Chamber and committees

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am having an iPad issue—thank you for bearing with me.

It has previously been reported that the rate of child poverty among rural Dumfries and Galloway communities has hit a record high and that Dumfries and Galloway had a child poverty rate of 26.9 per cent in 2022-23. Given the clear link between Labour’s policy of the two-child cap and child poverty, will the cabinet secretary update us again on the Scottish Government’s plans to end the impact of the two-child cap in Scotland?

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I will see how far I get with my notes in three minutes.

My South Scotland region has seen centuries of migration to and from our shores. In past centuries, boats would depart the ports of Galloway for North America, carrying thousands of souls across the Atlantic in search of a new life.

More recently, many people from across Europe have been welcomed into our communities. Despite the impact of Brexit, many of them have stayed and are a fundamental part of our society. Meanwhile, our country has exported people all over the world.

I was an economic migrant, too. I moved to California in 1990 and spent 14 years working in Los Angeles. Scotland has also received people who are looking for a better life in our communities, and my husband is one of them. He is an immigrant from the USA who owns a business, pays his taxes and employs people.

Today, as the cabinet secretary mentioned in her opening speech, my part of the world is going through demographic challenges. Dumfries and Galloway has the oldest age profile of any local authority area and the lowest proportion of working-age population. There is also a continued sharp decline in D and G’s overall population, while the rest of Scotland’s is increasing, unlike what members have said across the chamber.

People are moving to Scotland. Without families and workers coming to our communities, our schools will close, our health service will contract, our community facilities will dry up, and rural communities, not just in the south but across Scotland, will wither on the vine.

Our agricultural sector continues to struggle with employment. Again, I thank the cabinet secretary for taking my intervention about our dairy industry in the south-west. Those people who throw out rhetoric and policies that aim to block migration to Scotland need to answer for the consequences that their ideology is having for rural Scotland.

The SNP has been criticised for talking up Farage’s Reform agenda, but we certainly need to talk about Farage’s policy proposals and about how the xenophobic policies would utterly decimate our rural economies and leave communities such as the ones that I represent economically shattered. We need to talk about how the policies would strip our national health service of the skills and talent that migration has brought to it, because those people are saving lives and improving our health every day. As a nurse in the operating theatre I worked as part of a multicultural team, and we all benefited from the ideas and innovation of that multicultural experience. That has been the case every day in my job, both here and in Los Angeles.

It is high time that the UK Government stopped being the problem and got behind the migration policies that recognise Scotland’s specific needs, history and potential, rather than hiding behind its copies of the Daily Mail.

It is crucial that we continue to support climate innovation, which is supporting new jobs across our rural communities, where employment can be more precarious than elsewhere. For example, there are initiatives that are creating employment in anaerobic digestion and biogas, such as the project at Crofthead farm in Crocketford, which has biogas and carbon removers and which the First Minister visited just before Christmas. Can the minister outline how the Scottish Government is working to support emerging technologies and climate entrepreneurs across Scotland?

Regarding the rural pilot schemes for visas, 48 per cent of Scotland’s dairy herd is in the south-west of Scotland, and a lot of the cows are milked by persons from Europe. Does the cabinet secretary agree that we need to recognise how important it would be to support the south-west economy with a rural visa pilot scheme?

As SWestrans and Dumfries and Galloway Council have responsibility for local bus services, the scope for the Government to directly intervene is clearly limited, particularly given that a tender process is on-going. However, will the Scottish Government consider providing local transport authorities with technical and professional support to equip them with the capacity to ensure that areas such as Dumfries and Galloway have a vibrant and sustainable bus network, regardless of the commercial decisions that are taken elsewhere?

Good morning. Some stakeholders have questioned the intent behind adding “cultural development” to the aims when there is existing wording around “cultural heritage”. They have suggested that those concepts could be better differentiated by, for example, reference to support for the creative sectors. What is the intention behind that change, and could it be made clearer in the bill?

While we are talking about fixed-penalty notices specifically linked to farming, I know from our national rural crime officer that there is interest in Police Scotland looking at six-week limitations for accessing Conic Hill, part of the west Highland way, which goes through the Lomond and Trossachs area. That would limit access for folk with their dogs or mandate that the dogs go on a lead in order to reduce livestock attacks. Are you aware of that? Could that be pursued? According to the rural crime officer I spoke to, that could help to reduce livestock attacks during lambing time.

Would that aim link with the Scottish Languages Bill, which, I hope, we are about to pass? That bill promotes Scots as well as Gaelic, so cross-portfolio connections could be a part of this.

I will pick up on what Rhoda Grant said about housing. We know that there are housing challenges in rural areas. I am thinking about support for repopulation—people say that we need to address depopulation—in our rural areas. That will be part of the aim

“to promote sustainable economic, social and cultural development of the area’s communities”.

Providing housing is a critical part of helping to address depopulation.

I will stop there for now.