The final item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S4M-08736, in the name of John Finnie, on the lift lives for good campaign. The debate will be concluded without any question being put.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament welcomes Oxfam’s latest fundraising campaign, Lift Lives for Good, which will run until 30 March 2014; understands that the campaign will highlight Oxfam’s work in impoverished communities across the world and show how lifting one life up creates a chain reaction that flows to others in the community; further understands that the UK Government will match all money raised from Oxfam shops during this period; believes that this campaign will allow the public to better understand the results that Oxfam achieves with their donations, and wishes Oxfam the very best of success with the campaign in the Highlands and Islands and across the country and with its aim to raise £10 million.
17:02
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests as a member of Oxfam.
I thank members from across the Parliament for supporting the motion, and I thank Oxfam for its briefing. In that briefing, we read that Oxfam’s vision is
“a just world without poverty”.
I do not think that anyone would take issue with that. It wants
“A world where people feel empowered to improve their own lives, so they can in turn help others in their communities, setting in motion a chain reaction of change.”
We know that Oxfam enjoys considerable support across the country through its network of shops and its volunteers. A recurring theme of the approach that it takes is to encourage self-help. As it says,
“It’s about more than just delivering aid.”
It is about creating that chain reaction. It would like to see, as I hope we all would,
“grassroots action”
resulting in
“global decision making”
that effects
“lasting change.”
Oxfam has a history of involvement in campaigning. It has been involved with the make poverty history and enough food for everyone if campaigns. The lift lives for good fundraising campaign is the start of an ambitious new drive to tackle the root causes of poverty in 2014.
Oxfam makes clear in its excellent briefing and the report that it has compiled, “Lift Lives for Good: Actions to Tackle Inequality and Climate Change” that it sees the two biggest threats as being the growing gap between the richest and the poorest and the damage that is caused to poor people by climate change. Although there have been some economic gains in middle-income countries, they have not resulted in lifting many people out of poverty.
In the report, Oxfam mentions the political leadership in the United Kingdom. I hope that members of the Scottish Parliament and the other devolved institutions will see that there is a clear supporting role for them, too.
With regard to equality, Oxfam mentions the need to
“Put tackling inequality at the heart of decision making”,
“Address the unfair UK and global tax rules that fuel inequality”
and
“Promote universal free public health care and education services to tackle inequality”.
There are other points, but I will move on to climate change, given the limited time that I have.
Oxfam encourages investment in a low-carbon future, which I hope that we would all support. It refers to the UK, but that is for Scotland, the UK and the planet. Oxfam asks us to invest in climate resilience and low-carbon development overseas and to
“Promote ambitious global agreements on climate change”
and
“sustainable energy access”.
Positive moves on that have happened in the Parliament, but we should not be complacent.
The world produces enough food for everyone, yet one in eight people—840 million people—go to bed hungry each night. It is estimated that climate change could increase child malnutrition by 20 per cent, which would eliminate improvements that might otherwise occur through campaigns such as this one. A damning statistic is that, for every $6 of subsidy for fossil fuels, renewable energy enjoys only $1 of subsidy.
Oxfam is talking about, for example, an innovative dairy programme in Sri Lanka, a revolutionary rice-growing system in Liberia, and seed-growing co-operatives in Nepal. All those measures are designed to be catalysts to lift entire communities. Oxfam talks about smart aid and says that a concerted effort is needed to achieve the ripple effect of such good work. The important thing is to empower communities.
Oxfam talks about reappraising how aid works and seeing it as having transformative power rather than as a single short-term action. Aid helps people to build skills and help themselves. That approach is at the heart of what Oxfam does and has done for many years. We have all been involved in gifting a goat, a hen or bags of seeds and the like. Oxfam believes—it is rather harsh on itself—that it has not communicated that model of growth particularly well.
Oxfam notes that, in the past 10 years, 50 million more children in Africa have benefited from education, which is at the root of all our potential for improvement. It refers to how the global fund to tackle HIV, which blights the continent of Africa, is saving 3,000 lives a day and how debt cancellation has released millions of pounds for positive work in the countries affected—although many of us feel that countries could go a lot further on debt cancellation.
Oxfam does not just work abroad. There are fine examples from its work across Scotland. Govan features a lot in that—it is where Tea in the Pot; the GalGael Trust, which builds the wonderful traditional sailing boats that we have seen; and Sunny Govan radio are based. In my part of the world, Lochboisdale Amenity Trust is undertaking an interesting project to fund the purchase of trees for crofters to create shelter belts on fenced crofts and common grazings and for amenity planting. Oxfam is involved with partner agencies in making grants.
The mother appeal will give mothers worldwide the lift that they need to use their power to change the future. I think that we all agree that mothers are a powerful motivating group not only in their families but in their communities. The hope is to raise £10 million, and the UK Government has said that it will match up to £5 million donations that are made before 31 March and sales of items that are donated before then and sold before the end of April. I do not often praise the UK Government, but it is to be complimented on that and on retaining the overseas aid budget.
A new vocabulary, certainly for me, is associated with the campaign. There is shwopping—I hope that I have pronounced that correctly—which means bringing an old item of clothing into a Marks and Spencer store each time that something new is bought. All such clothing goes to Oxfam. I am told that items are placed in a shwop drop box. I am sure that adequate instructions will be available for anyone who wishes to help.
The appeal is targeting projects in Bangladesh, Tajikistan and Zambia. We all understand that there is a range of problems there and that it is important that we provide assistance.
Oxfam has a wide community and it is well known across Scotland. It provides statistics on and a breakdown of income from its shops. I am delighted that the shop in Oban town, where I used to live, features in the top 10 of shops. Oxfam has a breakdown of its record shops, clothes shops, bookshops and the like.
Oxfam quotes an interesting survey from last year, in which people said that supporting a charity uplifts their spirits. I hope that we will all take the opportunity to have our spirits uplifted in coming years and that we will all support this good campaign.
17:09
I have pleasure in supporting the motion and I congratulate John Finnie on promoting lift lives for good.
People feel empowered to improve their own lives and, if they can do so, the idea of making it a continuous cycle is part of the belief that our communities are at the heart of the way we live. People in the developing world have that potential and they need to get a first step, even a little lift, to allow them to make that change, so that they can empower their families and develop good ideas in their communities.
I was struck by the questions from some school students from Tain royal academy, who came yesterday to speak to me as someone proposing the yes idea, as well as to the no idea candidate, asking us how we could deal with inequality. That is the thing that struck them most. We say that, in Britain as a whole, inequality makes society less functional than it could be—indeed, some might say it is dysfunctional—but let us imagine what the situation must be in societies that have no ability to invest at all. That strikes home to me as a worldwide phenomenon that we must address and that Oxfam has addressed with its new campaign.
We have seen in the past the ways in which the rich have tried to help the poor, not with disaster relief but with misplaced notions about agriculture that does not fit, by imposing technologies such as genetically modified crops, which enrich only the multinationals. More recently, we have seen in Africa the use of mobile phones and Kindles, which have allowed for communication and education. We have also seen the fundamentals of co-operatives that allow people to organise worker-owner lives, which must be one of the best ways in which people can get a lift. We have excellent examples from our own country, and there are growing examples in many of the countries mentioned by John Finnie.
I suggest that the chain reaction that we are seeking is down to changing the way in which people look at overseas aid, as it used to be called. I thank Oxfam for showing us that it is not about handouts, as some people perceive it. The briefing makes it perfectly clear that good aid works, so that we can understand the long-term value of the work that is done by lifting lives for good.
I am sure that other members will have more to add to the debate, so I shall end by saying that there is no excuse for people in the north of Scotland not to come to Marks and Spencer in Inverness, which is our nearest shop, to do some shwopping, and also to visit the Oxfam shop in Inverness, as it is the only one near my constituency. If it makes people feel good about going into the Oxfam shop and giving a little, the lifting lives for good campaign will benefit from their cash. Oxfam needs it, we need it and the world will be a more equal place—a little—if we do that.
17:13
Like Rob Gibson, I start by congratulating John Finnie on securing the debate and on stealing everything that I was going to say. However, it bears repeating, so I shall do so.
I also commend Oxfam for its lift lives for good campaign because, as John Finnie rightly said, its vision, which I believe is one that we all share, is of a just world without poverty. People who are empowered to do something about their own circumstances and who can, in turn, help lift others in their own communities out of poverty are an extremely powerful tool. Oxfam describes it as a chain reaction; others might suggest that it is a virtuous circle. One thing is clear, though: it has the potential to change lives and to lift people out of poverty for good.
I will share with members one local example. I used to work with a community in which we empowered people by providing them with vocational and non-vocational training. We lifted a huge number of women who had no qualifications out of poverty by equipping them for the jobs market, and many of them went on to secure jobs. The one who I think of in particular had three children and no qualifications to her name, but she is now a teacher, and her three children have a very different role model. It is not just about the power of what she did to her family; the chain reaction that came from that impacted on the whole community, and she is now giving a lot back to that community. Empowering people does work; it changes lives.
The point of the campaign is to raise funds so that Oxfam can continue with its good work on tackling the root causes of poverty. Its approach is based on smart aid, which is about helping people to help themselves. If we all do just one thing, or make just one intervention, and then we all disappear, the effect will not be as long-lasting or sustainable as it would be if we did something that the community could carry forward.
Oxfam gives us a number of different examples. My favourite one is of the dairy co-ops in Sri Lanka. A family receives a cow, which is a very useful thing, and training in its care, so the family is given an asset and the skills in using that asset to benefit themselves and their community. I am not quite sure whether that exact example would work in Scotland, but I am sure that it is absolutely appropriate in Sri Lanka.
We all know that there are lots of demands on Oxfam’s funds. It is right that John Finnie should have highlighted some of its achievements. In the past 10 years, 50 million more children in Africa have gone to school. Oxfam has responded to twice as many disasters as it did a decade ago. Through all that, it has ensured that 4.3 million people have improved access to clean water, 120,000 people have been helped with emergency services, and overall, in 2012-13 alone, Oxfam reached 13.5 million people across 54 countries. That is a huge achievement, but we all know that that work needs to continue and that the demands continue to grow.
Like John Finnie, I do not often praise the UK Government. In fact, it would normally be a cold day in hell before I would praise the UK Government. However, on this occasion, I unreservedly welcome its commitment to match fund Oxfam’s efforts in raising funds. If we actually manage to raise £6 million through Oxfam, I wonder whether we could encourage the UK Government to match that and not put a cap of £5 million on its contribution.
We know that Scotland has a very positive history of giving generously, including through Oxfam’s network of 51 shops, 12 bookshops—I use one regularly—and two specialist music shops. We have a positive culture of giving. All I can do is add to the words of John Finnie and Rob Gibson, when they suggested that, if we do nothing else, we should pop into Marks and Spencer, or one of the Oxfam shops, and give generously, because it has the power to transform lives.
17:18
I, too, thank John Finnie for securing the debate. Oxfam’s record in fighting poverty is quite exceptional. As an organisation it has, more than any other, highlighted the work that has yet to be done.
We should celebrate Oxfam’s work in showing that deprivation is not just about money. It is also about mental and physical health, feeling safe and secure, and connectedness to family and community. Oxfam’s work on the humankind index, which released its second annual results for Scotland in June last year, gives us a vital way of understanding this complexity. Gross domestic product growth is no good if all the growth goes to the rich, or if wealth is being created only by breaking the backs and spirits of working people.
This week, Oxfam revealed that the 85 richest people in the world own as much as the poorest half of the human race, which is 3.5 billion people put together. The Scottish Government’s stated priority is sustainable economic growth; I hope that, one day, we will see that being extended to include sustainable human wellbeing.
One idea that was raised in a meeting in Parliament last week is worth serious consideration: a universal basic income, or citizen’s income. The amount would be enough to cover basic needs and it would be paid to every citizen without means testing. It would recognise unpaid work such as raising children and looking after relatives, and it would support lifelong learning, reduce inequality and give us a real chance to abolish poverty altogether—a mission that less radical ideas have repeatedly failed to achieve.
Oxfam’s lift lives for good campaign recognises the importance of building skills and community links as well as providing aid. Here in Scotland, two of Oxfam’s partners recognise the importance of wellbeing beyond money. Tea in the Pot, in Govan, helps women who have mental health problems to share their experiences and ideas. Not only does that element of the project help people to fight loneliness and improve wellbeing, but the project also means that people who are normally excluded from decision-making and ignored by officials can work together to make their voices heard and challenge the policies and conditions that damage their wellbeing.
Let us celebrate Oxfam often, but let us work harder on our national performance framework and on introducing some of the key elements that people have declared are a priority for them, which are not about getting more money but involve other areas and issues around wellbeing that Oxfam has highlighted.
17:21
I, too, congratulate John Finnie on securing the debate. I am so glad that we are having a debate about Oxfam because it is such a wonderful organisation, and all the people who volunteer to work for it are wonderful as well. I am pleased to join John Finnie and other colleagues in paying tribute to Oxfam’s work and specifically in welcoming its lift lives for good campaign, which many of us will have seen highlighted on television in the past few weeks in very effective advertisements.
I commend all my constituents in the Highlands and Islands who donate to Oxfam financially, or through giving second-hand goods, or by volunteering in our Oxfam shops. I do not know whether the Oxfam shop appreciates all the pairs of trousers that I give it, but I certainly donate goods myself. I was delighted to learn, because Oban is my local town, that its excellent Oxfam shop is, as John Finnie mentioned, in the top 10 performing Oxfam shops in Scotland. The shop took in £88,943 in sales in the period from April to September last year. The Oban shop has a particularly good second-hand books section, where many bargains can be picked up.
The Oxfam briefing for the debate emphasises that the lift lives for good campaign aims to show how smart aid works, and to highlight practical examples of Oxfam’s project work. Jackie Baillie mentioned the setting up of dairy co-operatives in Sri Lanka through cows being provided to families, as well as training. There are seed-growing co-operatives in Nepal, and former swamps in Liberia are being converted into rice paddies. Susana Edwards, a Liberian farmer in one of the very poorest regions of Liberia, has been helped by Oxfam. She said:
“It’s better to have your own farm than to have to buy rice. When they empower you and you begin to work, you get a lot of food; through the food you get money, which means the children can get to school.”
It is important for all charities working internationally with people who are in poverty to demonstrate to the public here the tangible impacts of their work on people and communities, so I am pleased that Oxfam, through lift lives for good, is doing that in a very clear and impressive manner. Enabling some of the world’s poorest people to grow the food that they need to feed themselves and their families is a very big part of the work that Oxfam is doing, and it will be increasingly important as we go forward—not least as some studies suggest that climate change might increase the number of people who are at risk of hunger by up to 20 per cent by 2050.
I am pleased that John Finnie’s motion notes that the UK Government is match funding all money that is raised from Oxfam shops during this campaign period. That is to be warmly welcomed.
The UK Government’s commitment to international aid and development has been impressive. In particular, I mention the significant investment in international climate finance, specifically to help developing countries to pursue low-carbon growth and to adapt to the impacts of climate change. There is also our response to the humanitarian crisis that continues to ravage so many people in Syria. The UK has committed more than £600 million to help those who are affected by that conflict—the UK’s largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis.
I conclude by again thanking Oxfam for its work. I encourage constituents from across the Highlands and Islands, and everywhere else, to consider supporting the lift lives for good campaign, which I wish every success in the period ahead.
17:25
As other members have done, I warmly congratulate John Finnie, not just on his motion and on offering Parliament an opportunity to debate it, but on covering many of the issues that I think members were all looking to cover in our speeches. That underscores John Finnie’s personal commitment to the issues that are under discussion.
The point about a chain reaction or a virtuous cycle was well made and should inform our approach to the debate, which is about the longer term and development of self-help, about which Rob Gibson made some interesting comments. I know from my experience of visiting Malawi that the way in which international aid is delivered has different facets. There is an antiretroviral programme, which is—thankfully—beginning to get some traction, but without investment in the fertiliser programme, there is a lack of the foodstuffs that are absolutely essential to making the antiretroviral programme work and to tackling the incidence of HIV/AIDS.
If we look further forward, education issues are absolutely paramount. The investment in building and expanding the schools network and supporting more children, not just through primary school but on to secondary school, was a natural and necessary development. I know of a community group in my constituency that is looking to fund solar power packs to support mobile phones in the north of Malawi. We are seeing a logical extension of international aid in some developing countries.
I understand that the mother appeal and the lift lives for good appeal are umbrellas that cover a range of initiatives. The mother appeal, which is run in conjunction with Marks and Spencer—perhaps making it slightly less accessible for some of my constituents than for those of other members—aims to raise £10 million by mothers day on 30 March. It encourages people to contribute and to celebrate motherhood at the same time. As John Finnie said, it is focused on projects in Bangladesh, Tajikistan and rural Zambia. In Bangladesh, many poor households are headed by women and depend on livestock. Those women are being encouraged and supported to form dairy producer groups and to work co-operatively. In Tajikistan, the focus is on smallholders. Women fruit and vegetable farmers are being helped to unite to sell collectively, and to become more than the sum of their parts. There is also access to finance and business training, which has long-term benefits.
In Zambia, women in the Copperbelt province are being trained in soya and dairy farming techniques and are being provided with information on crop rotation and water conservation, which will help to build resilience to the climate change impacts to which Rob Gibson and others referred. The aim is to raise £5 million through public donations through M and S or direct to Oxfam, but as others have said, that will be backed by the UK aid match programme, which will take the figure up to £10 million.
The aid match programme was launched in September last year, following a successful pilot covering 17 charities and about £40 million of donations. The aim is to give £120 million to UK charities over the next three years by match funding—up to £5 million—the sums that are raised by a variety of projects. Sensibly, the programme also ring fences allocations for smaller projects in 26 developing countries. The programme will give real impetus to fundraising efforts; people tend to give more if they are encouraged because their donations will be matched by additional funds.
I accept that there are, in times of austerity, those who question the legitimacy of using public money to support people in other countries. The argument is that it should be left to the discretion of individuals and that the funding would be better deployed at home. However, I simply do not accept that even our own interests are best served by looking inward and turning our backs on those who are in desperate need of our help. I am thankful that most people in the UK agree, with more than 60 per cent backing the UK Government’s commitment to spending 0.7 per cent of national income on international aid. That may or may not be because, as Save the Children suggested, it is in our DNA.
However, the benefit that that aid—good aid, as Rob Gibson rightly pointed out—is delivering is in no doubt at all. In 2012, UK aid prevented 2.7 million mothers and children from going hungry. It vaccinated 12 million children against killer diseases and supported more than 5 million children in going to school by building classrooms, training teachers and providing cash grants to poor families. We should all acknowledge that success, which should embolden us to do more.
I welcome the debate and congratulate John Finnie again on allowing it to take place and allowing Jackie Baillie the long-overdue opportunity to raise her voice in praise of the UK coalition Government. I thank the aid organisations that do such invaluable work throughout the developing world. In particular, I wish Oxfam every success with its lift lives for good campaign.
17:31
I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of the Scottish Government. Like others, I thank John Finnie for bringing the topic to the chamber for debate and for lodging the motion, which I whole-heartedly support.
During the debate, members outlined clearly how the campaign can help. Sometimes, a small amount sets off the chain reaction about which Oxfam is talking and about which we have heard. In her speech, Jackie Baillie talked about how she had seen in her community something that altered the lives of individuals and their families, lifted them out of poverty and had an impact on the wider community. Such programmes in the underdeveloped or developing countries not only change countries and communities but make the world a better place, which is what we all want.
Humza Yousaf, the Minister for External Affairs and International Development, would have liked to have been here but he is on a visit to Malawi and Zambia, representing Scotland’s work in those countries and seeing for himself some of the challenges that communities in the developing world face and the work that is being done to help them. During his visit, he will meet the Oxfam country director in Zambia to hear at first hand about some of the good work that Oxfam, supported by Scottish Government funding, is doing to support communities in dealing with the impacts of climate change.
Oxfam is a key delivery partner for the Scottish Government’s international development and climate justice funds. The project in Zambia is just one of a number of Oxfam initiatives that we are supporting and that are making a real difference to people’s lives in many parts of the world. In Tanzania, Oxfam is receiving £1.3 million of Scottish Government funding to provide food security for farmers through a partnership arrangement with the local Government and private companies. In Pakistan, we are giving Oxfam £350,000 to assist small-scale farmers to improve their productivity, while in Malawi we are providing Oxfam with £400,000 to deliver a project that is focused on addressing the needs of vulnerable women who have been affected by HIV and AIDS.
Of course, that is just a flavour of the work that Oxfam does around the world, which is having a huge impact on people’s lives, reducing poverty and fighting inequality wherever they exist. That is work to which Scotland contributes globally, not just through the funding provided by the Scottish Government, but through the contribution of Scottish taxpayers to the UK Government’s development assistance programmes and, of course, through donations and purchases made by people in Oxfam’s 51 shops with 1,000 trained volunteers up and down the country, which members mentioned and on which they commented.
Last year, Oxfam celebrated 50 years of working in Scotland and, in that time, it has done a marvellous job in raising awareness among the general public of the inequalities that, sadly, persist in many parts of our world.
Oxfam played a crucial role in highlighting the problem of global hunger through last year’s campaign, enough food for everyone if. That influenced the Scottish Government’s decision to give funding to the six development education centres in Scotland that provide training and support for Scottish teachers to equip our young people to become global citizens and be aware of the challenges that our world faces and the role that we can all play in helping to tackle them.
The make poverty history campaign in 2005 is another example of how Oxfam has worked with other organisations to help draw attention in Scotland to the issues that face people in the developing world.
Oxfam has a track record of dedication and commitment as well as a passion to make a difference to people’s lives throughout the world. I can see that passion reflected in the lift lives for good campaign that it has launched.
The campaign rightly highlights the two biggest threats to ending poverty: the growing gap between the richest and the poorest people in the world; and the damage that is caused to poor people by climate change. The Scottish Government takes both of those issues seriously. Right now, our £9 million international development fund is focused on helping some of the poorest people in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.
The “Scotland’s Future” publication sets out clearly what action this Government would take in an independent Scotland to help the world’s poorest people, including commitments to spend 0.7 per cent of our gross national income on overseas aid, ensure that all our policies across Government do no harm to countries in the developing world, promote gender equality, and give careful consideration to the question of unjust debts.
We also fully support the lift lives for good campaign’s focus on highlighting the issue of climate change. The Scottish Government strongly recognises the voices of those who are in the front line in relation to the impacts of climate change. They are suffering from a changing environment that is causing increasingly erratic weather patterns, crop failures, water shortages and newly spreading diseases. Our world-leading £3 million climate justice fund is a recognition of the injustice of climate change and the fact that those who have done least to cause the problem have been most affected by its impacts.
The fund is already helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change for people in Malawi and Zambia and, last October, the First Minister announced a doubling of the climate justice fund, which will provide further support for vulnerable communities in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Scottish Government is pleased to support this motion and commends the work of Oxfam in drawing attention to the issues of global poverty and inequality through the campaign. I encourage everyone to get shwopping. I will certainly be doing that. The Government is determined to do what it can to make a difference and I am pleased that, through this motion and today’s debate, the Parliament will encourage the people of Scotland to support Oxfam’s lift lives for good campaign in its aim to make an impact on poverty around the world.
Meeting closed at 17:38.Previous
Decision Time