Meeting of the Parliament 17 September 2019
I will start by saying to Pauline McNeill that Christmas has started, because my daughters are designing their Christmas cards at school today. I will make sure that she gets copies of them so that Christmas comes at least to her office, if not to her house.
There is consensus among most members in the chamber this afternoon. That is absolutely positive. Sometimes, we think of consensual debates as being not as exciting as other ones, but there needs to be cross-party support to move forward on credit unions, so I welcome the cabinet secretary’s recognition of that.
Others have mentioned the relevant statistics, so I will not repeat them. However, I say that we are doing well in Scotland, although there is still room for improvement.
The Scottish Government has a strategy, and the cabinet secretary has said that she will welcome the views from the sector and from political parties, so I will throw my three pennies’-worth in this afternoon.
First, as a number of members have said, we need to do some succession planning. There is a danger that credit unions are seen as being for a certain generation—perhaps Liam McArthur falls into that age group—so we need to think about getting people who are younger than that involved, such as the cabinet secretary. [Laughter.] I am trying to win friends this afternoon, cabinet secretary.
Joking apart, I believe that we need to ensure that the news about credit unions gets into schools, universities and colleges. It is important that we plan for the future and that we ensure that there is expansion in membership among younger people.
Secondly, I want to pick up on a point that has been made by my colleague Michelle Ballantyne and others. There is a danger that credit unions are seen as being only for people of a certain type or a certain background. That perception still exists among many people. We need to see credit unions as being for everybody in society, regardless of whether people think of themselves as wealthy, middle class or less well-off. Credit unions will be able to grow and lend more money only if all types of individuals in our society get involved. There is work to be done on that by us all.
Finally, there are still people—particularly people who are disabled—who find it difficult to engage with credit unions. Work is being done on social media across party groups that could help in that regard, but we need to drill down to find out why so few disabled people are using credit unions.
I think that I have, in the past three minutes, been able to offend most people in the chamber. To those whom I have not offended, I apologise. [Laughter.]