Agenda for Cities
The next item of business is a debate on motion S4M-01740, in the name of Nicola Sturgeon, on the agenda for cities.
14:57
This is an important debate not only for our cities, but for the regions in which they sit and, I argue, for all of Scotland. It is good to see so many members in the chamber—city MSPs and even some who represent non-city areas. I look forward to hearing the views of members of all parties during the debate.
This is the first debate on cities that I have had the opportunity to lead as cities minister and I am pleased to do so. I spent the first half of my life so far living in a city region 25 miles or so from a city, and I have spent the second half living in Glasgow. Therefore, like many others, I know, not only theoretically but from first-hand experience, how important the vibrancy of our cities is. It is important not only to the economic life of the cities and Scotland as a whole, but to the social, cultural and educational life of our country.
Cities and their regions really matter. They are the drivers of economic growth. We know that that is the case not only from domestic experience but from a wealth of international experience. We know that successful cities contribute disproportionately to the wealth of nations and create benefits and opportunities way beyond their boundaries. Therefore, the agenda for cities that I published in December was written and developed with a clear objective in mind: to ensure that our cities and regions are able and supported to make the fullest possible contribution to sustained economic recovery and, beyond our economic recovery, to vibrant economic growth by stimulating economic activity and creating jobs.
As we all know, our cities face a range of challenges, including pockets of endemic poverty, inequality and deprivation. In many of them, poor health remains a key challenge. I will be frank at the outset of the debate. The cities agenda will not, in and of itself, address all the challenges that our cities face but is part of a joined-up package of Government approaches, policies and strategies. With our early years work, our anti-poverty strategy and the equally well strategy, it is part of the Government’s comprehensive approach to tackling the issues. The cities agenda is deliberately and purposely focused on economic growth.
Our cities are recognised as centres of knowledge, innovation and culture, and they have many strengths and assets to build on individually. We can see that if we take a quick tour around our cities. Aberdeen is up there with Houston, Texas as one of the top two energy cities in the world. Dundee has an international reputation in life sciences and a global reach in the computer games industry. Stirling and Inverness are our two smallest and newest cities. Each of them has fantastic natural heritage and a proud history, but they both punch their weight in the here and now, Stirling with its sporting excellence and Inverness in leading medical research and development in diabetes. Edinburgh and my city of Glasgow are United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization cities of literature and music respectively, which makes Scotland the only country in the world with two UNESCO-designated creative cities.
Our cities individually are success stories. We should be proud of each and every one of them—I am, and I am sure that we all are. However, although we are proud of our cities and they are big in a Scottish and even a United Kingdom context, in the global context, they are relatively small, and their size means that they do not always have the scale to put themselves on the global map for key segments of the investment market.
Nevertheless, even in what are incredibly difficult financial times here in Scotland and across the world, we know that investment interest and opportunities remain for the right projects at the right scale. Alone, our six cities will at times struggle to achieve the required scale, but if they come together and collaborate, they have the potential to create a range of compelling investment propositions.
We have some terrific and enviable assets to promote and exploit. We need to get better at doing that in a co-ordinated way to make it easier for international investors to understand what Scotland—as team Scotland—has to offer. We want to support our cities to work better together to build on their combined strength and develop strong investment propositions at a scale that we know will be attractive to potential investors.
With that purpose and focus in mind, we have established and created the Scottish cities alliance, which will be supported and facilitated by the Scottish Council for Development and Industry to deliver the agenda for cities. The alliance will be led by the six city leaders and myself as the cities minister and it will draw upon the expertise of the public, private and academic sectors. It will forge collaborations and create the momentum that is required to ensure that our cities and their regions can play their part in our economic recovery and beyond, and attract the investment and jobs that we know they can attract.
In the public sector, we must ensure that our national agencies—whether that is Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, VisitScotland, Scottish Development International or the Scottish Futures Trust—are aligned with the ambitions of our cities. I know that the private sector is also keen to engage nationally and the Scottish cities alliance will consider how it can work most effectively with that sector to build on successful examples of such an approach at a city and regional level, such as the Aberdeen city and shire economic forum and the Glasgow economic commission.
It is also crucial to draw in the academic sector. I am delighted that the University of Glasgow and the University of St Andrews are together establishing and funding a Scottish cities knowledge centre, which will support the alliance in its work. The centre is intended to pool expertise on city growth issues, draw on the wealth of international experience that we know is out there and provide the alliance with a solid evidence, research and evaluation base.
I readily recognise that the Scottish cities alliance needs to be more than a forum for strategic thinking, discussion and talking. It should be judged on its ability to deliver tangible outcomes. It is therefore critical that it moves forward with purpose and momentum. We want to see real progress in the current session of Parliament, and I hope that the Parliament will come back to the issue in future to measure, judge and scrutinise the alliance’s performance and achievements. That will involve cities successfully taking propositions of scale to market and attracting new and significant investment to Scotland.
When I launched the cities agenda before Christmas, I announced a £5 million cities investment fund to help to give the alliance the momentum that it will require. As I said at question time last week, the detailed operation of the fund will be finalised after we have consulted the six authorities and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, but the clear intention is for the fund to support collaborative programmes between cities that promote growth, lever in additional investment and protect and create jobs. Programmes that allow wider regional collaboration to create additional scale will also be supported.
In today’s climate, £5 million is a significant investment, but it is important to see it not as a fund in itself but as a catalyst to draw in other funding—that is the intention. I can announce today that we are adding to the £5 million cities fund. The Scottish Government is investing a further £2 million in the fund in recognition of the importance of the agenda. The additional funds will focus on collaborative programmes for sustainable cities that will help to move us more quickly towards a low-carbon economy. Taken together, we now have a £7 million catalyst fund that will be used to ensure that the alliance can move rapidly to deliver tangible outcomes, supporting the priorities of our economic strategy.
Far more important than the size of the fund is the impact that we will ensure it has—and it is that on which I believe its success should be judged. The Labour amendment mentions the previous cities growth fund, and I should say at this stage that we will support the amendment. I am happy to acknowledge the cities growth fund, which was designed and implemented at a time when we lived in different financial circumstances from today. However, the independent evaluation made the point that the fund did not have the anticipated impact. My point is therefore that, whatever the size of the fund we create, our driving priority must be to ensure that it has an impact, that it levers in additional funding and that it provides tangible benefits.
I will touch on a point that has been raised with me by non-city MSPs. It was raised by Willie Coffey at last week’s question time—I am not sure whether he is in the chamber today. He and others have asked whether the cities agenda and the fund that goes with it will in any way downplay or disadvantage other parts of the country. My emphatic answer to that is no. As I have said, we focus on our cities as a catalyst to deliver benefits for the wider regional economies and all of Scotland, and we do so with a clear understanding that our cities need to strengthen effective partnerships—not just with each other, but with their wider regions—that recognise the co-dependent relationships that they have with their neighbours.
I firmly believe that a growth agenda for our cities will bring national benefits. Some 86 per cent of Scotland’s population lives within an hour’s drive of one of our cities. It is to cities that so many of us travel for employment, to study, to access services and for cultural and leisure facilities. However, it is not a relationship of dependency on our cities; it is a relationship of co-dependency and interdependency. Without the wider regions, our cities would lack the resources—particularly the human resources—that they need to thrive and succeed. The fact is that, as a nation, we need healthy city, regional, rural and island economies to deliver, so it is right that we tailor our approaches to ensure that we optimise the contribution that each can make.
The last point that I want to make in my opening speech is to stress that the cities agenda is the start, and not the end, of a process. Very often—this commentary is not just on previous Governments; I am sure that it applies to this Government at times, although not often—Governments produce strategies that almost become an end in themselves. It is important that we regard the cities strategy as a starting point. It is what happens now that matters—how we take forward the framework for collaboration and apply the resources in the cities investment fund to lever maximum advantage. That is how we will determine whether the agenda succeeds. I am determined to ensure that it does, so that we have the most successful cities possible and, through our cities, deliver success for the nation.
I look forward to the debate and I am delighted to move,
That the Parliament recognises the vital contributions that Scotland’s cities and their regions can make to delivering the aspirations of the Government Economic Strategy; welcomes the commitment shown by the cities to work collaboratively with each other, with the Scottish Government and with national agencies to optimise that growth for the benefit of Scotland as a whole; notes that the focus of the Scottish Cities Alliance is on creating collaborative opportunities for enhancing sustainable economic growth, attracting large-scale private sector investment and creating jobs; notes that the four themes of the collaborative work are connectivity, sustainability, knowledge and liveability, and welcomes the publication of Scotland’s Cities: Delivering for Scotland alongside the Cities Investment Fund, which is designed to support the Scottish Cities Alliance in developing collaborative programmes that promote growth, lever investment and protect and create jobs.
15:10
Scottish Labour welcomes the debate and the publication of the strategy for cities, which can help to shape the Scottish Government’s cities policy and provide a framework for strategic collaboration between city authorities.
Since the abolition of the cities growth fund, to which the Labour amendment refers, there has been a complaint from Scotland’s cities that the Government does not always understand the challenges and opportunities that our cities present. Our cities are the powerhouse of Scotland’s economy. As the cabinet secretary said, they are our major population centres and 86 per cent of us live within an hour’s drive of a city. Our cities are home to many of our most important cultural and intellectual institutions, and they are our major transport hubs. In the modern economy, we must harness the potential of such advantages to ensure prosperity through innovation and growth. We need design and planning, not accident and by-product.
We are not seeking to pitch one part of the country against another or to put undue emphasis on the urban over the rural. Rather, we acknowledge that the success of Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness and Stirling can not only improve the wellbeing of the people who live and work in those cities but drive forward the prosperity of the city regions and the whole of Scotland.
We debated cities strategy briefly in the opening days of this parliamentary session, in the context of a wider debate about the cabinet secretary’s portfolio priorities. During the debate, the cabinet secretary talked about bringing forward a stand-alone debate on cities strategy as soon as possible, and it appears that today is the first opportunity that she has had to do that, as she said.
During the debate on the cabinet secretary’s portfolio priorities, I expressed hope that the Parliament would be an active partner with the cabinet secretary in developing her new area of work as cities minister. It is slightly unfortunate that our first chance in that regard comes after the strategy has been published rather than beforehand, which would have enabled us to inform the strategy. Members of all parties could have contributed usefully to an earlier debate. However, we can make a useful contribution at this stage, too, and I accept the cabinet secretary’s comments about the collaborative approach that she wants to take in the spirit in which I am sure she made them.
Scottish Labour particularly welcomes a number of aspects of the cities strategy. I am pleased that it will continue to be led by the cities themselves. Given the work that SCDI did on the six cities review, I welcome its continued involvement and its role as chair of the leadership group. The cities minister’s role should be as an enabler and occasional fixer in times when a lack of joined-up government means that the priorities and problems that the cities might encounter are not understood.
This is the first debate on cities in this session, but previous Governments were not silent on this area of policy. Labour’s cities growth fund, which the Scottish National Party scrapped, provided £173 million between 2003 and 2008.
Does the member acknowledge that the cities growth fund was rolled into the local government allocation that the cities received?
I entirely accept that point, but rolling the fund into the allocation meant that it was used to pursue the Scottish Government’s priorities, whereas its purpose had been to allow cities to pursue their own priorities.
We welcome the cabinet secretary’s announcement of the £5 million cities investment fund and the £2 million for sustainability projects, but we must regard the funding in its proper context, which is the scale of the future resource that might be required to do the policy justice. It is a matter of regret that the Government has not taken the opportunity to restore the cities growth fund, as Labour said it would do in its manifesto.
Members will have read the briefing from the Scottish Wildlife Trust, which describes the approach to sustainability as a missed opportunity. I have raised the issue with the cabinet secretary in written questions, to which she has responded. I am glad that the Government has responded by providing a dedicated funding stream for projects that will promote sustainability. That element of funding has significant potential, as it could encourage collaboration between our six cities to determine what could be done to make them greener and to share learning between them.
The original £5 million amounted to just £830,000 per city. We have several questions about how the fund will operate, and the cabinet secretary alluded to where we could look for more detail. The funding is to be used to prepare business cases in order that other moneys can be leveraged in to support the cities agenda. That might be of more value to smaller authorities than to larger ones, so how will we ensure that we get the maximum benefit in deciding which projects are to be supported? Who will be directly involved in deciding on bids? What criteria will they use? Will only local authorities be able to bid, or will other partners be involved too? SNP back benchers have even suggested that community groups might be able to bid. I appreciate that the cabinet secretary said that the Government will consult the cities on some of those points, but I hope she agrees that a good starting point for the strategic use of what is a welcome but small fund would be to use the criterion that was applied by the previous cities growth fund, whereby projects had to be of regional significance and benefit.
The Scottish cities knowledge centre is a welcome development, and I congratulate Glasgow and St Andrews universities on it. Evaluating and understanding what works and undertaking comparative work on what is being done elsewhere will be valuable and essential in ensuring the future development of the cities agenda. That is perhaps more important than ever in a time of straitened public resources. I hope that those with an interest in developing a bolder cities policy can look forward to some imaginative reports emanating from those experts.
You would be surprised, Presiding Officer, if I did not mention some of the priorities that my, and indeed the cabinet secretary’s, city—Glasgow—might wish to be part of the debate. On connectivity, Labour again urges the Scottish Government to investigate all options to provide support for air route development. Glasgow City Council has stepped in to provide a small fund in the absence of a national scheme. Although the council is to be congratulated on that, the fund does not replace the support that Government previously provided, and it cannot alone ensure that our key transport and business hubs are connected to the markets around the world where opportunities for increased trade exist.
That is one of a number of areas in which the strategy does not go as far as it could have done. It does not respond to the calls from Edinburgh and Glasgow for further reform of the disbursal of business rates. There is no mention of surface public transport links, particularly a link to Glasgow airport, which remains a key missing link without which the city cannot grow properly. Indeed, a link to regional and national public transport infrastructure could benefit the whole country. Today’s debate comes at a time when Glasgow’s newspaper, the Evening Times, has launched a campaign to save stations on the rail network because Transport Scotland seems to have misunderstood the very nature of an urban environment and has identified rail stops as being too close together. Of course they are close together. That is how people live in a city; indeed, it is probably one of the definitions of a city.
In Dundee, there have already been calls for the fund to be used to create a jobs task force, and in Edinburgh we need action to tackle the fact that the capital has the highest percentage of unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds. Aberdeen and Inverness desperately require improvements to their trunk road connections, but on a slightly smaller scale, they also require assistance to link the major trunk roads within their city boundaries at locations such as the Haudagain roundabout.
The Deputy First Minister’s appointment as cities minister has perhaps been branded by more cynical types than me as part of the SNP’s local government election campaign. Only last weekend, she was pictured with her group of wannabe city fathers at the Glasgow campaign launch. I say “city fathers” advisedly, because it appears that the SNP forgot to select many women to run for the council. If the agenda for cities is the opening salvo in the campaign, I am afraid that the Deputy First Minister’s bang has been somewhat undermined by the lack of buck provided.
The Scottish Labour Party welcomes this slightly overdue debate, and we welcome the publication of the strategy, as far as it goes. We would have welcomed an investment fund that was more akin to the cities growth fund. The purpose of our amendment is to highlight the level of ambition that that fund demonstrated, which goes well beyond what the cabinet secretary outlined today.
I hope that, during the debate, there will be some support for more ambition. Getting support for Scotland’s cities right could help us to get much more right for Scotland’s economy. In each region, there are opportunities to do more. We must recognise that, as the cabinet secretary rightly said, the publication of one document and the creation of one strategy group to talk about the big ideas that we need are not enough. We need the big ideas to be advanced now. We hope that the cities alliance will set out a radical vision that is bold enough to make clear the tools that it needs to really do the job.
I move amendment S4M-01740.1, to insert at end:
“; further recognises that this new fund builds on the success of the previous Cities Growth Fund, which provided substantial and targeted support for the development of Scotland’s cities amounting to £173 million between 2003 and 2008, and further welcomes the initiative as a renewed focus on the actual and potential contribution of Scotland’s cities to economic prosperity and job creation through better connectivity, sustainability, better use of knowledge and improved liveability for all those who live and work in Scotland’s cities, their regions and in the country as a whole.”
15:20
Well, I had good news and bad news. The good news was a call from the business team, saying that the Conservative spokesman had an opportunity in this afternoon’s debate to speak for a little longer than they might normally expect; the bad news was the debate itself. When I read the motion, studied the report and mulled everything over, I was inclined to give half a round of applause, invite everyone to join in a quick chorus of “Kumbaya” and then sit down.
Do it!
I am tempted, but I do not know whether it will help the Presiding Officer to stretch out the afternoon.
Please do not do it, Mr Carlaw.
I accept the report and its contention that cities are a good thing; that Scotland has some; and that they are generally to be commended. Indeed, I share the ambition and am broadly sympathetic to the approach. Nevertheless, I have to say that the dynamic that will deliver it is to be found not in the chamber but in the entrepreneurial ability of those in the cities who function in the civic and corporate worlds or in the private sector to realise the potential that I think we are all seeking to achieve.
It is so unusual and rare for a Conservative in this chamber to be confronted with a motion that mentions
“attracting large-scale private sector investment”
in such a positive way that I would support it several times over just for that phrase. However, I point out to those who embrace such an idea that we need to be careful about the language that we use about the private sector. The producers of alcohol in Scotland, who are huge contributors to the Scottish economy, are not wicked; the producers of oil in the North Sea are not polluting evildoers; and those who are involved in the private healthcare sector are not just profiteers. We have to recognise that the self-same people on whom the economy relies are the private sector that we are celebrating in this motion.
When I looked at the structure of the Scottish cities alliance, I thought, “Well—fine.” However, my one concern, which I hope the cabinet secretary and all those involved in the alliance will share, is that the structure must not become an end in itself. The problem with community health partnerships was that the clinicians withdrew because they thought the whole thing had become bureaucratic and there was really no point to it. It is crucial for business and all the other parties that the structure seeks to embrace to believe that it does something and does not just exist. I am sure that that is the intention, but it will be important to drive that forward if it is not, like many other programmes, to become mired in good intentions instead of action.
I found page 12 of the report fascinating, because it illuminated a deep split in the Scottish National Party Government. It says:
“However, for recovery to be sustained—and for faster sustainable economic growth to be delivered—the main driver will be increases in levels of private sector investment. This requires appropriately functioning capital markets, and for a climate to be created where companies and investors with available capital feel confident about investing.”
I realised that that was a call from the Deputy First Minister to the First Minister to accelerate the timescale for the referendum on Scotland’s future in the certain knowledge that the prerequisite for feeling confident about investing is a clear statement on Scotland’s economic future.
Like others in the chamber, I come from a business background. If one reads the report from a business perspective, one has to ask: what do businesspeople think about politicians? Largely, they are oblivious to them and get on with their business without them. Business does what it needs to do. It needs to succeed not because it wants to contribute to a Government strategy but because it has to succeed in order to exist. Business has its own dynamic.
I commend to the member the Glasgow Economic Commission, which has involved the private sector in its work; indeed, the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce is one of the key partners. It is not entirely accurate to say that business is not interested in certain strategic decisions if there is an opportunity to allow it in.
I fully accept that point, but I am sure that Mr Smith would accept that, as they go about their day, most businesspeople concentrate on their business. I doubt that they all have the Parliament channel on so that they can watch proceedings in here with avid fascination.
They are certainly not watching Mr Carlaw.
I am the first to admit that they would be very disappointed if they were watching this afternoon.
Businesses do what they need to do, and businesspeople want politicians not to get in the way but to positively assist. That means that they are interested in what we do with regard to connectivity, whether it be in transport or information technology, what we do for the education of young people, who will be the next generation of the workforce, and what ways we find to allow them to innovate and succeed.
Cities co-operating, which is part of the underpinning of the ambition of this report, will achieve synergies. Scotland has more cities that are household names across the world than a country of our size should expect to have. That is a great thing. We have huge opportunities in tourism, and we recognise the opportunities that would be afforded if tourists had far greater access to our country through the use of smart card technologies and through various cities working together to attract that tourism and make it easier for people to get around our country.
This is not a strategy that we believe should involve the devising of new rules, regulations and frameworks; it should be one that allows people to get on with what they have to do.
In unveiling the growth plan this afternoon, the cabinet secretary discussed the £5 million cities investment fund. I am glad that she did not make too much of that. Kevin Stewart will be the first to tell us that the expansion of the international arrivals terminal of Aberdeen airport also cost £5 million. We need to keep in mind what we can expect £5 million to achieve in the context of all of our cities.
At the end of the day, people are what will make the strategy work, along with entrepreneurial talent, civic co-operation, a degree of altruistic planning between the various cities and interventions that aid the path of development rather than those that require businesses to employ consultants to enable them to understand what all that was supposed to mean and what they now have to do to comply with it.
Will the member give way?
Of course. [Interruption.]
Can we have Maureen Watt’s microphone on, please?
It was my fault; I did not have my card in.
The member should get out a bit more. What he calls for is precisely what is happening in Aberdeen, where people are getting together in the way that he suggests they should, through the Trinity Group and ACSEF, which the cabinet secretary mentioned. That is why economic growth in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire is leading Scotland at the moment.
I would be grateful if you could come to a conclusion, Mr Carlaw.
I will do so by saying that my son is at university in Aberdeen, so I get to visit Aberdeen quite regularly. I congratulate Maureen Watt on what will be an excellent press release in the moments after the debate.
I support the motion and, like everyone else, hope that what is a worthwhile document and strategy can be delivered in a way that is of practical benefit.
We now move to the open debate. Although we are not awash with time, we have a little bit of leeway for interventions.
15:28
Members will not be surprised to hear that my speech will focus on my home city, Dundee.
The opening statement by the cabinet secretary, the additional £2 million and the fact that there is a member of the Cabinet with a responsibility for cities demonstrate our SNP Government’s commitment to our cities. The strategy, which will be implemented in collaboration with our cities, is to be welcomed across the chamber.
It is important to recognise the good work that has been carried out by previous Administrations under the auspices of the cities growth fund which, although welcome, was restrictive in terms of what it could be used for. By rolling the cities growth fund into cities’ allocations, John Swinney removed the strings on how that money could be used that had been applied by previous Administrations. The cities growth fund did not show the results that might have been expected across Scotland, but Dundee was an exception in that regard. The use of the fund to pay for our central waterfront was an excellent example of how money can be used to benefit not only the city but the city region. That was the result of a cross-party approach that should be welcomed.
Statistics such as the fact that 67 per cent of Scotland’s gross value added is generated in the six city regions demonstrate the importance of our cities in driving forward the economy and, given the current difficult economic situation, it is more important than ever that we support our cities and optimise economic growth and job creation. The cabinet secretary talked about Scotland’s six cities working together and building on their combined strengths to provide sustainable economic growth and attract large-scale private sector investment.
I look forward to the number of our cities increasing to seven, and I fully support the fair city, Perth, in its bid to be awarded city status as part of the diamond jubilee celebrations. Perth is just 22 miles from Dundee and we share many economic, social and cultural links, which I hope will be strengthened over the coming years, regardless of the decision on Perth’s city status. I certainly support Perth in its campaign.
A prime example of how a city can help to invigorate a region is the Victoria and Albert museum project in Dundee and our central waterfront redevelopment. The central waterfront project is expected to create at least 1,000 jobs over 10 years, to generate more than £500 million of GVA for Scotland’s economy and to bring in an additional £270 million of private sector investment. Members will be pleased to hear that the project is moving forward. As we speak, preparatory work is under way on the Tay river bed for the foundations of the V&A, which will be the centrepiece of our new waterfront. Yesterday, the old walkways to Tayside house came down as part of the redevelopment of the area around the museum site, and we look forward to Tayside house being demolished in the near future.
We heard yesterday that the non-Government-funded aspect of the V&A project has received a boost—the funding campaign has announced that £5 million of private funding is expected to be in place by the end of the year. It is estimated that the V&A at Dundee will attract 500,000 people in its first year and 300,000 people a year thereafter, which it is clear will have a hugely positive impact on the city of Dundee, on Tayside and probably on Scotland as a whole.
Dundee currently has a strong economic base in the creative industries, such as the computer games industry, and it is a world leader in life sciences, but it has huge potential in another area that could result in a radical increase in the city’s economic output and skilled jobs base. This week, we had the announcement that one of the four enterprise zones that are to be created will be the low carbon/renewables east enterprise area, which will be formed by Dundee port in conjunction with the port of Leith.
Dundee port is already a key renewables site, and there is strong interest from manufacturing companies. The recent memorandum of understanding that was signed with Scottish and Southern Energy will ensure that Dundee is a key strategic location for the development of its technology. The creation of the enterprise zone will enable Dundee to offer incentives to attract private investors and to secure a great many good-quality engineering jobs and, of course, apprenticeships. People in Dundee are very proud of the way in which the city has moved forward with life sciences and video games, but there has been a feeling that its manufacturing base had been eroded over decades, so there is great excitement about the potential that the new renewables industry offers our city.
By working together, Dundee and Edinburgh can ensure that not just one city gets the benefit that enterprise zone status brings and that a hub is created that will be worth far more than would have been the case had the two areas worked separately.
The member and I both welcomed this week’s announcement of the enterprise zone. Has he had any indication from his Government about what form the incentives will take?
Dundee City Council is engaging with the cabinet secretary to ensure that, by working together, Dundee and Edinburgh get the best impact for us. It is important that any support not only is appropriate but is the best support for bringing industry here and is not just about providing financial grants, although many grants are available to encourage industry into Scotland. At First Minister’s questions today, the First Minister set out just how well Scotland is doing in encouraging international investment in Scotland compared with other parts of the United Kingdom, as is shown on the Channel 4 FactCheck site.
It is not just our cities that will benefit from investment in Dundee and Leith, because the potential for the surrounding areas is also huge, with new employment opportunities created, private investment stimulated and economic growth boosted across the Tayside and Lothian regions.
I would be grateful if the member could start to conclude.
The development of Dundee as a base for renewables and the site of the V&A would not have come about were it not for the support of Dundee City Council, which is why the cabinet secretary’s comments about the importance of the leaders of city local authorities for the agenda for cities are particularly welcome. It is clear that the Scottish cities alliance, supported by the cities investment fund, has a vital and challenging role in creating jobs and increasing sustainable economic growth. I hope that it will have cross-party backing, and I look forward to us all working in a collaborative way across Scotland.
I remind members that if they wish to speak in the debate, they should press their request-to-speak buttons, and that if they intervene, they should then press them again.
15:36
I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. I want to focus on the challenges for the Fife region of being between two of Scotland’s largest cities—Dundee and Edinburgh—and the opportunities that come with that as well. First, though, I associate myself with Joe FitzPatrick’s comments about Perth’s attempt to achieve city status, which I hope happens over the coming months or years. That would be good not just for the people of Perth but for those in the surrounding area.
The west Fife town of Dunfermline’s closeness to Edinburgh brings both opportunities and challenges. The history of the area shows that, over the years, it has moved from mining work to defence work to electronics. The people of Fife have had to deal with that and with demographic changes over that time. It has been difficult, because people have had to acquire new skills, unemployment has fluctuated and people have had to move into new areas. However, the area’s closeness to the city region of Edinburgh has brought benefits. For example, following the closure of the naval base at Rosyth dockyard in 1995 and the departure from the area of all the naval families, we saw growth in the Dunfermline and west Fife area from people who came there to live and work.
The downside to that—this relates to sustainability, which we have touched on—is that although people come to live in an area, they often work elsewhere. For example, many people live in south Fife but work in Edinburgh and the Lothians. They put a lot of stress on the Forth road crossing and on public transport links. Even with the best intentions of growing a population and making a place more effective for people to live in, with communities being built around the city regions, major planning challenges are sometimes thrown up.
Another specific issue about Dunfermline that worries me greatly is that the naval families who left used the town centre and shopped there frequently but, as a result of the expansion of the town, many people have moved into the eastern part of the town and the town centre is now on the western periphery. That brings huge challenges because the area is not getting the benefit of people living there and using local shops and businesses. That kind of situation is a challenge for us as parliamentarians, because we must ensure that planning frameworks are about serving communities rather than about deciding the best place to put houses on any land that might be available.
The cities document sets out a number of interesting points, particularly on capital investment. The public sector also has a wider role—for example, it can set employment standards.
Scotland has had quite a lot of inward investment over the years. Some forms of that have been better than others. Companies such as Chunghwa Picture Tubes and Motorola came for a period and then moved to low-wage economies. Recently, Amazon has come to Fife. I hope that it will stay there for a period and grow its company and that the quality of the employment will grow, too. In any public sector investment in areas to bring in such companies, we must encourage high-quality employment practice as much as we can and we must attract companies that take a longer-term view and which will stay as long as they can for the benefit of a community.
A wider issue relates to the public sector. Many people who live in and around Fife get the benefit of working in the public sector in Dundee or Edinburgh, because Fife is quite close to those places. The Scottish Trades Union Congress reported this week that there is stress and pressure on public sector jobs, and a prediction of 70,000 job losses has been made. I hope that the Scottish Government is in a position to look at how we ensure that people are mobile across the public sector and not just within sections of the public sector. The issue is not just mobility within the national health service but how we move people from the NHS to local government, between local authorities and into other parts of the public sector.
When we face job losses, there will be people who want to leave—people who are of a certain age or who want to take their career in a different direction—but there will also be people who want to stay and work in the public sector, because they have the public service ethos. We in the Scottish Parliament should find a mechanism, or the Scottish Government should develop a mechanism, to ensure mobility across the public sector, which would ensure that people stayed in work and could perhaps work in their own locality.
Finally, I will talk about the sustainability of city regions. Fife and many other parts of the country could have a jobs bonanza as a result of renewable energy. Offshore wind is the big issue in Fife just now—many companies are looking closely at investing in Fife because of that. When people are employed for such work, we must have the infrastructure in Fife. I would hate to see us having to import labour or bring people from other parts of the UK or Scotland to work in Fife. Conversely, people from Fife might have to move to other parts of the country to work in renewable energy. That is a huge challenge.
The issue is how we plan the next five to 10 years. We have a difficult economic situation to deal with, but I believe that there is huge potential, particularly if we get the reindustrialisation of Scotland right in the future. I welcome the document and the collaborative approach that has been taken across the chamber to ensure that the document succeeds and delivers for our cities and regions.
15:43
I thank John Park for his thought-provoking speech, which touched on issues that concern me, too. I will talk about community involvement and community benefit clauses to ensure that local people are employed when employment is available.
Like the cabinet secretary, I have lived in the centre of Glasgow, and I still live there. Members might not know that she and I shared a tenement building—perhaps she did not want to mention that. I am still there, but she is perhaps in a better place—I do not know.
As the Deputy First Minister said in her foreword to the Scottish Government’s document “Scotland’s Cities”,
“In their own right, our cities are recognised as centres of knowledge, innovation and culture.”
Through working collectively, they can build on those strengths.
Our cities are unique. As the cabinet secretary said, Glasgow is designated as a UNESCO city of music and Edinburgh is designated as a UNESCO city of literature. Scotland is the only country to have two UNESCO-designated creative cities, which is a unique and fantastic feat for which we not only in the Scottish Parliament but in Edinburgh and Glasgow should pat ourselves on the back.
It is apt that, as we speak, musicians across Glasgow are tuning up their instruments and readying themselves for the start of Celtic Connections, which kicks off today. More than 200 artists from around the globe will come together at more than 300 events across the city. Celtic Connections has been very successful for more than a decade, and the key to its success is effective collaboration in different genres of music. An analogy can be applied to the Government’s approach. If we stretch the analogy, we could look at the Scottish cities alliance as a band with the Scottish cities knowledge centre, the action teams, the cities investment network and the leadership group all being members that feed into the final production, or the delivery group.
The cabinet secretary mentioned the make-up of the Scottish cities alliance and the interactions in it to foster innovation and collaboration and drive economic growth. I think that all members would endorse her comments.
Framework 2 in the cities strategy identifies the crucial role of capital investment in achieving sustainable economic growth. Central to that aim is the need to improve the ability to secure finance. The document goes on to state:
“The Scottish Cities Alliance, supported by the Cities Investment Network will”
work to
“create and promote strong investment propositions aligned to distinctive City Visions”.
It will also be charged with packaging and marketing those
“in a coherent Scotland wide way that is clear and accessible for international investment funds”.
Both of those points are undoubtedly welcome. That is a great example of the joined-up approach that I have already mentioned. We need to ensure that it runs through the Scottish Government’s strategy for cities.
The Scottish Government proposes using innovative funding mechanisms to secure further access to finance. It proposes using mechanisms such as the national housing trust and tax increment financing—or TIF, as we normally call it—which I would like to concentrate on
As a mechanism, TIF secures funding against future business rate income that will be generated by the resulting development. It was developed in partnership with the Scottish Futures Trust, and Scotland’s local authorities have estimated that it could be worth hundreds of millions of pounds and could generate more than 17,000 new jobs. I am sure that we would all welcome that.
In Glasgow, a current example of TIF funding under consideration is the ambitious project for the Buchanan Galleries, which will see new retail companies and restaurants and vast improvements to Buchanan Street bus station and Queen Street station, all the way down into Buchanan Street. Things will be joined together all the way along to Cathedral Street. I know that concerns have been raised about that TIF and the proposal that has been put forward. One concern that business leaders have raised with me is the time that the proposal—or even a decision—is taking to come to fruition. Will the cabinet secretary indicate when she sees the proposed plans being settled?
The member can correct me if I am wrong, but has the SNP group in Glasgow City Council not expressed concerns about that project? It has not supported a speedy resolution to the matter at all.
It is not just the SNP group in Glasgow City Council. One reason why concerns were expressed was that there were three meetings with Glasgow City Council officers, and they could not produce the papers. I can speak to the member afterwards. If he speaks to Labour councillors, perhaps we will find out why the papers were not produced when they were supposed to be. There are genuine concerns, but I want to move things forward and find out when the project will go ahead and whether there is a date for that. I ask the cabinet secretary that question.
Other issues have been raised with me, including whether there can be only one TIF proposal per city. Perhaps the cabinet secretary could say in summing up whether there can be only one TIF, or whether two TIFs can be applied for per city. Obviously, there is great interest in that.
I have asked the cabinet secretary how we can ensure local community involvement in the cities strategy. She replied:
“The detailed criteria for the fund will be finalised after consultation with the six city local authorities and with COSLA.”—[Official Report, Written Answers, 12 January 2012, S4O-0567.]
I would like to know when the consultation process will be finalised, and when we will hear about the detailed criteria. I mentioned the areas that John Park spoke about—I wonder whether, in the cities strategy, we can ensure that there is room for communities to be involved. I got the answer that there would be room, but I wonder whether community benefit clauses will be put in for any jobs that are created through the cities strategy, to ensure that—as John Park mentioned—local people will benefit by being able to get those jobs.
I think that my time is up; I am being nodded on. Perhaps the cabinet secretary can answer some of the issues that I have raised.
I remind members that speeches should be six minutes. I have a little bit of leeway for members who take interventions, but not an awful lot.
15:50
I begin by declaring an interest as a member of Aberdeen City Council, as a former chair of Nestrans—the north east of Scotland transport partnership—and as a former director of the Aberdeen BID Company Ltd, which will all feature in my speech.
I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate; in my view there are never enough opportunities to talk about the great city of Aberdeen. I very much welcome the Scottish cities alliance, and the collaboration that it is hoped it will bring about. Far too often, our cities have been in competition rather than being collaborative. We, as a country, have lost out on many things because our cities have been competing against one another. One of the best examples is the Energy Technologies Institute: Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh tried to get it, but it ended up in Loughborough. That was a major loss for Scotland and for all three cities.
I turn to Aberdeen and will look first at connectivity, which is mentioned in the cities strategy. I will begin on a bit of connectivity for which we in the north-east have waited far too long: the Aberdeen western peripheral route. I hope that the court proceedings will be dealt with very quickly so that we can get on with the job of building that bypass and dealing with some of the other problems in the roads network. I say to Drew Smith, who mentioned the Haudagain roundabout, that nothing can be done there until the western peripheral route is in place. If we started on the Haudagain roundabout without the AWPR, the whole city of Aberdeen would be in gridlock.
Jackson Carlaw mentioned Aberdeen airport. I am extremely pleased at the level of investment in the airport in recent times, in particular for the runway extension, which has since brought us new routes to places such as Baku and Frankfurt and is good for the city and shire economy.
There is not just the airport. There has also been investment in deepening the harbour mouth, which has allowed better access because stormy weather sometimes caused difficulty in that regard. I, like my colleague John Finnie, who is sitting to the left of me, want improvements in the Aberdeen-Inverness railway and to the A96. The Government is committed to doing those things.
It is not all about connectivity. We must also consider sustainability. Other places could learn many lessons from things that are going on in Aberdeen. I have mentioned in the chamber previously the success of Aberdeen combined heat and power. CHP, along with district heating systems, has failed in many other places—for what reasons, I do not know—but lessons could be learned from Aberdeen city in that regard. I pay tribute to the folks who have been involved in that.
Members had the opportunity last night to meet the Aberdeen renewable energy group and others to discuss the European offshore wind farm development, which I hope will come to fruition in our city very soon.
Officials from Aberdeen City Council met Government officials yesterday to discuss possible funding for hydrogen buses in the city, which could also lead to a massive amount of European money coming to the city. That is worth exploring. I hope that, given the low-carbon economy agenda, some of the £7 million catalyst fund can be considered for that project.
I have no comment to make on any of the issues relating to Aberdeen, but is there a contradiction between what Kevin Stewart says about building roads and extending airports and what he says about sustainability?
We want sustainable growth. Domestic short-haul flights produce much more carbon than long-haul flights. I want Aberdonians and folk from the north-east to be able to travel on long-haul routes without having to go down to the south-east of England to get connections. So, no: I do not see a contradiction at all.
Knowledge is the other major item on the agenda. Aberdeen has the University of Aberdeen, the Robert Gordon University and Aberdeen College, all of which are worthy institutions. Beyond that, we have knowledge in many other areas—particularly in the subsea industry, in which we are the leaders. Dennis Robertson, who is not in the chamber, would say that Westhill is the capital of that industry. It is slightly away from Aberdeen, but not that far away.
In culture, we have the Aberdeen international youth festival and Aberdeen Performing Arts, in which regard we are at the top of the tree.
Aberdeen has a huge amount to give and could, in co-operation with the other five cities—which will, we hope, be joined soon by Perth—do even greater things. Collaboration rather than competition is the key. I wish the cabinet secretary all the best with the alliance.
15:57
The north-east and Glasgow are always very well represented in these debates, perhaps because we have the most ambitious politicians—I do not know. I rise to make the case for the city of Dundee.
The Deputy First Minister will be aware of some of the current initiatives, especially after Joe FitzPatrick’s speech, but let me briefly recap. The Victoria and Albert museum is due to be built by 2015, and already the streets surrounding the waterfront including Union Street—the old main thoroughfare down to the port—boast new businesses and an air of prosperity. Private fundraising for the project is well under way.
We wait with bated breath for an announcement of jobs in renewables. Our port is ready, we have a trained workforce and we have new build for suppliers. The Government’s agreement with Gamesa fell through before Christmas, but we are pinning hopes on the latest memorandum of understanding that the First Minister signed with Scottish and Southern Energy just before Christmas. We hope and trust that that will yield jobs by Easter.
For clarification, the memorandum of understanding is not between the Government and the private company; it is between the private company and Port of Dundee Ltd.
I thank Joe FitzPatrick for that correction, although I think that the Government was quite involved in the memorandum of understanding and supported it. The member will agree that we are all hopeful that it will lead to some real jobs in our city.
However, that is not enough. Therefore, Labour has been busy campaigning on other initiatives to bring deserved prosperity and opportunity to our city. Over Christmas, I announced our campaign to bring the Sistema Scotland big noise project, which runs successfully in Stirling’s Raploch, to Dundee. The project is backed by local musicians such as Ged Grimes from Simple Minds and entrepreneur Chris van der Kuyl of the Smith group. Together, we think that Dundee children would benefit enormously from the rise in concentration, attainment, confidence and optimism that Sistema brings. It is perhaps even more necessary now that SNP-controlled Dundee City Council just this week is taking £3.5 million out of this year’s education budget, and is targeting music and physical education teachers.
I think that the project to which Jenny Marra refers was originally run by the Venezuelan Government. Is that not an excellent example of a socialist Government in action?
I thank Neil Findlay for that endorsement. I know that he agrees with my campaign to bring the big noise project to Dundee. It is a radical project that tackles the deep roots of poverty, and I know that the member is committed to doing that.
The £3.5 million that Dundee City Council has taken out of the education budget this week—through which it is targeting music—comes on top of the £4.5 million cut to education last year, which we were told would make education better. The SNP is telling primary 4 children that they cannot start learning to play a musical instrument now, but must wait until primary 5. Perhaps that is delayed preventative spend. I do not know whether the Government would like to clarify that, but I know that it agrees that El Sistema is a perfect example of preventative spend. That is one of my suggestions for the money that the Deputy First Minister might have available for Dundee.
Yesterday, I wrote to Dundee City Council asking it to go Dutch. In Holland, local authorities bulk buy energy on behalf of local residents. When Ed Miliband was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, he changed the law to allow communities to bargain collectively for their energy prices. Local authorities in Manchester are doing that with the Energy Saving Trust. I have asked Dundee City Council to set up such a scheme, which would result in the fuel bills in Dundee’s 14,000 council properties falling by 20 per cent each. That is Government action that people would like. I ask the Deputy First Minister to consider similar schemes for all Scottish cities in her strategy. That is a project of low cost but with high results for which the Scottish people would thank her.
More than 2,000 Dundonians have signed up to my campaign to bring the national football academy to Dundee. Dundee is ideally placed at the centre of Scotland and is accessible for elite athletes from all parts of the country to come to train. It is the only major city in Scotland without an indoor football facility. The Deputy First Minister’s colleagues on Dundee City Council have backed Labour’s campaign and have pulled together a working group to put our bid together. We expected an announcement from the Minister for Commonwealth Games and Sport on the national football academy before Christmas, but we are sure that it will come soon.
For years, visitors and commuters who use the trains in and out of Dundee have been baffled by how expensive it is. It is cheaper to buy a single ticket from Dundee to Perth and another from Perth to Glasgow than it is to buy a direct ticket. That is because Dundee falls outwith the subsidised zone, which is designed to boost local economies and encourage business. I ask the Deputy First Minister, as part of the strategy and at no cost, to liaise with ScotRail and Transport Scotland to consider whether Dundee can be included in the subsidised zone.
Last but by no means least, Dundee’s Labour group and I have jointly called for a high-level jobs task force for Dundee. The group, which should be chaired by a prominent local businessperson, would pull together all the initiatives and resources to make the case for jobs in Dundee to national and international companies. Dundee’s allocation of the cities strategy money could go towards levering in investment, either by bolstering our economic development department or seed funding for the jobs task force. We look forward to hearing the Government’s proposals.
16:03
Most of my adult life has been spent living and working in city environments. I was born and bred in Glasgow, I lived for 10 years in London and now, after 14 years as a resident of our capital city, I am proud to have the privilege of representing an Edinburgh constituency.
Our cities can be a powerful engine for sustainable economic growth and, as the cabinet secretary and my colleagues Sandra White and Kevin Stewart have outlined, each of them has a key role in helping to deliver the Government’s economic strategy. I welcome the publication of the agenda for cities and the £5 million of additional funding that is associated with it. Our cities are great places to live. Edinburgh emerges in survey after survey as one of the most attractive places to live and work, with quality of life there rated as being among the best in the UK.
The success and prosperity of Edinburgh and Scotland are inextricably linked. If Scotland is to succeed, Edinburgh, as our capital city, must grow and prosper. It has attracted, and will continue to attract, talent and investment from around the world, which power growth and jobs for the city and the country. Therefore, the extent to which our capital achieves the targets that are set out in the City of Edinburgh Council’s economic strategy should be of interest to us all and not just to members from Edinburgh and the Lothians. That strategy has the ambition for Edinburgh to be
“a confident, creative and inspiring city ... where the public, private and third sectors collaborate with common purpose; and ultimately a city which puts the people of Edinburgh at the heart of its economic success.”
I hope that members all agree with that. Edinburgh is keen to work alongside our other great cities in developing collaborative propositions that can be delivered at a scale that will be attractive to potential investors. I acknowledge that the Government is fully aware of the need for such collaborative working and is committed to the establishment of a Scottish cities alliance, but Jackson Carlaw made a fair point when he said that such an alliance should not be an end in itself. It should be designed to pull together representatives of government, our six cities, and the private sector—all at the highest level. It would, however, be helpful to understand how the priorities for collaborative working that are set out in the agenda for cities will be determined and what measures will be used to evaluate the success of the approach. I also endorse Drew Smith’s call for comparative work that would allow us to learn lessons from other locations on what works best and how to apply those lessons to Edinburgh and Scotland.
As I have already said, Edinburgh is one of our great cities. That makes it all the more important that we set out a vision of our capital as a place that its people and businesses can be proud of. The City of Edinburgh Council’s economic strategy aims to focus on four specific areas, each of which is designed to consolidate and expand Edinburgh’s already outstanding role as an engine of local and national prosperity. The four areas are: physical development; attracting inward investment; enhancing the support services that the council provides to businesses; and, most important, helping to get unemployed people back into work or learning.
John Park made a valuable contribution when he reminded us about the role of the public sector and the need for high-quality working practices as well as well-paid employment, and I endorse his comments about the role that renewables can play in the re-industrialisation of Scotland.
One of the key challenges facing Edinburgh is the growing jobs gap that has been identified by the council.
Does the member welcome today’s news that the SNP voted for the Labour amendment to abandon Edinburgh City Council’s plans to privatise many public services in Edinburgh? Will he put his support for that move on the record?
As always, I am grateful to Kezia Dugdale for having her finger on the pulse. I do not think that it is a secret that the SNP was opposed to the private sector bid that would have involved the contracting-out of in-house services. We preferred the in-house bid, so I am happy to agree with her about that.
I return to the point about the challenges that face Edinburgh, and the growing jobs gap that the council has identified. By 2018, 37,000 more people could be looking for work in the city than there are jobs available. Tackling the jobs gap and creating the conditions for growth, investment and employment is the key economic challenge that is faced by all who have an interest in the city’s prosperity and wellbeing. We simply must address that issue and continue to work to resolve it. I would therefore welcome the cabinet secretary’s view on how Edinburgh should address such challenges.
Seven growth sectors have been identified in the Government’s economic strategy, including life sciences and our universities, both of which have already been referred to this afternoon. They are areas of particular strength for Edinburgh. Our capital city’s prosperity has always been sustained by its long tradition of academic excellence, and that is more relevant than ever. The city’s great universities work hand in hand with the private sector and public agencies to deliver outcomes that are recognised around the globe. That is particularly true in life sciences, renewable energy, and green technologies. Academic and intellectual excellence in those areas is a vital part of our knowledge economy and a major contributor to our economic prosperity.
The University of Edinburgh, which has its King’s buildings in my constituency, is in every way at the heart of the city, and has for hundreds of years enhanced beyond measure the capital’s quality of life. In the 21st century, it plays an important ambassadorial, cultural and international role in promoting the city and Scotland. Indeed, Times Higher Education recently ranked it as the seventh-best university in Europe. If it is to continue to flourish, it is important that we continue to make progress on issues such as digital connectivity, transport links and support for university start-ups.
As the convener of the cross-party group on life sciences, I welcome the Scottish Government’s decision to develop a dedicated enterprise area for life sciences, which will include the Edinburgh bioquarter to the south of the city. I endorse the comments of Mike Capaldi, the bioquarter’s commercialisation director, who said that the measures that have been proposed by the Scottish Government will
“add to our already strong proposition ... for Translational Medicine and Regenerative medicine”.
Edinburgh is a vibrant, dynamic and exciting centre with a proud history, an eventful present and the potential to have a truly outstanding future. That will happen only if all of its stakeholders work together for the benefit of the people and businesses of this great capital.
16:10
This has been an interesting debate. One of the most important things that we can do is be positive about our cities. We need some innovation in the economic climate that we face.
I will speak unashamedly about the Highland capital—the city in the Highlands, which is a popular destination for many—and refer to a Highland Council document, “Inverness City Vision: thinking about the Inverness of the future”. It is significant that that document was the subject of widespread consultation in conjunction with the Highlands-wide local development plan. The contribution from organisations such as Architecture and Design Scotland was welcome. Significantly, there was a lot of public interest in the consultation. Some of that was reflected in Scotland’s housing expo, which took place in Inverness and was a great success.
The first point of the Inverness city vision is that the economy should be at the heart of everything. That priority is shared with the Scottish Government—indeed, it is the bedrock of everything that we are trying to achieve—and we know that cities play a significant role in economic growth not only for the nation but for their surrounding regions.
Collaboration is mentioned in the vision. It is important that not only the Scottish Government and local authorities but—in the Highlands—Highlands and Islands Enterprise collaborate. I look forward to a significant chunk of the additional £5 million that the cabinet secretary announced making its way north.
We hope for positive involvement from the UK Government, but that will prove to be challenging, given the £1.3 billion that has been removed from the budget and the significant attack on capital expenditure.
Collaboration between the cities through the alliance is also important. In line with that, I commend Jimmy Gray, the Labour provost of Inverness, for the important role that he plays in the alliance for Inverness and, indeed, the Highlands.
Many other aspects of collaboration will help to bring our cities forward. I commend an initiative that is taking place under the cabinet secretary’s other portfolio with health and social care in the Highlands. That will improve the wellbeing of the Highlands and provide opportunities for asset management and the sharing of resources. For instance, if we get greater work across the public sector, it will result in the opportunity to free up resources such as Inverness castle.
I also commend of the role of the Inverness BID Ltd. It is a member-led organisation of large and small businesses that are involved in a constructive dialogue about the future.
We have heard about the enterprise areas. There is not time to go into all the benefit that will come to the city and the Highlands from that initiative. However, the cabinet secretary referred to life sciences, and Inverness is proud to have world experts in diabetes and world leaders in health research. Developing a niche in such matters provides cities with opportunities.
I will mention one site that was included in the enterprise area announcement: Nigg. It is not only of Highland, Scottish and UK significance, but of western European significance. The investment in that site will bring rich rewards not only to the immediate Nigg area but to the city of Inverness and the wider region. It will provide the opportunity for growth in the city. There are 111,000 people in the travel-to-work area of Dingwall and Inverness, so that opportunity will be welcome.
The investment will also be an opportunity to repatriate many of our workers who were involved in the initial oil boom of the 1970s and who now work overseas in, for example, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. It would be really good to see those families return.
The other matter that is mentioned in the Inverness city vision is strengthening the city centre. There are always negative comments about its city centre, but we need to be positive. One of the positive things that we can say is that, in the Highland Council area, nearly 8,000 businesses no longer pay rates. Whatever the challenges, that is something with which we have been able to help.
It is important to recognise that, as is mentioned in the Labour amendment, we must build on the city centre regeneration that took place previously. Part of the regeneration in Inverness concerned the visual appearance, which is hugely important to an area that relies on tourism.
I will race through a few other points. A better connected Inverness is what is sought. The infrastructure plan highlights firm commitments relating to the A9 and the A96. The plans are ambitious, but there is a solid commitment. I hope that Highland Council will meet its end of the commitment by completing the southern distributor road, with the eastern end being funded by the Scottish Government.
The A96 corridor is an ambitious plan to develop to the east out towards Nairn. That is an area of excellent agricultural land so, although I support the plan in general, I hope that we keep some quality agricultural land, because we all need tatties.
Improved rail times to the central belt, which require line upgrades, are important. I am a huge supporter of rail. The announcement of the £50 million investment in the Caledonian sleeper is very welcome. That helps with our carbon emissions and there have traditionally been difficulties with the flights to London getting slots anyway, so the sleeper will be a sound investment. I also welcome the commuter trains from Moray, Badenoch and Easter Ross.
The city benefits from a £51 million investment in Inverness College, which forms part of the University of the Highlands and Islands college system. That will not only retain our young folk but will, I hope, encourage others to come in.
Much more could be said about the culture of Inverness. We are very proud of Eden Court theatre, the city arts, Inverness Caledonian Thistle—which attracts people and has raised the city’s profile—and the Gaelic hub that we hope to develop.
It is important to have families living in city centres; we need to have them living above the shops and in other currently empty spaces. There is a lot to be positive about and I hope that everyone will continue to be positive.
16:16
I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in this important debate. I have listened close and hard to the debate and I have to say that a lot of very positive things have been said about many cities, including Glasgow. It would be remiss of me not to add my bit for my city by saying how wonderful Glasgow is, how wonderful its citizens are, how well we are doing in Glasgow, that we are the second-biggest retail outlet in the UK after London and that we reach out to many parts of the world.
On a serious note, we are discussing an important issue. One thing that is missing is the link between our cities and our strategy in our overseas commitments and our vision of what we want to achieve in the long term. We want to see how we can add more and what else we can bring to the table. Although we recognise the skills, abilities, knowledge and structure in our cities, we do not have a clear and distinct policy for the development of our infrastructure, which would support our investments overseas and, more important, encourage overseas investors to invest in Scotland.
Four of our major cities have twinning agreements and memorandums of understanding across the world. In the 18 different countries with which we engage, Scottish cities are engaged with 27 cities or destinations. My point is: how does that impinge on our structure? How will we make sense of all that now that there is a Scottish Parliament? We need to understand that before the Scottish Parliament, Scottish cities dealt with overseas issues. Now that we have a Scottish Parliament, we need to be more focused in how we continue our engagement overseas.
The Scottish badge is recognised around the world and many people appreciate the good things that we do. We have invented a lot of good things. We have a good country and a good tourism business and industry, but what else can we do? How can we promote our cities better? How can we interlink these—
I agree with what the member says. He may not be aware that Aberdeen City Council officials are in Ghana speaking to businesses that have moved from the north-east to see whether the infrastructure that is in place in Aberdeen can be repeated in Ghana following the boom in the offshore sector there. We can learn a lot from cities elsewhere, but our cities can also project a lot to the world in terms of best practice and lessons that we can pass on from our experiences.
My learned friend will be pleased to know that I agree with him. That is exactly the point that I am making. For example, four cities in Scotland have twinning agreements with four German cities—they are all different cities. We have four cities in Scotland twinned with four cities in France. I want to encourage a joined-up policy and find out how we can benefit from that twinning. What is the point of having twinnings if no benefit comes to the country?
We have twinning agreements with cities all over the world—in China, Russia, Cuba and Pakistan. What is coming back? Are they just documents that are signed and put away, or will we actually get some trade from them? We have some limited cultural exchanges, but a lot of expense goes into the issue. A lot of trade delegations go out, but it is important that we as a Parliament assist the cities in coming up with a structure that is more useful, productive and focused on what we are trying to do.
Cuba has twinning agreements with more than 50 countries. It does not trade with them; they are bits of paper. We need to avoid that approach and ensure that our twinnings are meaningful and not just cultural exchanges. We have to learn from each other. The cities growth fund and the Government’s economic strategy are just as important as the twinnings.
I listened to Drew Smith talk about our infrastructure and transport. One thing that is dear to me is the Glasgow airport rail link. It would be a very important piece of infrastructure for this country. That is true for all our airports: we need good, positive transport infrastructure so that our businesses can be encouraged and we can encourage others to come here to develop. If our infrastructure is poor, people will be reluctant to come. Companies do not have money to burn, and they are looking for safe havens. They cannot find a safer, more developed and hungrier country to develop in than Scotland, but we must have the infrastructure in place to encourage them to come here. That is why it is so important.
We have recognised the skills, ability and positive things that there are in cities in Scotland. One city that has not been mentioned so far is Stirling—that is a wonderful city, too. We need to encourage a strategy that will be beneficial to us in terms of our infrastructure and industry.
16:23
I welcome today’s debate and the publication of the new cities strategy. I am sure that the strategy will be welcomed in Scotland’s cities, and I hope that the Parliament can unite behind the initiative.
I have to express a wee bit of concern that there are no Lib Dems present this afternoon. Although they lost the votes in the cities last year—and the regions and towns—the document and initiative are things that Lib Dems should show an interest in. Unfortunately, they are not here to defend themselves.
The creation of the Scottish cities alliance is long overdue. As a non-city dweller, one thing that has really annoyed and disappointed me over the years is the constant bickering between those who have led Glasgow and those who have led Edinburgh about which city is better. I am sure that there are arguments on both sides, but as a non-city dweller I found the discussion boring and tedious. It also belittled those two marvellous cities.
I am delighted by the creation of the strategy and the Scottish cities alliance, and I welcome the fact that the six cities—not just the two—can work together to make their economies better and help Scotland to become better. As I said, the constant attacks detracted from Glasgow and Edinburgh’s successes and opportunities. I accept that some of that might have been a bit of banter between the two cities, but we have grown up and I welcome that. A successful Scotland needs its two largest cities to work together.
I will talk about how the west of Scotland can benefit from the strategy, but first I want to talk about Dundee. I studied in Dundee, which is a marvellous city. Before I went, I had the impression that it was dour, drab and dreich, but I found it to be a wonderful city. The people are tremendous and very similar to the folk in Inverclyde, where I am from, and there is a range of things to do. Many people have come to live, work and study in Dundee, and it is a wonderful melting pot. I hope that the strategy will benefit the city.
The cabinet secretary talked about the wider regional benefits of the strategy and touched on the question that Willie Coffey asked in Parliament last week. When she appeared before the Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee, Chic Brodie, Angus MacDonald and I made the point that we do not represent cities. We asked her how the strategy will affect the areas that we represent and whether funding for our areas will be reduced. The cabinet secretary gave an assurance, as she did today, that funding to our areas will not be reduced. I am happy to accept that. There are challenges to do with deprivation and poverty in the west of Scotland that are similar to the challenges in our cities. It is vital that the strategy is a success for the west of Scotland, and if Glasgow is a success, the west of Scotland can also be a success.
I stay in Inverclyde, which many members visited in June. Many people from Inverclyde commute to Glasgow and elsewhere for employment. If there is more investment and collaborative working, I anticipate that there will be greater opportunities for people in Inverclyde, if not elsewhere in the west of Scotland. The strategy presents opportunities for the area. There has been huge investment in Glasgow during the past four years and more investment is planned, so I stress that business opportunities for the wider region should be actively promoted by the relevant Government agencies. However wonderful our cities are, not everyone wants to live in or put their business in a city.
Members who visited Inverclyde last year will have appreciated the beauty and splendour of our area. Mark McDonald talked to me about the area and said that he thought that Inverclyde must have a massive tourism industry. That is unfortunately not the case, because there has been a lack of vision from many people who have led in Inverclyde over the years. I am glad to say that things are moving forward, but opportunities have been missed in the past.
Inverclyde was decimated by the Tories when they were last in power and we have lost 20,000 people, who moved to find employment. However, many people have not given up. The people who stayed still have hope and aspire to make Inverclyde better. I recognised much of what John Park said in his excellent and thoughtful speech, because similar things have happened to the area in which I live.
Drew Smith said that the Scottish Wildlife Trust talks about a “missed opportunity” in its briefing. I studied in Sweden and spent a lot of time in Stockholm, which is a stunning city. The Swedes are proud of the mix of green and built-up areas in the city. I gently remind Mr Smith that the Scottish National Party is not yet in power in Glasgow, so if he is questioning the lack of green space and parks in the city, he needs to look a bit closer to home.
I whole-heartedly agree with what Sandra White and John Park said about community-benefit clauses, because we must ensure that there is community buy-in.
Neil Findlay talked about a socialist Government. It appears that he has not read the memo from his current leader, Ed Miliband, who talks about responsible capitalism. If Mr Findlay wants to put in a bid, I am sure that the trade unions are listening.
You really need to wind up.
Okay. I welcome the strategy and I look forward to the six cities progressing and communities in the west of Scotland benefiting from the strategy.
16:29
It is always a wee bit disturbing when I say at the beginning of a speech, “I agree with Jackson Carlaw.” Perhaps it is disturbing for him as well; I certainly hope so. Like Jackson Carlaw, I found myself a bit underwhelmed by this document, which rarely raises itself beyond the level of the glossy strategy documents of which we have seen very many. It has very nice pictures in it, but I am afraid that it never quite gets beyond that.
Jackson Carlaw can relax now, because the agreement between us ends there. I not only thought the document underwhelming, but found issues in it to object to. I should say, in case I do not shout loud enough at 5 o’clock, that I will be voting against the motion. That is mainly because of what I described as the central contradiction in John Swinney’s and the Government’s overarching economic policy—the idea of sustainable economic growth. The cabinet secretary says that the strategy is deliberately focused on economic growth, and that, for me, is its weakness. Mr Carlaw will happily tell me that polluting oil companies and money-grabbing healthcare companies are not doing those things simply because they are evil, but that they are contributing to gross domestic product. That is one of the problems with GDP as a measure of our success as a society. Cities are not only places where business owners get rich, or poor, but places where people live in communities, yet their interests do not show up in GDP or measures of economic growth.
There are some wrong assumptions in the document, particularly where it says, in the cabinet secretary’s introduction and elsewhere, that cities have higher carbon emissions per capita than other parts of the country. That may appear to be true if we use the conventional methods in the UK, which do not account for urban land in terms of carbon sequestration, but in reality urban land—parks, gardens, golf courses and so on—absorbs substantial amounts of CO2 that are not counted in the existing figures. If we also take into account the high-density housing such as tenement accommodation in many of our cities, it is clear that cities have lower per capita CO2 emissions than most of the rest of our country. There will still be huge challenges in reducing those emissions, and I do not want to underplay that.
The backing for growth showed up again today at question time when the Government talked about its backing for retail growth. I cannot help but see the contradiction between that and the objectives that are stated in the document about reducing waste output and energy consumption. I do not see how the two can be squared. That is a very serious problem, particularly for Glasgow—a city whose economic strategy seems to have been gambled on the basis of the phrase, “Let’s go shopping forever.”
Low-carbon and sustainable energy aspirations are stated throughout the document, but let us think about what we are building. I visited the company that intends to build Laurieston’s transformational regeneration area—the new buzz phrase. I hope that it will get the planning permission that it needs for that, because truly high-quality housing is very much needed on the site. However, when I ask people what they are doing to build sustainable housing for the 21st century, the answer is, “Well, it meets the building regs.” If we are remotely serious about building differently, and powering our cities differently, we need to start right now with community heating, CHP, and a host of new technologies that are not being put in place. There is nothing to prevent local authorities, if the Scottish Government were to back them in doing so, from borrowing to invest in publicly owned and community-owned renewables that could be generating income, not just clean energy.
The document contains rhetoric about low-carbon transport, but let us follow the money. The most substantial investments are in road building. In Glasgow, what is spent on the M74 dwarfs all the investment not only in the local roads that people use daily—money to deal with potholes, for example—but in sustainable transport. I commend Kevin Stewart, who may have been a single breath from saying, “It’s not just about building more roads and expanding the airports—it’s also about sustainability.” With that remarkable level of doublethink, he will go far in the dysfunctional industry that we have.
Any talk about connected cities seems to relate only to the drive time to get to cities, and to contain nothing about travel within cities. Furthermore, in looking at the transport elements of a document about cities, I was astonished to see nothing at all about buses. How can we address the transport needs of a city such as Glasgow—in which most households do not have access to a car—if we are not prepared to acknowledge that people are receiving a grossly inadequate bus service? The service will not improve unless we take action.
I am not criticising only the current Government or its current strategy; I would level the same criticisms at the Glasgow City Council document “Future Glasgow”. It is a glossy document containing bland aspirational phrases with which few people could disagree. By the looks of the photographs, by 2061 everyone in Glasgow will be involved in a Ready brek advert, not in real life in a city. We can do so much better, but not with glossy documents with pretty photographs.
16:35
Before Patrick Harvie’s contribution, I was tempted to say that the debate had largely been about motherhood and apple pie. However, by using that expression, I am leaping from metaphor to cliché in a single bound, and let us not go there.
The speech that we heard just a moment ago was perhaps the best of the debate—although I believe that Patrick Harvie had his tongue very much in his cheek when he suggested that “Let’s go shopping” may be the basis of future economic development. Many an economist appears to have taken that view in recent years, but I still do not believe that we can build our entire economy on retail—although retail is very important for many of our cities. During the debate, we have heard a great deal about what is good in our cities, and many of us have found a great deal on which we can agree. The published document is very much something on which we can all—with the possible exception of Patrick Harvie—agree. The future of Scotland relies on the success of its cities—cities that are very different in both scale and potential.
I am lucky enough to represent North East Scotland, a region that contains two of our larger cities. Dundee is an example of a city that has had to work hard for many years. It has delivered a great deal of success through its research and its education and it has demonstrated achievements in life sciences and in the programming industry, which we have heard a great deal about. In recent years, miracles have been achieved with the regeneration of more than one part of the city—and I am thinking in particular about the waterfront. I pay particular tribute to Joe FitzPatrick. During his time in the Scottish Parliament, he has become an outspoken advocate for the city of Dundee, although he now finds himself with a little bit of competition, as Jenny Marra is on the same ground. It is good that the city has people who are willing to step up and defend its interests.
When it comes to defending the interests of a particular city, we have some competition in the form of Kevin Stewart, who has become an outspoken advocate for the city of Aberdeen—and, yes, there is a great deal to advocate about the city of Aberdeen. In comparison with Dundee, Aberdeen has, over the past 30 years, found itself in the right place at the right time. Not every city can be as lucky as that. Aberdeen has demonstrated a great deal of what other cities should be trying to achieve. We can consider the achievements of the Aberdeen city and shire economic forum—as the cabinet secretary suggested it was called. It has actually changed its name slightly, just to confuse us all. It is now Aberdeen city and shire economic future. The acronym is exactly the same, but it now means something different, which we had better take into account. It has achieved an enormous amount by bringing together people in the private sector and by making progress with initiatives that benefit that whole city region in the north-east.
I also commend the work of Nestrans, of which Kevin Stewart was once the chairman. Nestrans has demonstrated the importance of local authorities working together to strengthen transport links within a city region. Transport partnerships in other parts of the country have operated with varying degrees of success, and Nestrans has been an example of how things can be done correctly.
If we look again at that Aberdeen model, however, there are other things that we need to take into account. Earlier, we heard Jackson Carlaw say that what will deliver the strategy is our people, and that interference is not always the best or most beneficial approach for Government to take. Aberdeen has demonstrated in recent years the kind of altruism and support on the part of the successful businessmen of the area that, a generation or two ago, was the hallmark of other major cities such as Glasgow and Edinburgh, when fortunes were being made there. Aberdeen has been the city where money has been made and Sir Ian Wood came forward to offer substantial amounts of money to the city—for example, £50 million for the development of Union Terrace gardens. It is horrifying that a small number of people have been able to stir up as much negative publicity as they have and have tried to prevent Aberdeen from enjoying benefits similar to those achieved in other places at other times.
The member talks about a small number of people opposing the scheme. Could he remind us of the results of the referendum?
There has not been a proper referendum. Those who participated in the so-called referendum were a self-selecting and small sample, who came from across the entire world. Until we get a representative test of public opinion in Aberdeen, there is nothing that I would accept as providing a measure.
In her opening speech, Nicola Sturgeon made it clear that she wants the public and private sectors to work together to achieve objectives, and in the document there is a clear indication that private enterprise has a great deal to contribute to the development of our cities. Throughout the debate, that has been made clear by many speakers, none more so than my colleague Jackson Carlaw, who explained that private enterprise has a great deal to deliver and will do so most effectively when it is left to its own devices. Minimal interference is often the way to go. At the end of the debate, however, we saw an extraordinary exchange. As Jim Eadie proposed that principle, he was challenged from another corner of the chamber by someone who wanted to know why the SNP was not so much in favour of private sector involvement in the city of Edinburgh. Of course, when challenged, Mr Eadie backed down immediately. Therein lies the problem.
The member needs to wind up.
This Government understands the contribution that can be made by the private sector and, from its front benches, we regularly hear of the importance of the private sector in the development of our economy and, today, of our cities. However, when challenged, those who sit at the back are not prepared to make that same commitment. That is why this Government has a long way to go.
16:43
Like other members, I welcome the opportunity to debate the important contribution that Scotland’s six cities make to our economy and our society.
My experience of cities is the reverse of the cabinet secretary’s. I was born and brought up in Aberdeen, Hong Kong, which is a truly global city that is on a different scale to our cities in Scotland. I now live in a city region, in Dumbarton, that ancient capital of Strathclyde, which is probably one of Scotland’s oldest cities. I acknowledge that Patrick Harvie is, indeed, a son of the rock.
Regardless of whether someone lives in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Inverness or Stirling, they will be fiercely proud of their city, its culture and its unique contribution to Scottish life. That has been demonstrated by every member this afternoon.
We have heard today that the majority of our population lives in and around cities—some 86 per cent of us. However, it is their importance in driving our economy that truly sets our cities apart. Our cities are, without question, the powerhouse of our economy. It is right that we should pay them special attention and it is right for us to invest in them. That is the case because we face bleak and challenging prospects.
No one can be anything other than deeply concerned about the significant rise in unemployment. In the past three months, unemployment has risen by 19,000—a staggering 200 people each and every day. The Scottish unemployment rate now stands at 8.6 per cent, which is higher than the UK average. All that comes on top of figures from the Scottish Retail Consortium that show the worst December of trading since at least 1999—despite my best efforts.
We know that consumer confidence is low, that sales are declining and that cost pressures remain intense. We know, too, from the Scottish Chambers of Commerce survey that business confidence is low. That is due in part to the euro zone crisis, but it is also due to public sector spending cuts. The SCC warns that there are few signs of improvement and that many companies expect to cut jobs in 2012. The situation is undoubtedly grim, but that is all the more reason why we should strive to mitigate the impact that it will have on our people and communities.
Therefore, like other members, I very much welcome the renewed focus on our cities. There is little to disagree with in the overarching principles of the strategy: improving connectivity and sustainability, developing knowledge and enhancing cities as appealing places in which to live, work and play. None of us disagrees with any of that—except, perhaps, Patrick Harvie.
I know that for my constituency of Dumbarton—and, indeed, for the whole of the west of Scotland—to thrive, we need a vibrant and thriving Glasgow. Academics tell us that, as do experts who work in economic development. The same is true for each of the regions surrounding our six cities, so it is spurious to demand that the jam, such as it is, be spread even more thinly across non-city local authorities.
Although I welcome the £5 million that the cabinet secretary announced in December and the further £2 million that she has announced today, I am sure that she will acknowledge that, in the face of the scale of the challenge that lies ahead, that funding is just a drop in the ocean. I welcome her recognition that it is a catalyst, rather than the totality of the resource that is available.
Of course, the context is that of a real-terms cut in the local government settlement. The SNP is always keen to tell us that local government has an increased share of the budget. That is all well and good, but it does not fit with the information from the Scottish Parliament information centre, which tells us that the budget for local government will decline by 6.1 per cent over the course of the spending review period, while the overall Scottish Government budget will decline by 2.7 per cent, so I ask the SNP not to tell me that local government is somehow getting a better deal. We need to be honest and recognise the challenge that we face.
I turn to the cities growth fund that was established by the Labour Scottish Executive, which, as we know, amounted to £173 million over a four to five-year period. The ambitions then were very similar to the ambitions that are set out in the present Government’s cities strategy. The difference would appear to be in the scale of the resourcing. What additional resources does the cabinet secretary envisage being directed to our cities that will enable them to do what we all want them to do, which is to step up a gear and put in place the very projects that will improve connectivity and harness the potential of our cities to grow our economy? I accept that funds are more limited now, but although I share her view that we need to ensure that every penny that is spent is spent well, we need to look seriously at providing extra investment for our cities.
I understand from Richard Baker and Lewis Macdonald that in Aberdeen the focus should clearly be on the energy sector, including renewables. There are huge challenges to do with connectivity and broadband access that are severely hampering development.
In Dundee, Jenny Marra rightly urged the creation of a high-level jobs task force to give more people in the city the opportunity to work, and Joe FitzPatrick rightly mentioned the Dundee waterfront project, which has transformed the cityscape and which, interestingly, was supported in its initial development by the cities growth fund. However, I say earnestly to Joe FitzPatrick that simply rolling up a dedicated fund into a general settlement inevitably reduces focus. The Government has acknowledged that by making two separate allocations amounting to £7 million, instead of rolling that money up in the local government settlement.
Does the member not accept that the decision of John Swinney and the SNP Government to remove the strings that were attached to the cities growth fund was exactly what cities across Scotland were asking for?
Losing the focus and rolling up specific funding into a general settlement does not work. The Government has accepted that by setting aside a separate £7 million for a new cities investment fund.
For Glasgow, Drew Smith outlined the need for the air route development fund to help build our international links, the need for the Glasgow airport rail link and more besides. Sandra White highlighted Glasgow’s rich musical contribution: Celtic Connections starts today. I confess to some trepidation when she started to compare the cities strategy and its delivery to a kind of band. I had visions of the cabinet secretary as the lead singer, perhaps joining Jackson Carlaw in a duet.
All our cities, but particularly Stirling, Inverness, Glasgow and Edinburgh, have a key role in attracting overseas tourists and pumping new money into the economy. We need to look to VisitScotland to do more in that regard.
Jim Eadie rightly spoke about our academic and intellectual excellence and its importance to our economy and business. We need to support our academic institutions and ensure that they remain at the cutting edge of innovation and research.
I say to the cabinet secretary that cities excite much passion, which has been demonstrated in the debate. We recognise their importance to our everyday lives, whether we live or work in a city, or enjoy the many and varied cultural diversions that our cities offer. Every member has recognised their importance to the economy. The cabinet secretary therefore has broad support for the cities strategy, but we urge her to put in place the resources that will make it real and let all our cities flourish.
16:51
I know that it is traditional to say that it has been a good debate, but I have really enjoyed it. It has been interesting and at times quite thought-provoking. The consensus that it has generated is very welcome, although it is always healthy to have someone who breaks the consensus—step forward, Patrick Harvie. I like and respect him, but I disagreed with much of what he said, although not everything; I quite like the idea of going shopping forever, but perhaps that is just a personal opinion.
More seriously, I agree with Patrick Harvie that GDP is not the only measure of success. As I said in my opening remarks, I believe that what makes our cities great is their contribution to our culture, society and educational opportunities. I also believe, however, particularly in this economic climate, that somebody who sees a focus on economic growth as a weakness is not on the same page as this Government, nor, I suspect, on the same page as many people across the country.
We might get closer to being on the same page if the cabinet secretary could answer one question. Why does the cities strategy document have nothing to say about her constituents and mine who rely on buses in Glasgow, or about investment in improving the dismal bus service that our constituents put up with? Most households in Glasgow do not have access to a car, so why do we not have a cities strategy that has something to say about that?
The cities strategy is not a declaration of all our policies on these issues. I will pass on Patrick Harvie’s comments when I meet FirstBus tomorrow morning, but I point out to him that one of the biggest investments that this Government is about to make in the transport network of the city of Glasgow is in fastlink, which will be hugely important for the bus infrastructure across the city and which I hope all of us across the chamber will welcome.
I will address three themes in my concluding comments: money, the leadership of the agenda by the cities, and collaboration. If I have time, I will touch on some of the other points that have been made in the debate.
On the subject of the first theme, which is money, I say to Drew Smith and Jackie Baillie, echoing a point that Joe FitzPatrick made very well, that the cities growth fund has not been scrapped. For me, the much bigger question about the cities growth fund is what impact it had. I am not knocking it, and I do not want anybody to suggest that I am, but the independent evaluation of the fund said that it was difficult to see what it supported that was different to things that were supported through other Government programmes and that, overall, the fund had not had as great an impact as it could have had.
My point is that, regardless of how much money we have in a fund, the real challenge is to ensure that it has a big impact. That will be the challenge for the cities investment fund. As I said earlier, I would be happy to hear members’ views—I have heard many during the debate—about how the fund should be spent and what the requirements and rules for the spend should be. I expect to bring a proposal to the first leadership group meeting of the Scottish cities alliance in late February, so if anybody has views and thoughts that they want to feed in, I would be very happy to hear them.
Sandra White’s point about community benefit was good. Community benefit clauses have been used to good effect—the Raploch in Stirling provides a good example of that. We expect such provisions in the projects that the Scottish cities alliance develops.
The second theme that I will touch on is the importance of the cities leading the agenda, which was the key theme in Jackson Carlaw’s speech. When I say to him that “Kumbaya” would have been preferable to his speech, I mean no disrespect to his speech—I just would have loved to hear him lead us all in a chorus of that song in the chamber—[Interruption.] There is indeed time yet.
Jackson Carlaw was absolutely right. There is a sentence that members might not hear from me very often. He was right to say that the dynamic that is needed to deliver the aspirations in the strategy will not come from within the Parliament. The cities alliance is a partnership. The Government’s role is to be a supporter, enabler and facilitator—Jim Eadie also made that point well. The Government’s job is not to dictate to cities or usurp the role of city councils. The agenda should and will be led by the cities, but it is important that the cities work with others, too.
I agree with other members that John Park’s speech was very thoughtful. He made a good point about the challenges and the benefits in an area such as Fife, which is sandwiched between cities. Stuart McMillan made a similar point.
Hanzala Malik set the debate in the international context. He was absolutely right to say that our cities have things to teach cities elsewhere in the world and things to learn from them.
The third aspect that I will touch on is collaboration. John Finnie talked about the benefits and the importance of collaboration. I echo his comments about Provost Jimmy Gray, who launched the agenda with me before Christmas.
It is understandable that Kevin Stewart and many other members spoke passionately about their cities. If I was here in a constituency capacity, I would speak just as passionately about Glasgow and particularly about the south side of that wonderful city. It is right that members should talk about the importance, benefits and attributes of their cities, but the approach in the document recognises not just what is valuable about cities individually but how we can support them to be greater than the sum of their parts.
Kevin Stewart was absolutely right to say that competition between our cities is sometimes appropriate, but sometimes it gets in the way and leads to the disadvantage of all. Stuart McMillan was right to say that, in the past, the rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh for its own sake has not been in the interests of either city. Collaboration is key to success in what we aspire to do.
In the couple of minutes that are left, I will touch on some other issues that were raised. I agree with much that Drew Smith said about the air route development fund. The Government is seeking to work with the European Commission to find the flexibility that we need to support air routes in such a way. I made that point last week when I launched the second daily Emirates flight from Glasgow to Dubai. Emirates is another example of a company that is keen to invest in Scotland and which seems to be oblivious to all this nonsense talk of uncertainty that we hear from other parties in the Parliament.
I echo Joe FitzPatrick’s point about Perth’s city bid, to which I give my whole-hearted support. I hope that Scotland will have seven cities before too long.
Sandra White asked about TIF. I am sure that she will appreciate that I cannot comment on the Buchanan Galleries. The business case is still under consideration and it would not be appropriate for me to comment on that today.
TIF is in a pilot phase and we are supporting a limited number of pilot projects. If the Government sees TIF as a successful initiative, we will be keen to explore how to take more advantage from it.
Jenny Marra talked about Sistema Scotland. In my constituency capacity, I met Sistema representatives before Christmas. I hope to see their fantastic work at first hand in the Raploch before too long and I am keen for them to take that to other areas, not just in Dundee but in the city of Glasgow.
In conclusion, a range of extremely good points has been made. There is consensus on the importance of our cities, not just as cities, but as the drivers of growth and success in the rest of the country. The agenda for cities, like the fund that I have announced, is a catalyst. It is meant to focus us on what more we can do with our cities working together to ensure that they fulfil their potential. I look forward to continuing to work with members and those in the public and private sectors and communities to ensure that we can take advantage of this opportunity and ensure the success of all our cities.
That ends the debate. I say to the cabinet secretary that, despite the invitation to Jackson Carlaw to join her in singing, there will be no singing in the chamber.
On a point of order, Presiding Officer.
He is going to sing.
I do not want to sing, although I will if Bruce Crawford asks me to.
I seek the Presiding Officer’s guidance on the rules regarding the admissibility of Scottish Parliament motions and the abuse of the system in order to mislead Parliament in contravention of rule 3.1.8 of the members’ code of conduct, which requires that members act honestly.
Presiding Officer, you may be aware of motion S4M-01746, which was lodged on 18 January, in the name of Bob Doris MSP. In that motion, Bob Doris cites a motion for an Opposition day debate in the House of Commons in order to assert that the Labour Party supports the privatisation of the national health service. The move was accompanied by an SNP press release that stated:
“Scottish Labour’s MPs including the party’s deputy leader Anas Sarwar and shadow Scottish Secretary Margaret Curran voted in favour of using the private sector throughout the NHS.”
In fact, the House of Commons motion in question is backed by the trade union Unison as part of its our NHS, our future campaign and was drafted to oppose the Conservative-led
“Government’s plans to open up the NHS”
in England
“as a regulated market, increasing private sector involvement in both commissioning and provision of NHS services”,
which will
“risk putting profits before patients”.
It can in no way be honestly portrayed as support for increased private sector involvement in the NHS; in fact, the precise opposite is true.
In view of the fact that such manifestly false assertions have found their way into a motion of the Parliament, what provision is there for members to be required to withdraw motions if they are found to be demonstrably false and misleading, considering that they will remain on the record even if they are amended? Will the Presiding Officer confirm that the chamber office is unable to prevent the lodging and publication of such erroneous motions, as accuracy is not currently one of the admissibility criteria under rule 8.2.2 of the standing orders? If so, does she agree that that should be changed in order to protect the Parliament’s integrity?
Finally, is it appropriate that a member who wantonly and mischievously misleads Parliament in this way should be able to continue as deputy convener of the Health and Sport Committee?
The criteria for the admissibility of motions do not currently include accuracy. It is for the member who lodges the motion to determine whether it is accurate.
Dr Simpson has had a lengthy opportunity to make his point, which is now on the record. I am quite sure that if the member in question needs to reflect on Dr Simpson’s words, he will do so.