Rural Affairs Committee, 21 Mar 2000

Meeting date: Tuesday, March 21, 2000

Official Report 189KB pdf

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Rural Employment Inquiry

We move on to item 4 on the agenda. I welcome Professor Mark Shucksmith, who has been present during today's meeting. He has had an opportunity to see how the committee operates and has heard most of the committee's members speak at this meeting.

We have gone through a complex tendering process to secure the research and advisory background that we need to conduct the inquiry, which we have been planning since the first days of the committee. Today, the successful tender is represented by Professor Shucksmith. Our inquiry will undertake a wide-ranging investigation into employment patterns in rural Scotland, their impact on rural communities and the effectiveness of current policy responses. We have some flexibility; we always wanted to appoint an adviser who could help us to focus on the areas that we wanted the inquiry to address. We need the expert advice of someone such as Professor Shucksmith to ensure that we achieve the aims of the inquiry.

I invite Professor Shucksmith to go through what was, essentially, his tender, but is now his proposal for the way in which we should conduct the inquiry. We will then discuss the proposal.

I hope that members have received copies of the briefing paper, which summarises the suggested approach. I will go through the paper briefly and then invite questions and discussion. This is a joint proposal for the committee to work with the University of Aberdeen, the Macauley Land Use Research Institute, the Scottish Agricultural College, and with Sue Sadler, who is here today. Sue Sadler is a former officer of Rural Forum Scotland and is very experienced in public consultations that were organised by Rural Forum Scotland. The proposal brings together my role as adviser and the role of the research team. The research team will be co-ordinated by Dr Andrew Copus, from the Scottish Agricultural College, who is also here today. We hope that by working together we will give you the benefit of a much broader range of experience that will help with the inquiry.

The different tasks in which I will engage are set out in a table on the first page of the briefing paper. This is the initial meeting with the committee. Next week I will present a draft of the consultation paper, which will be prepared in the light of the steer that the committee gives us today. There will then be evidence sessions. I understand that next week the committee would like to hear suggestions about witnesses from whom the committee could hear early in the process, although members want to hold open the possibility of inviting other witnesses later on. Towards the end of May, I will help to draft the committee's report, which will draw on all elements of the research and consultation. Some time is scheduled in early June for discussion of the draft and revisions to it.

The research team has three main roles. First, it will help to devise the strategy for the consultation process and provide input into the consultation document. Sue Sadler will be instrumental in that role. The second role of the research team relates to the tasks that are set out in the specification document, which I will not go through now. Those tasks will lead the research team to produce a number of interim reports, which I will feed through to the committee as they appear. The third role is to analyse the responses to the consultation document and to feed that analysis into the draft report. We envisage that, if the consultation is launched before 4 April and six weeks are allowed for consultation, the consultation period will close in the beginning of May, and that there will then be a couple of weeks to analyse and summarise responses.

On the second page, a diagram provides a summary that I find extremely helpful. It attempts to show how the research team, the committee and I will work together. The remainder of the document summarises the contents of the interim reports. The first report will summarise findings from the analysis of evidence from the Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee. The second report will be based on tasks 2 to 4 of the research specification and will address these issues: the key drivers of rural employment change; who gains and who loses and what the impact is, especially in terms of income levels and housing. The third interim report will combine the findings from tasks 5 and 6, and will review the rural dimension of employment policy and present five best practice case studies. The final interim report will present the findings of the consultation exercise.

I hope that that gives the committee an idea of how the research team and I see our relationship. I would be grateful for advice and direction from the committee.

I welcome the idea of the research and advisory teams working together. From day one, I have said that that would be the best way to work.

The paper makes clear the fact that there is a lot of work to be done. It is important that we ensure that rural businesses, people involved in housing, anti-poverty workers and so on are involved in the consultation process. I am particularly interested in the processes that could be used at public meetings to ensure that local people who are facing unemployment have an opportunity to make suggestions. What is happening in communities should be reflected in the inquiry. One of the case studies that will be included in the third interim report should examine a positive way in which a community has dealt with unemployment through community economic development or something similar. It is important that we get out and about and that not all of the evidence is gathered in a committee room in Edinburgh. We should work in places where people are feeling the bite of rural unemployment.

I will take those comments on board. We want to involve as many people as possible. We have had some thoughts on how to proceed with the consultation process and although we were supposed to bring our proposals on that to the committee next week, it would be useful to give members a brief idea of what we envisage. That will let us know whether we are on the right lines.

As well as talking to the usual organisations, we want to talk to the wider public—we envisage doing that in a number of ways. We would have a mailing list to which the consultation paper would be sent. We will discuss the membership of that list with the committee's clerks after the meeting.

We also thought that it would be helpful to place articles in the rural press to alert people to the existence of the inquiry, its main thrust and where they can find more information about it. We envisaged that the consultation paper would be available on the Scottish Parliament website. We also envisaged that there would be a number of public meetings. We would like members' guidance on how many meetings there should be and where they should be held.

We have considered holding between three and five public meetings to cover the different parts of rural Scotland. There is a need to have some meetings in the south, some in the Highlands and some in Central Scotland—exactly where they were held would depend on whether there were three, four or five meetings. The number of meetings held would depend upon the participation of committee members and the time that members have to speak at the meetings to explain the inquiry to the public.

We have some ideas about where we might hold the meetings. Echoing what Mark has just said, we aim to have at least one meeting in the Highlands and at least one in South of Scotland. Depending on how many meetings we have, we would also like to cover the east and west of Scotland because transport links in Scotland are more north-south than east-west.

We are keen that members of the committee take the consultation out to people and explain it from their perspectives, so that we do not introduce yet another interpretation of what is wanted from the consultation.

There are questions about how many people we want to engage and what the cost of the exercise might be. We could limit the number of people who participate in a session, or we can make meetings open; that will depend on the resources that go into the inquiry.

If we were to have three meetings, I thought that they might be in Moffat, Laurencekirk in the north-east and in Kyle of Lochalsh or Oban in the north-west. If we have five meetings, we could perhaps consider Inverness, Newtown St Boswells, Laurencekirk, Newton Stewart or Stranraer, and Oban.

Any comments will be gratefully received.

Go for five.

Does Laurencekirk get two meetings?

No.

I welcome the Aberdeen research consortium on board.

Since it is early in the Parliament and as this is a major inquiry, we should make full use of the opportunity for Parliament to be seen to go around the country. We should hold at least five meetings, which should be as open as possible and spread as widely around the country as possible. The committee could also take evidence outwith Edinburgh.

I am concerned that the furthest north that a meeting will be held is Inverness, which is reasonably urban compared with other parts of the Highlands and Islands. The northern isles—Shetland and Orkney—and the western isles—Lewis, Harris and Barra—do not have links to Inverness and would not feed into those meetings. It is a huge rural area and to choose a large town in the south of the area might not be the best way to get rural views.

As an Aberdeen MSP, I am even more pleased than Richard Lochhead to congratulate the Aberdeen research consortium on making such a professional and impressive proposal. My concern is that when social issues in rural areas are being considered, those who are socially excluded sometimes find it difficult to express their views in a public forum that is also attended by those who are very socially included and who hold power in communities. Are there ways in which people who have less confidence and less power in their communities can be enabled to speak out and not feel inhibited?

We can think more about that, as it is important. We need to find ways of allowing people to feel comfortable—rather than intimidated—about contributing to the consultation. However, we also need to gather a wide range of views—I would be reluctant to go down any path that would lead to our listening to only a small selection of views. We might be able to reach the people to whom Lewis Macdonald referred through specific interest groups or activities.

No matter how one approaches the topic, the sample will always be self-selected to some extent. Those who wish to come forward will do so.

It is a difficult issue. Organisations such as the councils for voluntary service, which work in the rural areas and have a wide base of members, are the kind of agencies that we might want to link with. I share Rhoda Grant's concern—at least one of the five meetings should be held in the islands, where there are special problems of distance.

I concur. I am pleased to see the acknowledgement that east and west have different problems within the northern and southern regions. I am a regional MSP for South of Scotland, and I am sure that Elaine Murray will agree that there are three distinct geographic regions in South of Scotland, each of which has distinct problems. Although one must have regard to the cost of the inquiry, I think that the five-meeting programme will serve us well, bearing in mind Lewis Macdonald's comments on how we need to draw people out to give us evidence.

I would add Caithness and Sutherland to the list, as the far north has particular problems.

Are you including bodies such as local rural partnerships and social inclusion partnerships on the list of those with whom you might make contact?

We have drawn up a list of different ways in which to reach different groups. Community groups could be reached through the newsletter that the Scottish Council of Voluntary Organisations in Inverness produces. We also have a lengthy mailing list in the Arkleton Centre for Rural Development Research, which includes many community activists in different parts of rural Scotland. We have tried to think of different ways in. I hope that we are approaching the issue from all angles and that we will be able to reach most groups. The points about having a meeting in the islands and ensuring that we reach people who would not normally participate are well taken.

We have already said that there should be five meetings, but there are more than five suggestions about where they should be held. Will you run through the five places that you originally selected, so that we can have a brief discussion on where the committee wants the meetings to take place?

This is a balancing act that might be better performed by our research team than by the committee—if that is not delegating responsibilities too quickly. I would be happy to delegate that decision to the research team. They have heard the committee's views, and their initial proposal was well balanced, although there are one or two other factors that must be taken into account. We need to discuss this in detail today, unless other members feel differently.

Do we have an alternative bid? I am happy with that, Lewis.

Can we have a steer as to whether a visit to the islands should be additional to the other five meetings?

Are there any comments?

I would be happy for such a meeting to be additional to the others. We do not need to visit all the islands but we should visit at least one, although I am not sure which. I would be happy to delegate that decision.

It would be helpful if we could get a steer on the nature of the consultation document. When we meet again next week, we will have drafted that document, and it will not be long before the committee will want to launch the consultation. The more steer that we can get on that today, the better.

This might be completely at odds with members' views—please tell me if it is—but I envisaged that the consultation document would begin with a preamble on the inquiry and why the committee is pursuing it. The document would be constructed around approximately 10 key questions. Those questions should be those that will engage people's interest and attention and to which they would respond. Each question might appear at the beginning of a separate sheet, with some text below the question that would elaborate the issue to be discussed. To determine whether I am on the right or the wrong lines, I have drafted 10 questions with the help of the research team. This will not be the document that I will submit to you next week, but discussion of it should give us an idea whether we are aiming for the appropriate breadth—or narrowness—in the inquiry and whether they are the sort of questions that members want.

Do members have the questions?

I do not know whether members have had time to examine the questions in advance, but I would welcome comments and ideas on them.

I had a brief read through the questions. Could they be more specific about manufacturing industry? Manufacturing industry is being lost in South of Scotland and in other parts of rural Scotland. There should be some investigation into the problems of attracting and retaining manufacturing in rural Scotland, and into the issues that surround the problems of the manufacturing sector. Those problems could be addressed specifically in some of these questions.

Absolutely. I included manufacturing in my first draft of question 2, but removed it when the question got very long.

You are good at asking open questions, but question 5 begins the closed questioning. It asks:

"In rural areas there is a high level of self-employment. Is this indicative of a high level of entrepreneurship or of a lack of alternative opportunities?"

Your open questions are quite good, but we should try to avoid closed questions.

Your second question, concerning substantial increases in jobs in local government, will not go down well in Aberdeenshire or in rural areas where outstations and so on are being closed.

Local government has been one of the fastest growing sectors in employment in rural Scotland.

Not any more.

I know that local government is facing difficult times in Aberdeenshire.

Are there any other comments?

We do not want to ask leading questions when exploring the differences between full-time and part-time work and male and female employment. Is there room for a question on child care? When I speak to women, they tell me that that is the biggest barrier to employment.

Sorry, that should have been included. Perhaps I could add that into question 4, which lists the key issues. I am not quite sure how I left that out.

I have a small point on question 10, particularly as today is budget day—the UK Government might also be a main player in stimulating rural employment.

I am just looking through the paper. I am not sure that there is anything in here about cost barriers to employment in rural areas. It would be good to draw out of people what they see as the cost barriers to living in rural areas—petrol duty is one thing that comes to mind, but there may be others.

Question 4 includes a number of things that might be barriers, for example the lack of training opportunities. We have not listed them as positives or negatives. Transport should probably be added to the list, as well as child care.

I have a point on question 10, to which Lewis Macdonald has referred. I imagine that a lot of people who will respond to the consultation will not be aware of the roles of the different organisations and might need a bit more explanation of what a local enterprise company does and so on.

That is where the idea of having a page of text underneath a number of the questions would help. It would be helpful to elaborate a little on the issues and responsibilities and so on. Similarly, on question 8, which lists various policies, there could be some elaboration of things such as the new deal.

Is question 7 where we would expect people to mention the reduction in services, such as the closure of post offices, garages, small shops and pubs, which further escalates the decline of rural economies?

I am trying to think where that would come in. Those issues are more to do with rural decline than specifically with rural employment losses.

Yes, except that when those services disappear, they take jobs with them. The lack of services may mean that fewer people want to live in rural areas, because they do not have access to a post office, local shop, school or whatever. When people move away because areas do not have all the services they need for their families, they take money out of the local economy.

We should probably elaborate on that a little in the text if we want to draw out that sort of issue in the responses. We may need to do that in questions 6 and 7, because question 6, which looks at how the changes in employment opportunities affect different groups and how they relate to poverty, social exclusion and housing, links with the other services as well. We will build that in.

My point ties in with question 8 and with Elaine's point about manufacturing. Should we be examining whether people feel we could encourage better employment practices in rural areas by adding value to the primary products that at the moment are shipped out? That would be well worth examining, if it comes within the remit of the report, which I think it probably does.

Yes.

Are there any further comments?

I have a question. How are we defining rural areas for the purposes of this investigation?

We agreed on the way here that we would not mention that. [Laughter.]

It is a perennially difficult question. It is especially difficult in a public consultation, because everyone has their own idea of what is a rural area. My usual approach is to let people define in their own minds what a rural area is. Pinning it down becomes more important when one is trying to assemble statistics. The research team will grapple with that. For the consultation, we will be interested in people's views regardless of what they think is a rural area.

Would it be fair to say that we want to talk to people who believe they live in a rural area?

That sums it up very well.

That seems to be all the questions.

Are members happy with the general approach?

Members indicated agreement.

Brevity is the key to this. We want ordinary people to respond to the questions—not just organisations. There should not be too many questions—10 is fine—and we should keep them quite simple and straightforward.

We have made a first attempt at jargon-busting so the questions will be as accessible as possible.

Organisations have the resources to answer these things—they just get someone to do it—but we want ordinary people to respond.

Professor Shucksmith will be back again next week to consider the detailed consultation process, so we will be able to hear how the consultation is evolving. What he has told us today has been very encouraging. Cathy Peattie, Irene McGugan and I have tried to keep this running along. We have had a number of disappointments, so I am sure that I speak for both those ladies when I say that we are delighted to have got to this stage. Thank you, professor, for coming along today.