Chamber and committees

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?

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?

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”?

The croft house grant scheme is an excellent method of helping crofters with the cost of housing and retaining families in island communities. Does the cabinet secretary have a view on whether the astronomical recent rises that we have seen in the cost of building materials will need to be taken into account in the scheme?

On Tuesday, the United Kingdom Government announced its intention to make unilateral changes to the Northern Ireland protocol, putting the UK in breach of international treaty obligations and threatening a full-scale trade war with the European Union, while people are suffering a cost of living crisis. Given that many businesses have warned of the damage that that could do to Scottish exporters, does the First Minister agree that it shows that there is no group of people or sector of the economy that the Tory Government is not willing to sacrifice on the altar of Brexit?

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)

Good morning, secretary of state. When it comes to the inclusion of agriculture and fisheries in the UK’s new subsidy framework, as we have heard already, NFU Scotland has told some committees of this Parliament that the proposed measures risk reducing the agency of the Scottish Parliament to make its own policy on agriculture in some areas. The NFUS is not among the usual suspects that would make such a point. Do you think that the NFUS is just mistaken?

Do you agree that some of the language that the UK Government has used on all these issues has been rather less mild and proportionate than the language that you have used today? We have a Prime Minister who has described the existence of devolution as “a disaster”. Do you understand why some people might have concerns about power grabs being under way?