Chamber and committees

Another key factor in ensuring a good learning environment for such education is the fabric of our school buildings. I know that the cabinet secretary is aware of the current significant issues at Castlebay school in my constituency. Will she provide an update on what progress her officials have made on that issue since she met the local authority last month?

I thank Kenneth Gibson for bringing this important debate to the chamber. It focuses on an important source of funding for many charities, and highlights a completely needless obstacle that many of them face.

I am a long-standing supporter of charity lotteries, which raise funds for good causes and are operated, as others have said, on a not-for-commercial-gain basis. However, those lotteries are being hampered in their ability to support deserving causes by an unnecessary and unreasonable funding cap, which was originally implemented by the UK Government to protect the national lottery from competition.

The Gambling Commission, in its advice to the UK Government seven years ago, stated that it believed that there was no need for such a cap to remain in place, given the record levels of both national lottery and charity lottery sales in recent years. During the UK Government’s 2018 consultation on charity lottery limits, its preferred option was raising the annual sales limit to £100 million. However, six years later, charity lotteries are still being constrained by a limit half that size. As Mr Gibson pointed out, when the UK Government could be bringing forward legislation to free up millions of pounds of funding for good causes, its continued lack of action on the issue is hard to fathom.

Working to remove the annual sales cap is an SNP manifesto pledge and an issue that the Scottish Government has supported for many years. I understand that the Scottish Government has made representations to the UK Government about it on numerous occasions, frustratingly without progress. The legislation on the matter is, unfortunately, fully reserved to the UK Parliament.

Several of the fantastic charities based in Scotland that the People’s Postcode Lottery supports, such as Maggie’s centres and Mary’s Meals, are seeing their funding indefinitely capped due to the outdated charity lottery annual sales limit. That is despite the People’s Postcode Lottery’s desire to increase its activity in support of charities. It is estimated that, over the next five years, Maggie’s may lose out on £5 million of additional funding, while Mary’s Meals may lose out on more than £1 million. During a cost of living crisis, when charities are on the front line of providing support across the country, how is that fair? What end does such a cap serve?

Charity lotteries have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for good causes in my constituency, with organisations such as the Stornoway Trust, the Bernara Community Association and Western Isles Foyer benefiting from vital funding.

Players, as well as charities, benefit from those lotteries. When my constituents in North Uist and Bernaray won £3 million through the People’s Postcode Lottery, the prize was shared between 101 fortunate individuals. Much of the winnings were spent locally, which gave an economic boost to the whole community.

Charity lotteries provide transformative funding to charities. To pick up on a theme raised by Mr Balfour, they do so in a way that deliberately does not include highly addictive forms of gambling, such as scratch cards. The lotteries therefore pose a very low risk of gambling-related harm to players. They exist to fund and support good causes, and it makes no sense at all that they should face far more regulation than the purely for-profit bookmakers, which make astronomical sums of money for their shareholders and pose a much higher risk of gambling-related harm. I urge the UK Government to break a long-standing habit and do something positive, which would be to remove the unfair and illogical annual sales cap on charity lotteries.

An issue that has been talked about in the past is what checks and balances there should be on the actions that ministers have to take once the bill becomes an act. In particular, I am thinking about the code of practice. One of those checks and balances would relate to whether regulations under section 7 of the bill were subject to the negative procedure in Parliament.

That might be a very technical point, but it opens up the wider question of what scrutiny there should be of the decisions that ministers take on the back of the bill. I am particularly interested in hearing about the code of conduct, though.

Forgive me, convener, but we are talking about the second theme, are we not?

I am just thinking back to something that Sarah Skerratt said about ensuring that the objectives of support for communities align with the support for practitioners of agriculture and how they are not quite the same thing. I do not know whether the crofters in the room want to comment on this, but is there something distinctive about crofting in that, compared to most rural communities, a big slice of the community is engaged in agriculture? What should be different about that relationship when the funding model applies to crofting?

Will the member give way?

Will the member take an intervention?

I appreciate that you will not like my saying this, but I suggest that we move to a vote on whether we should revert to the original agenda.

Thank you, convener. I appreciate the arguments that you made. However, the postponement came as a surprise to me. I appreciate that it is not the fault of people who cannot make it here because of the weather, but we have conducted meetings of the committee online or partly online, and we have had hybrid meetings in the past. We did that throughout the Covid pandemic, and other committees have handled stage 2 proceedings in that way.

Although the decision is ultimately at your discretion, committee members did not know about it. I want to register my curiosity about what we will do in the future if one or two people cannot make it, and I would like to know how we can avoid a situation in which we delay legislative proceedings indefinitely.

Can the cabinet secretary provide any update on the national centre for remote and rural health and care and how it will support the sustainability and capacity of primary care in rural communities?