The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Humza Yousaf has questions to answer
Under the UK’s system of devolution, foreign affairs is a reserved matter: it is for the Government in Westminster, accountable to Parliament, to determine how the UK approaches the rest of the world. It would not only be confusing were Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland allowed to conduct their own foreign policies. It would be to the detriment of the whole nation, allowing one part to undermine the whole.
This is just one of the reasons why the recent behaviour of Humza Yousaf, the Scottish First Minister, is so concerning. Today, this newspaper reports that he overrode official advice to instruct the Scottish government to pay £250,000 to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), which operates in Gaza.
Officials had recommended a donation be made to Unicef, to fund water programmes, but Mr Yousaf disagreed. This happened while members of the First Minister’s extended family were trapped in the Palestinian enclave. A spokesman for Mr Yousaf has denied that there was any conflict of interest or that the matter had anything to do with his family.
This is hardly the first time that Mr Yousaf has attracted criticism over his forays into international affairs, however. Late last year, Lord Cameron accused him of breaching protocol when he met with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, at the Cop28 environmental conference. At the time, the Foreign Secretary threatened to shut the Scottish government’s “mini-embassies” abroad, saying that Mr Yousaf had reneged on an agreement to have a UK official present at diplomatic talks.
UNRWA itself is a highly controversial organisation whose local staff have, in the months since the Scottish donation, been accused of deeply troubling links with Hamas. Many Western countries have since cut off donations to the body entirely.
At the very least, the First Minister must now be fully transparent about why he went against official advice, and explain whether all the appropriate rules were correctly followed.
But a broader debate about how the Scottish government has sought to pursue a quasi-independent foreign and development policy should also follow.
The SNP might well wish to put Scotland firmly in the international camp opposed to Israel’s current military operation against Hamas in Gaza – and it has made its desire for a ceasefire between the two sides well known, not least in Parliament. But that is not currently the agreed position of the United Kingdom. Mr Yousaf must be made to understand that.