Regeneration
I will respond to that only briefly, Presiding Officer. The £70 million that the Government claims that it is putting forward, which is effectively a bribe, should be part of the local government settlement in the first place, which would allow local authorities real self-determination in their areas.
The key funding stream for the voluntary sector is the fairer Scotland fund, which is delivered by central Government and distributed through community planning partnerships. The aim of the fund is to assist CPPs in achieving economic growth through regenerating disadvantaged communities, tackling poverty by helping vulnerable people and groups and overcoming barriers to employment. The fund is worth £435 million over the 2008-11 period and is ring fenced within the local government settlement until March 2010, when it will cease to exist as it will be rolled up in the local government settlement. Allocations of the fairer Scotland fund to community planning partnerships were based on levels of need in each local authority area, using the Scottish index of multiple deprivation in 2006.
There have been some good contributions this afternoon. On finance, the minister said that there were pressures for the foreseeable future. That is a perfectly fair point to make, but, with all due respect to Alex Neil, it seems to be the same old rhetoric that we keep hearing from the Government, which blames the UK Government more than anyone else, and does not take responsibility for the financial situation in which we find ourselves.
Because budgets are not about single issues. The overall budget that the Government put forward, which it was not prepared to discuss sensibly with us as an Opposition did not merit our support.
I am not saying that the Government has got it wrong on absolutely everything, but it cannot discuss regeneration without also focusing on the adverse impacts of the failure of the Scottish Futures Trust to build anything. The result of that is that development and regeneration plans have, at best, been delayed if not put on ice. Given that the SFT has not laid a single brick, 28,000 construction jobs have been lost in Scotland. Twenty two members of staff and a salary bill of £1 million may be many things but it is not a regeneration project.
As ever, the shadow of the concordat looms large over the potential for economic and social regeneration. Single outcome agreements are expected to show how community planning partnerships have agreed the strategic priorities for their local area and yet SCVO claims that “many” local authorities
“continue to exclude voluntary organisations in planning and delivering public services.”
SCVO has make it clear that in most areas, the third sector is represented in CPPs, but it also notes that being at the CPP table does not guarantee good involvement in the community planning process. That is simply not good enough.
As the minister and others have said, whether or not the approach is bottom up is irrelevant if community groups are not at the table when deals are made. Ross Finnie was spot on when he highlighted the fact that so far we have not got that right.
The Scottish centre for regeneration has expressed legitimate concerns about the end of ring fencing of the fairer Scotland fund. That will lead to money being used to fill gaps in local authority departmental budgets—for example, in education. Although the majority of SOAs contain details of how FSF moneys are being used, the fact that 10 SOAs contain no statements of that kind is a glaring omission that undermines the Government’s ability to engage with local communities in effective regeneration projects. Serious action is required in that area.
It must be more than an aspiration or a good idea to have decision-making structures at neighbourhood level that bring together key players to develop a regeneration strategy, based on an assessment of community needs. Such structures must be seen to work, and evidence of the proposals must be tangible. Access to knowledge and expertise, sufficient powers to facilitate the development of networks and the effective implementation of projects are a must, but so far we have heard little beyond the platitudes in today’s motion about how the Government intends to make that happen.
In all probability, communities will take different approaches to achieving the right balance of physical regeneration, training, job creation and community building, but there must be some standardisation of the overall process; at present, that is missing. Ross Finnie, Johann Lamont and others were right to ask for the issue to be addressed.
In this period of economic downturn, community-led renewal will be a vital aspect of how we climb out of recession. The current economic situation could stimulate a rethinking of the way in which we do regeneration. As we try to deal with the multitude of problems that face our localities and neighbourhoods, new approaches will need to be developed and strengthened. The resources that are available from government, both central and local, need to be used smartly to maximise positive outcomes for local people and to create virtuous cycles of education, employment, equity, civic pride and community cohesion. Third-sector, community and voluntary organisations must not only be seen as a valuable additional resource but be put at the heart of the regeneration process. Often they are a mine of knowledge and increased capacity at local level, with a successful track record of action that makes a real difference to local communities.
Taking a positive outlook, the potential for community development to fill the resource deficit and offer other locally appropriate and sustainable solutions to local regeneration is an exciting prospect. Government must create the space and capacity to assist communities in the regeneration of their areas. As Johann Lamont explained, the planning framework is central to that. Communities do not just need access to discussion forums for their areas—they need access to funds to help them to regenerate those areas, bringing derelict properties and waste ground into productive use, promoting community engagement, and creating local jobs and training opportunities in the process.
The minister is correct to say that regeneration is not just about paying for new buildings—it must increase social justice and quality of life by overcoming poverty and disadvantage and producing more inclusive, equitable and sustainable local areas. As Jamie McGrigor correctly pointed out, there must be a place in regeneration strategies for community enterprises, credit unions, co-operatives and housing associations, among other community-based organisations. The member was right to list the areas that have benefited from additional funding but, like Karen Gillon, I wonder whether he really believes that signs in Thurso replace the devastation that was caused by the pulling down of the towers of Ravenscraig in Lanarkshire.
Given that the member does not support the council tax freeze, at what level would he set council tax throughout Scotland? What would the Liberal Democrats’ top limit be and what impact would that have on economic regeneration?
Perhaps we could get back to regeneration please.
I agree with what the minister says, but does he agree that the situation in which voluntary sector projects that support the social infrastructure that he mentioned are closing all over Glasgow, such as the Castlemilk stress centre, is not supportive of the objective that he is setting out to the Parliament this afternoon?
There is no doubt that the pressures on public finances will have consequences for a number of projects not just this year and next year but for the foreseeable future. The reality is that, as there is a cut in our budget, so inevitably there is a reduction in what is available to those organisations that are supported by the Scottish Government, with the consequences that that entails. One of our objectives is to try to ensure that our budget goes further and that, where possible, we use the public money that is available through the Scottish Government to leverage in additional resources, for example from the European Investment Bank, whose remit includes encouraging, financing and supporting urban regeneration.
In addition to the first lesson about the need to tackle not just the physical problems but the economic and social ones, one of the key differences between the old Highlands and Islands Development Board and its successor organisation Highlands and Islands Enterprise as compared with the Scottish Development Agency and its successor Scottish Enterprise is that the HIDB and HIE both had or have a social remit as well as an economic one. Many communities in the Highlands and Islands have benefited from that combined economic and social remit, which is appropriate, particularly to small communities in the northern part of Scotland.
It never had a social remit, so it is not a case of putting it back. When the legislation was introduced, it did not carry a statutory social remit for Scottish Enterprise, and the legislation has never been changed since it was passed in the early 1990s.
The second underlying lesson is about the need for community ownership. A couple of weeks ago, I visited Neilson, which is a community of just over 5,000 people just south of Paisley. Although it is a small community, it has an historic legacy of success in industry, particularly in the textile and related industries.
Neilston is a very good exemplar and shows what can happen not only when the community supports a project but when it has originated it. In this case, the community used powers under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 to purchase the disused bank building in the town and make it the focus of community regeneration, and it is now planning a 20-year development strategy to regenerate their community in a self-sustaining way. It intends, for example, to establish a community-owned wind farm facility that, once up and running, will generate up to just under £500,000 of revenue that will be put back into the community. That in turn can be used to attract additional investment.
I recognise that moneys were brought forward and that there was two years’ spend in one year, but only 40 per cent of that spend went on new build. There is a concern that a significant amount of money was spent on off-the-shelf housing that was languishing in the market.
A broader issue is that not one hospital or school has been built through the Scottish Futures Trust. That is a lost opportunity in our local communities. We talk about the importance of economic activity, but it is critical to link that to local opportunity. There is concern about the fact that the Scottish Government does not have an employability strategy and that its skills strategy is entirely blind to the barriers and discrimination in the employment market. We must recognise that it is the Scottish Government’s job to address the economic, social and personal barriers. I am all in favour of the go local message, but we still need national support. The levers at the Scottish level must be used to support that local activity.
If there was ever an example that captured the lack of understanding of how all those aspects come together, it is those who criticised the Glasgow airport rail link for being simply a train line. The frustration at the loss of GARL was that it was an opportunity to create jobs and to provide community development and regeneration in a deprived community. The scheme would have created 1,300 jobs for local people, which would have made a huge difference. That regeneration issue must be addressed.
The same issue arises in relation to the role of Scottish Enterprise. The minister said that Scottish Enterprise never had social responsibility under the legislation, but the fact is that, in the past, when there was physical regeneration in the constituency that I represent, Scottish Enterprise was round the table talking about how to link the training and employment opportunities to the people in the community. Scottish Enterprise has told me that it no longer has that role. It does not have responsibility for training or for directing economic activity to deprived communities, which is a huge problem. Deprivation has a geographical dimension, so there ought to be a geographical responsibility in an agency that is so well funded. Scottish Enterprise should not be led simply by demand from companies; it should actively support local economic activity. I make the same point about community development in Scotland. There are huge opportunities, but I am not convinced that those are recognised in Scottish Enterprise.
I want to flag up issues about the planning system, because regeneration at all levels must be supported by a strong planning system. However, people in the planning system who are committed to working in communities tell me that local authorities are deciding to make planners redundant and to reduce their planning departments. I am told that community engagement with the planning process is not as rigorous as it should be. In the current times, that is a critical job. To an extent, we will plan our way out of recession, so we must have strong planning departments to do that.
As someone who supported community planning, I have a great fear that it is being honoured in the breach. There is an issue about the role of the voluntary sector in community planning partnerships. They are not at the table. I ask the minister whether that will be sorted and whether voluntary sector representation will, as of right, sit at the table in every community planning partnership.
One of the big issues in the old social inclusion partnership process was the extent to which we were able to bend the spend sufficiently. I recognise that we did not do that; mainstream budgets were not directed sufficiently into communities. However, it seems that that process is now even worse.
We need real community engagement, but the feeling is that there is now less. Community engagement is critical in prioritising budgets, understanding need and knowing where the real challenges are. To be fair to the minister, he referred to that in his opening speech. However, he will know that the study of the fairer Scotland fund by the Scottish centre for regeneration, which was based on case studies in a number of local authorities, concluded that many respondents felt that, in comparison with the more local, geographic and project-focused approaches of previous programmes, it has become more difficult to engage communities in the more thematic community-planning-partnership-wide approaches, which are becoming more common. I am sure that we would all be interested to know how that problem is being addressed.
The minister said quite rightly that local government is a critical partner, but it is facing severe financial pressures now—not in the future—despite a growing budget. There will be a time when we will have to ask whether a centrally imposed council tax freeze on local authorities is the best approach when we need to sustain communities and the groups that Robert Brown quite rightly identified.
There is a particular issue around single outcome agreements and the extent to which they are delivering on the local priorities that would support regeneration. A report by Audit Scotland states:
“The audits showed many CPPs to be overly bureaucratic and not focused ... on outcomes for local people.”
Equally, there is a need for community planning partnerships to make clear the impacts that their single outcome agreements, and specifically, the fairer Scotland fund-related elements, will have on equalities groups in their area.
There is a disjunction between what the Government wants to do with regeneration and what it has said and the vehicle through which that is being delivered.
Single outcome agreements are still not equality impact assessed. In those circumstances, I am not confident that the rounded view of community regeneration is being recognised.
Robert Brown mentioned the impact on voluntary organisations locally. Will the minister confirm the willingness of himself and John Swinney to intervene where they feel that voluntary organisations are disproportionately feeling the impact of the financial squeeze locally? That in itself seems counterproductive when we are talking about regeneration.
Regeneration should be part of an anti-poverty framework. It is unfortunate that single outcome agreements emerged ahead of the achieving our potential framework, the equally well framework and the guidance on equalities. As a consequence, spending on regeneration locally has not been shaped by anything other than the warm words of the frameworks. We are not seeing any delivery at local level that is influenced by the frameworks at Scotland level.
An example of that is the supported employment framework, which is important in relation to regeneration. The framework has come out, but there is no role for Scottish Enterprise, no money and no evidence that where the Scottish Government has let big contracts, work to support those who are further away from employment is being recognised.
I would welcome the minister’s comments on how he sees the Southern general hospital contract providing community benefit and employment opportunities. Is there an opportunity to use article 19 of the European Union public procurement directive to support sheltered workplaces? Those are examples of how thinking at a local level can support a strategy on regeneration.
I recognise the important comments that the minister made about how regeneration works and how it should be central. However, he will understand, as we all do, that saying it does not make it happen. The levers have to be used more to ensure that there are not just warm words, that there is a Scottish strategy that recognises the geographical nature of deprivation and the challenge in some of our communities and that, therefore, genuine local partnerships can be fostered to ensure, along with the Scottish Government, the employment and economic, social and physical regeneration that the minister talked about and which we in the Labour Party supported.
I move amendment S3M-5852.1, to insert after second “regeneration”:
“; notes in particular the importance of an effective planning system and the necessity of genuine community engagement to secure real change”.
15:09
I thank the minister for his contribution in lodging the motion for debate. I also thank Johann Lamont and Jamie McGrigor for their very constructive amendments, which do much to enhance the motion and the debate. I will wait until I hear Robert Brown before making up my mind about the Liberal Democrats’ amendment.
I will just pick up on what Cathy Jamieson said about eyesores and vacant land. Funnily enough, I have figures here about vacant land that show that 10,863 hectares of land in Scotland is classed as vacant, and that 3,352 hectares—37 per cent, which is a lot—has been unused for at least 23 years. Those are handy figures to have, and Cathy Jamieson is quite right to ask the minister or local government to consider how they can use such land.
A number of points have already been made on which I think we would all agree. I do not doubt the minister’s sincerity in trying to ensure that regeneration is at the heart of what he wants to do in government, but I am not quite so persuaded that that is the case for some of his colleagues or persuaded about where it sits in the broader scheme.
I start off by raising the issue that I raised with the minister in relation to Scottish Enterprise. He correctly points out that the agency never had a statutory social remit but, previously, workers in Scottish Enterprise in Ayrshire, which I represent, and in other areas felt that they had some social responsibility to the area in which they were located. It seems that they are now specifically being told that they do not have that responsibility. The difference may seem to be subtle and semantic, but it has huge implications for how the agency operates on the ground.
I was interested to hear about the minister’s visit to Neilston and the work that is being done there. Members have commented that regeneration is about more than renewing and regenerating buildings but the reality is that if, when local residents walk out of their houses every day, they face a village centre or main street in their town that is dilapidated, is run down and contains buildings that have been boarded up and left abandoned for years, it does not make them feel the good sense of place about which Linda Fabiani talked.
The Scottish Government needs to consider afresh how we can quickly bring some of the derelict buildings back into productive use. I have corresponded with the minister, his predecessors and other ministers on that. The reality is that, in far too many communities, there are still sites that are, to be frank, an eyesore and a disgrace. Something needs to be done about the way that local authorities are able compulsorily to purchase those buildings and bring them back into productive use, particularly where the owners have simply disappeared off the face of the earth, leaving local communities to deal with the blight.
I urge the minister to consider having an audit of the use of vacant and derelict land, and try to pin down in each local authority what buildings or sites cause the most problems, who owns them and how they can be brought back to something that will benefit the local community. That leads on to issues that Johann Lamont raised, such as how local authorities could use their procurement policies and the opportunity for sheltered work spaces for people at local level.
I will say a couple of words about the town centre regeneration fund. I know that the Tories will want to claim all the credit for that, but while Jamie McGrigor is at it, I hope that he will remember that some of the issues that we face, particularly in the former coal-field areas, did not happen in the past couple of years but stretch back to when the Conservatives were in power. We are only beginning to get to grips with some of those issues, after a very long period of trying to regenerate the communities. I will not be entirely churlish, though, because I acknowledge that there was cross-party support for the town centre regeneration fund.
However, as the minister pointed out, the issue was that the need was greater than the sum of money that was available. Certainly, in some of the communities that I represent, particularly in the Carrick area, people feel that there was overpromising and underdelivering. They all felt that they had very good bids that were equal in value, status and importance to some of the successful bids. No one wants to deny to the people who had the successful bids their right to them. However, people feel that other areas were equally worthy and in need of support, but that is not available now.
There has been much talk about the voluntary sector and co-operatives. I have been involved with co-operatives for many years and, indeed, have worked in the voluntary sector. I offer a wee word of caution on this area, because capacity building in the voluntary sector does not happen just because we say it is a good idea. Historically, co-operatives have arisen because a need was identified in a local community and people banded together to work in a democratic way to provide a service, without private profit being made from it. That is an excellent principle that I am sure we all want to see taken forward. However, in some of our more disadvantaged areas, such things cannot be sustained without support, particularly in the start-up phase. I worry that, by talking so much about the voluntary sector and co-operatives, we almost let local authorities off the hook. It will not be good enough for local authorities simply to offload some of the difficult bits and some of the bits that they have not got right, and expect local communities to take on the ownership and running of them without being provided with the resources to do so.
An aspect that has not been covered yet is that, for many of the communities in the former industrial areas, as the minister will be well aware, there will not necessarily be future opportunities in the traditional industries. That means that we must join up our thinking on tourism and rural industries as the focus of regeneration. I hope to see a much more joined-up approach from the Government on links from those areas into transport and the infrastructure that is required for those communities to thrive.
15:38
Karen Gillon is absolutely right about that. I hope that local authorities will be able to look at that suggestion.
A good example is Drumchapel, which I visited on Friday to meet with what used to be called Drumchapel Opportunities. The area has been deprived for—gosh—decades, but it still has derelict land sitting there. That is not just an eyesore but an absolute disgrace. It would be good if something could be done about that. The land was supposed to be for regeneration 10 years ago, but I honestly do not know what has happened, as the “For Regeneration” signs have been taken down. To wake up to that every morning, or to see that when going to the shops, certainly does not make people feel good.
As a Glasgow MSP, I have seen many changes, particularly in the city centre with the regeneration of the harbour site. We should congratulate Steven Purcell—I know that everyone here will wish him all the best for a speedy recovery—on working to achieve that along with other agencies. He has done much to redevelop the harbour site, so we should give credit where credit is due. However, local government obviously needs to work in tandem not just with the Government of the day but with many other organisations. Although that has happened in Glasgow’s harbour area development, regeneration has not really reached other areas of Glasgow. That is a real disappointment. With the Commonwealth games coming to Glasgow, we must ensure that those areas that have not enjoyed regeneration also now benefit. They need not just short-term, quick-fix jobs and housing, but long-term benefits for everyone in those communities and for the people at large.
As the minister mentioned, regeneration needs to be targeted not just by Government but by local authorities, community planning partnerships, community health and care partnerships, the voluntary and private sectors and the local communities. All of those groups need to be consulted and involved. However, as Johann Lamont mentioned, a recent report highlighted Glasgow as one of two areas where the CPPs and CHCPs do not engage with the voluntary sector or with local communities. Indeed, I am sure that I am not the only MSP to have been told by voluntary groups that their local knowledge of problems and issues is overlooked by the CHCPs and CPPs. As other members have said, the voluntary organisations feel that those partnerships are not operating as they should. I ask the minister to look into that, because I am sure that those partnerships were set up to operate with, rather than just talk down to, the local groups on the ground. Unfortunately, in Glasgow—and in another area, which I cannot remember but which is mentioned in the report—the partnerships do not operate in that way.
I also ask the minister to look at the boards of those organisations. As Ross Finnie mentioned, many different organisations, such as SIPs and so on, were set up many years ago to try to help deprived areas. However, their boards are often unrepresentative not just of local people but even of the political parties. I ask the minister to look at the boards of the CHCPs and CPPs to see whether they are representative. I hope that something can be done about that to ensure that there is parity for all on those boards.
For decades now, in Glasgow—and elsewhere, as Ross Finnie mentioned—we have had various schemes to try to target deprived areas. Billions of pounds have been spent, but the same areas are still suffering from deprivation. After decades in which money has basically been thrown at them, those areas have never risen out of deprivation and people are, unfortunately, still suffering and still in need. In this day and age when we are looking at fresh thinking, we cannot allow that situation to continue so I would like some form of monitoring of the money that is invested in those areas. Perhaps if we had had such monitoring 10 or 20 years ago, those areas might not be in the position that they are in today. We could learn from our successes and from our mistakes, but that has never been done despite all the moneys that have been pushed through SIPs or anything else. When various colours of Government—whether Tory, Labour or Labour/Lib Dem—have been in power, we have never had feedback to tell us exactly how well those schemes are doing. Therefore, my plea to the minister and the Government is for some form of monitoring so that we can see where the successes are, which we can then replicate, and perhaps catch in time—before the situation goes on for another decade—those schemes that are not successful.
All that I am saying is that it is about time that we targeted the moneys. Not just the Government and the Scottish people generally but the people who live in those communities need to be able to see that they get long-term benefits, such as employability and long-term sustainability.
15:45
I am pleased that the minister has acknowledged the continuing need for the regeneration of communities across Scotland, and that he recognises the number of stakeholders that need to be involved in ensuring its success. However, when he is making his winding-up speech this evening, I hope that he will tell us what practical steps the Government is going to take to ensure that regeneration continues.
As we have heard from other members, regeneration is about economic and social restoration, the physical regeneration of the communities in which we live and work, the tackling of poverty and disadvantage as Cathy Jamieson said, and the safeguarding of a sense of community. The physical regeneration that is involved in building new houses and restoring old buildings must be part of a process of empowering our communities; that is vital.
It is also vital that major stakeholders across the economic, social and community services work together to provide improved economic opportunities and infrastructure. It is about building a better environment, safer communities and community engagement. A holistic approach is needed if we are going to bring back some sense of pride in the communities that I represent.
Cathy Jamieson talked about the impact of what happened during the miners’ strike on many communities. It certainly had a huge impact on the area that I represent.
I am a member of the Dysart regeneration management group, which was set up during the previous Administration. It has played an important role in bringing the community together. Members have mentioned confidence building, the development of new skills and people actively participating to shape the area in which they live, and they are all key factors in the success of regeneration. In Dysart, the encouragement of community spirit resulted in the re-introduction of the Dysart gala day as well as the formation of community teams for initiatives such as the Scottish coastal rowing project, which exhibited in Parliament recently. As a community, we have developed our village, and it is now an important tourist destination with improved services and opportunities for our children and young people.
I talked about a holistic approach at a local level, but I call for such an approach to also be taken at Government level. For example, the townscape heritage initiative that I have discussed previously could be seriously impacted by the concessionary fares scheme, which the Government has cut, taking £20 million out of public transport across Scotland.
We have heard a lot about community planning partnerships and building from the bottom up. In the initiative that I have been talking about, we have seen modern apprenticeships working in the built environment, and stonemasonry is a compulsory part of that scheme. However, the Scottish Funding Council is looking at the redistribution of funding, and funding for training in the built environment will be adversely affected if the plans go through, which will affect the number of planners that we can train. There does not seem the same enthusiasm across the Government for community regeneration as we have seen from the minister today. My plea to the minister is to see that the holistic approach that he is asking communities to take is also practised in Government.
According to the Fife regeneration health and wellbeing study, 37 per cent of people in Kirkcaldy are dissatisfied with the physical appearance of their local area. That builds on what members have said about derelict buildings and a sense of place. Investment in regeneration has begun and the issues are being addressed. The example that I gave of the Dysart townscape heritage initiative has been on-going. Although I welcome the £1.6 million funding that is to be given to Kirkcaldy, I ask the minister to consider continuing the scheme because it is only tackling the tip of the iceberg.
Regeneration is about need as well as opportunity. As the minister will know, last year in September work began in my constituency to improve the tenure, mix and quality of the affordable housing. Housing is a big part of regeneration, but it is not everything. I again make the plea that there is investment in creating and supporting jobs in the construction industry, and I hope that the minister will talk to his colleagues about making training an integral part of any project. When that has worked, we have seen young people getting not only jobs but vital skills. I wish Margo MacDonald well in her recovery, and I think that, if she were here, she would support me on the issue of stonemasonry jobs.
Town centre regeneration must be high on the Scottish Government’s agenda. We have heard about that today, and the funding that has been made through the town centre regeneration fund is very important to Scotland’s economic growth. As convener of the cross-party group on town and city centre development, I have chaired discussions on the town centre regeneration fund and asked delegates from the Scottish Government to ensure that social deprivation is taken into account when funds are allocated. People are not clear whether that has happened, but, as Johann Lamont said, it must be part of the Government’s poverty agenda.
A town centre that has featured in the United Kingdom’s top 20 high streets worst hit by the recession is Kirkcaldy. The £2 million is welcome and will allow us to move forward.
Absolutely. That is the point that I am making. Let me put it this way—there is no excuse for financial cutbacks in situations in which organisations take short-term, budget-led decisions without having regard to longer-term strategies. Removing one bit of funding from an organisation is like pulling away a thread. When there is no support for one side of the house, the whole house falls down. The threat to other bits of funding is not taken account of, with the result that a service is taken away. Such a cut might seem reasonable on paper when it is looked at from the centre, but all sorts of linkages that have been built up over a period are lost.
The second project is Youthbike in Cambuslang, which helps motivate and direct young people through their interest in motorbikes. The fact that one of its sessions is on Saturdays helps to keep young people off the booze on Friday nights. It has won a number of awards, and the number of young people that it puts through Motherwell College as bike mechanics and the like is growing. The project is council run, but RegenX is no longer able to fund it, so it may have to close. The cost will be measured in an increase in the number of young people who get into difficulties and go off the rails.
The third project is the autism resource centre in Ruchill, which I revisited on Monday. I met a tremendous bunch of people, who are clearly mutually supportive of each other, but who face all the social relationship issues that autism sufferers frequently face. Funding cutbacks mean that the project will have to move to Bridgeton and will be unable to sustain the informal drop-in and group activities that are part of its appeal. The result will be a loss of support and motivation for people who are looking to go back into work.
An issue that emerges from that is how people survive in the current climate. Projects can fail and sometimes have to be closed down, but they should be properly terminated after evaluation. I return to the point that Ross Finnie made about the role of government. What has become of the local government-voluntary sector concordats that we went to some lengths to develop in the most recent parliamentary session? Do they have any continuing significance? How does the Government see them operating? What can the Government do to provide the structure and the strategy that allow voluntary sector organisations to prosper and survive in these difficult times?
The Government uses the alibi of Westminster cuts. The concordat and the single outcome agreements are all very well in their place, but there is no excuse for having a positive and sustainable strategy for the people-enhancing aspects of regeneration. I make a plea to the minister not to do a Pontius Pilate in this area, but to take specific responsibility at Government level for how such matters operate across the board.
15:59
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate, as regeneration is an issue that affects communities the length and breadth of the country. I am sure that there will be few MSPs who cannot think of an area that they represent that would not benefit from being regenerated and given a new lease of life. The sad fact is that the number of communities in such need will no doubt have increased significantly as a direct result of the recession. Empty shop fronts and derelict housing may be a clear sign of the economic damage that has been done to individuals and businesses, but they also represent real blows to the vibrancy of a local community.
Without successful businesses at the hub of local communities, there is less interaction between residents, fewer visitors to an area and, of course, less money circulating locally. That is why, as well as the town centre regeneration fund, the Scottish Government’s small business bonus has been a crucial measure during the economic downturn. The money that small businesses have saved has often made the difference between their folding and their being able to continue as a viable concern.
The recession might have done major damage to many businesses and the communities that they support, but how much worse would things have been without the small business bonus, which Labour and the Liberal Democrats sadly failed to vote for in the 2008 budget, which introduced it?
I am glad that the Scottish Government recognised the importance of local businesses to the future of communities in some of the awards that were made under the town centre regeneration fund. For example, the retail rocks! Aberdeen project in the Torry area of the city, received £573,000 from the fund towards its plans to provide up to nine empty shop units rent-free for a year to budding entrepreneurs. That will help to re-energise the local community. I hope that some of those entrepreneurs will come from the Polish community, which already has some shops there, and that that will help community and social integration. I look forward to those businesses being developed in that area later this year.
Similarly, the safer places improved spaces project will benefit the Mastrick shopping centre in Aberdeen, which has been on a downward spiral since the demise of its largest shop, Woolworth’s. Because of the project, that empty unit will be occupied by a new tenant, which has already been identified.
I think that Cathie Craigie will find that the poundage will still be lower than it is in other places.
Just as important to successful communities as flourishing businesses are the facilities that are necessary for social groups and local events to take place in. I am therefore pleased that the town centre regeneration fund has awarded funding to improve town halls across the country.
In Laurencekirk, the Dickson hall trust received £467,000 for a complete upgrade of the hall and its facilities, and Stonehaven town hall received £181,000 for roof repairs and other improvements. The importance of such halls is never greater than in times of crisis, as was demonstrated by the fact that St Bridget’s hall in Stonehaven was used as an evacuation centre for people who were affected by the recent flooding in the area and the landslips at the Bervie braes. Such halls help to tie communities together, and improving the facilities that they offer has a knock-on effect, as it can stimulate community groups and generate pride in a local area.
On Karen Gillon’s point about vacant and derelict land, I say that the Scottish Government has a fund that provides money to local authorities that have great concentrations of long-term vacant and derelict land, to enable them to bring that land back into productive use. Surprise, surprise—that fund totals £36.6 million and is ring fenced for the period from 2008 to 2011.
I agree, but I think that, sometimes, local authorities do not use the powers that they have to drive that forward.
As many members have said, community planning partnerships are best placed to doing the sort of work that we are talking about. However, the efforts that the Scottish Government has made to encourage regeneration across communities are welcome and, in many cases, have made a real difference to the lives of residents.
16:05
The chamber has witnessed a few heated debates and it is fair to say that from time to time members have opposing views on various matters. However, from the tone of today’s debate, I think that we are all clear that regeneration is a priority for communities throughout Scotland and for us as elected politicians—and is even more so in the challenging times of a recession.
Last year, after a slight hiccup, the chamber came together to set up the town centre regeneration fund, through which millions of pounds have been invested in local communities to help shake off the recession. We cannot understate the benefits of regeneration at such an important time. Last August, for example, community members in Lochee in my constituency welcomed the allocation of £2 million from the town centre regeneration fund to bring new life to the town’s high street. I thank the minister and his officers for that decision, which, as well as allowing structural improvements to be made, has allowed community partners to engage in new projects to rejuvenate Lochee.
More important, the money from the fund has complemented the previous efforts of active community members who had until then been constrained by a lack of financial resources. With the support of the Scottish Government and Dundee City Council, Lochee high street is in the process of being revitalised; much needed repairs and refurbishment are being carried out; and steps to make residential areas safer have been introduced. Regeneration efforts in Lochee have strengthened not only the high street’s physical structures but the local community, and the emphasis on partnership working and economic, social and environmental benefits is paying big dividends.
Dundee itself is a long way to go before it fulfils its full potential. However, that potential is enormous, and the waterfront project aims to capitalise on that. The Scottish Government’s £33 million investment in the waterfront regeneration project can create 3,500 new permanent jobs and generate £2.6 billion for our economy. Although the current SNP council is taking forward these ambitious plans, it is continuing the previous administration’s good work and, in line with the tone of the debate, credit should go where credit is due.
The process of regenerating Dundee’s waterfront started back in 1986, with the return of RRS Discovery and the launch of the city of discovery campaign, which has been quite successful in turning around the city’s fortunes. In its new one city, many discoveries campaign, Dundee is looking back at its past while looking forward to the new technologies that are becoming increasingly important to its economic future.
Dundee’s waterfront remains key to the city’s regeneration. The jewel in the crown of the waterfront project will be the Victoria and Albert Museum in Dundee, which the Scottish Government is working towards jointly with Dundee City Council, Dundee’s two universities and other partners. An international competition is under way to find a design team to create an iconic building near RRS Discovery. It is hoped that that building will be set not only next to RRS Discovery, but on the Tay, and that it will be an iconic building on the waterfront for people from Fife, who will see it as they go across the bridges, as well as within the city. The Victoria and Albert Museum in Dundee will potentially generate 900 jobs, and it has been estimated that it will bring in 130,000 visitors to Dundee every year. That will be a huge boost to the Scottish economy as well as to Dundee’s economy. It will tie into the other cultural centres in Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow and really make Scotland a global cultural place to visit.
As well as investing in the waterfront, the Scottish Government has been doing a lot of other work with Dundee City Council and other partners to help Dundee to recover. There is £22 million for a new swimming and leisure centre, and there are five new primary schools. The refurbishment of Harris academy in the next few years has been approved. Those things will help to protect vital construction jobs in Dundee and the surrounding area.
Communities throughout Scotland have seen job losses over the past two years because of the recession. Scotland appears to have suffered less than the rest of the UK, but our regeneration efforts must focus on job creation. The Parliament’s world-leading climate change legislation represents a huge opportunity for our communities to create jobs. Forth Ports, Scottish Enterprise and Dundee City Council are working together in Dundee to take advantage of the growing renewables markets and to use the port as a location for offshore turbine manufacturing and maintenance. Such opportunities are being grasped not only in Dundee, but in several locations throughout Scotland. The prize is big enough for all of us to share. With the loss of manufacturing jobs in Dundee as a result of the closure of NCR’s manufacturing base, that could prove to be real and sustainable alternative outlet for our highly skilled engineering workforce. Scottish companies in the offshore wind turbines industry have the potential to supply the European market, and the construction of renewables sector hardware in Dundee is an opportunity that must not be lost.
Regeneration must be about more than just buildings; it must be about communities, and it must provide sustainable benefits on multiple levels.
I am pleased to support the motion.
16:17
Let me finish the point and I will let the member respond.
In the community where I grew up, our textile industries were devastated. In the communities that I now represent, the Ravenscraig and Gartcosh works were shut because of a systematic decision by Government. In the communities that Marilyn Livingstone and Cathy Jamieson represent, the mines were shut because the Government did not like the miners. That was the reality of the 1990s and that is the reality of the communities that we now support. The reason why the Tories have only one MP in Scotland is that they still have not realised that communities the length and breadth of Scotland suffered in the 1980s and 1990s and that young people still grow up with parents who do not have a full time job or do not earn more than the minimum wage. That is a scandal that we must all tackle and face.
The new life for urban Scotland projects that I mentioned were highly commended in 1999 by the University of Cambridge as examples of excellence. Can the member give me one example of anything better that her party has done in the past 10 years?
I do not dispute that new life for urban Scotland was an effective project, but the reality of systematic destruction of industrial heritage is that people have no opportunity. The communities cannot be regenerated because people cannot get employment or get an income.
The member wants to talk about achievements. The national minimum wage is probably one of the biggest and proudest achievements of my Government. The fact that my mother got a pay rise when the national minimum wage was introduced says a lot about what I stand for. People have the ability to spend, support themselves and be proud of who they are—that is what the Tories took away and that is what we have put back. The reality of regeneration is that it is as much about people as it is about buildings. That is why there is a difference between the parties when we come to the general election. I hope that Stewart Hosie gets to grips with that, too.
16:23
Regeneration of our deprived and disadvantaged communities is a key priority for this Government. It is critical to achieving our purpose of sustainable economic growth that benefits everyone in Scotland.
Regeneration is at the heart of every aspect of this Government’s policy, in terms of physical infrastructure regeneration and economic and social regeneration. However, much of the responsibility for delivering regeneration rests with our friends in the local authorities and their partners, particularly those partners who are involved in community planning partnerships. Further, the role that local people play in regeneration is absolutely critical. Community empowerment is not an add-on to regeneration; it is a fundamental building block.
Solutions cannot be imposed from the top down by people sitting in offices in Edinburgh or elsewhere; a bottom-up approach is required so that the community can take ownership of regeneration projects.
We need communities to shape the services that they receive and to be able to deliver change for themselves. The Government’s role is to provide the tools for the job. We set the national policy context, lead innovation and support delivery. In that way we can create an environment in which the lasting transformation of areas is possible.
During the period of economic downturn in the past two years or so, the importance of regeneration has been enhanced. It is often the work of regeneration projects that has allowed communities to maintain higher levels of employment and income than would otherwise have existed.
If we look at the history of regeneration in Scotland since the first modern, large-scale regeneration project was launched in the east end of Glasgow in the late 1970s—the Glasgow eastern area renewal or GEAR project—we can learn certain lessons about what constitutes a successful regeneration project. There are two or three fundamentals that apply irrespective of the timescale or what kind of community we are considering. Whether it is a large or small community, a peripheral housing estate or a city centre, certain underlying principles can contribute significantly to the success of regeneration.
The first lesson to be learned from GEAR is that the focus should not be only on the physical regeneration of an area. To be successful, we have to tackle not just the physical needs but the economic and social regeneration of the area.
Given what the minister has just said about local economic regeneration, does he agree that Scottish Enterprise should be looked at once again and should have that social remit put back?
As the member knows, we fund Co-operative Development Scotland, which is probably much more integrated into Scottish Enterprise with regard to developing these matters. Certainly in my own field of housing I very much support the whole concept of housing co-operatives, which involve the active participation of tenants and the management at a local level of what is a very vital physical, economic and social asset.
Another underlying principle is embodied in the approach taken by communities such as Neilston and Blairgowrie, which submitted a very imaginative and successful proposal to the town centre regeneration fund to develop an indigenous renewable energy resource that would also generate an income stream over a sustained period for reinvesting in the community. By doing all this on a third sector basis, the bodies in question can access not only all the money that Government agencies can access but other sources of funding including lottery funding that very often are not available to agencies.
The ethos of the organisation that delivers regeneration in these areas is also very important. It must not be a bureaucracy or part of the state per se; instead, it should be under the local community’s ownership and control, with the involvement of all key stakeholders, be they voluntary organisations, private sector companies or indeed individuals. The proposals submitted by many organisations to the town centre regeneration fund—and, indeed, the fact that the fund itself was two or three times oversubscribed—clearly demonstrate that local communities have assets that not only have major economic potential but provide economic benefits.
The minister’s motion is straightforward. Indeed, despite my best endeavours, I could not find anything in it with which to disagree. We will therefore support it and the other amendments. In the interests of consensus, I am keen that we have a substantial debate about regeneration issues rather than a more aerated discussion—I am sometimes involved in such discussions.
The minister must accept that the budget that he has to spend this year has grown. I do not think that the Scottish National Party’s position is that the UK Government ought not to have bailed out the Scottish banks. It is recognised that the consequence to the public finances of doing so must be dealt with across the United Kingdom.
There is concern that there may be a gulf between what is said about regeneration and what is happening at the local level. I want to raise several issues that I hope the minister will address.
As the minister has said, we must recognise the connections between economic, physical and social regeneration. In focusing on economic development, we must understand the need for the physical and social development of communities. That means that we must take a strategic, Scotland-wide approach. We must look across Scottish Government departments’ budgets and resources, and not simply talk about regenerating a community from one budget; we must recognise that that has implications for justice department spending and health budgets, for example. We must recognise that there are links and that things are interdependent.
There has been concern. When the Scottish National Party came to office, set up its directorates and separated community planning, which was under the minister with responsibility for local government, from community regeneration, which was under the communities minister, I remember discussing the dangers inherent in such an approach and the likely disjunction that would emerge.
There is a genuine fear that we are now beginning to see the result of that mistaken decision, which is that community planning is regarded not as a catalyst for community regeneration and as a vehicle to revitalise communities, but as a mechanism for the distribution of resources. The minister must address that.
Physical regeneration is important, which is why time and again members raise concerns about what is happening in the construction industry. Public building through the construction industry is an important part of challenging the recession but, from where we sit, it looks as though there is paralysis in Government policy in that regard, with the consequence of lost opportunities for jobs and apprenticeships and for people to retain their skills.
You should be finishing now.
No one can disagree with the words in the motion—they are very warm—but I would like to hear how they will be transferred into action.
15:52
One of the issues that I have been pursuing and which the minister has been looking at is reviewing the use of local authorities’ compulsory purchase powers, which could enable them to take over some derelict land and bring it back into productive use. Perhaps when the minister sums up, he can tell us where that issue is in the framework.
Will the member give way?
I am sorry, but I do not have time.
I am delighted that communities in my region of the Highlands and Islands including Dunoon, Oban and Bowmore in Argyll and Bute; Stornoway in the Western Isles; Forres, Elgin, Lossiemouth and Buckie in Moray; Lerwick on Shetland; and Wick and Thurso in Caithness are all benefiting from the implementation of Scottish Conservative policy on regeneration. For instance, in my local town of Oban, the gateway to so many beautiful Scottish islands, the enterprising local people who have started the Oban Bay Marine company are benefiting from this Scottish Conservative policy; it has rewarded them with £800,000 towards the creation of short-stay visitor pontoons in Oban bay. Thurso is benefiting from signage and access improvements. The interest in the fund from communities the length and breadth of Scotland and the innovative ideas and schemes that have been proposed and are going ahead has been very encouraging. It is clear that many Scots are ready to play their part in regenerating their communities. They need the incentive and they need a recovery in our UK economy, which—unfortunately—has been so damaged.
As I have said, we welcome today’s debate. Our constructive and positive actions while in Opposition in this Parliament show that we are ready to work with others to increase the opportunities for local communities. Time prevents me from speaking in detail about housing policy, but I reiterate our strong support for the housing association sector that has helped to transform so many communities. We also believe very strongly that those councils that have not yet done so should pursue housing stock transfer. That would remove housing debt and unlock investment, in itself a massive boost to community regeneration. Our amendment recognises the good work that has taken place in the past and looks forward to further progress.
I move the amendment S3M-5852.2, to insert at end:
“; acknowledges the success of the New Life for Urban Scotland initiative focused on Castlemilk, Ferguslie Park, Wester Hailes and Whitfield and described as a landmark in the history of urban regeneration in Scotland in the official assessment of the scheme, and welcomes the £60 million Town Centre Regeneration Fund secured in the 2009 budget.”
15:17
We should not lose sight of the scale of the task. I understand why Jamie McGrigor gets so extraordinarily excited about the fund for which he claims entire credit. It is a useful tool, but let us not get carried away. The issue of regeneration in Scottish communities has been a long and difficult one. The minister was right to point to some of the long-standing background; we should not lose sight of how difficult all of us in Scotland of every political persuasion have found dealing with regeneration.
I describe regeneration is an aspect of market failure. Whenever a community has suffered a major change in economic activity from which it shows no sign of spontaneous recovery, there is need for that community to make a collective effort in partnership with Government, private sector and all the agencies to address the problem. Although that has been recognised for some time, we should also recognise just how difficult it has been. The minister rightly pointed out, as did Jamie McGrigor, the need for us to recognise the great difficulties that changes in agricultural and fishing patterns in our rural communities can bring about. It was undoubtedly the late Russell Johnston who first suggested in 1964 the Highlands and Islands Development Board. I do not recollect his Conservative opponent making any mention of that in the Inverness campaign, but perhaps I am misreading history. As the minister rightly said, there was always a social dimension and that has led to different prescriptions in the Highlands.
It is instructive to remember that the problems in our urban communities stem from coal mining, ship building, heavy engineering and steel making. Although it is understandable that those communities grasped at electronics jobs as they moved forward, the sad fact is that, despite all the best efforts by successive Governments, the worst areas of community disintegration and where the greatest need for regeneration are to be found are in those self-same communities. Our present problems stem from the decline of heavy engineering and so on. We have to remember that.
In central Scotland, whether we are talking about housing or economic regeneration, we have adopted models that have not quite worked. The minister is right: parties of all political persuasion have learned lessons.
We have learned that solutions must be from the bottom up and that local authorities must be given greater discretion. We have not wholly learned about the critical importance of the voluntary sector. I remain to be persuaded that the Government of which I was part quite appreciated the sector’s role or extent, although it tried. The same is true of the current Government.
The private sector also has a role to play. Often there are misgivings that the sector’s economic drivers are not wholly consonant with the social and economic goals that others seek to achieve.
There is also the role of Government. I was pleased to hear the minister say today that regeneration must be bottom up, but that is not an excuse for a Government of any persuasion to say that it will allow regeneration to take place on an ad hoc basis. The approach that we take must be rather different from the kind of proposals and plans that any Government would bring forward; it must both recognise the need to allow local autonomy and a bottom-up approach and give cohesion to what we are seeking to achieve. That is why the amendment in my name asks the Government for a plan.
We are not looking for the minister to meddle and interfere with individual issues or suggesting that we return to a top-down approach. On the other hand, there are important historical lessons that we must learn, as the outcome that we are trying to achieve is not just regeneration for today but regeneration that will last, be sustainable and allow some of the communities that have suffered first, second and third-generation problems of deprivation, unemployment and a lack of community regeneration to get off the list.
It is instructive that Jamie McGrigor points in his amendment to the
“Urban Scotland initiative focused on Castlemilk, Ferguslie Park, Wester Hailes and Whitfield”.
He is right to do so, but—crikey—those were the very communities that were in the forefront of regeneration projects in the 1960s; it was necessary for someone as young as me to go to the library to find that out. In my area of the West of Scotland, successive generations of the poor people who have lived in Ferguslie Park have been badly let down. That is curious, as the motives of the Governments that invested in and helped those communities could not be questioned, but the approach that was taken was not wholly successful.
We must look critically at where we are going now, at the initiatives that are still in place—the minister referred to a number of them—and at the funding streams. I share many of the concerns that Johann Lamont expressed about wrapping up those funding streams in local government single outcome agreements. When I was in government, I was keen to have a form of outcome agreement and was involved in Cabinet committees that looked at the matter. One critical issue was how to get general outcomes to result in more specific action. I say to the minister that the phrase “making progress towards” leaves me cold. I do not think that we are getting an accurate or plausible measurement of progress in the area.
Johann Lamont was right to say that we are not questioning the Government’s motives; we are not having a silly debate in which we disagree with what it is trying to achieve. However, it is not good enough to have an omnibus agreement that is not sufficiently specific to give anyone comfort on what actual outcomes will be, far less to enable members of the Parliament to hold the minister to account. It is now easy for the Government to say that it is making progress. What progress is it making? Can the minister quantify that or say where it is coming? He cannot. That is not necessarily his fault, but it is a result of the fact that the Government has written the agreement in terms that make it more difficult to quantify progress.
My colleague Robert Brown will say more about the role of the voluntary sector, which is critical and has been grossly undervalued. As I have already said, the previous Government did not develop that role, either, but it requires a great deal more attention.
Those two elements—on one hand, a greater sense that the Government has a plan and a purpose; on the other, greater recognition of the need to give more support to the voluntary sector—are the import and purpose of the amendment in my name.
I move amendment S3M-5852.3, to insert at end:
“and therefore calls on the Scottish Government to bring forward detailed proposals on how it intends to deliver its regeneration ambitions in the context of its economic recovery plan and how it will protect and enhance the contribution of the voluntary sector through structured and sustainable funding from central and local government”.
15:25
Despite decades of talking about regeneration, we continue to discuss it without ever quite getting there. I would go as far as to say that some communities need generation, let alone regeneration. Regeneration is an economic and social issue. We cannot say, “We have failed, so we will do no more”; we must keep going and we must measure progress appropriately, as Ross Finnie said.
Johann Lamont talked about community planning partnerships. Partnership—between national Government, local government, Scottish Enterprise and other Government agencies, for example—is important in the context of generating and regenerating communities. The education system is important. Colleges and schools are a vital part of communities.
The voluntary sector is also important. When I talk about the voluntary sector I do not mean only the people who provide services professionally; we must take nothing away from the value of the work that unpaid volunteers do in all our communities throughout the country. Unpaid volunteers work in small ways to keep their communities ticking over, although they are not often recognised.
The Parliament is a bit hard on business sometimes. Many small and medium-sized enterprises and even some larger businesses have a degree of social responsibility and contribute quite a lot more than general employment to the communities in which they are based.
As I have listened to the debate, I have been struck by just how much knowledge, detailed information and insight is held by members who have particular knowledge of the subject. I will obviously break the trend, but all the speeches thus far have added significant points.
Linda Fabiani talked about the role of place, which is very important. Sandra White made an extremely good point—and I am not saying this just because I want a vote for the Liberal Democrat amendment—about the CHCPs and the CPPs, how they work together, to whom they are accountable and how they operate. I have something to say about that in a minute. There were also a number of speeches from Labour members—Johann Lamont and Cathy Jamieson in particular—on issues of importance.
Alex Neil is one of my favourite ministers. In fact, he is probably my only favourite minister—I do not want to overstate the point—but I was a bit disappointed with both the motion and his contribution. It had an element of an academic treatise rather than a speech by a minister who is in charge of doing things.
The Government motion is full of warm words, but it is short of specifics, which is why the primary call in the Liberal Democrat amendment is for the minister to put some flesh and bones on his regeneration ambitions and to tell us more about what lies ahead. As I know, he is a minister who has great knowledge and experience of and commitment to regeneration.
Ross Finnie was right to say that the fact that there is an emphasis on local control and bottom-up approaches is not an excuse for the Government to say, “This is nothing to do with us—we’ve launched it, let’s get on with it.” It is not that sort of situation; the Government has an important role to play.
An important point was made about the fact that the issue is not exclusively about infrastructure and bricks and mortar. It involves a mix of more human-scale support and backing that could help to transform life, much of it instigated or provided by the voluntary sector. The projects that deal with mental health, addiction or learning support, that support disabled people into employment or that give young people on the verge of criminality more positive life choices are all central to community regeneration.
To my mind, there is no doubt that the voluntary sector faces the biggest challenge in several generations as a result of a triple whammy. First, the economic crisis means that private funding organisations have fewer resources—Lloyds TSB, for example, because of huge banking losses, and others because of lower returns on investment.
Secondly, public funders—whether the Government, the council, the lottery or others—are increasingly strapped for cash, also as a result of the economic crisis.
I observe in passing that it is outrageous that the poorest and most needy in society pay for the greed of city bankers to be fed, while the bonus feast seems to go on regardless.
Thirdly, a parallel process of prioritising in-house services and staff is tending to marginalise the role of voluntary sector providers, which is a problem. I want to mention three projects that I know of that are in that position, although I recognise that the minister is not directly responsible for any of them.
The first is Castlemilk stress centre, which provides a wonderful service to people who are afflicted by anxiety or depression, addiction, bereavement or other mishaps. It has been operating for 15 years. The service that it provides is not discriminatory in the sense that people are not labelled or dealt with in clinical categories, and it has helped to salvage the lives of many people and get them back into employment or useful and meaningful activity.
When I visited the centre recently, I heard many personal and inspiring stories of people whom the centre had helped to rebuild their lives, who had gone on to provide peer support for others who attended the centre; some of those people had even become counsellors. Funding from the CHCP has been withdrawn on the basis that people can attend another service in Govanhill, but there has been no evaluation, no consideration of capacity and no recognition of the fact that the stress centre fulfils, at modest cost, a rather different function.
While I was thinking about what to say in this afternoon’s debate, I read on a website:
“The purpose of regeneration is to improve the social, economic, physical and environmental wellbeing of our local communities.”
A local community activist who read that might wonder what it has to do with them. In plainspeak, regeneration should be about improving people’s lives and the environment where they live and work, and about giving everyone the chance to enjoy a good quality of life in a warm, dry home, with work to get up for in the morning. I think that the people whom I represent would understand that better than some of the authors of Government documents, Government websites and local authority websites.
Like other Labour members who have spoken this afternoon, I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with Alex Neil’s motion. I was encouraged by his opening remarks, in which he claimed that regeneration is a key priority and is at the heart of the Government’s work. I paraphrase his words. However, when Johann Lamont spoke, she pointed out the facts on the ground and identified the serious holes at the heart of the Government’s key priority—holes that we must all work together to try to fill.
I will use the time that I have this afternoon to talk about a couple of projects in my constituency. I know that the minister is familiar with them because I had the pleasure of welcoming him to Cumbernauld last summer to look at an area and officially open a new housing estate where residents had come together to challenge a difficult situation. When the minister spoke today, I was encouraged to hear him say that solutions must not come from the top down and that communities need to take ownership. The minister could see for himself in the area that we visited that the community had taken ownership of the problems in the flats in Ainslie Maclehose Road. Community activists came together to work with the partners—the local authority, the Government, Scottish Homes and Communities Scotland—and find solutions. The solutions that they found were driven by the community activists and their set of problems. We are not finished yet. Regeneration takes a long time, as the minister knows, but we have travelled in the right direction with the community taking the lead. I am pleased about that. Volunteers have done a lot of work to get to where we are today.
I contrast that project with another problem of which the minister is aware, and that is the methods that have been used in a so-called partnership approach to deal with the undoubted difficulties that we face with the high-rise flats in Cumbernauld. In that example, a partnership of the Scottish Government, North Lanarkshire Council, Cumbernauld Housing Partnership and the Sanctuary Group made a different set of proposals. It came forward to tell the community what it should want from the regeneration of the flats. Instead of consulting and involving the community, it came forward with a solution that it thinks would be best for the community. I do not disagree. I do not think that there would have been completely different outcomes had the partnership gone about things in a different way and involved the community from the start, but we now have a disgruntled community because people feel that they are being told from the top down what should happen rather than their being involved and telling the council, the housing partnership and the Government what they want.
I am informed by a document from the Cumbernauld Housing Partnership, which is part of the Sanctuary Group, that the proposal was put forward because it was the only game in town and because the Government said that demolition of the blocks was the only option for which public funding would be available. I do not think that that is the right way to start a consultation process. Years ago, I felt that Governments and councils did not know the difference between consultation and participation and it seems to me that we are taking a step back to the time when councils, Governments and housing providers simply told residents and tenants what they wanted instead of letting them participate in a decision-making process that affects their lives. I hope that this particular case in Cumbernauld is a one-off problem from which we can recover and from which the minister can learn lessons.
We must ensure that participation is at the heart of any Government’s regeneration policies and programmes. At the moment, though, I have my doubts in that respect, and I hope that the minister will address them in his summing up.
16:11
In September 2007, John Swinney announced that local regeneration activities were to become the responsibility of local authorities. However, local authorities are already struggling financially and have had to make substantial budget cuts, even to front-line services, to cope with the impact of the economic downturn and the Labour and SNP funding cuts. The problem is exacerbated by the effect of the council tax freeze, as councils have no control over raising their revenue. Even some SNP councils have warned that continued imposition of the council tax freeze will have a further impact on top of already significant cuts.
For example, in evidence to the Local Government and Communities Committee, SNP-run Dundee City Council warned that a centrally imposed council tax freeze risked support for children and action to stop homelessness and business advice. However, the Government refuses to acknowledge the difficulties that local authorities are facing.
I ask the member to wind up, please.
Stanley Baldwin once said:
“A platitude is simply a truth repeated till people get tired of hearing it.”
As platitudes go, this afternoon’s motion is one of the best examples of the hackneyed truths that Baldwin must have been thinking about when he made his observation. The Government motion contains nothing but platitudes. Fortunately, the debate has shown that the issue under discussion is hugely important. That cannot be hidden, even under the banality of the motion.
I share Cathy Jamieson’s view that the minister’s opening speech indicated a clear commitment to the area. I concur with others that the introduction of the town centre regeneration fund was a good way of helping our hard-pressed town centres. It highlighted the demand in our communities for such assistance. As I said to the minister in my intervention, our question on the fund is why it was a one-off fund, despite the evident demand for more funding. As the minister highlighted, there were 202 unsuccessful applications for the TCRF—a total of £139 million. That demonstrates the real need for regeneration in our town centres—a need that is not being met. In the communities that were left out, people have to wonder why the SNP did not commit to on-going support for our town centres. Perhaps, like the Glasgow airport rail link and the downgrading of Ravenscraig from a national to a regional priority and other such examples, it comes down to the short-sightedness of this Administration.
Will the member take an intervention?
The bottom line is that we cannot talk about the need for regeneration and praise the role that local authorities and the third sector play, and at the same time choose to slash the housing, regeneration, enterprise and tourism budgets, while claiming—as the Government does—to have sustainable growth as our purpose. We will support the motion tonight, but the platitudes of which it consists are not enough.
16:44
I will come on to the role of the economic development agencies and target sectors.
We must consider not just economics but fairness. I recommend to members the book, “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better”, if they have not already read it. It was published last year. The authors demonstrate that the societies that are the fairest are also the best economic performers. It is important to ensure that our society is not only economically prosperous but fair.
A consequence of not having a fair society is that the second, third and fourth generations of some families are experiencing unemployment, poverty and deprivation. Regeneration is all about breaking that cycle of poverty and deprivation, and I hope that members are united on the substantive points of principle that must underlie our effort.
We are working to a national strategy. I will not “do a Pontius Pilate” and abdicate responsibility—quite the opposite. We have an overriding strategy in the Scottish Government, which is designed to make Scotland wealthier, fairer, safer, greener and smarter. Within that, we also have a strategic approach to regeneration, which is encapsulated in our document, “Equal Communities in a Fairer Scotland: A Joint Statement”. Through community planning partnerships and the delegation of responsibility, for example for the fairer Scotland fund, we want to empower partnerships, which should include the voluntary sector, to spend money in their areas on the basis of what are locally agreed to be the top priorities.
The last thing that we need is ministers or civil servants in Edinburgh trying to write the budgets of every local authority, ring fence all the funds and decide how CPPs will spend their money when the people on the ground are best placed to do that. I do not see how it is possible to argue on the one hand for community empowerment and, on the other, say that we should ring fence all the funds from Edinburgh and dictate to people what they can and cannot spend their funding on.
Those are fair points, but what does the minister say to the SCVO, which says that many councils are still not allowing community organisations around the table in the first place and that even more councils, when they let such bodies around the table, still do not give them a voice? They are there, but their representation is tokenistic.
My experience is that it is mainly Labour councils that are not giving community organisations a voice because other councils are definitely doing it. The most complaints that I get about deliberate attempts by a local authority to squeeze out community councils and similar organisations certainly come from Glasgow and North Lanarkshire, so I do not think that the Labour Party is in a good position to criticise other people in that respect.
Will the minister give way?
That very important point raises the question of why, when there is so much unmet need, the tap has been turned off.
The member referred to a centrally imposed council tax freeze. Does he not acknowledge that it is for each council to make up its own mind whether it wants to introduce the freeze?
Indeed. That is the same get-out clause that I hear quite often from Mr Swinney and his Cabinet colleagues, but it is not realistic, given the problems that local government faces.
Another area in which the Government’s track record on regeneration is in doubt is in relation to the fairer Scotland fund, which is rolled up in the local government finance settlement as of this month. We know that local authorities are already struggling financially at the hands of the economic downturn, the council tax freeze and the priorities that have been imposed on them through single outcome agreements. As a result, it is highly possible that the fairer Scotland fund will get absorbed into plugging those gaps in funding, rather than being focused directly on regeneration and tackling deprivation.
The next item of business is a debate on motion S3M-5852, in the name of Alex Neil, on regeneration.
14:43
What discussions has there been with Scottish Enterprise about the role of Co-operative Development Scotland, which sits within the organisation, in supporting such initiatives and ensuring that the number of co-operatives with the community dimension that the minister has identified can grow?
It was turned off because the fund’s £60 million was accelerated from next year for spending this year. That was agreed by all parties and while the budget negotiations were going on no one suggested that we should set aside another £60 million next year. Quite frankly, the UK Government’s £800 million cut in our budget has meant that that money is simply not available. Had that £800 million been available, we would have been happy to extend the town centre regeneration fund. Labour members cannot have it both ways. They cannot turn off the Parliament’s tap in London on one hand and then demand more money for this, that and the next thing on the other. The reality is that we are making maximum use of the money that is available.
The town centre regeneration fund, which was originally suggested by our friends in the Conservative party, has been an excellent initiative that we as a Government have been happy to comply with and enthusiastically implement. Many projects throughout Scotland under its auspices, such as the Lochgelly Business Centre, are now coming to fruition. They are not only one-off projects; the new Lochgelly Business Centre, for example, will provide the capacity to build up a new industrial base in Lochgelly of small new start-up companies that can bring new jobs and investment to that part of Fife. The same will happen in many areas.
All the weapons that we can use—town centre regeneration funds, urban regeneration companies, all six of which are doing a great job for their particular areas, the vacant and derelict land fund, and the range of other resources that we make available to regeneration projects—are part and parcel of growing the Scottish economy for the 21st century, and trying to ensure that both our urban and rural communities play their full part in doing that and realise their full economic, physical and social potential in the years and decades ahead.
I finish by emphasising the importance of rural regeneration as well as urban regeneration. Regeneration should not be confined to urban Scotland. In many parts of rural Scotland, including the part that the Presiding Officer represents, regeneration activity is needed to boost employment opportunities and investment. Despite the very difficult financial situation that has been imposed on us from London, the Government is absolutely determined to use every available resource to maximise the potential of every community in Scotland and to ensure that, for our people’s future, we maximise job creation and investment potential.
I move,
That the Parliament acknowledges the continuing need for regeneration of communities across Scotland, particularly in challenging economic times; also acknowledges the critical role of local government, community planning partners, the private and voluntary sectors and community members in delivering regeneration, and recognises the contribution that regeneration makes to increasing sustainable economic growth and the improvement of opportunities for people living in deprived communities.
14:57
Does the member accept that figures that were published last week demonstrated a record build of 7,700 new social houses in Scotland and that that was never achieved in the first 10 years of the Scottish Parliament?
I am pleased to open for the Scottish Conservatives in the debate. I well remember the HIDB and the good that it did, which was normally under Conservative Governments. It goes without saying that we Scottish Conservatives are committed to the regeneration of deprived communities in rural and urban settings. That is why we successfully persuaded the Scottish Government to adopt our policy of the town centre regeneration fund, which has proved popular and about which I will say more later. We Conservatives would like more of that regeneration but—unfortunately—Labour’s mismanagement of the economy means that funding for such projects will be hard to find.
Repairing the UK economy is key and fundamental to regenerating our Scottish communities. Economic growth means not only that more individuals have jobs and thus a sustainable income but that individuals can more successfully set up small businesses and that existing small businesses can thrive and become larger enterprises. That is about acorns becoming mighty oaks rather than the sudden oak death disease that is afflicting our economy UK-wide.
Local and national Government must generate adequate resources to help to put in place the infrastructure and other support that help towards regeneration. That must be planned for by a Government with a long-term vision. Improving the British economy is a number 1 priority for the next Conservative Government and will help all communities in Scotland.
I am proud of the record of previous Conservative Governments in Scotland in making community regeneration a priority. The new life for urban Scotland, to which our amendment refers, was launched in 1988. Under the initiative, four parts of Scotland were selected for the establishment of new urban regeneration partnerships—Castlemilk in Glasgow, Ferguslie Park in Paisley, Wester Hailes in Edinburgh and Whitfield in Dundee.
The new life projects are now—rightly—seen as landmarks in urban regeneration in Scotland. In October 1999, Cambridge Policy Consultants commended them and found that their “pioneering approach” had levered in private sector investment and slowed the rate of depopulation. Surely we all agree that retaining an area’s population—whether in an inner city or in a remote or island community—is critical to enhancing and facilitating the regeneration effort there. Under the new life initiative, combined with the right to buy, resident satisfaction increased substantially. The scheme also provided value for money in comparison with other UK regeneration schemes, such as the single regeneration challenge fund and the London Docklands Development Corporation.
Community involvement was at the heart of the new life initiative and that is how it should be, so I agree with the reference in the Government’s motion to the role of community members in delivering regeneration. There is no point in imposing regeneration from on high or from central layers of Government; rather, local people need to have a stake and a say in achieving improvements in their neighbourhoods, in helping—when possible—to design the facilities that they require and in working in conjunction with a range of organisations, including their local authorities, community councils, housing associations, charities and businesses.
A good example of a grass-roots community regeneration campaign in my region comes from the work of international architect John McAslan and his team in Dunoon, who seek to restore the Burgh hall to its former glory so that it can once again be a key cultural destination for the whole community. That campaign has caught the imagination of local residents and engaged local members in open days and public meetings. I wish it every success as it seeks to revive the building as a cultural centre not just for the town, but for the wider region.
Often, such projects can act as a catalyst for wider redevelopment and regeneration. The Burgh hall’s regeneration is a good example of effective use of limited funds. It now needs revenue funding to expand its cultural amenities for the community’s benefit and a cultural co-ordinator is needed. Good culture plays a big part in regeneration, because it instils pride in population centres.
As I said, funding for regeneration is a problem. Could community funding from renewable energy projects such as wind farms and hydroelectric schemes—especially in the Highlands and Islands—be used by community councils for regeneration projects in their areas?
The Scottish Conservatives fought hard for the Government to adopt our £60 million town centre fund, which has proved to be a boost for communities. Our town centres are at the heart of community life and it is right that the Government supports communities, residents and businesses in their efforts to re-establish civic pride in our town centres, many of which have been hit by Labour’s recent recession. Dowdy and dilapidated town centres do not inspire confidence among investors, whereas regenerated ones can provide the vital spark.
On how community planning partnerships and the voluntary sector are critical to regeneration, what should be done to ensure that there is voluntary sector representation on CPPs in Scotland? Is there a role for the Scottish Government in ensuring that that happens?
There is an enabling role for Government, but we must fight against the setting up of organisations or quasi-organisations that become no more than talking shops, which has happened so often. That has been a concern of mine over the decades. We must empower communities, which brings me back to the volunteers that I mentioned—the people who know what is best for their area.
Mistakes were made in the past in the planning of communities. The peripheral estates that started to appear in the middle of the previous century tore the heart out of communities. Lots of houses were created, but there was no infrastructure that would enable people to feel that they were part of something. It is certain that the architectural and planning communities have learned from those mistakes and are now talking about place making. That is not just another term that is loosely thrown about. We missed the importance of place over the decades and we must get our heads round what it means. Communities that feel that they are part of something have a sense of security, of belonging, of history and of continuity.
We have started to rectify the mistakes of the past in our approach to inner-city regeneration. For example, we are rehabilitating existing tenements. Members talked about housing associations and community ownership. Housing co-operatives are a model that offers tenants truly democratic empowerment—another word that we like to use a lot—and control of the housing stock that they occupy. That gives people an incentive to make their area thrive. Co-ops, whether they are fully mutual or not, are not just experts in housing; they are involved in community facilities, training and employment and public art, the value of which to communities is often ignored but is extremely important.
There are great models of co-ops around, whether the South Lanarkshire Council one in West Whitlawburn, Easthall Park Housing Co-operative in Glasgow or Tenants First Housing Co-operative in Aberdeen. Those organisations, which are volunteer led, are truly working within their communities towards what we keep calling regeneration.
I am delighted that the Government and the minister recognise the value of the housing co-operative as a social and economic model around which communities can be built. As the minister said, we have had so many initiatives: the GEAR, the cities growth fund and then the town centre regeneration fund. Some successful work was done under the latter fund. The North Lanarkshire town centres received more than £2 million for a worthwhile cause and East Kilbride & District Shopmobility received £100,000 for soft play and the sustainability of the organisation.
The sustainability of communities is at the heart of this debate. It is not just about pumping in money through some new initiative then cutting the initiative off because it has been successful and looking for something else. It is about sustainability and continued growth.
In my last minute, I will consider the new towns as an example of what has been carried out. I am fortunate to represent two new towns: Cumbernauld and East Kilbride. East Kilbride is held up as Scotland’s most successful new town—it is certainly the oldest one, having been established in 1947. It works in the sense of place making about which I talked. Part of the reason that it works is that the new town was built round an existing community, albeit a small village community—East Kilbride village—with a recognition of the rural community that was round about the area. Its wonderful history—I commend Mr Bill Niven, our East Kilbride local historian who documents it all well—gave the town the important sense of place, the security of belonging and sense of continuity that define a sustainable place of which people feel proud and that want to make and keep successful.
My plea for today is that we recognise that people need places where they feel comfortable and happy. They not only need a roof and a job, but somewhere where they feel at home.
15:32
I fully agree with the member on the action of the CHCP in relation to the Castlemilk stress centre. Does he agree that it is ridiculous that the CHCP gave one week’s notice for its withdrawal of funding?
Could the member tell us what the effect of John Swinney’s announcement of a massive hike in business rates will be on the companies that she has mentioned?
I think that the member misunderstood the point that I was making. I am working with the minister to try to make progress on the issue of compulsory purchase, and I believe that the minister announced a review of the matter in our previous debate on this issue. There is a gap in policy that prevents local authorities from using some of that money to better effect and taking that policy forward. I was not disagreeing with the point that had been made; I think that there are things that we can do together.
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate.
For most of my working life, I have been involved in regeneration in one form or another. Many people have worked hard on regeneration over those years, as members have said, but it sometimes seems that we have not got very far. There has been much analysis of why that is the case and of why communities, despite millions of pounds being spent on their regeneration, still face the same problems that they had at the beginning of the process.
My biggest criticism of all Governments is that they taken too short term a view of regeneration—that also applies to all of us. That view has been based on the length of the parliamentary session, and it seems to need us to change policies, even when we perhaps had the policy right, simply because there is a new Administration. We end up with short-term fixes that do not take a long-term strategic view that carries on from one Administration to another. The challenge for the current Administration is to find out how we can come together at a strategic level to develop a policy framework that is based on consensus and that can last across different Administrations; how we can focus on the poorest communities, whether those communities are urban or rural; and how we can make the approach last for more than four years.
A bottom-up approach needs to be taken, but that does not mean the abdication of responsibility, as others have said. There should be a bottom-up approach not only to community organisation, but to policy development, because physical, emotional or economic regeneration does not just happen; it takes time.
If we are serious about regeneration, we must focus on individuals as well as communities. We need to start at the very beginning, with education. One of the greatest barriers to true regeneration is poverty of ambition for individuals and communities. Too often, lifelong learning or education pigeonholes people because of where they come from, the community that they grew up in or their family background.
We limit people’s expectations of their children because they grow up in a particular area or go to a particular school. We should have the same ambition for a child growing up in a single-parent family living on the minimum wage as we have for the children of the captains of industry. However, we do not have that yet. Each child should have the opportunity to realise their potential and the belief that they can do so. If people do not believe in themselves, they limit their ambition and fall into a cycle of unemployment, lack of educational attainment and lack of expectation.
I said that I have been involved in regeneration for a long time. My working life began in Blantyre in 1991, when I saw young people who had only ever known their parents being unemployed and who had little opportunity for unemployment. That is why I nearly choked when Jamie McGrigor said that he was proud of the legacy of the Thatcher and Major years. The legacy of Thatcher and Major is the scars that we are still trying to put right in some communities.
Jamie McGrigor rose—
Is it not the case that Mr Tolson’s leader also blames the UK Government for the state that we are in?
If we managed to get to our feet nearly as often as Alex Neil and his colleagues do, we would have a mountain to climb for the number of times that we blamed the UK Government. I say to Mr Neil that with all due respect his comment does not really add up.
The Government certainly needs to look at the funding agreements across the board. It seems to agree with the points that my colleague Ross Finnie made earlier. Therefore, I hope that when the minister comes to deciding how his group will vote later, he will agree to back the Lib Dem amendment.
Many members mentioned the voluntary sector and the effect of the single outcome agreements on it. Johann Lamont among others said that SOAs would have a significant detrimental impact on it. By and large, I agree with her—I have certainly seen much of that in my community in west Fife.
Robert Brown gave strong examples from Glasgow of the impact on the voluntary sector of the loss of services. In many ways, his was the speech of the day, because his passion, knowledge and well-thought-out contribution certainly held the attention of everyone in the chamber.
I was surprised that local authorities did not get much mention from many members, although Johann Lamont talked about the planning system being a barrier to jobs and progress. I raised that point with the minister at the Local Government and Communities Committee this morning and I have done so at other times. Local authorities are a crucial partner in helping ensure that we overcome many concerns.
Jamie McGrigor extolled again the virtues of the right to buy. Is it possible to bring him from the 20th to the 21st century so that he realises the severe damage that the right to buy has done to our communities and particularly to the provision of local authority housing?
16:30
No, I will not at the moment.
I also put it on record that Cathie Craigie’s description of the situation with the high flats in Cumbernauld was totally alien to the true situation. I will not go into detail because other members will not be aware of it but the idea that the Scottish Government has laid down what should happen to the high flats in Cumbernauld is absurd to say the least.
The debate on regeneration has been good and fairly constructive. What matters most about our debate is what we are doing to try to help the lives of people throughout Scotland and what we will do in the medium and longer term to ensure that future policies succeed. We must recognise that the debate takes place not in a vacuum, but in extremely difficult financial circumstances for the budget that is about to come into force in April and—more important—probably for budgets in the next five years or so, according to independent experts.
The Scottish Government’s website describes regeneration as
“the lasting transformation of places to benefit those who live and work there.”
The minister was right in his speech to add to that the point that regeneration is of course about places but is—more important—about sustained employment and economic activity for people. If we are to improve the life chances of people throughout Scotland, we must consider lifting our economic activity all over the country.
That is why the business start-up rate in Scotland is critical. In the past 10 or 15 years—the years for which we have data—that rate has flatlined, despite the best efforts of politicians of all stripes. Our rate is behind that south of the border. Occasionally, being behind south of the border can be argued away by saying that business is great in London and that we are fairly similar to other parts of the UK, but that does not apply to start-up rates. The only region whose rate we are ahead of is Yorkshire and Humberside. It is a big ask but, if the minister has anything in his closing speech about what the Government might do next on start-ups, that would be well received.
We have heard about the small business bonus scheme in the past couple of years. The fact that it could be open to holders of multiple properties whose rateable value is under £25,000 is a big step forward. Just last week, I had a conversation with a small businessman who is thinking seriously about opening a new shop in another part of town on the back of that policy. He had obtained a rent reduction on a vacant and derelict property, because it was not hugely attractive at the time, and he thinks that if he had a small business bonus on top of that, that would be the tipping point that pushed him into opening that shop.
We have heard much about the town centre regeneration fund, which was a Conservative manifesto commitment. We pushed for that in last year’s budget and it has had a positive impact throughout Scotland, to the tune of £60 million. I accept Ross Finnie’s argument that the problem is far bigger; the minister said that demand for the fund outstripped supply. I note that there were 132 applications and 36 winners in round 1 and that there were 136 applications and only 30 winners in round 2, which was a ratio of 4:1. I am pretty certain that those figures are just the tip of the iceberg. Far more than 136 towns, villages and parts of cities could be eligible and wanted funding but simply did not get round to applying or could not do so in time. Far more must be done.
The key question is from where the money will come to continue the regeneration that has been undertaken for the past 30 or 40 years. Whichever way it is dressed up, this year’s Scottish budget is static.
As I said earlier, we know in going forward that less money would be available. We also know from what we have seen in the pre-budget report and subsequent analysis that the capital budget appears to have been hit disproportionately. Of course, that may change in the next budget. We will hear about that at a later stage. The best analysis thus far suggests that the capital budget will be hit. We will have to be innovative in how we leverage in funding from the private sector to ensure that regeneration can happen.
What is the Government’s current view on tax increment financing? Under such financing, local authorities borrow on the strength of future council tax revenues and business rates revenues if developments are built in their area. Recently, the Scottish Conservative leader, Annabel Goldie, proposed a business dividend fund—a fund that would allow local authorities that achieved above target business rates revenue as a result of businesses being set up in their area to keep a proportion of that revenue. The idea is to encourage local authorities to push economic growth in their area. If they achieve over target, they get to share a slice of the revenue. The idea is to align central Government and local government objectives.
Not only do we not live in a vacuum, we live in straightened financial times. There is much to be done. It will take innovative thinking.
16:30
I listened to what the member said about the town centre regeneration fund. If it was such a priority for Labour, why did it not lodge an amendment to the budget? Also, why did it vote against the budget?
The member is about to finish.
We have had a good debate. The speech that I enjoyed the most was that of Karen Gillon. I did not agree with everything that she said, but she hit a number of notes and underlined the important point about the need to succeed in regeneration. She repeated a point that Ross Finnie made, which is that some towns and cities are currently the subject of regeneration projects for the second, third or fourth times. We must ensure that when we regenerate an area we do so in such a way that the area becomes self-sustaining at the end of the regeneration period. That is why I talked about the projects in Blairgowrie and Neilston, which provide not just capital investment in physical regeneration but an income stream, which will be an investment stream for the communities in future.
Another important point that Karen Gillon and many other members made is about the need to ensure that economic prosperity and investment underlie regeneration activity. We have had problems in the past when successful physical regeneration, as happened in the GEAR project, was not of itself enough, because jobs were not there to sustain the community after the physical regeneration had taken place. If there has been no economic regeneration, over time the benefits of physical regeneration often start to be eroded as the area declines again.
I absolutely acknowledge the need for physical regeneration to be supported by economic regeneration. Therefore, is not there a critical role for an enterprise agency to identify geographical areas in which the Government should sustain, support or stimulate economic activity? Rather than leave the matter to the free market, should not an agency have a role in identifying areas that need jobs to match their physical regeneration?
Will the minister give way?
I will not give way to Cathie Craigie again.
The reality is that we must think about how we make progress because there is no doubt that, in the immediate period ahead, irrespective of who wins the general election on 6 May, our budget and that of the UK Government will be squeezed. I say to whoever is elected in London on 6 May that it is highly important—Vince Cable has made this point—not only to tackle the medium-term problem of the budget deficit but to be very careful about where we make the cuts. The danger is that we cut the wrong things and, in doing so, put more people on the dole, which would make the deficit worse in turn. That is why we are engaged in an innovative approach to the joint European support for sustainable investment in city areas—JESSICA—initiative and other matters.
The proposition that we should spend all the extra money that Labour demands while it cuts our budget by £800 million a year is equally absurd. That is why we need control over our budgets in Scotland to protect our people against Labour and Tory cuts from London.