Give Scotland, not Holyrood, a bigger say in how we deliver aid

A recent report of the International Development Select Committee found that DfID does not engage sufficiently with Scottish organisations and engaging more thoroughly with Scottish organisations would help to make DfiD more visible within Scotland. DfID has funded significant research programmes including animal drugs and vaccines through the University of Edinburgh, pro-poor health systems through Queen Margaret University and drugs for neglected diseases at Dundee University. Civil society organisations in Scotland have also received £4 million worth of grants. Scotland contributes around £1 billion a year to a £12bn UK budget. Given that almost half of the Department's UK-based staff are in Scotland, there is too little appreciation within Scotland of the department's influence and reach. However, it would be a big mistake to start splitting up the UK's aid budget after we have just voted to keep foreign affairs and international development as reserved matters at a UK level. We need to raise DfID's profile in Scotland without diluting the influence and economies of scale of the UK DfID budget.

What Smith should be looking at is how UK departments like DfID can empower Scottish local authorities, non-governmental organisations, churches and community organisations to partner them in promoting awareness of develop­ment issues and in delivering programmes in developing countries. Giving Scotland a bigger say in how well we deliver aid isn't the same as giving the Scottish Parliament a bigger say.

Alastair Osborne,

4 Park Court, Symington.

AS a Member of the British Parliament who has followed international development matters since I was elected, I would like to respond to some of the points raised by Julian Siann.

I am of course in favour of any assistance to the poorest people in the poorest countries and to poverty eradication, but I find it difficult to agree with Mr Sianns's analysis. He asserts: "DfID is regarded by most people in the charity sector in Scotland as being remote, non-responsive and patronising." It would be interesting to know on whose behalf he is speaking.

The logic of his argument is that we wind up DfID, notwithstanding the fact that its headquarters, serving the whole of the UK, is based in East Kilbride and both the experience and the jobs of many committed civil servants would be at risk. I am puzzled at the apparent suggestion that it would be better to build an alternative and costly bureaucracy, with duplicated structures in Scotland. Surely the point is that maximum resources should be made available for eradicating international poverty and, for example, implementing the Millennium Development goals?

As a former minister, I recognise that in most departments of government there is always room for improvement in terms of civil service activity. However the description of DfID (with which I have worked very closely) is not my experience, specifically on Malawi.

I recently received a letter from a constituent who has done tremend­ous work between Lanarkshire and Malawi. He wrote that he was in tears when he received confirmation from DfID responding to his representations for crucial humani­tar­ian support for a village which he had visited (representations which I supported) and that this had met with total recognition.

While I have little in common with the existing UK Coalition Govern­ment it would be churlish not to recognise that it has honoured the commitment to 0.7 percent gross national income (GNI) of overseas aid spending which has been the UN target for many years. I am convinced that the commitment of much-maligned Labour governments and the similarly-maligned Gordon Brown made it impossible for this Government to withdraw from that spending reality.

Rt Hon Tom Clarke,

Labout MP for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill,

Former Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.

House of Commons, Westminster.