Friday 28 November 2008

You can always rely on George

Ah, the good Lord Foulkes in chamber yesterday not asking the question he wanted answered:

Department for International Development (Headquarters)

3. George Foulkes (Lothians) (Lab):
To ask the Scottish Executive what plans the Minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture has to visit the headquarters of the Department for International Development in East Kilbride. (S3O-4977)
The Minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture (Linda Fabiani): I have no plans to visit the headquarters of the Department for International Development in East Kilbride in the near future.
George Foulkes: I am absolutely astonished by that answer. The minister says that she has no plans to visit the headquarters, yet a few weeks ago she said that her international development plans were going to be closely integrated with the Department for International Development's work. Forty per cent of the DFID staff are at East Kilbride, including the civil society unit, which spends hundreds of millions of pounds in Malawi and elsewhere. When I was a minister there, I hosted a meeting with the President of Malawi.
The Presiding Officer: The member should ask a question, please.
George Foulkes: Would not the minister's rhetoric about integrating with the Department for International Development's programme and making her work complementary be more acceptable, and more like the reality, if she took the trouble to go to East Kilbride—it is not far away—to talk to the people who know what they are doing in international development, unlike her?
Linda Fabiani: I visited DFID's Scottish headquarters on Friday 7 November—three weeks ago. There are currently no plans to undertake another visit but, as always, we will continue to liaise with DFID.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh god, this was a highlight yesterday. Youtube, plz. Foulkes blew himself up into a gargantuan self-inflating pomposity, before Linda stuck a pin in just the right place.

I could see it coming - I knew he was going to fail, not necessarily exactly in that manner, but his manner deserved exactly a response like this..