at large. It is good to be reminded of that, because it can get lost in the robust debates that we have in Parliament about things that are, of course, important but are not quite on the scale of importance of the global goals that we want to achieve.
It is worth re-emphasising and reiterating the point that the global goals are unique, not just in themselves but because they apply to all countries across the world. In that regard, they are different from their predecessors—the millennium development goals—which just apply to the developing world. That is exceptionally important, given that we in Scotland have poverty and inequality that we must challenge, too. Therefore, I was delighted that, in the summer of 2015, the First Minister was one of the first leaders in Europe to commit, in an article that she wrote for the Sunday Herald, to definitely incorporating the sustainable development goals in our national economic strategies and so on. There is work to be done on that. How will we do it? We are already working on our national performance framework to see how we can incorporate the goals in our legislation and our practices in Government.
I want to touch on a couple of the goals—I will not go through all 17 of them. There are goals that we are already helping to take on through the Scottish Government’s international development fund.
Mary Scanlon seems to have been surprised—I was not—when Mhairi Black praised the UK Government’s efforts. I do not think that I have been anything other than effusive in my praise for the DFID’s work. Although I often have different views on how that work should be carried out, that is incidental in the grand scheme. Successive UK Governments have had a good record when it comes to their commitments on international development. We should support the UK Government where we can. We should also be proud of the non-governmental organisations, the schools and the public agencies that do international development work. Regardless of how small the scale of their work may seem, the impact is undoubtedly huge.
On our work in Scotland, we have a £9 million international development fund spread over seven countries. Malawi is probably the primary relationship because of the people-to-people links that exist. We work together on tackling a number of the goals. Members have spoken about goal 5, which is on achieving gender equality. That is hugely important, because we all recognise that we get more bang for our development buck if we are helping to tackle and reduce the inequality gap between men and women. We know that if we educate a man, we educate a single individual, but that if we educate a woman, the chances are that we will educate an entire family and then a nation, as a result of that. A lot of work must be done to reduce gender inequality; we are committed, through our international development fund, to doing that.
Iain Gray touched on climate energy, climate justice and climate change. Goals 7 and 13 are particularly pertinent to those issues. I reiterate that, from a Scottish Government perspective, we are committed to ensuring that we tackle climate change and take on climate justice. I have been to Malawi a couple of times, and I have been struck by what a difference renewable and sustainable energy can make to people’s everyday lives. For example, I viewed a micro hydroelectric project in which power that is obtained from the Mulange mountains is being provided to villages in the area, which has led to a woman being the first in her village to give birth in a room with a light bulb. Incredibly, that was in 2013. When I visited villages in Malawi more recently, I saw that, instead of having paraffin or kerosene lamps, people have a sustainable solar-panel lit energy-efficient light bulb, which means that the children can study for longer and are not inhaling smoke. I was struck by how the small things can make a huge impact.
I will finish with two points. Going back to Heather Cameron and the pupils at Dunbar, it is so important that we teach our young people about the challenges that the world faces. Any country can lose itself by being too insular; Scotland is not immune to that, so we must teach our young people about the challenges. We can do that through the curriculum for excellence, which has a global citizenship module. I have seen the development education centres in action, teaching our teachers how they can make an impact through that module. We have to do that, because too often I read newspapers, blogs and Twitter and Facebook posts that ask why, when we have challenges here, we are giving money to other countries across the world that are suffering. We must communicate to our young people why it is important that we continue to tackle those issues.
My last point is about a point that was well made by Iain Gray in his excellent speech, when he spoke about his own experiences. He made the point that we should never lose hope. That is an important point. I, like many other members here, watch a constant news cycle. It would be easy, with all the challenges that the world faces, to commit ourselves to a downwards spiral, but Iain Gray was correct when he said that as long as we have good people—people like Heather Cameron and the many others who are always willing to stand up against injustice and for humanity and compassion—and those people outweigh the bad people, we do not need to be in a downwards spiral. There will always be hope. There will always be goodness. That was a great point and a good one to end on.
I again thank Iain Gray for securing the debate. My special thanks go to Heather Cameron and Dunbar grammar school, and all the good people across Scotland and beyond, wherever they may be, who are working to promote the global goals.
13:05 Meeting suspended.On resuming—
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