Official Report 821KB pdf
The next item of business is a members’ business debate on motion S7M-00899, in the name of Holly Bruce, on save Queen’s park glasshouse. The debate will be concluded without any question being put. I ask members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons now.
Motion debated,
That the Parliament recognises what it sees as the deep cultural, historical and environmental significance of the Queen’s Park Glasshouse to the Glasgow Southside constituency and the wider city; notes what it considers to be the significant public support for protecting this cultural heritage asset, evidenced by a Glasgow City Council petition signed by more than 13,000 people; understands that the glasshouse supports a range of crucial community priorities and that maintaining public access is important for heritage preservation, community cohesion, urban greenspace, accessible public toilets and dedicated opportunities for children’s play; believes that the safeguarding and sustainable revitalisation of the glasshouse aligns directly with key Scottish Government strategic ambitions, including those under the National Planning Framework 4, the Climate Change Plan and the Health and Social Care Strategy; notes the view that additional investment is required to bring the glasshouse back to its full potential, and further notes calls for the Scottish Government to meet with representatives of the Save Queen's Park Glasshouse campaign and Glasgow City Council to discuss all opportunities for the future of the glasshouse.
17:15
I will start by declaring an interest: I am a sitting councillor on Glasgow City Council.
I thank the campaigners from the save Queen’s park glasshouse campaign, some of whom are in the gallery this evening. They have taken time off work and education and travelled through from Glasgow to be here today. I thank them for their tireless campaigning—Glasgow Southside owes them a great deal. I also acknowledge that all seven Glasgow regional MSPs signed their support for the motion. I am pleased that this issue is one that we can agree on across the parties, and I am particularly grateful for Paul Sweeney’s support for the campaign.
Every time we allow a public asset to lock its doors, we chip away at the social fabric of our communities. Cities demand that we buy something just to sit down. Free, publicly owned spaces are the vital equaliser in our communities. They are safe, non-transactional places where we can take up space without cost. In privatising or profiteering from public space, we tell working-class people that they must pay to exist and that they do not belong.
Safe, free green spaces are not a luxury; they are a fundamental feminist infrastructure for more equitable cities. Nobody knows that better than folk who live in Glasgow Southside. We have been here before with the threatened closure of public libraries. In the past few months, the save Queen’s park glasshouse campaign has worked tirelessly to protect the Queen’s park glasshouse. For those who do not know, it is an iconic community venue in my constituency that has been threatened with closure, with Glasgow City Council claiming that the costs of keeping the building open have become unsustainable.
However, this evening, I really want to talk about priorities. Right now, in a world that aims to dehumanise us, I believe that we should be holding on more tightly to our precious public spaces that make us feel more human and connected to those around us, not eroding their funding and allowing them to sit empty, or worse, be sold off to the highest bidder. I do not want to see yet another public asset disappear. I do not want campaigners to have to continue to take time out of their lives to fight for something that it is the Parliament’s job—our job—to prioritise.
Queen’s park glasshouse is not just a building; it is a crucial civic asset—one whose public value has only become more important in the face of austerity and degrading public assets, many of which have been left to deteriorate and sit abandoned, leaving depressing relics of what could have been scattered across Glasgow and throughout Scotland. My constituents have said loudly, proudly and very clearly that they will not stand by and watch that happen to the glasshouse.
For more than a century, the glasshouse has provided numerous benefits to Glasgow Southside. It has hosted weddings, live music, family events and festivals. It has housed a cafe and a children’s soft play area, supported horticultural education and provided a calm, sheltered, green space of refuge for Glasgow residents and visitors.
I have received hundreds of emails from constituents across Glasgow Southside telling me that this really matters to them and asking me to do something about it. What has struck me is not just the volume of emails that I have received but that each person has their own relationship to the glasshouse. Many young people wrote to me to tell me that when they find life in the city really overwhelming, they go there to reflect, restore and just rest, and that the glasshouse is a place of sanctuary in some of the most vulnerable times. While we look to improve the mental health of young people across Scotland, we must listen to them and provide calm spaces to support their wellbeing. Many have said that that is exactly what the glasshouse is—a coping mechanism in dark times.
That is why the save Queen’s park glasshouse campaign has been working tirelessly to prevent the glasshouse from being closed. It is why more than 13,000 people signed a petition to support the campaign’s aims to keep the glasshouse publicly owned, publicly run and publicly accessible, with future use developed through meaningful, deep community engagement. The campaigners have also been clear that they want this campaign to result in a space that will continue to provide social, environmental, cultural, educational and wellbeing benefits—the glasshouse ticks all the boxes, really, as it has done for more than a century.
Last month, in my capacity as a local councillor, I lodged a motion at Glasgow City Council that was passed with significant cross-party support. It commits the council to keeping the glasshouse open, at least until the next budget day comes around. However, I do not want us to have to fight to save our public spaces budget to budget, year on year. I do not want our constituents to always need to keep a watchful eye over services that should be thriving.
This is only for now, and I look to the long-term future of the glasshouse and many other public spaces in Glasgow Southside and beyond, such as Govanhill baths and Langside hall. We need to go deeper and look at why our public spaces are in the state that they are in. I have dedicated a lot of my time to this cause. Some might call it political crumbs and a councillor problem, but this is what I am here to do. It is my job to serve my constituents and make our everyday spaces better and, in turn, that will help to make my constituents’ lives better.
It is not news to anyone that our councils face chronic underfunding and an inability to raise revenue. We need more funding for local government so that we can make better decisions on the local level. That is the bottom line. We need creative solutions to these problems instead of just saying that there is no money and not doing anything substantive to change it.
If we reformed the council tax, we could have a tax that not only is fairer for people and paid by those who can afford it but raises more money for councils. That should be a priority for the Government. We should be working on the hard stuff.
The funding that is available to councils and communities is often poorly advertised and difficult to access. Take the ENV2 planning framework, which is an example of money that, in theory, is available but is not making its way to the projects that need it most.
The capital block grant from the United Kingdom Government is forecast to fall, year on year. Capital spending for people and place will decrease at a time when community spaces for community cohesion, warmth and mental health are needed more than ever. There is a big opportunity for the new Prime Minister to change that.
Investment in the glasshouse would reward itself time and again. I want to make the Minister for Innovation, Technology and Tertiary Education and the Cabinet Secretary for Education, Culture and Gaelic aware that, although I know that there are substantive issues with capital funding, I am here to help to solve those problems and to find a sustainable solution. I would welcome their collaboration, a visit with them to the glasshouse and a solution-focused meeting to protect the people of Glasgow Southside’s heritage, wellbeing and community spirit.
I look forward to hearing the reflections of many members this evening and to the debate being the start of a conversation to not only save the glasshouse but open its doors for good. [Interruption.]
I must remind members of the public in the gallery that contributions such as clapping are not permitted.
17:23
I thank Holly Bruce, the member for Glasgow Southside, for lodging this members’ business debate motion. I was pleased to second it, because we are united not just in the defence of that public building but in defence of a principle that was foundational to the creation of the modern city of Glasgow: our great civic assets and our places of beauty, learning and wellbeing belong to the public, and Glasgow City Council has a fundamental duty to be their ultimate guardian on behalf of the public.
Queen’s park glasshouse is not just another greenhouse; it is a vital piece of our social and architectural history. Constructed in 1895 by the renowned Partick-based horticultural builder Simpson & Farmer, it has stood for generations as a civic sanctuary in the south side of the city.
When the Victorian city fathers commissioned such structures, they were driven by high-minded ideals. In an era when Glasgow was the workshop of the world, shrouded in industrial smog and soot, municipal glasshouses were constructed as cathedrals of light and nature. They were rooted in the philosophy of rational recreation and the civic gospel: the belief that the working class deserved access to clean air, botanical education and moral uplift. They were designed to provide a democratic space of beauty and tranquillity, free at the point of use, to improve the physical and mental health of the public.
Those laudable ideals are just as relevant today. The Queen’s park glasshouse currently provides immeasurable benefits to the community, and its future potential as a hub for growing, learning, biodiversity, climate action and wellbeing is enormous. The local campaigners here in the gallery who have rallied to save the glasshouse have fought a magnificent campaign, and they have won the right to be heard in the national legislature.
Glasgow City Council has finally committed to consultation, a feasibility study, capital funding bids and community engagement. We welcome those commitments, but as the campaigners have rightly stated, those processes must not become a bureaucratic smokescreen to avoid the central question, which is, who will ultimately be responsible for the glasshouse in the future?
I know all too well the perilous journey of saving such a structure. The Queen’s park glasshouse shares a profound connection with another of Glasgow’s great lost civic treasures, the Springburn winter gardens, which was built by the exact same firm, Simpson & Farmer, just five years later in 1900. The Springburn winter gardens was once the jewel of the north of Glasgow, built with the same soaring ambition. When I first became involved in the campaign to save the Springburn winter gardens back in 2013, the building had lain derelict for three decades—its spectacular ironwork was rusting, its glass was long gone, surrounded by Heras fencing and municipal apathy.
For 13 years alongside the dedicated group of local trustees, we fought to pull that building back from the brink. We tirelessly lobbied, we scraped together funding for emergency works to keep it standing and we fought a seemingly endless battle against a culture of managed decline. I am incredibly proud of what we have achieved in a major breakthrough in that campaign this year, securing a viable funded path forward to restore the ruined building.
However, it should not require 13 years of exhausting, relentless campaigning by volunteers in their spare time to save a category A-listed publicly owned asset from collapsing altogether. People who have been involved in the struggle to save the nearby Govanhill baths over the past quarter of a century will know exactly what I mean.
Community trusts and local collaborations are wonderful. Indeed, they are essential for community wellbeing, but we cannot allow local authorities to use community empowerment as a euphemism for municipal abdication of responsibility. Handing over the keys of complex heritage-listed and capital-intensive glasshouses entirely to underresourced volunteer groups is often setting them up to fail. That does not mean, however, that the council must rigidly operate every square inch of the site alone. We must look to the future through a lens of collaboration and modern municipal enterprise.
There is immense opportunity here to be flexible and innovative. We can and should collaborate with social enterprises, charities and local organisations to diversify the utilisation of the wider glasshouse complex. Whether that involves partnering to run a community cafe, leasing ancillary spaces for urban agriculture projects, running a botanical gin distillery or collaborating with educational groups, such partnerships can generate vital revenue and breathe dynamic new life into buildings if appropriately planned and designed with the community.
However, that flexibility must be built on an unshakeable foundation: the fundamental principle of public ownership and control. The core public spaces of the magnificent glasshouse, which are open to the public today thanks to the campaign, must remain publicly operated, publicly managed and free to access. The council must be the ultimate guarantor of the building’s future.
We must also acknowledge that the vulnerability of the Queen’s park glasshouse and the wider erosion of our parks funding is not happening in a vacuum. It is a direct symptom of the disproportionate austerity inflicted on Glasgow City Council by the Scottish Government. Over the past decade, Glasgow’s budget has been slashed by more than 10 per cent—literally decimated. When the Government sets roughly 80 per cent of the local authority’s funding, it leaves the council with an impossible dilemma.
We cannot allow our Victorian civic inheritance to become the collateral damage of those cuts. We need only to look to the east end and the devastating closure of the People’s Palace winter gardens in 2018 to see the cost of inaction. That closure robbed the people of the east end and Glasgow as a whole of another civic historic glasshouse, leaving it to languish while the council struggled to find the funding to keep it going.
We cannot allow the south side to suffer the same fate by stealth. We are witnessing the gradual erosion of the civic infrastructure that led the poet John Betjeman to famously describe Glasgow as
“the greatest Victorian city in the world”.
Today, too often, we see these civic assets treated merely as liabilities on a spreadsheet rather than the engines of community wealth that they were meant to be.
The conclusion here is straightforward.
Will the member give way?
I will give way, if I may.
I am sorry. Paul Sweeney is well over his time.
Apologies. I would love to give way.
We have won the right to be heard here. Now we need to win the future of the glasshouse. The council must embrace the opportunities of municipal enterprise and partner with the community to unlock the building’s potential while retaining the ultimate responsibility for its ownership and the operation of its core public spaces.
Keep the glasshouse publicly owned, publicly controlled and publicly accessible. Anything less is a betrayal of Glasgow’s municipal socialist heritage and its people.
17:29
In principle, I am happy to support Holly Bruce’s motion; indeed, I thank her for lodging it.
As someone who has worked to look after heritage buildings, I know what challenges they present and what is required to make them sustainable. What is required is not only money but love, care and active community support. Therefore, a breathing space—
I am sorry, Ms Schmulian, but could you raise your microphone?
My apologies. Did members hear the opening part of my speech?
Members: Yes.
From me, it is a yes to breathing space for a feasibility study but an absolute no to getting Glasgow Life involved, because strategic alignment with council objectives is not the same as a business case, which is what is required for the glasshouses to flourish.
I say this not to have a go at the council but as someone who knows: for any potential community business to flourish, it needs to have stakeholder partnerships with the private sector. A one-size-fits-all approach will simply not cut it. I will tell members why. These days, people who spend money on events want some personal input and flexibility when it comes to catering, drinks suppliers, entertainment and so on. They want to plan their event to their own price point. In addition, when a community business works with a dedicated list of suppliers and stakeholders as a multipurpose venue, they in turn do the business’s marketing for it.
The south side of Glasgow is buzzing at the moment, with many start-ups in places such as Sinclair Drive and Strathbungo. The transformation of the old Victoria infirmary into flats, with more development planned for Battlefield, means that the market is expanding, and residents and visitors will look for more green space, better access to the park, more pedestrian areas and also more parking. While people like me have retreated from the city centre, local community businesses have flourished. If residents are willing to spend £5 on a matcha latte in some shop front, they will do it at a cafe in the glasshouse.
In considering the glasshouse’s future, there are positive and negative examples in the south side to look at. I was on the committee of Langside Halls, which is a project that often seems endless. Its drawbacks include major fabric challenges, a poor location with no exclusive green space and, most notably, its size. Govanhill baths is another example of a project that is not a sustainable business concept. After many years of going from funding application to funding application, there is still no conclusion. A plan with a revenue model attached moves in years.
By contrast, Newlands park is flourishing, with the privately run cafe and the community group Friends of Newlands Park working together with voluntary Scottish tennis bodies for the restoration of the tennis courts adjacent to the cafe.
My final example is Pollokshields Burgh Hall Trust in Maxwell Park, where I acted as chief executive for three years, increasing its turnover to £300,000. The building was acquired by a community group when Strathclyde Regional Council wound up. With a lottery grant for repairs, the building opened in the mid-1990s with a clear business plan and community support. It offered on-site overnight accommodation in the form of luxury wedding suites for events in renovated park-keeper cottages. A varied list of trusted suppliers offered a variety of hospitality packages that were approved to suit every ethnicity and taste, from curries for mehndis to steak for weddings, as well as vegan options. As some of those suppliers to the venue had their own following, they brought business to the trust. As a result, little marketing was required. People would often tell me that they booked the burgh hall because they knew that all profit was ploughed back into the community business. Most people in Glasgow know someone who has been to a wedding or a similar event at the burgh hall.
I do not fully know what facilities the glasshouse has, as I was prevented from doing a thorough on-site investigation when someone found out that I was a member of Reform. However, if the Kibble Palace can achieve what it has achieved, I am sure that Queen’s park glasshouse can, too.
Nobody in the south side is short of banners, hashtags or public meetings. What we are short of is people who are willing to say the words “commercial” or “profit” without flinching. [Interruption.]
I ask people in the gallery not to contribute or they may be asked to leave.
17:34
I, too, was proud to second the motion. Perhaps Holly Bruce, Paul Sweeney and I should have shared notes before the debate, because I cannot imagine that members will hear much that we have not heard in their fantastic contributions.
I must say that I am disappointed to find myself here on this fine Thursday evening. I say that not because of the glasshouse, nor because of the cohort of incessant activists who have marked their ground and protected their community, or, of course, the hard work of my Green colleague Holly Bruce in her capacity as a councillor and an MSP to empower the movement, but because of the underlying topic of the debate.
Just yesterday, barely 24 hours ago, this chamber heard powerful speeches on the need for community, togetherness, integration and local pride. Yet, today, those notions hit the cold, hard reality of what they mean in practice. How can we build community with no community space? Where is local pride when local areas are left to atrophy? Is it really togetherness if we are only consistently coming together to fight back against losing our spaces?
I am starting to feel a bit like a broken record in this place, but this must be highlighted. What happened at the glasshouse is not one isolated case; it is a continuation of the successive failures to protect our built heritage and community spaces, to build an environment that everyone can thrive in and to reject managed decline. It is the same story with the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Trongate 103, the Hillhead Baptist church and, most recently—although the situation has been questioned desperately by almost all Opposition members in this chamber, including me—the People’s Palace and the winter gardens in the east end.
We have all seen what happens when we gamble with our publicly owned assets and what happens to our communities when we leave them behind in order to simply balance the books. Slow austerity is still austerity. I am glad that our council has chosen to protect the space, but it must follow its own strategies and protect all our community-owned assets, with support from this place.
Investing in our spaces is investing in our future. It means investing in the social lives of our children, reducing isolation for the elderly and working towards a more collegiate and coherent society. I need not remind colleagues, nor those in the gallery, of the disgraceful scenes that we have seen across our great city in recent months. Just last week, affordable housing was set on fire due to misinformation surrounding refugees and asylum seekers. The last thing that we need right now is to reduce the ability of our communities to come together. Let us not isolate in the age of disinformation. Let us not give up on vibrant and thriving communities, which every one of my constituents deserves access to.
Before I end this speech, I must honour the members of the save Queen’s park glasshouse campaign, some of whom join us in the gallery today. To them, I say: your continued drive to save this community asset is inspiring, not just to myself, but to the thousands of people who have followed this campaign. Let the work that we do here in this chamber, and the work that is done in Glasgow City Council, make sure that you never need to come out again to access your basic right to community.
17:37
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, which states that I am an elected member of Renfrewshire Council—I promise that that will be relevant to the conversation. It also states that I am a nurse in the national health service, which is also relevant to the points I am going to make.
As the member for Renfrewshire North and Cardonald, I am in the unique position of representing a constituency in which Renfrewshire and Glasgow come together—that can sometimes be a controversial statement in itself. However, although the glasshouse is not something that I have had to talk about before, I have enjoyed going to it. It is one of those unique offerings that, as an east coaster who is now in the west, I found absolutely intriguing when I had the opportunity to see it.
The issue reminds us of the importance of heritage assets and the need to recognise Glasgow’s specific heritage. I felt such warmth when I was learning the history of the glasshouse. I am not going to go over the things that members have already said about that history, because they have spoken eloquently about it, and much better than I could. Instead, I want to draw members’ attention to the fact that listening to communities has always been my bread and butter—it is what has mattered to me in the representation that I have offered—and I think that we should recognise how loudly this community has spoken and how hard it has worked in order to raise the issue and, more importantly, get positive action.
Iris Duane spoke very well about community cohesion, and I align myself completely with her comments. In order to get rid of bad-faith actors, it is important that we all come together on that point.
I, too, pay tribute to Holly Bruce. I am unashamedly an east-end politician, and people who know Glasgow will know that crossing the river is the kind of thing that we need to take our passports for. However, all that I would say to Ms Bruce—and, indeed, to my fellow Glasgow MSPs—is that they should take heart and take hope from what has happened with the Tollcross winter gardens. There is now a beautiful nursery attached to it, and, whereas it used to be an absolute wreck, it has now become a vibrant space. Although I will not seek to cross the River Clyde—I am unashamedly a parochial east ender—I would say that members should take heart, because that example shows what can be done.
I thank the member for his comments. He is absolutely entitled to his views, and if he wants to get his passport, I am sure it will carry him over that way.
I will get back on point. As has been said, this is about mental health, but it is also about physical health. Where I disagree with some of Kim Schmulian’s commentary is in relation to people being willing to pay the same price elsewhere for a coffee. We do not want to create exclusion in our communities and exclude people from spaces that we have created in order to be inclusive. It has been made clear that, where there are opportunities to look for investment, that should be done collaboratively with the community. Community empowerment is powerful when it is done well and done right.
Public service reform is a major part of the Scottish Government’s focus, and this is an opportunity for us to look at how we utilise community spaces, places and people, and their skills and experiences, to make Scotland better. Ultimately, that is really important.
As well as welcoming the minister to his new role, I welcome Councillor Ricky Bell to his new role at Glasgow City Council. It is important to set the tone right and well. Consultation is due, although I appreciate that a date has not been set for it yet, and I encourage all stakeholders, both groups and individuals, to be heard as part of that. When Ricky Bell made his statement today, he expressed clearly his dedication to being a champion for the people of Glasgow and to working collaboratively with communities. I know that the proof will be in the pudding; however, given that he has only been in post for an afternoon, I will give him a bit of time to gain that bit of pace. He has been a councillor for a long time and is aware of the realities of these situations. I am sure that my good friend in Glasgow City Council, the new council leader, will open his door to those discussions, to make sure that those things are done with communities.
I look forward to seeing how the local communities whose representatives are in the gallery today, as well as the wider movement, work alongside local political leaders—whether the councillors in the wards or the wider council—to develop a long-term plan so that this situation does not happen again. The people’s palace is a really good example of where, even with good intentions, structural complexities can cause delays. We do not want to have that situation in the future.
We all have places in our patches with these issues—I could mention several even in Renfrewshire. For the greater good of everyone, we need a more proactive approach.
I call the minister to respond to the debate. In doing so, I welcome him to his new role.
17:42
Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I am very proud to represent the Scottish Government in responding to the debate, and I am very glad to be responding to such a positive debate, in which there really is a lot of consensus across the chamber from all points of the compass.
Holly Bruce made a powerful speech, and I disagreed with nothing in it. I am glad to see that the Glasgow MSPs are united on this issue. Paul Sweeney had a lot of good ideas, and I pay tribute to his advocacy for the built environment across Glasgow and elsewhere. Over the years, he has had a lot of good ideas about new uses for the building, and I think that has to be where we all turn our minds going forward. He also made a powerful point about public ownership and control of the space, which was echoed by my friend Michelle Campbell. I, too, am concerned about the privatisation and commercialisation of the public realm. That is not what we, as a nation, want to see. We need to preserve our heritage and our spaces, and we must make sure that they are free to access. I will come on to Glasgow City Council in relation to that point shortly.
Kim Schmulian made a very good point when she said that this is not just about a building, but about love, care and active community support. That is a powerful ethos. She also talked about partnership with the private sector, and I am very open to that.
I, too, welcome the minister to his role. In relation to his reflection on a member’s speech about the role of community, does he share with me a deep discomfort with the gratuitous insults that a Reform member made in the chamber yesterday against the community of Govanhill, talking down everything about that community and insulting not only its representatives but its residents? Does he think that the member’s speech this evening might have been improved if it had included an apology for those remarks?
Alyn Smith: I am doing my best to achieve consensus in the debate, but I am in furious agreement with Patrick Harvie—yes.
I believe that community assets are the future. I am very supportive of Stirling, the place that I know best, transferring assets from the council to the community. However, there must be a sustainable plan for the asset, it must be free for the public to access and it needs to wash its face, because we all have budgetary challenges.
Iris Duane made several good points, particularly about the need for community spaces, with which I am in strong agreement.
My friend Michelle Campbell made a powerful speech and several great points, particularly in recognising how hard the community has worked to be heard. I am very glad to see the community campaigners here and to respond to their concerns. She also made points about commercialised and privatised public space, which is very much at the forefront of my mind.
David Linden made a really powerful point about the Tollcross winter gardens. There are solutions to this matter and a lot of good examples of stuff being done.
The Queen’s park glasshouse has been part of Glasgow life for more than a century. I am a Glaswegian and my dad is from Queen’s Park. If you go back far enough, generations of families have happy memories of visiting the glasshouse and learning, meeting and finding enjoyment there. Many people have powerful memories associated with it, and that connection really matters.
However, although we are united in wanting the space to be preserved and to flourish, we need to recognise the challenges as well: it requires substantial investment. Issues relating to its condition and long-term sustainability are long standing. Everyone who cares about the future of the glasshouse shares that same starting point: we want to protect this important heritage asset and give it the best possible chance of a sustainable future. The Scottish Government recognises the importance of historic buildings and public heritage spaces—of course we do. Across Scotland, communities are grappling with similar challenges: many historic buildings require substantial investment at a time when public finances remain under pressure.
I welcome the minister to his post and thank him for giving way. An interesting example nearby might be the Queen’s park arena. The original arena was destroyed by a fire in 1996, but the community councils around the area took control of the site and developed a new public asset, which is managed by a community interest, not-for-profit company called Inhouse Event Productions. That shows that there can be ways to activate a venue and make it self-sustaining while retaining some degree of public control and ownership of it. Of course, there is a balance to be carefully struck between keeping it in the council and shirking responsibility altogether.
Alyn Smith:I really could not agree more. Community ownership of sustainable assets will be a great thing for a lot of communities the length and breadth of Scotland, not only in Glasgow.
I am grateful for the engagement that I have had from Glasgow City Council.
The minister mentioned the need for capital funding. I laid out in my speech a few options that could be explored in relation to council tax reform, ENV2 money in the planning framework and capital funding from the UK Government. Is the minister open to sitting down with me and the glasshouse campaigners to discuss those options, and will he agree to meet me in Queen’s park glasshouse?
I
Alyn Smith: I am grateful for being put on the spot and am very happy to agree. I am conscious that I am standing in for the cabinet secretary, Màiri McAllan, so we might have a discussion about who should meet Ms Bruce. I am very supportive of that idea and I know that the cabinet secretary is as well.
Glasgow City Council has made a commitment: it has primary responsibility for and ownership of the building. It will keep the building in public ownership and explore the long-term financial options, and the glasshouse will remain open while that process is under way.
The arguments that have been made today remind us of the value of the glasshouse, which cannot be measured only in financial terms. We need that public realm and a sustainable future for it. That is why the Scottish Government continues to support Scotland’s historic environment, and we do so through a range of programmes and partners because there will not be a one-size-fits-all solution.
I am very supportive of community ownership in Stirling, which is my bit of the world, and I want it to happen elsewhere. If the Scottish Government can do things with local campaigners and local leaders, as we have seen today, I am very open to doing so, as is the cabinet secretary. I am grateful to Holly Bruce and others for the debate, and I look forward to working with them on that basis.
Meeting closed at 17:49.
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