Meeting of the Parliament 17 June 2015
It has been a very interesting afternoon in the chamber, with lots of topics being raised regarding the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill. I absolutely believe that this is about community and the communities in which we live.
I had a poignant experience before coming to the chamber this afternoon when I attended the unveiling of the Scottish steelworkers memorial on the Ravenscraig site in North Lanarkshire. I was struck by the fact that it was a community project that brought together the communities of North Lanarkshire on the industrial heritage side and also brought together local schools and the local council, which supported the fundraising for the memorial.
The unveiling was poignant because of where the memorial sits in our community—at the former site of the Ravenscraig steelworks. When I was a schoolchild in that area of North Lanarkshire, I would never have imagined that an Andy Scott sculpture, which will form part of our heritage in the future, would be on that site—indeed, I do not think that Andy Scott would have envisaged any of his sculptures at that time.
To have the memorial on what was the site of the steelworks and beside the regional sports centre, in the heart of what will be a changing and developing community, brought home to me how important it is to bring all our communities together in looking forward to the future. It also brought together for me some of the themes that have come out this afternoon, such as the view that everything changes and nothing is static. The bill is a framework that should take us forward to the as yet unenvisaged community empowerment projects that may come our way.
I was glad that the minister paid tribute to the work of the committees. I joined the Local Government and Regeneration Committee only in November last year, and I have to admit that the bulk of the work on the bill had already been done by that point and a lot of the evidence had already been taken.