Seòmar agus comataidhean

My final question is about skills. I know that you covered this slightly with Michelle Thomsons, but, in terms of optimising our spend in the skills space with the Withers review and the restructuring of that space, how have you made decisions about where that money is optimally spent, and which elements of the skills landscape are you choosing to invest in?

Thank you, convener. Amendment 25 seeks to ensure that community wealth building action plans are rooted in community priorities. Community wealth building action plans should be aligned with community action plans, local place plans and local development plans. That seems a basic step to ensure coherence. If the minister is unable to support the amendment, I would like to hear from him whether he will commit to ensuring that the approach is present in guidance.

On the other amendments in the group, Paul Sweeney and I have similar intentions but different approaches, so I will not support amendments 85 and 118. I am happy to support Richard Leonard’s proposal to change “may” to “must” in amendment 60.

As Sarah Boyack has said, amendment 69 is about facilitating and supporting the generation, circulation and retention of wealth in local and regional economies

“through the development of community-owned renewable energy, and skills and supply chains associated with renewable energy.”

I support amendments 105 and 106 in this group but not the others, particularly those that refer to the Scottish National Investment Bank, for reasons that I have set out previously.

That is an interesting approach. We have taken evidence a few times from the enterprise agencies, and it seemed that there was no clear data on whether it was better for them to give out money or to teach businesses to go and find funding for themselves. It was a sort of “give a man a fish or teach a man to fish” situation. By cutting resource spend while increasing capital spend, we seem to be planning to give out more fish instead of supporting businesses to go and get their own funding. Was that intentional?

I note the Scottish Government’s discomfort with some of the legislation in this space because it has not consented to the underlying legislation. However, this particular piece of legislation seems to be small enough and technical enough, so I understand the Scottish Government’s reason for consenting to it.

My amendment 26 compels the Scottish Government to set targets. The text of the amendment is based on the approach used in the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill, in that it does not put targets in the bill but ensures that targets will be set. It was a significant concern of the committee that the bill did not have targets, and several members have suggested approaches to resolve that. I heard the minister say that he is not keen on that, but the committee clearly is. The Government may be in for a defeat over Murdo Fraser and Daniel Johnson’s amendments on targets, which means that the minister will have to come back at stage 3 if he does not like what gets passed today.

Amendment 26 is my suggested approach, because it is the tried and tested one from the Circular Economy (Scotland) Bill. However, I would like the Government to give serious consideration to including some mechanism for targets in the bill. As I say, an amendment might be passed today, but if the Government does not like it, it could propose something that it does like at stage 3.

We all agree that reporting and monitoring are needed in this bill. Now that the Government has lodged amendment 101, I will not move my amendments 39 or 39A. However, I will carefully review the Government’s amendments before stage 3 to ensure that the reporting is adequately covered.

Amendments 29A, 29B and 110 to 112 are my attempts to piggyback on Daniel Johnson’s excellent approach of requiring the Scottish Government to review specific legislation with respect to community wealth building and, in particular, procurement. A review does not require primary legislation to take place, but the Scottish Government needs to be willing to commit to such a comprehensive review so that the Scottish Parliament can remove legislative barriers to community wealth building, particularly around procurement. I would like to hear from the Government how it intends to undertake that.

I spoke to representatives of the national park authorities, and they are not interested in being on that list of relevant bodies. I do not know whether the member spoke to them.

For the past few weeks, the committee has been working on the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill, and I think that there is consensus across the room that it is a good thing to ensure that more wealth is retained in communities and to help to build such wealth across Scotland.

I have heard frustration about the commentary that our enterprise agencies and Business Gateway are not set up to support co-operatives and other democratic business models, which means that, when people are looking to start a business, those models are not presented as options and the advantages that they offer are not mentioned. There is lots of data that shows that such businesses contribute more to their communities than traditional profit-based businesses.

In order to get the best bang for our buck in our investment, do you intend to use the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill to achieve a shift in how our enterprise agencies support businesses so that we can make the optimum use of funding to support the kinds of businesses that will help with community wealth building?

08:45

There is a lack of clarity about who is on what list. It will not be practical to get everyone around the table to develop the action plans, so the group needs to be small enough to be functional. It is not at all clear to me by which criteria members of either list are being chosen—whether it is by purchasing power, land ownership or other unspecified ways in which they might have local influence.

Although I think it is right that Scottish Enterprise is on the list, I would flag a concern that I had when we had representatives of the three enterprise agencies before the committee to talk about the bill. Both South of Scotland Enterprise and Highlands and Islands Enterprise appeared to understand community wealth building and their role in it, but the chief executive officer of Scottish Enterprise did not have a clear grasp of it, thinking, when asked, that bringing in foreign investment and high-paying jobs was community wealth building. It is not—that is not what community wealth building is. Those might be worthy goals, but they are absolutely not what community wealth building is. Some clear guidance on that to Scottish Enterprise will be required if it is to participate fully in developing the action plans and if it is to understand the consequences of its decisions.

Given the limited funding that is available to support community wealth building as an endeavour, it is vital to have the owners of assets around the table, so that they can be part of the discussion about how public assets can be used for the public good. That means that, instead of putting money in, you bring the people who have the wealth to the table. I am therefore proposing amendments 96 to 98. Forestry and Land Scotland is the largest landowner in Scotland; the Crown Estate owns the foreshore, which is critical for marine biodiversity and offshore energy, potentially including community energy schemes; and Network Rail owns a considerable amount of vacant and derelict land, particularly in west and central Scotland. Bringing those bodies around the table would allow their extensive assets to be used for community wealth building.

Michelle Thomson raised with you the importance of scaling up businesses. I think that we agree on that. Can you please give us more details on how the budget will support the scaling up of businesses?

In the past, you and I have slightly disagreed on support for start-ups. It is not that I do not support start-ups, but “start quickly, fail fast” is not a model that I am particularly supportive of. I prefer the idea of creating businesses with the intention that they will last a long time and support communities for a long time. In that regard, I think that taking already successful small Scottish businesses and helping them to scale up is the key.