The Asian Tsunami

With the passage of time our knowledge of the impact of the Asian tsunami grows, As I write the number dead approaches quarter of a million killed by the wave alone. The challenge now is to prevent further deaths and aid recovery.

But other parts of the world have long needed our help too. Much of Africa starves. And much of that is due to government failure in the affected countries.

So it was right that we have had two debates in the Scottish Parliament on the subject. Neither led to a vote as there was a common desire to avoid dividing, or seeming to divide, opinion at a time when unity is vital.

Now while the untimely loss of a single person diminishes us all, this scale of loss overwhelms our capacity to understand.

We remember the blitz during the last world war, but it killed only a fifth of the number of people who have died in the tsunami. We shiver at the recollection of atomic bombs falling Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the bombs there killed only a third of the number who were killed on 26^th December.

The measure of our humanity rests in the scale and appropriateness of our response now. Impressive deliveries of food and water have tackled short-term need. Deliveries of generators, hospital infrastructure and water-purification plants have started to rebuild vital infrastructure.

When money is spent directly in the affected areas, it can start the economic recovery that must follow such disasters. Fundamentally, however, we must equip the people who will continue to live on Asian shores with the tools, the skills and the capital that will sustain their long-term future.

Over the past 30 years, I have visited many of the affected countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, India and Kenya. Based on that experience, it is clear that one size will not fit all.

Even before the tsunami impacted on each of those countries in different ways and on others that I have not visited, those countries were extremely different in terms of their cultures, peoples, languages, beliefs and development.

The best people to judge the need of people in those countries are the ordinary people who live in those countries and who can work together to decide what their needs are in relation to their local circumstances.

Some countries in the area have bureaucracies and institutions that are able to identify and articulate their people's needs. Others, however, are not so fortunate. Indonesia has particular issues—and the government is flexing its muscles to control relief. Fine if that helps, but it is beginning to seem otherwise.

Parliament have been told that a significant number of our civil servants have been seconded to help. That is a start.

And across the North East schools, churches, community groups, fishermen are all mustering to help. And that has to be good.

The Red Cross has produced a pack for schools to aid understanding.

An irony is that our communities with least, where government here seek to help, are giving more than our richer areas. So assisting others far away seems to have broad support.

But if we not still engaged with people in need around the world in a year's time, it will have made little difference.

And that was something about which there was universal agreement in our debates in our own Parliament.

Sewell who?

One of the enduring difficulties with our devolved Parliament is managing the relationship with Westminster where other powers are retained and where legislation for England and Wales is considered.

To allow for what Donald Dewar, the Labour politician who led Prime Minister Blair to the devolution trough, saw as no more than an annual need, a convention named after Lord Sewell was created.

When a Sewell motion is passed in the Scottish Parliament we are allowing Westminster to do our work for us. And allowing MPs with little or no knowledge of Scots law to legislate for us.

So alarmingly high has the usage of these become – about one a month – the Procedures Committee of our Parliament is looking at the results.

But we need look little further than two current issues.

A Sewell means that Westminster will change the arrangements for legal appeals. This despite that subject being covered by the 1707 Treaty between Scotland and England which established a UK government and that treaty preventing any change.

And more alarming in a day to day sense, it seems that a UK body, directed by PM Blair and his successors, will have some control of Scots police forces.

We need better collaboration between law enforcement agencies – yes. And across Europe and beyond. But dis-empowering our police and opening them to political interference is not the answer.

Scottish decisions are better decisions.