Speech by Scottish President Malcolm Bruce MP to Scottish Liberal Democrat Conference
18 February 2007
Malcolm Bruce MP
I am a supporter of the Bring back the Aviemore GO Kart track campaign. You see thirty years ago, when the Scottish Liberals met in Aviemore, David Steel and Russell Johnston took to the track as one of those why do we do it kind of photo opportunities.
I see no reason why Nicol and Ming should not have given us the same entertainment and shown on the race track the qualities of risk and boldness that characterises their leadership.
It is said that all political careers end in failure and disappointment and when you look at the Bush – Blair axis of feeble this seems to be true. To be fair to Tony Blair his reign as PM started with hope whereas Bush’s began with disappointment and untold numbers of hanging chads.
Tony Blair is a flawed talent – an engaging personality, a brilliant communicator – he has made commitments to poverty reduction, to tackling climate change and to trying to find a peace settlement in Israel-Palestine.
But it is all destroyed by the disaster of the war in Iraq and the hubris of slavishly following George Bush in his “war against terror” which has made the world more dangerous than ever.
I have just returned from the GLOBE climate change dialogue held on Wednesday and Thursday at the US Senate. Nick Stern was there presenting his report recently denounced by Nigel Lawson.- the only man who believed that pure monetarism could inform an economic policy and sees climate change as a left wing plot to intervene in the market.
Of course Lord Lawson comes from a school of right wingers who see any modification of unbridled markets as communism and no doubt argued that the abolition of slavery (achieved in the British Empire 200 years ago this year) was an interference with the market and a threat to our competitiveness – as no doubt were factory acts, and outlawing putting children up chimneys and down mines.
The response of the Bush administration is not to accept the evidence on climate change but the Democrats and progressive Republicans now in charge in Congress are beginning to. Public opinion has been inspired by Al Gore (whose business partner is called Blood. Blood and Gore has a certain resonance for an environmental partnership don’t you think). An Inconvenient Truth – may give him a more lasting legacy than once having been the next president of the United States
However a growing number of states in the USA are adopting policies to combat climate change, for example: Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger is leading the way in California and the North Eastern states are setting up their own carbon trading scheme.
When President Bush announced that America repudiated Kyoto (which ironically they had done so much to shape) I made sharp criticism from our conference platform.
I was astonished that my remarks were picked up in the United States and I was inundated with supportive e-mails from frustrated Democrats despairing that their own party had failed to stand up to Bush.
I am proud as the immediate past president of Globe International and Chair of GLOBE UK. Along with Joan Ruddock I set up the climate change dialogue which first met in London just before the Gleneagles summit
And now it went to Washington and I have encouraging news for you. The world is turning. In Washington this week seven Senators and four congressmen contributed to the dialogue including Jeff Bingaman (now chair of the energy committee) John Kerry. Joe Lieberman and John McCain.
They told us that the debate about the science of climate change was over. They predicted that the USA would set mandatory limits on carbon emissions in the near future and they recognised that the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases had an obligation to help developing economies achieve clean growth.
I asked John Kerry if he thought the necessary majority for action could be achieved in the Senate. He replied that once his fellow Senators were confronted with the facts as to how close the world is to catastrophe the wavers would be won over.
The conference agreed a statement which called on the G8 + 5 nations to “identify a measurable long term goal to stabilise greenhouse gases in the atmosphere…at a level between 450 and 550 parts per million.”
“recognising that meeting the EU’s two degrees Celsius target would require stabilisation at the lower end of the range.”
Indicating the urgency of the crisis we face the meeting called for “negotiations on such a framework be launched at the Bali meeting of the UN Forum for Climate Change in November and be concluded by 2009.”
This was supported by China and India as well as the EU and the USA.
Quite rightly, developing countries are demanding the right to clean growth and look to developed countries to help – not to use climate change to deny them what we have.
After all 4 million children die every year from diarrhoea and millions of girls are denied schooling because of the time they must spend fetching clean water and the risks they face of rape and abduction in the process.
So clean water and basic sanitation are a precondition for achieving ambitious targets on primary education in developing countries. And as drought and famine recur more widely and more unpredictably the targets are moving away from us
Yet, as is so typical of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown the UK set itself tough targets on emission reductions above and beyond Kyoto but never understood the need for policies to make these work – so we are going backwards.
Yet, thanks to the Liberal Democrats, Scotland - which is rich in opportunities to help the UK deliver ambitious targets - is beginning to show the difference.
Nearly 30 years ago I wrote a pamphlet for the Scottish Liberal Party with my friend and colleague, Ross Finnie calling for greater energy efficiency and the development of new clean energy technologies. We were both vice chairs of the party at the time a post for which I do not recall there being great competition.
For almost eight years now Ross has been a minister – the longest serving in the Scottish Executive. He has had the chance – along with Jim Wallace and Nicol Stephen to start implementing that pamphlet – proof if any were needed of how the nation lost out for not having Liberals in power.
And Scotland is beginning to show what a radical energy policy can deliver.
We have set ambitious targets on renewable energy and are beating them
leading to even greater ambition – like 100 per cent renewable electricity by 2050 – and pioneering wave and tidal power.
So where Liberal Democrats have the chance we make a positive difference.
Contrast that with foreign policy and individual liberty and human rights.
The late Robin Cook was almost certainly sincere when he set out the case for an ethical foreign policy. He probably under-rated the pretensions of his boss the Prime Minister.
The first casualty was the arms trade where dubious exports were sanctioned, bribery and corruption went unchallenged and unchecked. Indeed, as we have just discovered, the first serious attempt to investigate allegations of bribery involving British arms exports has been pulled after pressure from the Saudi Government.
The Serious Fraud Office is now investigating allegations of bribery in connection with the highly controversial Tanzanian air traffic control contract, which doesn’t and never did look like a poverty reduction project.
British companies have also been identified directly or indirectly as being prepared to deal in conflict resources which are often illegally acquired and used to fund the activities of warlords and promote and prolong civil wars.
Yet the British Government have done nothing to pursue these companies or even to promote guidelines and standards notwithstanding being asked to do so by the UN and OECD.
Debt relief has been hailed as Gordon Brown’s triumph. He does deserve credit for persistence in progressing the issue and persuading other governments to support it.
The reality, in many cases, is that the debts were not being paid in any case so the write-offs did not yield extra money. Also debt relief has been used to inflate the UK’s aid budget and present our progress towards the UN target in the most favourable light.
In fact, last year, if debt relief is removed from the equation, UK aid expenditure actually fell.
At the very least there should be an objective analysis of what debt relief actually released resources for development in beneficiary countries and what was effectively lost-cause money whose write off made no material difference.
But it is in Iraq and Afghanistan that the principles of aid and development being targeted towards poverty reduction have been most seriously compromised.
Iraq is a devastated country but it is not a poor country. Nearly a billion pounds of historic UK export debt has been written off. It is clear that aid projects in the country are more to try and win hearts and minds and because of the security situation are disproportionately expensive to deliver.
Yet again, because of the International Development Act diverting extra resources to Iraq could only be achieved by taking it away from other middle income countries – mainly in Latin America.
Afghanistan is a poor country and, therefore, its aid programme can come out of the allocation for low income countries. Nevertheless, the security situation once again makes costs disproportionately high.
The lack of troops mean that they are engaged to a degree in “going after the Taleban” rather than creating a secure environment for development.
In addition, the attraction to poor farmers of growing opium poppies, makes Afghanistan the hub of the world heroine supply. In a poor country where other crops deliver only a fraction of the value of poppies it is difficult to secure support for measures that reduce incomes unless adequate alternatives are on offer.
The suggestion of the Senlis Council that the international community should buy the poppies and use if for manufacturing therapeutic morphine has been resisted by the Afghan and British Governments but that seems mostly because the Americans don’t approve.
Any activity that involved British troops in conniving at the destruction of growing poppy crops would therefore undermine the credibility of our claim that we are there to bring development and once again security saps the effectiveness of aid projects.
Back in the Middle East more and more of our aid resources are being diverted to compensating for the destruction of infrastructure (much of which we paid for in the first place) and offsetting the consequences of boycotting the Palestinian Authority following the election of Hamas.
In Lebanon the bombardment of roads and bridges devastated the economy as well as costing the lives of hundreds of innocent Lebanese civilians. The Department for International Development has diverted tens of millions of pounds to repair the damage, which we had previously paid for after the destructive civil war.
In Gaza, the destruction of the power station increased poverty and hardship for which further aid was required.
The decision of Israel and the international community to refuse to deal with Hamas has led to the loss of over a billion dollars of revenue previously going to pay Palestinian civil servants and the cost of providing services.
The gap has been partly filled by the Temporary International Mechanism administered by the European Union and by international relief funds targeted through a number of agencies.
The net effect has been a massive increase in poverty necessitating a corresponding increase in aid, diverted away from other poor countries. The occupied territories of Israel now receive the highest per capita aid budget in the world.
This is an unsustainable situation where Hamas and the quartet (EU, UN, the USA and Russia,) are in a stand-off waiting to see who will blink first while the occupied territories undergo economic collapse and the failure of essential public services while the aid inflows soar.
A hard won agreement to set up a Government of National Unity has now been hammered out after a near outbreak of civil war between the rival factions.
Hamas has agreed to a cease fire and to recognise past agreements. They have not agreed to recognise the state of Israel but this should not be used a pretext to withhold reinstatement of essential funding for the Palestinian Authority.
After all we have not asked Sinn Fein to give up their aspirations to a united Ireland – just to abandon violence.
In the end a two state solution requires two viable states but now is not the moment to impose unnecessary preconditions.
Wherever you look the designation of a war on terror makes rational foreign policy or a balance of security and civil liberties almost impossible.
Do Liberal Democrats support our police and intelligence services? Of course we do – just as surely as we back our armed forces acting on our behalf in dangerous theatres.
But these services all require political leadership. This certainly requires giving them resources to do the job and a justice system that works.
That cannot be achieved if we undermine or destroy the very freedoms we are employing these professional services to defend.
Holding people indefinitely without trial is incompatible with the freedoms we have fought to uphold.
It is a victory for the terrorists on two counts. Firstly we have changed the way we respect liberty. Secondly, it is a stark indication that Britain is now a more dangerous place because of our foreign policy.
So Tony Blair’s career ushered in to the words of “Things can only get better” ends in failure and humiliation to “What’s your hurry; here’s your hat”.
So far I haven’t mentioned the Tories. But why would I?
North of the border there has been a complete failure of the Cameron effect (and there are signs of its faltering in England too.)
Do we need another well meaning plausible empty communicator? Fettes to Eton is even a regression in the alphabet.
Despite the determined efforts of the chattering classes in the media to raise febrile speculation I do not believe this year’s elections will or should be about independence. They should be about how we use the powers we have got to deliver a brighter future for Scotland.
The SNP are now saying that in the unlikely event they could win a majority for it they would hold a referendum at the end of a four year term. What on earth does that say about their programme.
“We’ll spend four years wrecking Scotland so that you’ll all want to vote for independence. Or we will deliver effective government to prove we are capable but run the risk that independence is then unnecessary?”
The SNP have no manifesto for delivery in the Scottish Parliament this side of independence so with no majority for independence they have nothing to offer.
A party that has no policies for Scotland this side of a fantasy simply cannot be trusted. A party that has never put forward an alternative budget because nothing they say adds up cannot enter negotiations for delivering on health, education, crime, transport or the environment when the only negotiating ploy is on how quickly or slowly they should be allowed to destroy the union.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. Since David Steel and Russell Johnston took to the race track here in Aviemore our party has taken many steps and passed significant milestones. More and more of our fellow citizens have joined our journey.
The torch of leadership has passed from hand to hand.
Russell inspired us and kept faith in our Liberal values. He passed the torch to me to negotiate a fairly elected Parliament with significant powers.
I passed it to Jim Wallace to take us into Government to deliver a whole raft of long held Liberal Democrat policies. Jim is now moving on with dignity and our heartfelt thanks at a time of his choosing.
Now Nicol heads our advance. He showed yesterday in his speech clarity of purpose, vision and determination.
We invite our fellow citizens to join our growing movement. To join a party that has clear and consistent principles in foreign affairs, in fighting for our liberties, in facing up to the challenge of climate change a party that has practical policies at home in charting a future for Scotland in the UK and delivering hope and opportunity to our young people.
We do not promise what without the support of the people we cannot deliver but Liberal Democrat political careers have been marked by success.
Your task is simply this. For the next ten weeks scour the towns, villages and countryside of Scotland as you have never done before and tell the people this.
A new brighter Scotland is available to everyone who wants to grasp it. Nicol Stephen’s message is based on the sure foundation of experience in Government. With your support he can deliver. With your vote you can change the face of politics. Think positive. Vote Liberal Democrat.
