Malcolm makes concrete suggestions in support of Fair Trade

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Fairtrade Fortnight Malcolm Chisholm (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab): I welcome this debate on Fairtrade and wider trade justice issues and congratulate Patricia Ferguson on securing it.

As we have seen in this and previous years, Fairtrade fortnight is a fantastic opportunity to raise further public awareness about fair trade issues in Scotland and around the world. It is a chance to celebrate the power of the individual to shape how our supermarkets, food outlets and high street stores do business and the good will and determination of the people of Scotland and the UK in working towards combating issues of poverty and global injustice. Those efforts continue far beyond the allotted two weeks of Fairtrade fortnight.

I want to widen the debate, as other members have done, because Fairtrade fortnight is also a good way to provoke debate about what more needs to be done and how we can do more to tackle the root causes of poverty, not least those that prevent or hinder developing countries from competing in the world market on an equal footing with their richer neighbours.

Although Fairtrade fortnight celebrates the power of the individual consumer, it is important to recognise the need for Government and the Scottish Parliament to take a lead in addressing these issues both at home and on the world stage.

At home, we must ensure that the essential principles of fair trade, development and justice are major factors throughout all areas of Scottish policy. We need to confront the sticky issue of public procurement to ensure that ethical and sustainable procurement is at the heart of all public service delivery, wherever possible.

Although there has been some uncertainty about the extent to which the Scottish Government is able to include ethical trading requirements in its tendering policies within the prescriptions of EU law, mounting evidence, not least from the House of Commons International Development Select Committee's report last year, suggests that there might be more scope than it first appeared to include social and environmental criteria in future public service procurement contracts.

Moreover, we need greater accountability to ensure that service providers adhere to the international standards that are currently in place. In its bid for the 2012 Olympic games, Madrid put forward tendering proposals for the supply of Fairtrade T-shirts. Perhaps Scotland could develop that idea further to include fair and ethical criteria in its procurement contracts for the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth games. That is just one way in which Scotland can do more not only to support the ideals of Fairtrade but to promote more ethical codes of practice in business in Scotland and abroad.

That might be one small step towards addressing some of the larger issues of trade justice on the world stage—the structural and apparently insurmountable inequalities that are embedded in current international trade regulations and procedures.

The continuing controversy surrounding negotiations between the EU and African, Caribbean and Pacific countries over economic partnership agreements is a critical example of the ways in which international development aims are so frequently sacrificed to a pro-western mercantile agenda. However, international pressure to liberalise markets to such a degree—and so quickly—might have catastrophic effects on those countries, which could result in unfair and overwhelming competition from technologically advanced, subsidy-maintained European economies and cause further economic insecurity and disempowerment in developing countries.

For example, a study by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa indicated that Zambia could lose up to $15 million in revenues as a result of being forced to lower import tariffs—that is roughly equivalent to its total annual spending on HIV and AIDS. According to the Kenyan Ministry of Trade and Industry, Kenya could lose up to 65 per cent of industry and 12 per cent of Government revenues, which would threaten the livelihoods of millions, especially those in rural areas. The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, of which Malawi is a member, could lose up to $0.25 billion dollars in regional trade as a result of the current EPA deals.

If trade is ever to be really fair, Scotland, in partnership with the UK, must put pressure on the European Union and the World Trade Organization to redress those and the many other trade injustices that serve to keep developing countries in crippling poverty. March 19th 2008, (Columns 7117-9)