Scotland-Malawi Relationship

Part of Parliamentary Candidates: Barriers for Women – in Westminster Hall at 5:18 pm on 13 September 2017.

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Photo of Rory Stewart Rory Stewart Minister of State (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) (Joint with the Department for International Development), Minister of State (Department for International Development) (Joint with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) 5:18, 13 September 2017

I am afraid I do not have time to address that point, but as a lawyer the right hon. Gentleman should be aware that setting arbitrary deadlines is completely irrelevant in that type of negotiation, and his intervention was extremely inappropriate given the time. We can talk about that in much more detail later, and we can discuss the 16 articles if we wish. Deadlines are not the key; the key is the Malawian political position on the treaty. Setting an arbitrary deadline is not likely to help us.

If we could move away from the right hon. Gentleman’s confrontational tone and towards what I had hoped he would address, namely a more positive discussion on how we can learn from the Scotland Malawi Partnership, I would like in the remaining 45 seconds to touch on what those lessons could be. The first is about learning how to operate at a smaller scale. The second is about learning how to use history and identity. The third is about learning how to use civic connections, and fourthly and most important lesson is about learning how to place the human at the centre.

What is so striking about the Scotland Malawi Partnership is that it has found ways of engaging a whole human population. Britain could do that in Malawi or in Tanzania, Uganda or Nigeria. It is a very exciting way of thinking about how to do development in the 21st century. The fact that so many right hon. and hon. Members are here championing international development shows how these human connections give us the legitimacy and centre to make progress. I wish they would also champion international development in the main Chamber and champion the UK aid budget in the same way. I will end by saying zikomo kwambiri—thank you very much.