I am not entirely sure that Jackie Baillie did not just miss the point of the debate. I know that the message that she delivered is consistent with the view that she has expressed regularly, but to take the debate in the context of Scotland or Britain alone is to misunderstand the objective that we are discussing. We need to look at the matter internationally and see where we are as a nation in relation to what is going on in the rest of the world.

First, there are many people in this Parliament who assume that equality is a key element of what we want to achieve. However, I have equal respect for those who put their family, their community or perhaps their country first. As a consequence, the idea of equality is perhaps something that individuals, particularly in the more impoverished countries in the world, cannot afford to consider when their priority is to look after their own and to make their own way in difficult circumstances.

If we are to achieve our objective of cutting the extreme difference in incomes that exists in the wealthiest and in the most impoverished countries, we must consider what the impact of that is likely to be in this country. It is undeniable that we have spent generations striving to increase the quality of our lives as individuals, and to increase average incomes in our country, and that for every part of our share of the world’s resources we have consumed over and above the average. Consequently, someone, somewhere, has had to have less so that we could have more. The impact that that has had in places including sub-Saharan Africa is massive. We must accept that if we are determined to maintain our high standards of living, someone else will have to carry the can.

As a result of those pressures—but not only those pressures—we have in government at Westminster a party that, prior to its election, made the key commitment that when it took office it would exceed the requirement that 0.7 per cent of gross national income be put into international aid. The latest figures that we have show that 0.72 per cent of Britain’s GNI—£11.4 billion a year—goes to international aid, which makes Britain the second highest contributor to international aid in the world in absolute terms, and the fifth highest in terms of share of GNI.

However, if we look at the reaction to that here in our own country, we find that there are many people who criticise the Westminster Government for having taken that decisive step. When by-elections take place in which parties such as the UK Independence Party compete to win seats in Parliament, we hear our Government being attacked and criticised for having set that target and stuck to it during its time in government.