Chamber and committees

I will turn away from the relationship between the UK and the EU and towards how that fits into, if it does at all, relations between the UK and Scottish Governments. Can you offer any observations on that, particularly now that we might be entering a period in which there might be not only policy disagreements between the two Governments but different understandings of what is or should be devolved?

Professor Forrester, could you elaborate on a couple of interesting points that you made? First, you talked about the thinness of the TCA. Can you say a bit more about why you feel that it is so “thin” and what that means?

Staff at Scotland’s welcome hubs are becoming more experienced by the day as they assist in triaging displaced people from Ukraine. Will the minister assure the Parliament that those hubs will continue to be supported in that triaging role, allowing a warm Scots welcome to be afforded to all displaced Ukrainians who arrive in Scotland?

Jeremy Balfour mentions delays over weekends and so forth. This has been pointed out already in the debate, but I take it that he is aware that the delay associated with applying for the UK’s universal credit is five weeks before the first payment is made.

I would have thought that the voices within communities are heard through the planning application process, and that process has always given a role to ministers.

As an MSP representing part of the Highlands and Islands, I am heartily sick of one or two people with little or no connection with the region trying to impose on communities their notions about what the land should be used for. With the expected growth of natural capital markets and the increasing number of businesses and organisations perhaps seeking to become “green lairds”, it will be more important than ever for us to do as the minister is setting out today—to guard against models of ownership that do not have local communities at their heart.

This debate is timely. For many decades, wage stagnation, low productivity and huge wealth inequalities have often seemed like entrenched features of the Scottish economy. As we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic, there has never been a more important time to examine our approaches to local economic development.

Contrary to some of what we have heard this afternoon, what has been outlined by the minister on community wealth building is a people-centred approach to local economic development that redirects wealth back into the local economy, and places control and benefits into the hands of local people.

The Scottish Government is working with five areas, including my constituency of Na h-Eileanan an Iar, to produce bespoke community wealth building action plans. Community wealth building is underpinned by five central principles: progressive procurement; fair employment and just labour markets; shared ownership of the local economy; socially just use of land and property; and making financial power work for local places.

In many ways, it is difficult to think of a part of the country that is more suited to the ideas behind community wealth building than my constituency. The Western Isles has the highest rate of living wage employers anywhere in Scotland. Its strong tradition of crofting encourages durable links between communities and the land, and it has been a trailblazer for community land ownership, with a significant 70 per cent of people living on community-owned estates.

Community land ownership has to be an essential aspect of any community wealth building strategy that we talk about. There are people—perhaps even members of the Scottish Parliament—who would argue that the way that land is used is far more important than how it is owned.

However, community wealth building recognises the intertwined nature of land ownership and land use. Different forms of ownership come with different forms of management that in turn determine how land is used. I can think of countless examples in my constituency that illustrate that. For example, the West Harris Trust has done fantastic work since the community bought the land from the Scottish Government in 2010.

At that time, the population of the area was unsustainable; a very low proportion of residents were of working age and 35 per cent of the housing stock was self-catering cottages or holiday homes. The trust wanted to attract young families into the area and focused on creating employment and housing prospects for them.

Although those problems of fragility have certainly not gone away, since 2010 the trust has created opportunities for small local businesses to flourish, sold housing plots and enabled the construction of new housing units for rented social housing, and as part of a shared equity scheme, it has created jobs in the trust itself and a further 20 jobs at its purpose-built arts, food and entertainment centre.

Those numbers may sound small, but in a community the size of west Harris, they have a disproportionate impact. As a major employer, the trust provides a range of opportunities for local suppliers and—crucially, and this is where the relevance is—it ensures that all the income that it derives from its facilities is reinvested back into the community for local projects.

That has all had a real impact, with a 20 per cent increase in population since the trust was established.

In contrast to west Harris—this comes back to my point about the relevance to this debate of community ownership of estates—is another community in my constituency, Great Bernera. It faces similar demographic challenges to Harris, and its people have no less a sense of community and no less a wealth of talent to draw upon. However, unlike west Harris, the island remains in absentee private ownership, despite the best efforts of the Great Bernera Community Development Trust.

While the community landlord in west Harris is a driver of development, in Bernera, I have heard complaints from constituents about demands for large sums of money before the landlord will allow legitimate transactions in relation to tenancies to proceed; he raises objections to planning permission for new housing and refuses to engage with crofters seeking to exercise their legal right to buy their crofts.

Local residents say that those actions are prohibiting the island’s development and hastening its depopulation. The island has already lost its local shop and school in recent years, while the community has been unsuccessfully trying to persuade the absentee landlord to co-operate with its buyout efforts.

That is why land ownership matters in the context of the debate that we are having about investing in communities. The best people to decide the future of our communities across Scotland are the people who live in those communities.

The member has outlined many of Cunninghame Graham’s fine qualities. I am sure that she is coming to this, but will she also acknowledge that he is remembered, rightly, as a great writer in his own right and that he, in his short stories, has captured many people’s imaginations around the world?

I am interested in that point about there being a sense of movement away from things that may have been needed to cope with an urgent Brexit situation. Professor, McEwen, in your written evidence, you mentioned about a similar point. You talked about how, initially, the “not normal” reasoning was used around the Brexit deal because it was an urgent emerging situation, but you drew a contrast between that and things such as the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, the Professional Qualifications Act 2022, the Subsidy Control Act 2022. Do you have a view on whether there is a contrast to be made between urgent emerging situations and pieces of legislation that do not meet that requirement, in your view, when it comes to using the phrase, “not normal”?

Convener, I am glad to hear that you are relaxed about us wandering from subject to subject.

I wonder whether people watching—if there are any people watching—are curious, as I think a lot of people are, about the extent to which constitutional practice rests on conventions. I am conscious that that word is used in different ways, but I am interested to know—perhaps from Professor McEwen, perhaps from Professor Tierney as they are both sitting next to me—where the Sewel convention sits in the food chain or the hierarchy of conventions, if there is one. At one end sit conventions that have not been challenged for a long time, such as the convention that the Queen has to appoint a Prime Minister who has some support in the House of Commons. At the other end, there are conventions such as Sewel, which the UK Supreme Court seems to characterise as a political convention. Where does Sewel sit in that hierarchy for those of us, myself included, who find the whole idea of the British constitution mysterious and sometimes offensive?

To ask the Scottish Government how many grants have been awarded through the croft house grant scheme in the Western Isles since 2007. (S6O-01108)