Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 25 May 2022
I am grateful for that lengthy intervention. It provides some clarity, but I think that we need to go further. If we look at examples, both here in Scotland in North Ayrshire and elsewhere, we see that a firm commitment needs investment as well as intent. It goes beyond simply removing barriers and looks at changing the institutional frameworks.
Community wealth building, when done properly, has the capacity to make change, but it has to have that focus. We currently have good examples, even closer to home, that we might not consider to be community wealth building, such as the Edinburgh Solar Co-operative. Even Lothian Buses is a great example of municipal ownership.
We must learn the lessons, both recent and in the past. I would take small issue with the statement that community wealth building is a brand new concept. I firmly believe that the values at the heart of it are ensuring that assets and economic means serve and are accountable to those who depend on them, and those values are absolutely vital. They are enduring Labour values: ensuring that the means of production are as widely held as possible for the benefit of the many, not the few.
We will support the Government motion, but our amendment seeks to ensure that it has meaning and purpose.
We will not support the Conservative amendment, however, for two reasons. First, its focus on local authority funding is somewhat dangerous. This cannot be viewed as a substitute for local authority funding; it must be additional to it. What is more, I do not think that the levelling-up funding—which is a poor substitute for the funding that it replaces—is worth supporting at all. Ultimately, it rings somewhat hollow to hear arguments about local authority funding from a party that has cut by half the funding for local authorities in England.
We must go further. We have a cluttered landscape of agencies and disconnected initiatives when it comes to regional economic development. To be truly successful, it must be embedded at that scale. At the moment, city region deals have little accountability and little joined-up action with the local authorities in their areas. If we are to be successful, we must have that regional lens, because Scotland’s regional economic inequalities are gross and unjust.
There is a short distance of 60 miles between Dundee and Edinburgh, but we see huge inequalities between them—as much as 30 per cent in terms of the hourly output per worker. That might be a narrow and cold economic measure, but it reflects real differences in wages, life opportunities and the ability of people to feed themselves and their families.
Going further, we must also look to infrastructure and transport. In some ways, I am disappointed that the Liberal Democrat amendment was not selected because, ultimately, we can do all these things. We can create the jobs, but if people do not have the ability to travel to those jobs, they will serve little purpose. Infrastructure and transport are absolutely key—a point that I believe that my colleague Pauline McNeill will elaborate on further. The track record of the current Scottish Government is not a good one. We see the public transport system in meltdown because of the Government’s failure to plan and to invest. It is not just about the two ferries that it cannot build; it is about the many other ferries that it should have been building over the past decade, which, frankly, it has failed to do.
In summary, we cautiously welcome the Government’s enthusiasm for community wealth building. However, a huge amount of detail is still needed. There must be a commitment to provide long-term resources; community wealth building should not be just another fad or tick-box exercise. Ultimately, we must embed community wealth building at local, regional and national levels. Quite simply, community wealth building is not ambitious enough; we need to have ambition for national wealth building.
I move amendment S6M-04580.1, to insert at end:
“; believes that the Scottish Government should provide more detail to its Community Wealth Building proposals to ensure it is embedded within a clear regional economic framework and a coherent and ambitious industrial strategy to support post-pandemic economic development and local job creation; further believes that the necessary legislative, institutional change and investment must be available to deliver the Community Wealth Building that Scotland needs and that can be translated into regional and national growth, and calls on the Scottish Government to revise all public procurement policies to ensure that Community Wealth Building is embedded at every level.”
15:25Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.