Seòmar agus comataidhean

Councillor Macgregor, I will pick up on a point that you made about Business Gateway, given that you are familiar with it. I have heard from stakeholders that Business Gateway cannot support and mainstream social enterprises, co-operatives and other more democratic business models as much as people would hope. If people are trying to start such an organisation, Business Gateway does not necessarily have the tools to support them. Is that true or is that not your experience?

Does anyone else have a view on who should be around the table?

On that point, we have heard from other witnesses that the financial pillar is often the most difficult of the community wealth building pillars to address. Is there anything that the Scottish Government should do, or that should be included in the bill, to increase the capacity of such financial players to be involved?

Following up on what my colleagues have asked, it seems that cumulatively, between this bill and the UK Internal Market Act 2020, there is a significant hampering of devolution in Scotland. Instead of having legislation that allows Scotland to actively diverge on areas of environmental protection, packaging and so on, in order to protect our environment and to implement recycling schemes, we are reduced to saying whether it is okay for the UK Government to impose UK-wide legislation on us. It does not sound like we are able to actively diverge on those matters any more.

I turn to the text of the bill, at the start of which two statements of intent are set out. The first is to

“reduce economic and wealth inequality”—

I can fully get behind that—and the second is to

“support economic growth in and across Scotland”.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts on how we measure economic growth, because witness after witness at our evidence sessions has told us that GDP is not a good measure of what we are trying to achieve with the bill. Is there a way of measuring or describing the economic success that we wish to achieve, other than by using GDP to measure economic growth?

I have two questions that are largely about exploring the same theme slightly more. If I understand correctly, the intention of the bill is to allow the UK to align more closely with the EU. Is that written into the bill or is that just how the current UK Government has said that it intends to use the bill? Could a different UK Government use it to diverge from the EU?

While discussing community wealth building, we have heard a lot that community and employee-led businesses are so important for community wealth building but, when people want to start a co-operative or other such organisation, the resources to do that are not necessarily available. I would appreciate that being discussed.

I have a couple of specific questions about the bill. First, the bill provides for three years for bodies to come together and create a community wealth building action plan. From the evidence that the committee has received, a quarter of councils—eight out of the 32—are already doing something on community wealth building. I do not know what that means for the rest—whether they are doing nothing or not enough.

Three years seems like quite a long time, because it will be three years after the bill has been passed, which will be several months off. As councils have already started on that work, could we make that period more ambitious? Would it be reasonable to say two years?

That is brilliant—thank you. My second question is about the intentions behind the bill and how we measure success. Right up front, the bill says that its intention is to

“reduce economic and wealth inequality ... and ... support economic growth”.

In various evidence sessions, we have heard how we might measure economic growth or success. If economic growth is measured simply by GDP, that does not necessarily measure the things that we are trying to achieve with community wealth building, such as quality of life, crisis management and the human connection piece that we know is so important but is not necessarily captured in GDP.

How do councils and COSLA measure economic success? Do you have standard metrics? Is there something that you look at? How would you decide whether the bill was working in your areas?

We have spoken about guidance already, but would you suggest anything else that should be included in the guidance? For example, during the committee’s visit to North Ayrshire on Monday, we heard that they had had good success by taking as their starting point the inclusive growth diagnostic and a map of regional land and assets. In that way, they knew where the problems were and where their assets were so that they could understand what they were doing. Would that be a good place for our new community wealth building partnerships to start? Is there anything else that should be in the guidance to make sure that this works?

You mentioned supply. My question is substantially about demand, because the market by itself will not demand recycled plastics, as they are more expensive and might be lower quality depending on how they have been manufactured. Are Governments willing to force demand by essentially putting in place taxes on new plastics so that recycled plastics can compete?

We are in a cost of living crisis. One of the unpalatable things that people have to come to terms with is doing things such as taxing polluting products such as new plastic. Are Governments willing to do that? Do we have that appetite?