Seòmar agus comataidhean

I am disappointed by the minister’s response to my amendments. I do not think that they are particularly onerous or difficult. I assume that the minister agrees in principle with the idea of gathering relevant data to understand the extent of wealth circulation in a local economy, whether it is termed as leakage or retention. It is a semantic point, really.

The amendments were developed in conjunction with Community Land Scotland, and I think that they are laudable and merit some further consideration. A good example, from the minister’s own constituency, would be Royal Strathclyde Blindcraft Industries, which is part of City Building. It has referred to the idea of the Glasgow pound, which involves local procurement chains recirculating wealth and the consequent multiplier effects on local economic development.

I think that having greater visibility at a micro level is helpful in developing policy. There is a significant gap in data gathering—whether it is to allow analysis of foreign direct investment projects and how they add value to the Scottish economy, or on generation of local supply chain content—and that would be useful data for us to have to drive public policy. Placing such measures in the bill is certainly more helpful than merely having them in statutory guidance.

I would be reassured if the minister would at least engage at the next stage of the bill to try to find a way forward so that that activity can take place as a function of the legislation, because I think that that would be in the public interest. I press amendment 85.

In developing my amendments I have engaged with the national park authorities primarily through Community Land Scotland; I have not engaged with the national parks directly. However, I suppose that they have a view; I suppose that we, as parliamentarians, can take a view about whether they ought to be on that list. That is a matter of judgment for individual members. I think that there is certainly a rationale for it, which merits further discussion.

In my view, those organisations should be included in the list of relevant public bodies, rather than specified public bodies, due to the size of the landholdings in which they have a controlling interest, their influence over land management and the significant financial resources that they are responsible for managing.

Amendment 130 would insert community councils: it would add them to the list of relevant public bodies included in section 5. It is vital that, if community wealth building is to be implemented coherently, it must be acted on by all public bodies, and the community council is the most granular unit of democracy in our country.

Yes—sorry.

Amendment 118 not moved.

Amendment 60 moved—[Richard Leonard].

I propose that amendments 139, 141—I am supporting Sarah Boyack’s amendment—142, and 143 form part of the bill. Amendment 139 would add a key local accountability check to the bill by requiring Scottish ministers to create lines of accountability between community wealth building partnerships and local residents. It suggests options, including citizens panels and community audits, and would be a vital part of making the bill one in which local communities have continued buy-in and connection to projects and partnerships. We have seen good examples of that in other areas, such as community planning partnerships, charrettes, local place plans at local authority level, and developing urban planning models. A similar model could be used here, and I commend the proposal to the committee.

I support whole-heartedly amendment 141, in the name of Sarah Boyack. It actively promotes co-operatives, much in the same spirit as that just expressed by my colleague Richard Leonard. It is important that we grow the size of the co-operative economy in Scotland because it is an obvious and excellent example of how to retain wealth within a community because of its inherent structure of member ownership and the dividend being shared locally. There are many examples in Scotland that can be developed further, and to weave that into the legislation explicitly is an obvious and good suggestion.

Amendment 142 aims to broaden the ambition of the bill by using it as a catalyst for wider change within government procurement. It requires the Scottish Government to issue a report following a review of procurement and whether the current rules meet the requirements of community wealth building, where the interface is often under tension with the need to procure on an international or open basis. In line with what my colleague Richard Leonard just said, are we being ambitious enough with exemptions for community-owned enterprises?

For example, we know from the Mondragon co-operative structure in Spain that there are established measures that are compliant with international procurement treaties and domestic procurement legislation. I would like to test further where we can make that work more effectively in Scotland. This is a good way of probing the opportunity. Amendment 142 is important, because it would turn the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill into something that will truly change behaviours in procurement by embedding the values of the bill across our supply chains. Community wealth is a journey. Driving those values into purchasing behaviours seems to be the natural next step.

Amendment 143 would require Scottish ministers to set out how community wealth building will be financed and funded. That would add accountability to the initiative, while also clarifying where the financial burdens and barriers to the initial set-up of community wealth building partnerships would be. Similar tensions exist in community asset transfers, for example, where it can be challenging for communities to acquire the initial capital, for example, given the rules on the time-constrained disposal of assets. It would be useful for clear opportunities to be expressed as to how communities can establish initial seed funding to build community wealth building approaches.

Community councils would not necessarily produce action plans, but they would certainly be involved in their development, and they ought to be cited as relevant public bodies. I mentioned the parallel with urban planning and developing community building plans. In my community of Springburn, the work of the community council was essential to winning grant funding to develop a charrette and a local place plan, which has now formed part of a city development plan.

11:15

Although I agree that community councils in general are extremely underfunded—they are the Cinderella of our democracy—there are instances in which community councils are very well attended and resourced. It is often a lottery, depending on who is available and who turns up. In some instances, community councils demonstrate value, which is worth highlighting in the bill. Perhaps it could create an impetus to resource community councils better.

Amendment 131 would insert community planning partnerships into the list of relevant public bodies in section 5. If community wellbeing is to be implemented coherently, community planning partnerships should be involved.

Amendment 132 would insert ferry operators into that list, for a similar reason: they are essential lifeline services for many communities, and they are a key wealth generator.

Amendment 133 would insert housing associations and co-operatives acting as registered social landlords into the list. It is clear that the housing association and co-op model is about more than being purely a housing provider; it is a central anchor in many communities, which are often deprived ones, and it often forms a backstop, particularly when local authority services are withdrawn—whether by providing bulk uplifts, developing regeneration projects, or resourcing communities in different ways. Often, that work is not properly recognised. Adding housing associations and co-operatives to the list would give them that status, which would be useful.

Amendment 134 would insert

“integration joint boards established by virtue of section 9 of the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014.”

Often, integration joint boards take decisions that are harmful to community wealth and driven primarily by budgetary considerations and short-term financial constraints, which drive more costs on to public services overall. Giving them the remit that is set out in section 5 would be useful.

For the list in section 5, amendment 135 would insert local employability partnerships; amendment 136 would insert Marine Scotland; amendment 137 would insert ScotRail; and amendment 138 would insert universities.

For the list of specified bodies in the schedule, amendment 144 would insert Forestry and Land Scotland; amendment 145 would insert housing associations and co-operatives acting as registered social landlords; amendment 146 would insert Marine Scotland; amendment 147 would insert the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator; amendment 148 would insert public sector pension funds, on the rationale for which my colleague Richard Leonard spoke more substantively; and amendment 149 would insert the Scottish Housing Regulator.

Those who have been involved with the Scottish Housing Regulator know that it has presided over a significant decline in community-owned housing associations and co-operatives in Scotland since it was established in 2010. The rationale for including it is obvious: if it had a remit to promote community wealth building, that would support the housing sector and drive community wealth building.

Amendment 150 would insert into the list in the schedule the Scottish Prison Service, particularly given the community enterprise work that has been done at prisons such as Barlinnie, to support prisoners in developing skills. There is an opportunity to spin that work out into the community, so it should be included. Amendment 151 would insert Social Security Scotland; and amendment 152 would insert Transport Scotland.

Amendment 103 would insert:

“the role of the Scottish Ministers, community wealth building partnerships, community bodies, private businesses and landowners”.

As drafted, the bill does not sufficiently draw in the private sector or fully reflect the important role that community organisations already play. Mechanisms and intentions are needed to draw the private sector into community wealth building practices, as private interests will be a key driver in achieving community wealth building aims. Without that, there is a risk of on-going economic leakage, with wealth continuing to be extracted from local areas.

Similarly, community bodies are not sufficiently recognised in the bill. At stage 1, the committee recognised the vital importance of empowered communities in advancing community wealth building, drawing on successes in Alloa and Irvine. There should therefore be a formal recognition of third sector and community groups as essential delivery partners in shaping and delivering community wealth building action plans. Large public bodies should be important drivers of community wealth building, but community trusts and community businesses already are. They are important existing organisations, they are properly constituted entities, they employ staff and they have strong local presences in their areas. That is particularly significant in areas that are poorly serviced by the public sector.

Amendment 103 seeks to include private interests, landowners and community bodies in the bill. That would let us begin to recognise the contribution of community organisations and would indicate that private companies and landowners are subject to statutory regulation and guidance, ensuring that those groups are monitored and kept accountable for community wealth building goals.

Once the bill is enacted, guidance akin to the land rights and responsibilities statement should be developed for private businesses to use when developing their economic, social and governance credentials, to ensure that they dovetail with community wealth building efforts in their local areas.

Amendment 140 seeks to fully integrate the work of the Scottish National Investment Bank into community wealth building, allowing for a much more holistic approach to national investment and guaranteeing that community wealth values are implemented across the Scottish economy.

I move amendment 103.

I move amendment 118. Actually, I will not move it, because it is pointless in the context.

The purpose of amendment 85 and its associated amendment 118 is to ensure that a community wealth building action plan must include

“an assessment of economic leakage from the local area to which the plan relates, and … the measures the community wealth building partnership is taking, or intends to take, to address this”.

Amendment 85 seeks to minimise the leakage of wealth from local areas and to ensure that relevant public bodies take meaningful action to secure and grow local development and the circulation, or recirculation, of wealth within that geography. When public finances are pressured, as they often are, the case for community wealth building becomes even stronger, as we must try to prevent that sort of leakage from local economies and ensure that public expenditure results in wealth circulating and remaining in circulation in the local area as much as possible. An example could be the economic extraction that takes place as a result of public subsidies feeding unsustainable land price increases—investor land ownership in Scotland is a case in point.

The Government often cites foreign direction investment in terms of purely the projects, without any further granular analysis of those projects. If not properly scrutinised, such projects might result in greater flows of profit extraction from the Scottish economy in the years to come. Indeed, that overreliance on foreign capital has led to the dilution of Scottish democracy, and it could do so again. Investors could exert leverage by threatening to move investments elsewhere if demands are not met on tax breaks or the erosion of workers’ rights or environmental standards, for example, or in relation to other legislation that might reduce rates of profit extraction. My proposed provision would be a good preventative measure in that regard.

Although the most recent gross national income figures to be published are welcome, there was a significant gap between 2017 and 2023, as well as a two-year time lag in relation to the latest data. Those are significant issues for data analysis and understanding of the gap between gross national income and gross domestic product. The Scottish Government should therefore also commit to publishing GNI figures more readily, and perhaps the proposed more granular local data picture could assist with that.

If properly resourced and collaboratively delivered, community wealth building action plans would represent a significant opportunity for local authorities in particular to help the national effort to secure and grow local economic development and a true circular economy.

I move amendment 85.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the amendments in the group. Their general context in the bill is that Scotland has one of the most foreign-owned economies in the world and is one of only a handful of such countries that is rich and developed but is not a microstate or an outright tax haven.

Although we do not often speak about the balance of payments or the capital and financial accounts in our economy, a good indicator is a comparison of Scotland’s gross domestic product with its gross national income. At the start of this parliamentary session, £36.5 billion was extracted from Scotland, largely in the form of profits and dividends to foreign companies and shareholders, while only £26.4 billion flowed into Scotland, largely as foreign investment income. That created a net outward flow of £10.1 billion in 2020-21. The need for measures in the bill to retain more wealth under domestic ownership is important, and my amendments seek to do that in meaningful and practical ways.

Amendment 119 seeks to broaden the bill slightly by adding the purchasing of community shares as an optional measure to fulfil the goal of reducing inequality and supporting economic growth.

Amendment 120 would add credit unions simply by mentioning them as bodies that can be supported and promoted. When we consider community groups, it is vital that credit unions, which underpin so many financial transactions, particularly in working-class areas of Scotland, are encouraged to flourish, and they should be explicitly mentioned in the bill.

Amendment 80 seeks to encourage steps by the Scottish ministers to encourage and support the Scottish National Investment Bank to develop a community wealth fund; to work with relevant public bodies and community organisations to provide financing for community wealth building projects; and to advise on the strategic use of community benefit payments, including from a change of land use, renewable energy projects and seed funding for community-led wealth building projects.

Securing funding for community wealth building activities is essential to ensuring that local communities and other organisations can take full advantage of the economic transformation that those activities provide. Simply grant funding them is not sufficient. Patient finance is important. The creation of a community wealth fund has been the subject of much discussion over the past couple of years, with detailed proposals for such a fund being put forward by the Scottish community coalition on energy. Those proposals would allow for the strategic and democratic use of additional payments from major renewable energy and infrastructure projects, most of which are in foreign ownership, and major land use change projects to seed fund community wealth building projects around the country.

Amendment 80 aligns with Sarah Boyack’s amendments 78 and 90, which set out that the community wealth building guidance, action plans and statement that the bill will introduce should refer to the community wealth fund. Amendment 80 would mandate a role for the Scottish National Investment Bank in providing finance for community wealth building activities, including the community wealth fund. In that context, it should be noted that one of the bank’s three missions is about place, and account should be taken of the transformational potential of expanding access to finance that is generally not currently provided by commercial banks.

As the committee noted at stage 1, the Scottish National Investment Bank should have a prominent role in supporting economic development. It should play a key role as a public sector leader and a source of potential patient capital and underwriting for community wealth building. Amendment 80 would set out in the bill the bank’s important role in that regard.

In seeking to provide that the Scottish National Investment Bank must encourage community wealth building, amendment 121 would allow for a more holistic approach to be taken to economic growth, and it would put investment—sustained investment through ownership, rather than one-off windfalls—at the heart of community wealth building.

Amendment 126 seeks to add the purchasing of community shares as an optional measure to fulfil the goal of reducing inequality and supporting economic growth as part of the community wealth building plan, which is the norm in many other European countries.

Amendment 127 seeks to encourage credit unions, as organisations that have members who would benefit from community wealth building plans, to be part of that ecosystem.

As Lorna Slater said, the amendments in this group have a similar purpose. Amendment 124 would remove the possibility that the community wealth building statement might contain actions that are not acted on, and would instead require the Scottish ministers to implement the measures in the statement. It is key that action, and not just the duplication of paperwork, is the ultimate outcome of the bill.

Amendment 102 seeks to ensure that the community wealth building action plans are binding, enabling meaningful and progressive action towards outcomes. If the phrase

“so far as reasonably practicable”

is kept in the bill, relevant public bodies will have an enormous loophole to avoid following through on action plans. The ability of the community wealth building partners to deliver the action plan should be assessed and dealt with during a review or monitoring, rather than providing a general loophole in the bill. I hope that that loophole can be closed at this stage.