New UK Gov International Development Minister Brings NGO Experience

An MP who held a senior role in the charity sector before joining politics has been made the UK Government's International Development Minister.

As part of new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham's Ministerial line-up, which includes Ed Miliband as Foreign Secretary, former Save the Children Executive Director, Kirsty McNeill has been appointed Minister of State for International Development and Africa at the UK Government's Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). For the past two years, Ms McNeill has been Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Scotland.

In announcing her new position on social media, Kirsty McNeill posted the above photo commenting:

"A year or two ago, when I was thinking about the approaching twentieth (yes, twentieth!) anniversary of the Gleneagles G8 summit I looked this out. It's a flyer for the Make Poverty History march I helped organise in Edinburgh, when we tried to answer Mandela's call to be a great generation. We're still trying. In this job I'll give it my all to get there but I will need your help. So, old friends, please give me your wisdom and your challenge. New friends, let's think about where we might collaborate."

Last June the SMP participated in a 20-person roundtable hosted by Ms McNeill at the Scotland Office with stakeholders from the third sector, academia, business and government discussing how Scotland's expertise in international development could continue to make a global impact. In the meeting, Kirsty McNeill was immediately upfront about the need to be able to achieve more with less and took an ‘in it together’ pragmatic approach. The invitation to collaborate is something that the SMP welcomes. At last year’s meeting in Queen Elizabeth House, few could have foreseen the drastic extent of the UK’s aid cuts to Malawi announced last week.

Read Susan Dalgety's "Edinburgh Evening News" column commenting on the aid cuts here