Official Report 783KB pdf
The next item of business is a debate on motion S6M-20717, in the name of Ivan McKee, on the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill at stage 3. I invite those members who wish to speak in the debate to please press their request-to-speak button.
15:46
I begin by thanking the Economy and Fair Work Committee for its scrutiny of the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill. I also highlight the input from Richard Leonard, Paul Sweeney, Rhoda Grant and others as being particularly helpful.
The committee’s stage 1 report stated that community wealth building has the potential to play a vital role in improving the lives of people across Scotland. I think that that is true and, since I became responsible for the bill—I thank Tom Arthur for his earlier work on taking the bill forward—it has been apparent to me how much support there is for community wealth building across the country and internationally. I am aware that many organisations support the legislation and are keen for it to pass.
The bill’s main aim is to create a new and consistent platform for local economic development in Scotland—a new format that recognises the economic agency of every pound of public money alongside the necessity for the public sector to partner with businesses and communities in the pursuit of sustainable and inclusive economic growth. We need to encourage the kind of growth that everyone can benefit from. Community wealth building can play a key role in generating, circulating and retaining wealth in our local and regional economies, ensuring prosperity and benefit for all.
When I assumed responsibility for the bill, I was clear that the legislation must add value to economic policy objectives and work as a public service reform measure. We need only look at what community wealth building is achieving on the ground to see the benefits. It is growing all forms of local business, creating and protecting jobs, extending greater asset ownership and influence to communities and attracting more investment into our local economies.
The bill obliges future Scottish Governments to publish a community wealth building statement that will set out the measures that the Scottish ministers intend to and are taking to advance community wealth building in Scotland across the five pillars of the economic development model, which are spending, fair work, land and property, new business growth and investment. The statement and detailed statutory guidance will assist community wealth building partnerships, which are made up of local authorities and relevant public bodies, to produce their own community wealth building action plans.
I expect that other contributors to the debate will point to things that they wanted to see in the bill in specific discrete policy areas. However, I believe that establishing a strong cross-Scotland focus on community wealth building as an economic development model will ensure a consistent realisation of economic benefits for all areas and regions of Scotland over time. As the policy advances, the policies, budgets and laws that are relevant to its success can be examined with a view to establishing whether change is required in any contributory area that can spark the creation of more jobs, more businesses, further innovation and increased community asset ownership.
In general, the bill has been informed by the desire to enable democratically elected local government to lead a process of active reform and improvement without creating a complex attendant bureaucracy. Local authorities will sit at the centre of a core partnership of those public sector anchor bodies with the highest degree of economic agency in their investment and delivery activities. They will be partnered by our enterprise agencies, health boards, colleges and regional transport partnerships.
Among the many important recommendations in the committee’s stage 1 report was the call for clear guidance to help community wealth building partnerships to develop plans and implement actions in concert. An inclusive and collaborative development process with regard to statutory guidance has already started. Clear guidance, informed by successful practice, is key, but too high a level of prescription in practice is not desirable. The majority of our local authorities are already pursuing community wealth building policies and objectives, and I am confident that an approach that is built on collaboration and empowerment has the best chance of success.
The bill sets out a list of specified bodies that must be consulted when community wealth building guidance is being prepared and that
“must have due regard to guidance”
when it is published. Although all those public bodies also have economic agency as employers, asset owners, purchasers or investors, we determined that it was appropriate that they should have a lesser level of leadership expectation with regard to advancing community wealth building in Scotland.
I expect that local partnerships will want to engage many specified bodies in their discussions, and many of the bodies can demonstrate telling contributions to community wealth building. However, it is appropriate that local, collaborative conversation reflects local context and circumstance.
To reflect the fact that some local authorities will want to work together, the bill makes provision for neighbouring councils to work on a regional basis. That provides flexibility for community wealth building partnerships and, whatever the pattern of uptake in this context, all partnerships would be expected to set out plans that are complementary to community wealth building objectives to strengthen local economies and empower local communities.
It is critical that the voice of local communities is at the core of community wealth building. As an economic policy, I want the power of our communities to be harnessed to help build our local economies. Ideas from communities about growing businesses and creating jobs must be listened to.
The next Scottish Government and subsequent Administrations will be tasked with considering how all relevant Government activities can contribute to community wealth building, whether very directly in areas such as procurement, fair work or skills, or in a wider range of policy areas, where public investment or regulation might flex and change to assist our economy to grow in a way that is successful, sustainable and fair.
Community wealth building is an attractive policy to many, as people want to see and feel change where they live: for example, improved and vibrant high streets, increased job prospects with good terms and conditions, and strengthened, resilient communities.
The bill will not change everything overnight, but it forges a new common purpose for the public sector to work with partners in the private, third and community sectors to focus on growing our economy for the benefit of all.
In moving the motion in my name, I urge members to vote to pass the bill.
I move,
That the Parliament agrees that the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill be passed.
15:52
Just to make it clear, the Scottish Conservatives will be supporting the bill at stage 3, in a short time—as, indeed, we did at stage 1, when we backed the bill’s general principles.
I start by thanking everybody for the part that they have played: the clerks of the Economy and Fair Work Committee and the Scottish Parliament information centre, who supported us, and all those who gave the committee evidence. I thank my fellow committee members for their very collegiate approach in trying to improve the bill. Indeed, there were some perhaps unusual alliances. Lorna Slater voted for some of my amendments and I voted for some of Lorna Slater’s amendments. That demonstrates the value of cross-party co-operation and working. We did not agree on everything; nevertheless, we were able to get the bill improved at stage 2—not always to the delight of the minister. We had very constructive engagement with the minister in any case. Particularly when it came to stage 3, there was a joint endeavour to tidy up some of the bill’s imperfect wording that had been agreed at stage 2 to ensure that the bill got to the place that it needed to be at stage 3. We all worked together extremely well, and I am grateful to the minister for his co-operation and support.
I put forward only one basic issue at stage 2, dealing with the question of the percentage of spend that would go into local businesses and local economies through procurement. I felt it important for the community wealth building plans to have a target set in them. I do not think that we should be prescriptive as to what that target is, and I do not think that the Government should be setting that target; it should be set by the local partners. That principle was an important one. I am very pleased that the committee agreed on that and was able to get it into the bill, tweaking the wording at stage 3.
Community wealth building is a good thing—I think that we can all agree on that. It seeks to use the economic impact of anchor organisations—public, private or third sector—to stimulate and retain economic activity in a local area. As we discussed when we considered the bill at stage 1, there are five pillars to community wealth building: maximising the benefits of public procurement, which we have talked about; increasing fair work and skills development opportunities for the workforce; ensuring that land and property are used to benefit communities, SMEs and the environment; inclusive ownership; and finance.
The question of land and property is really interesting. Just yesterday, I met a community group in the Carse of Gowrie that is looking to take over what is, in effect, a derelict orchard and bring it into use for the local community. The group is doing so under legislation that the Parliament previously passed, but it strikes me that that is the sort of initiative that the community wealth building agenda seeks to support. It is about looking at lands and buildings that are either derelict or not being used to their fullest potential and bringing them back into more productive use—either economic use or, in this particular case, environmental and sustainable use for the benefit of the community.
I very much agree with Murdo Fraser’s point. Does he agree that we must use initiatives such as this to almost tip the balance? All too often, communities feel that they need permission to do things, yet, if it is public land, they should be empowered and enabled to do it. The default should be a yes and not a no. Does he agree that that is what we need to achieve with the bill and future legislation?
That is a very reasonable point. The land that I was talking about was private land and not publicly owned land, but the same principle applies. We have a lot of publicly owned assets in Scotland that are not being used to their fullest potential, and we should seek to promote anything that we can do to bring them back into more productive use where the community has an interest.
Given that we are going to pass the bill at stage 3—I assume that that is the case—the key question is what happens next. It is all very well passing a bill and saying that local authorities and other public bodies have to produce community wealth building action plans, but that in itself will not deliver much. What we have to do is ensure that there is delivery of the objectives of community wealth building, which will come back to the question of resources.
When the committee took evidence, some witnesses said that they have issues with, for example, what is in the financial memorandum and the lack of estimates for the implementation costs of the action plans. There will be a resourcing issue for public bodies and local authorities. When it comes to community wealth building plans, I can entirely see a scenario in which some bodies say, “Oh no, yet another bit of paper that we’ve got to produce—something else that Johnny in office 52 gets to do.” The question is whether we are confident that all those who are tasked with delivering have the resources that are required to implement the bill and ensure that something is delivered. That needs to be the next stage. The resources must be there to ensure that the objectives that everybody in the chamber wants to see can be delivered.
We will support the bill at stage 3, but, if we want community wealth building to be delivered, as I think we all do, passing the bill is only the first step. Much more will need to be done to achieve delivery.
15:58
I, too, thank the Economy and Fair Work Committee, our clerks and everyone who gave evidence. It is something of a relief not to speak in the debate as the convener of the committee, because now I get to say what I really think. I will, nonetheless, be rounded and balanced.
I would like to reflect on the observation that—
Will Daniel Johnson give way on that point?
Well, it depends on which point.
I think that we would like to hear Daniel Johnson speak more often about what he really thinks, particularly in the light of recent events.
I have only five minutes, so I will stay on the topic. In addition, the standing orders say that we must speak to the motion. [Laughter.]
I will speak to a point that Murdo Fraser alluded to. An interesting alliance formed at some points during stage 2 when Richard Leonard, Murdo Fraser, Lorna Slater and I were all talking about shared objectives. Questions about how ownership is distributed, whether people are empowered and whether there are opportunities to maximise people’s potential are important, regardless of one’s political perspective. Whether one views oneself as a socialist, a social democrat, a capitalist or an environmentalist, the distribution of ownership matters, even if what that is called sometimes gets in the way.
I hope that community wealth building action plans will provide some focus, because if assets are not being used effectively and not being maximised, that comes at a cost to our local communities. Murdo Fraser gave one example and I heard another, of a local resident who simply wanted to put planters in a back green. That person was furiously trying to figure out who they needed to get permission from, but I do not think that that permission should be required at all. More than that, where there is common land or a common asset, we must ensure that we absolutely maximise opportunities for local people. That is what community wealth building is about.
When the bill was introduced, lots of people were scratching their heads about what community wealth building is. My concern is that there are probably places where community wealth building is being delivered without people even knowing, or that there are examples of it that we do not notice because we do not call them that. I would describe municipal ownership of the public bus service in Edinburgh as an example of long-standing community wealth building and one that we should support.
We must not make the mistake of thinking that legislating for community wealth building means that it will be delivered. If we look at the pillars of community wealth building—spending, workforce, land and property, inclusive ownership, and finance—we will see that the bill, at best, influences the first. If we are serious about effecting genuine community wealth building, a lot more must be done.
I am pleased with the improvements and think that the measurement provisions will genuinely improve matters, because having a consistent language of measurement will allow us to ensure that progress is made. Likewise, it is right that we review legislation such as the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015, because it is important that we will the means as well as will the motivation towards these things.
However, there is a risk that what we are enacting today will require a semi-regular conversation and the production of reports without necessarily willing the outcomes. There was a concern at the outset that we did not need legislation to do any of this and that having the Scottish Government set a ministerial direction with the right policies and oversight would be just as, if not more, effective. What is more to the point is that, in order to bring about community wealth building, the legislation will absolutely have to provide a focus. If it is simply passed and forgotten about, all this will have been for nothing.
The bill cannot be simply a legislative name check. There must be some serious thought about providing the means to explore things, enabling new legislative capacities—including compulsory sale orders—and looking further at how asset registers can be made more available to the public. We must think about how we can provide more mutualised models for the delivery of public services and how we can more broadly promote employee ownership and co-operatives. If we do not do those things, we will not make progress.
Labour will support the bill at decision time, but there is a huge amount of work to do once it is passed.
16:04
For the first time since I became an MSP, my husband came to me and said, “Is this thing on TikTok about you?” He was referring to a video from someone outside Scotland, who had identified our bill as being a groundbreaking world first. Likewise, a former colleague who currently works for the Belgian Government in Brussels contacted me and said, “Community wealth building. Is that you? Are you involved in that? It looks very exciting.” That was a really interesting perspective, given how underwhelmed members of the Economy and Fair Work Committee were when the bill was brought to us. It is interesting that we appear to be at the start of doing something intentional that is thought to be remarkable by other people, even though, as I said, committee members were not overwhelmed with excitement when we first saw the bill.
The bill does only two things: it makes Government ministers of the day provide a statement about community wealth building and it forces local authorities and other named public bodies to get around the table and do likewise for their regions. The bill does not do anything about compulsory sales orders or compulsory purchase orders. It does not do anything to complete the land register. It does not do anything in relation to the common land and assets registers. It does not do anything in relation to procurement reform directly, although, indirectly, thanks to some amendments from Daniel Johnson, it requires the Government to consider that issue.
Therefore, there is unfinished business. The bill is just the start. We can say what we intend the bill to do, but we now have to do the work to make that happen.
I was really pleased with the stage 2 amendments. Various Opposition members proposed various approaches to improved reporting, metrics and targets. That is so important because, if we are not measuring, how can we judge progress?
Community wealth building is not just a warm and fuzzy concept that is nice to have; it is very serious. It is about restructuring the economy and providing transformative change, so that everybody has a stake in how well Scotland is doing. It is about addressing the disconnect that people feel when they see the very wealthy continuing to get richer while they struggle to afford to pay their energy bills or to travel somewhere nice for their kids to experience nature. There is a disconnect when, although people hear that, apparently, the economy is doing well, they do not feel that they are doing well. Community wealth building is about rejoining things by ensuring that everyone has a stake in the economy, so that, when the country does well, every individual also does well and gets what they need from our economy.
More work is still needed to transform how we think about co-operatives, social enterprises and other alternative business models. In too many cases, the Scottish Government and its enterprise agencies think about only small and worthy businesses when they think about co-operatives, but there is no reason why co-operatives and employee-owned businesses cannot be enormous, ambitious, competitive, highly productive and very innovative. Enterprise agencies should prioritise such businesses, because we know that the additional benefits that they bring to communities are absolutely worth it.
Therefore, there should be a clear instruction to our enterprise agencies to prioritise such businesses, put back together Co-operative Development Scotland and get in-house expertise so that, when any person or small group comes to Business Gateway or one of the enterprise agencies and says, “I want to start a business to do X,” they are given the option to become a co-operative or to adopt a social or other employee-owned business model. That will allow us to lock in the benefits of community wealth building.
We move to the open debate.
16:08
Mercifully, Mrs Hepburn has not yet brought to my attention any TikTok videos about my endeavours, but there might be time yet.
At its heart, community wealth building is the simple but powerful proposition that our local economies should work better for the people and communities who live in those areas. When wealth is generated, circulated and retained locally, we create opportunities—there are more good jobs and stronger businesses, and profits are reinvested in the places that produced them in the first place.
Therefore, the bill represents an opportunity to address economic and wealth inequality. It will do so not through some abstract theory but through practical action that supports the generation, circulation and retention of wealth in local and regional economies across Scotland. In that way, we will help to create the circumstances in which communities and people can own, access and more directly benefit from the wealth that our economy creates.
The central aim of the bill is to establish a new and consistent platform for local economic development. It recognises the economic agency of every pound of public money.
Public spending is not neutral. It can shape markets, it shapes supply chains and it can shape opportunity. That is why I welcome the placing of partnership at the bill’s core—bringing together the public sector, businesses, the third sector and communities in pursuit of sustainable and inclusive growth.
Through community wealth building, Scotland can create the conditions in which local businesses thrive—in which resilience, innovation and local investment reinforce one another. When investment supports the resilience of local employers, when good work is created close to home and when profits are reinvested in communities, we help to build an economy that delivers prosperity across economic, social and environmental dimensions.
Investment from elsewhere is to be welcomed, but we know that capital can be transient. Making it stay as rooted as possible in local communities should be an objective that the Parliament shares. The bill will ensure that that approach is implemented consistently across Scotland. It places clear duties on Scottish ministers, local authorities and other public bodies to publish and deliver statements, action plans and guidance. It will empower democratically elected local authorities to lead meaningful reform without imposing unnecessary bureaucracy on them—striking the right balance between national consistency and local flexibility.
One of the bill’s strengths is its focus on anchor organisations. Whether they are public bodies such as local authorities, the national health service, universities and enterprise agencies, or major private and third sector employers, those institutions have deep roots in their communities and significant economic influence. By leveraging their procurement spend, employment practices, land and property assets and, in some cases, legal powers, anchor organisations can stimulate local economic activity, shorten supply chains, create jobs and strengthen regional resilience.
The bill is grounded in five clear pillars: spending that maximises local benefit; a workforce that is built on fair work principles; land and property that deliver social and ecological value; inclusive ownership through co-operatives and social enterprises; and finance that serves local people, communities and businesses. Together, those pillars form a coherent framework for change.
Ultimately, the bill is about fairness, resilience and shared prosperity. It is about ensuring that the wealth that is created in Scotland better benefits Scotland’s people and places. It is about recognising that local partners and communities are best placed to understand their own challenges and opportunities, and giving them the tools and flexibility to act.
Community wealth building is not a passing initiative but a long-term commitment to reshaping our economy so that success is widely shared and locally rooted. I recognise that there might be more to be done and that the bill might be just the start. However, by passing it today, we will take a decisive step towards an economy that works for people, communities and Scotland.
16:12
It is true that the bill is in better shape than it was when it was introduced by the Government, but I cannot help but be reminded of the phrase that Aneurin Bevan once famously used. He said:
“It has taken five years of governmental labour to give birth to that mouse”.
Parliament has improved the bill, and the Minister for Public Finance has been listening and co-operating. The promotion of employee ownership, worker co-operatives, social enterprises and supported businesses is now on face of the bill, including their promotion by the enterprise agencies and the Scottish National Investment Bank. Credit unions, mutual banks and building societies and municipal banks are also in the fabric of the bill, which is welcome. The ministerial list of measures is now mandatory, not discretionary. Reporting mechanisms are now much more robust. There will be a review of the Procurement (Scotland) Act 2014 within 12 months of royal assent, including, explicitly, how it can support workers to transition their company into employee ownership. Those are very welcome improvements.
In the passage of the bill, many amendments that I lodged, including some that I lodged for debate this afternoon, have been opposed by an unholy alliance of the Scottish National Party and the Conservatives, with the Conservatives claiming that some of my proposals were, in their words, “extraneous” to the bill and the SNP claiming yet others to be “tangential”, when it is my contention that insourcing, not outsourcing, public services, harnessing the considerable community wealth that already exists inside multibillion-pound local government pension schemes in Scotland or using public procurement progressively are measures that are the very essence of community wealth building—they are axiomatic to community wealth building, not extraneous or tangential.
In the end, the real test of our political principles is whether or not they bring about change. All too often, change is promised but not delivered—a hollow political slogan rather than meaningful political action. I started by quoting Nye Bevan; let me finish by quoting him on something that, over the years, I have tried to apply to my own politics. In his final speech to the Labour Party conference just a few months before his untimely death, he said this:
“Let me give you a personal confession of faith. I have found in my life that the burdens of public life are too great to be borne for trivial ends. The sacrifices are too much, unless we have something serious in mind.”
I hope that the low platform provided by the community wealth building act will be something that the next Parliament can build upon; that we can have a Marcora law in Scotland, with statutory rights for workers to become co-operative owners; and that we can make this—the home of Robert Owen and the birthplace of the Fenwick weavers—a Mondragon of the north.
I hope that we can believe that those who follow us really do have, in Bevan’s words, “something serious in mind”, something that goes way beyond trivial ends: a rejection of the creed that the economy is nothing to do with Parliament and politics and an understanding instead that there is an alternative to an overreliance on foreign direct investment and extractive capitalism and that we can act in the wider community and national interest, rather than simply the narrow shareholder interest—economics as if people mattered, as if communities matter, and as if future generations matter.
Thank you. We now move to closing speeches.
16:17
The report that has been referenced by several colleagues, “Developing Scotland’s Economy: Increasing the Role of Inclusive and Democratic Business Models”, was, to cast our minds back to the distant past, a Bute house agreement requirement, and it is an achievement that I am still really proud of.
Moving the recommendations of that report forward—notwithstanding my disagreement with Richard Leonard about tax breaks—will be a substantial step forward in supporting community wealth building in Scotland. I commend the report to the members in the chamber and to the next Scottish Government, because we are now just weeks out from an election and it will be for the next Scottish Government and the next Scottish Parliament to implement the bill as well as the recommendations in the report.
It behoves us all and all our successors to get out to the community groups and stakeholders in our regions and constituencies and get them making noise about this and pester their local authorities to get their community action plan started and see how they fit into it, because this is going to matter to them. We need to make sure that our stakeholders know how to apply for procurement contracts and that community organisations know how to contribute to their local action plans.
I hope that, through the bill, local authorities and public bodies are encouraged to think in an entrepreneurial way about how their assets and resources can be used to prioritise wellbeing and resilience in their areas—how one organisation’s derelict land may be another organisation’s community garden. That is exactly the kind of bringing people around the table that can achieve things even without a substantial input of funding. I hope that the power of the bill will be the facilitative effort that happens when people sit around the table and say, “Here’s what we need,” and “Here’s what we have,” so that we can co-operate to make the best of everything that we have.
I will give members some examples of how the bill might benefit our constituents. It is not just about community shares in renewable energy schemes, although it is partly about that, and it is not just about lovely community gardens and orchards, although of course it is partly about that. It could be about local energy resilience—if local energy generation is in place in a distributed way and the grid gets taken out by a terrible storm, local people would still have heat, electricity and maybe a safe place to retreat to in the case of terrible cold, wind, flooding or fire. That is the kind of community resilience that could be built because of the work on the bill.
Last week, Liz Smith, Maree Todd, Neil Bibby and I attended a hustings where there was a discussion about the challenges of maintaining swimming pools in our communities. Those could be an interesting example of a community asset. If swimming pools were owned by a community, partners in developing community action plans could come together to figure out how they would heat their local pool. Maybe the local whisky distillery or the local data centre would have excess heat that they could use, or maybe one of the public bodies would have land that they could use to install a pool. That is about how we pool our resources—private enterprise, public bodies and local authorities—with volunteers and organisations to make the best of what we have, and it should be making the best of Scotland. I look forward to working on the implementation of the bill in the next session of Parliament.
16:21
The Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill is not just a means of trading a slogan; it represents a recognition that Scotland’s wealth is based in the local communities that we live in. It is often forgotten that 1.2 million jobs in Scotland—more than half of all private sector employment—are created and sustained by small and medium-sized enterprises, which are the foundations on which this country’s prosperity depends. Combined with the powers of the state, both local and national, they shape our lives, building up wealth in our communities and allowing each next new generation to be richer than the last.
Yet, for far too long, our policy in Scotland has relentlessly focused on a laissez-faire dependence on the initiative and enterprise of foreign corporations, and foreign ownership and investment from multinationals, rather than building up our home-grown talent and enterprise potential. That is how Scotland has become one of the most foreign-owned economies in the world. As a result, it has experienced a net outflow of wealth in every year since records began. That is not a trivial sum. We are talking about more than a quarter of a trillion pounds leaving Scotland between 1998 and the latest figures in 2021. That is the result of decades of people actively choosing the multinational rather than the local.
We can go back to the Toothill report of 1962, which determined that Scotland’s heavy industrial base was beyond reform and that, as a nation, we had to depend on external investment, primarily from the United States, into our light industries. We seem not to have shaken that dependence ever since. That has come at tremendous cost to our prosperity. Scotland is one of the most foreign-owned countries in the world and one of only a handful of such countries that are both rich and developed but not microstates or outright tax havens.
Gross national income provides a useful indicator for us. The Government has been undertaking experimental statistics, although I note that it has not done so since 2021. GNI provides a measure of the country’s total national income, including all the income earned by its residents and businesses both at home and abroad. It contrasts with gross domestic product—GDP—which measures the income of anyone within a country’s boundaries, regardless of who produces it. It is a useful indicator, at a macro level, of community wealth building. GNI tends to be based on ownership, whereas GDP is based simply on location. If we compare GDP with GNI in the latest statistics from 2021, we can see that £36.5 billion was extracted from Scotland in that year, largely in the form of profits and dividends to foreign-owned companies and shareholders, while only £26.4 billion flowed into Scotland, largely as foreign investment income. That represents a net outflow of £10.1 billion. It is important to note that that is 5.5 per cent of GDP, which is greater than the average of any World Bank income group, including the world’s least developed and most heavily indebted nations.
Only five polities in the World Bank’s GNI database are richer in GNI per capita than Scotland while having a higher rate of outward economic flow: San Marino, Singapore, Ireland, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands. We need to address that structural problem and properly interrogate the nature of foreign direct investment. That is why we have pushed the Government through amendments to the bill. The Government does not properly scrutinise the nature of foreign direct investment projects to ensure that they actually add net value to the Scottish economy.
I admit that, like many of my Labour colleagues, I was sceptical about the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill as introduced—it was a mouse of a bill, as Richard Leonard referred to it. I was worried that it would create lots of paperwork for underresourced local authorities, that it would be about just an empty slogan and that the opportunity to meaningfully create community wealth building would be lost. We are perhaps still sceptical in some respects, but I am pleased that we have been able to work constructively with the Government and colleagues from across the chamber to fashion a stronger bill that will genuinely support community wealth building activities—to give the mouse some teeth, I suppose.
We have worked to achieve the inclusion of community-owned financial institutions such as credit unions in the Government’s community wealth building strategic statement and as an option in the action plans. The Scottish Government has committed to procurement reform and community empowerment reviews—both of which are sorely needed—in the next session of the Parliament.
I would have liked there to be more measures supporting co-operatives and for there to be greater scope in the organisations that will be included under the action plans. I note the concerns that have been raised about the surreptitious rundown of Co-operative Development Scotland, and I was disappointed that the Government resisted the amendments in the name of my colleague Richard Leonard. However, we recognise that the bill is a useful starting point, and it will be up to the next Parliament to ensure that its promise truly comes to fruition.
We need to ensure that councils and public bodies are properly resourced so that community wealth building plans turn into real community wealth building activity. We must also ensure that, when procurement processes are reviewed in relation to how they keep to community wealth building goals, we then act accordingly and make the changes that will be required to use public purchasing power to drive wealth building in Scotland.
The prize of a Scotland in which wealth-generating activities circulate within our communities is one that is worth striving towards. I hope that we will be able to consider the bill as the beginning, not the end, of our community wealth building journey.
16:27
Yesterday, I went to see my 92-year-old aunt. She is a remarkable woman: independent, sharp minded and proud of standing on her own two feet. She still lives on her own, and she is rightly determined to do so for as long as she can. However, she gets meals on wheels, and she pays her contribution towards that.
When I arrived yesterday, it was around lunch time and my aunt said, “Would you like some soup?” So, she put some soup on, and we sat down and had lunch together. As we were eating, the doorbell rang and it was the meals on wheels service—my aunt had forgotten that she had ordered it. The meal that arrived was sausage and gravy with mashed potato and vegetables, which was perfectly respectable fare. Where did it come from? Here is my point: it came from Trowbridge, Wiltshire. It had travelled all the way from Wiltshire to reach a 92-year-old woman who lives in a part of Scotland that contains some of the most productive agricultural land in the country and has some of the best livestock farming that can be found anywhere. It is a place that produces world-class food. I have nothing against Wiltshire—for heaven’s sake, I am a unionist; I believe in the United Kingdom. However, it is deeply ironic that, while we have spent hours in committee and in the chamber talking about community wealth building, local procurement and keeping money circulating locally—
Will the member take an intervention?
In a second. It is ironic that, while we have been talking about those things, a local authority in Scotland is procuring food for meals on wheels from hundreds of miles away.
Yesterday, I formally opened the new Inverness Castle Experience, which has a cafe with a menu that has a detailed description of where all the food comes from. Does Stephen Kerr welcome the fact that the vast majority of the food is local?
Hallelujah!
That is the good food nation for you.
Yes, the good food nation and all that stuff—excellent.
However, my point is about the gap between rhetoric—in which we specialise—and reality. Such a gap is the danger with virtue-signalling legislation. If community wealth building does not change decisions such as the one in my example, if it does not alter procurement behaviour, and if it does not make it easier and more attractive for local businesses to supply local services, what exactly will we have achieved?
We now have freedoms that we did not have before: freedoms to shape procurement rules in ways that support local enterprise; freedoms to encourage small businesses to start up and scale up; and freedoms to ensure that public money raised in taxes is recycled back into local economies wherever possible. If we are not using those freedoms, passing another bill and declaring success is, to be frank, meaningless. My fear is that, unless the Government changes its attitude, the bill will simply become another beautiful bureaucratic exercise—it will just be like other strategies, plans and reports that sit unread and make no tangible difference to the lives of the people whom we represent.
As this Parliament completes stage 3 of the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill, we should step back and ask a simple but important question: what do we think we are doing when we pass acts of Parliament in this place? Legislation is not theatre, it is not virtue signalling and it is not box ticking. The laws that we pass are meant to mean something—they are meant to change behaviour, shape incentives and improve outcomes for the people whom we represent. When they do not, we exist largely to allow ministers to say, “Job done.” That is not a harmless failure but a serious one. It wastes parliamentary time, costs taxpayers money and corrodes trust in the whole legislative process.
In recent years, there has been a tendency towards introducing what I can only describe as performative legislation. We see symbolic action—we have announcements that sound good, bills that photograph well and strategies that generate press releases—followed by a general shrug when little changes on the ground. We have seen all that before. We saw it in the debate about becoming a so-called good food nation, as was mentioned earlier. Those are fine words and worthy aspirations, but there is little evidence that procurement, production or outcomes have shifted in any meaningful way.
That brings me to community wealth building. Let me be absolutely clear: I am not opposed to the idea—quite the opposite. The Scottish Conservatives believe deeply in wealth creation. We believe in local enterprise, local jobs and strong communities. We believe in businesses of all kinds being able to start up, scale up and succeed. We believe in the money that is raised through taxation being used intelligently and being reinvested in the communities from which it comes.
I see that I am out of time. [Interruption.] Oh—am I not out of time, Presiding Officer?
Members: Aw!
Keep going.
Listen, there is not going to be a division on that, okay? [Laughter.]
Believing in those things means being serious about delivery. It means asking whether legislation changes decisions or whether it simply generates another plan, report and document that are quietly filed away somewhere in the cloud.
We need seriousness. We need a Government that is genuinely committed to backing local businesses, organisations and community groups. We need a Government that understands that wealth is created not by frameworks but by people who take risks, create value and employ others. We also need a Parliament that is willing to say that good intentions are not enough.
As the bill completes its passage, my challenge to ministers is simple: let us get beyond virtue signalling. Let us get into the practical work and make the legislation mean something. If we do not do so, we will have passed another bill that looks impressive on paper but changes absolutely nothing in practice. The people whom we represent deserve better than that.
16:34
I would like to thank all members for what has been, by and large, a constructive debate. I think that it is true to say that there is consensus that community wealth building is an approach to economic development that can help to deliver sustainable growth and foster resilience in our local economies. Legislating for community wealth building means that there will be consistent implementation across Scotland of an economic development model that benefits communities by creating and protecting jobs, supporting business growth and extending influence over how assets are owned and used.
In line with the principles that underpin our public sector reform aims, the bill as introduced was designed to deliver impact while being lean and focused. Murdo Fraser talked about resources, and I welcome his support, at stages 2 and 3, for ensuring that the bill remained lean and focused. Our objective is to deliver in an efficient way within the public sector. Keeping the bill focused on the ability to deliver in as lean a way as possible is absolutely core to our mission.
Through the process of scrutiny that was led by the Economy and Fair Work Committee, the bill acquired some additions that add value. The final provisions in the Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill empower our public sector bodies rather than dictate to them. The statements that it requires future Scottish Governments to make, allied to the statutory guidance that will be published, will help local partnerships to produce tailored and practical action plans.
On Murdo Fraser’s point about what is next, it is clear that significant work must be done on pulling the guidance together. Officials are already working on that and will continue to bring it forward. I am sure that any future Government will be keen to engage widely across the chamber on the guidance to ensure that it is effective in delivering on the agenda.
I will turn to some of the contributions from members. Murdo Fraser and Daniel Johnson made a point about moving assets into local ownership and use and making that as straightforward and easy as possible. In my application of the existing asset transfer legislation, the principle that I adopt—as does the Government more widely—is the presumption that the transfer will add value to local communities and that such transfers should be supported wherever possible.
At one interesting point in the debate, Daniel Johnson said that whether someone was a capitalist, a socialist, an environmentalist or a social democrat, they should support the bill, and Stephen Kerr asked him which of those things he was. I think that we now know the answer to that question. Based on his incitement of community groups not to wait for permission but just to take over land, be it private or public, we can say that Daniel Johnson is by nature an anarchist, which is an interesting reflection. [Laughter.] Meanwhile, Lorna Slater self-identified as an entrepreneur. There has been some interesting crossover of perspectives in this discussion, which I think has added to the strength of the bill.
Lorna Slater made some really good points about the potential for alternative business models to grow to scale, and I think that that is absolutely key. There is no reason why supported businesses, whether co-operatives or employee-owned businesses, cannot grow to scale and be significant engines in the economy. Richard Leonard shares that perspective and articulates it very well. Lorna Slater’s call for communities to take advantage of the legislation and to power it forward to the next phase was very welcome.
There were calls for wider work in that regard. It is worth reflecting on some of those calls, because the bill is not the beginning or the end—it is very much a part of the journey. It builds on some of the great work that has already happened, including work on asset transfer legislation, work that we are taking forward on compulsory sales orders and reforming the compulsory purchase order regime, and work that the Registers of Scotland is focused on delivering around the land register. All of that work continues.
I want to make special mention of the procurement achievements of previous Governments since the 2014 act was passed. It is nice and very useful to know that Stephen Kerr is not, in principle, opposed to Wiltshire. [Laughter.] On his point about procurement, however, it is easy to say that we need to do more. We absolutely need to do more, but it is also important, if we are serious about making progress, to recognise what has been achieved. As I outlined in my opening speech, in Scotland, 47 per cent of our £16.5 billion public sector procurement spend is with SMEs, which is more than double the rate of the UK as a whole, and we should be proud of that. In fact, SMEs’ share of public sector procurement is larger than SMEs’ share of the total economy. Although we want to continue to do more in that regard, it is important to recognise the significant progress that has been made in the platform that we are building on.
Richard Leonard’s comments are always worth listening to, whether or not members agree with all of them. His point about the level of ambition is absolutely important and something to be taken on board. He is absolutely right about the need to have something serious in mind. The Government is genuine in engaging with the issues. His amendments were not agreed to for various reasons, but, on the intent and principle behind them, we will take forward work in that regard where we can. When he started talking about Nye Bevan and used a quote about mice, I was not sure whether he was going to pivot to Nye Bevan’s other famous quote about vermin. Thankfully, Richard Leonard did not go there, because that would have destroyed the consensual atmosphere that we have had in the discussion.
I will close by thanking all the people and organisations who are already making community wealth building a reality across Scotland. There has been a great deal of interest in the passage of the legislation in Scotland and, indeed, beyond. Lorna Slater’s comment about the worldwide fame that the bill has achieved through the mechanism of TikTok is worth reflecting on. Scotland can claim many firsts, and I urge members to vote for the bill, which will make it the first national community wealth building legislation in the world.