Chamber and committees

On the final point that you raised, how will you manage to achieve that? How do you co-ordinate the spending in the islands programme with that wider spending? A subject that I never stop speaking about and will not stop speaking about is housing, because there are acute housing needs in many areas. How do those two areas of budgeting activity tally?

You mentioned childcare. Through this project, and in other areas of its activity, the Government is putting a lot of effort into childcare. I have one comment, which I am sure is not unique to my constituency. In huge swathes of that constituency, there is not one childminder available for anyone in the community at all. I know that I keep going on about that, but some of that is related to demographics and to the fact that there is no housing that people who might want to do that job can live in. Is it likely that policy will focus on some of the demographic problems that have an impact on childcare?

I begin by thanking Kate Forbes for bringing to the chamber a debate that has a striking relevance to my constituency. As she mentioned, the census figures show a population drop of 5.5 per cent in the Western Isles in the space of a decade, and I note the future figures that she referred to. Those figures might be stark, but they are not surprising. We are now at a crossroads. The very existence of some communities as places where children grow up and people work is now in question.

I will take Harris as an example. Last week saw the phenomenal and much-awaited launch of the Hearach—the first whisky from the Isle of Harris Distillery. In passing, I note that the work and vision that have gone into that island enterprise are now quite rightly being celebrated. However, of course, all businesses need a workforce, and nearly every local business that I speak to is struggling to find staff. The local authority is having real difficulty in providing care for elderly residents. Harris—whose population has halved since the 1960s—simply needs more people, and, as I have mentioned in the chamber before, the on-going challenge across the Western Isles to the traditional concept of a house as a year-round dwelling is a major part of the problem.

There is no single answer, but, with fewer than one birth for every two deaths in my constituency, there is no solution that does not involve bringing more people to live and work on the islands. To illustrate the scale of the challenge, I draw members’ attention to the fact that the Outer Hebrides community planning partnership identified the need for inward migration of 1,000 working-age and child-bearing families to keep the islands’ workforce anything like sustainable.

In such a situation, we should not shy away from any available avenue. Immigration has the power to keep public services, industries and communities sustainable. I can think of local businesses that successfully attracted workers from eastern Europe. Those workers put down roots and, in many cases, their children have grown up speaking three languages. However, since Brexit, the UK Government’s approach to immigration is simply not working for Scotland—certainly not for rural Scotland.

We know from the Migration Advisory Committee that rates of international inward migration to islands and remote rural areas are less than a fifth of what they are to our larger cities. Communities are crying out for a bespoke rural visa scheme to encourage inward migration to those areas. We know that that works successfully in other countries, such as Canada, with its Atlantic immigration programme. The proposal has been endorsed by Scotland’s local authorities, business groups and Parliament. I remember putting the proposal to the UK Government when I was Minister for International Development and Europe. However, if the UK Government had any appreciation of Scotland’s distinctive demographic needs at that time, it did a good job of being undemonstrative about it.

Unfortunately, the necessary powers lie not with this Parliament but with another—one with an obsession with net migration and hostile rhetoric. If we are to create a wealthier Scotland—a Scotland that can meet the needs of its industry and public services and properly tackle depopulation—we need a tailored migration system. Communities in the Highlands and Islands need one sooner rather than later. Therefore, I hope that all parties will commit themselves either to providing rural visas to Scotland or to devolving the necessary powers so that Scotland can provide them herself.

The member raises animal welfare issues. Does he not concede that there are animal welfare issues associated with the current overpopulation of deer, which this measure seeks to address?

Will the member take an intervention?

I do not dispute the importance of infrastructure, although, as I have mentioned, housing is also important and is an issue that people in some of the other parties are less keen to engage with.

However, is the member not overlooking something major? Does he agree that one of the major reasons why people used to come from many European countries to live in rural Scotland was the freedom of movement that we used to have? If we are not going to have freedom of movement across Europe in the way that we did as a member of the European Union, we will have to create something else that works, but there is currently nothing that is attracting people from other European countries to live in rural Scotland in the way that they once did.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. There is something wrong with the wi-fi in this corner of the chamber. I would have voted no.

I want to ask a wee bit more about the question of duplication in the code. Do sections 2 to 4 of the bill place any new legal obligations on buyers and sellers? I think that Gilly Mendes Ferreira touched on that. Are we dealing with something that is purely advisory or will people have new obligations as a result of it?

A number of you have identified problems with how the trade operates. Will you say a bit more about whether the code is the answer to that and whether it will have a potentially deterrent effect on people who are responsible for bad practice?

On a technical point—this is perhaps for the Law Society but perhaps for others—the bill sets out, to an extent, what the code should and should not contain. Is that normal practice in legislation? Does anyone have comments on the approach that the bill takes to that?

Regarding unlicensed litters—I am building on the point that Karen Adam made earlier about one-off litters—is there a need for a sort of de minimis provision that recognises the difference for low-volume breeders or, on the contrary, is there a need for more regulation of low-volume breeders?