Chamber and committees

To ask the First Minister whether she will provide an update on the Scottish Government’s work with the United Kingdom Government to create free ports in Scotland. (S6F-00271)

The SNP refused to acknowledge the benefits of any kind of port in Scotland for a long time. As a result of the Scottish Government’s refusal to work co-operatively with the UK Government, it would appear that funding is available for only one Scottish green port, due to the increased operating costs of that model. Can the First Minister confirm whether there will be only a single green port in Scotland? If not, where will the additional funding for the remainder come from?

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. My device is not connecting. I would have voted no.

With that in mind, I hope to see the Scottish Government taking more positive action to bring genuine change to those forgotten communities.

I have been to the Department for Work and Pensions and spoken to the people who work there. They think that this is the best system to encourage people to get into work—[Interruption.] We need to invest in rural communities and we need to give people the opportunity to get into work. [Interruption.]

In fact—[Interruption.] No, I am going to make some progress.

A doubling of the Scottish child payment would go some way towards resolving those issues, but it is not enough on its own, and it takes no account of rural and urban disparities. [Interruption.]

One of the first steps towards building a fairer and more equal society is to ensure that all children get a fair start in life, no matter where they are born. All too often, the issues of rural poverty are swept beneath the carpet—out of sight and out of mind. As our world becomes ever more connected, the communities on our periphery are being left behind. Ensuring that rural communities are connected, with young people afforded the same opportunities as their urban counterparts, is a key part of the challenge, and nowhere in Scotland is that more evident than in Ayrshire.

Looking at the Scottish index of multiple deprivation, it is sad to see that several communities in Ayrshire appear in the top 10 per cent of Scotland’s most deprived areas. However, the majority of those areas lie outside Ayr, in the countryside. Despite being a few miles from the promenades of Troon and Prestwick, those areas feel a million miles away.

Recently, during a street surgery tour, I visited towns in rural East Ayrshire, which has some of highest levels of deprivation in the country. While I was there, residents pointed out the number of derelict buildings in one of the towns—there were 12 on one street alone. The effects of housing poverty can be felt clearly in rural communities, and derelict buildings are the final result. Without adequate funds to keep houses in good condition, living standards deteriorate, which causes further hardship and stigma, with a knock-on effect on young people’s development.

In East Ayrshire, 37 per cent of buildings failed the Scottish housing quality standard, with that figure rising to 46 per cent in South Ayrshire—nearly half the local authority’s dwellings. In South Ayrshire, 41 per cent of dwellings were judged to have critical elements of disrepair—in other words they are flawed in terms of weather-tightness and structural stability—while 25 per cent were in need of immediate repair, affecting a horrifying 34 per cent of families.

Fuel poverty is another issue that holds back people in rural areas. In East Ayrshire, fuel poverty affects 15,000 households, including 2,000 families. Meanwhile, in South Ayrshire—a wealthier local authority—a staggering 12,000 households are affected, which is nearly a quarter of all households. In South Ayrshire, the fuel poverty gap, which is the amount of money it would take to pull households out of fuel poverty, has reached £850. Those figures truly highlight the disadvantage at which many people in rural communities find themselves.

It is a pleasure to join the debate on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives. We have already heard from my colleague Miles Briggs about some of the fantastic things that the community jobs Scotland project has achieved nationally, so I will use my time to focus on some of the projects that we have been working on in Ayrshire.

I recently completed my summer street surgery tour across South and East Ayrshire, having visited many different communities and encountered a cross-section of Ayrshire life. Although some areas of the county are noticeably wealthy, others are not; they often score high in the Scottish index of multiple deprivation and suffer from social issues, such as antisocial behaviour, drug misuse and unemployment. When I spoke to residents, sadly, all too often, they commented on how there were too few opportunities for young people, too little employment and, as a result, too few incentives for young people to remain and contribute to those communities.

I share their frustration; I have lived in Ayrshire all my life and I have seen the traditional industries in the region fade away to nothing. As a parent of three young Ayrshire residents, I know how hard it is for young people to find work, particularly in a rural area such as the south-west, far from the bright lights of Glasgow or Edinburgh. That is why I found it really heartening to read about some of the truly remarkable work that the SCVO and community jobs Scotland have done to turn around young people’s lives in Ayrshire.

There are stories such as that of James, from Muirkirk in East Ayrshire, who, like so many people in the region, felt that there was no support and sadly little hope of getting a job locally. CJS signposted him to a Street League employability course, which led to work with Auchinleck Community Development Initiative, where he specialised in helping people with mental health or learning difficulties. Now James works with the National Autistic Society, doing work that he loves and improving the lives of others.

The Carrick Centre has been another Ayrshire CJS success story. Led by centre manager Andrea Hutchison, the much-loved community centre has supported 31 young people through the scheme. Despite facing enormous challenges thrown up by the pandemic, Andrea has been a stellar advocate for the CJS and the impact that it can have in young people’s lives. She highlighted the work of one CJS participant in particular, Alastair Stobbs. Despite experiencing barriers to employment, Alastair has become a valued member of the Carrick Centre team. He has developed his skills to adapt to the pandemic, helping to set up online workshops and a weekly newsletter and updating the website to enable the centre to stay in contact with its service users. Not only that, Alastair now mentors two new trainees at the centre.

Alastair and James are only two out of the thousands of people who CJS has helped to put their lives on track. Encouraged by employers such as Andrea, CJS enables them to grow, both as people and as leaders, by providing them with rewarding, meaningful employment that makes a real contribution to their communities.

Any story of a young person succeeding is a good-news story, but 10,000 of them is another thing—absolutely fantastic. What SCVO and CJS have achieved in remarkable. I am glad that we can mark their efforts in Holyrood today.

The Scottish Government has many worthy aims when it comes to resolving poverty, but there is often too much talk followed by too little change. Education followed by consistent employment is, and will always be, the best way to deliver real economic change in a community.

Making sure that we have the appropriate tools in place is an essential step on the road to reducing rural poverty. Inward investment is one mechanism, as is education, but employability programmes also have a role to play. With that in mind, I decided to look at how the Scottish Government’s employability programmes have progressed. I was surprised by the results—and not in a good way.

Fair start Scotland has been operational since 2018, but its performance has been disappointing. Only 14 per cent of participants who started in April 2018, in the scheme’s first quarter of operation, sustained one year of employment. The figures have not improved, and the pandemic is no excuse. In the final quarter of 2019, only 9 per cent of starts stayed in a job for a year. Although the pandemic has undoubtedly had an impact, at the height of Covid, in October to December 2020, 38 per cent of starts began a job. That figure plummeted to 9 per cent in the second quarter of this year. In June 2021, only 76 participants had achieved 12 months of work out of 878 starts the previous year.

If we are serious about curbing rural unemployment, the cabinet secretary needs to get a grip on Scotland’s employability programme.

The number of Scots using devolved social security programmes is set to rise exponentially as the effects of the pandemic are felt and further benefits are devolved. We need robust measures in place to boost rural employment, cut rural poverty, and end rural barriers to employment.

We fully supported the temporary uplift in universal credit at the height of the pandemic, but now that we are coming through it we need to get people back into work. People in my area do not want to live on benefits. They want investment from the Scottish Government in the area.