Chamber and committees

I will try not to speak as quickly as the minister.

I thank the Government for the debate, which highlights the fantastic organisations that are doing so much across Scotland to improve our communities and bring buildings and spaces back into public use.

As a former councillor, I have seen at first hand the importance of empowering our communities. While this Scottish National Party Government has stepped back, our communities have stepped up. Following continued cuts to local authority funding, more responsibility has been passed to community groups. From planting flower beds to putting up our Christmas light displays, communities up and down the country have stepped up while the Government has failed.

Buildings that once stood proudly in our town and village centres have fallen into disrepair due to shrinking council budgets. However, thanks to the UK Government’s community ownership fund, some of those buildings are now being brought back into community use.

We Conservatives believe that we must put communities first, and that empowering communities is absolutely critical to ensuring that our towns and villages can be the vibrant and thriving places that they ought to be. The reality is that no one knows better how to achieve that than the individuals and families who live in those communities. Centralisation simply does not work: we need to see power moving downward to local communities, not moving in the other direction.

From 2017 to 2021, I was the convener of Aberdeen City Council’s finance committee, which dealt with the local authority’s community transfer requests with varying degrees of success, depending on the asset and the group that was looking to acquire it.

I will start with some success stories. The Seaton depot was an old disused council property. In 2018, it was agreed that the depot would be sold to Seaton community church for just £1. The church subsequently spent more than £0.5 million demolishing the old building and constructing not only a church but a brand-new community facility. While doing my research for this debate, I found a press clipping from 2018 that quoted me saying that the church’s work would

“make a real and lasting difference”

to the residents who live in the area, and that

“By using surplus council assets in new ways and supporting the goals of partners like the Seaton Community Church, we can make a real difference to people across the city”.

So, I do sometimes get things right. Today, the church has a full calendar of events from cage football to baby and toddler groups, and is proving to be a real asset for the community. I thank and commend Barry Douglas, who had the vision and determination to see the project through.

Another success story can be found in Footdee. Established in 2015, the Fittie Community Development Trust sought to secure the gospel hall with the aim of renovating it for the community through fundraising. It was successful in securing the hall back in 2018 and is now well on the way to achieving its goals.

Despite those positive stories, however, some challenging asset transfer projects have not yet been completed. One of those involves Westburn house, which is found in Aberdeen’s Westburn park. The house is a much-loved part of the city’s heritage but is, sadly, rapidly falling into disrepair, with the roof now having collapsed. The huge cost of making the building windtight and watertight appears to be the biggest hurdle to any revival. There is the will on the part of the local authority to transfer the asset, and the community supports the transfer and has a plan to use the building, but sources of funding are limited. About £7,000 has been raised, but that is a drop in the ocean compared with the sums that are required.

Those are a few rare examples of urban projects. Rural areas have been much more successful in implementing asset transfers. According to the Scottish Government’s figures, only 5 per cent of community buyouts have been in urban areas. The urban hub manager for Community Land Scotland has criticised the lack of progress in urban areas, saying:

“Community land ownership has been transformative in hundreds of communities across Scotland, but the potential in urban areas hasn’t been delivered yet. It should be a normal option in cities, like it is in the Highlands and Islands”.

Perhaps the minister would like to say in his summing-up how that is to be addressed.

The UK Government’s community ownership fund has significant financial benefits for Scotland. Venues that serve communities across Scotland are being supported by £2 million of investment from the fund. The levelling-up initiative sees Scotland benefiting from £2 billion of direct investment from the UK Government, and the UK Government community renewal fund provides additional financial support of £220 million to prepare the way for the UK shared prosperity fund.

However, more still needs to be done. The process of community asset transfer is hugely complicated, with unnecessary red tape before an asset transfer can be agreed. It requires, prior to transfer, a huge amount of legal knowledge and planning by community groups, which are often beyond the scope of smaller groups. Much more support is needed to enable groups to find their way through the process so that we see more buildings and assets that have fallen into disrepair being brought back to life in our communities.

The SNP says that it wants to empower local communities, but at the same time it is centralising services. It seems to be giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Much more clarity is required from the Government. Does it want local communities and councils to have more say about their destinies or does it want to centralise services, including adult and child social care?

Although I welcome the motion, I urge the Scottish Government not to rest on its laurels. Work still needs to be done. We need more community empowerment, not less. We need to cut the red tape for community groups and help them to make applications for asset transfers. We need to work with the UK Government to fund projects, and we need to stop centralisation of services away from our local communities.

I move amendment S6M-07247.1, to insert at end:

“; welcomes the UK Government’s Community Ownership Fund, which will allow communities to take ownership of local institutions that have fallen into disrepair or are under threat of closure, and further welcomes that there are projects in Scotland benefiting from this fund.”

Right, okay—that explains a lot. Thank you.

I have a question about negative inflation, which we are due to have by the middle of the decade. Should that be universally welcomed, or does it provide any risks to the Scottish economy?

So most of that £40 billion is due to inflation, which is really a global factor anyway. Is that correct?

Would you expect interest rates to come back down as quickly as that?

We would also expect wage inflation to come down to almost zero, which might well have an impact on the forecast for income tax take.

Thank you.

Richard Hughes, you said that fiscal policy changes over the past six months will have added £40 billion of borrowing by 2027-28. Will you give us a breakdown of what has caused that? Is it due to the Bank of England having to step in on the bond market? Is it because of policy decisions such as the energy price guarantee? What is behind that rise?

To ask the Scottish Government when it expects police officer numbers to be restored to the previous target of 17,234 officers. (S6O-01659)

I thank Jackie Dunbar for bringing the debate to Parliament this evening. We were councillors together at Aberdeen City Council, and we are now MSPs together. We rarely agree in debates, but I am glad that we can today.

“Young people are part of society. They deserve to be heard because they are here, and they exist in the present. They are not just the future and the decisions made in Scotland and the UK affect young people today.”

Those are not my words; they are the words of an #iwill ambassador from Aberdeen. We are fortunate to have so many young people who are willing to come forward and be heard. As a Parliament, we should be doing more to listen to their voices and to hear their views on topics that affect us all.

We are lucky to have a vibrant Youth Parliament, and perhaps we should be doing more to strengthen the links between the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Youth Parliament. As elected representatives, we have the privilege of welcoming school groups into our workplace. I know that, for many of us, it is the highlight of our week. Young people have important things to say about our democracy, our policies and the issues that we discuss, and they often ask the unexpected questions that others dare not ask.

#iwill week is all about a celebration of those young people who get involved. It celebrates the social action that our young people take part in, and it commends the huge amount of volunteering that young people do and the difference that they make throughout Scotland.

Figures from Volunteer Scotland show that, far from declining, volunteering among our young people is increasing. At 49 per cent, youth volunteer participation is double the rate of participation by adult volunteers, which sits at 26 per cent. Seventeen per cent of young people who do not volunteer say that they will in the future. In the past decade, formal volunteering has grown from 33 per cent to 49 per cent. Girls are more likely to volunteer than boys. Our young people are active and vital members of our volunteering communities in Scotland.

#iwill week also encourages organisations and governing bodies to commit to young people and their participation in social action and decision making. We want young people to be more engaged in how policy is made at all levels of our society. It gives me an enormous sense of pride to know that a policy convention that will take place tomorrow in Aberdeen, my home city, will be attended by more than 200 young people. They will discuss the role of youth work as a rights respecting and rights promoting practice. Young people are key to enabling social action that will be the catalyst for change that young people will ultimately drive. I think that, as parliamentarians, we should invite them to come here to present the outcomes of that conference to us.

I would like to add my thanks to the many youth organisations and youth workers throughout Scotland who are passionate about working with young people. YouthLink Scotland, which is leading the #iwill week in Scotland, does an incredible amount of work to build and strengthen our network of youth work. Youth work does, indeed, change lives. I know that colleagues will join me in congratulating Angela Leitch on her appointment as chair of that organisation just this week.

In closing, I once again pay tribute to our young people. We could all learn from, and emulate, their ambition, vibrancy, hopefulness and commitment to helping others. They are, indeed, part of today’s Scotland and we are a far richer country as a result.

You lost the referendum. We said “No” in 2014.