Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 25 May 2022
I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in the debate. As members are aware, it is my belief and the belief of my party that the development of community is essential for the prosperity of Scotland. We can call that process “community wealth building”, but it is important to define what we mean by that. In my view, it involves creating an environment in which people want to live, work and play, and where the essence of community interaction—that intangible feeling of belonging—can grow. In that way, community wellbeing and, therefore, community wealth are developed.
As I have said many times, I believe that, in recent decades, the heart has been ripped out of so many communities as a policy of centralisation has been pursued by the Scottish Government, to the detriment of those communities.
We are talking about the ability of communities to come together in a shared interest, whether that is sport, art, music or drama. An issue that I have mentioned numerous times, but to which lip service has been paid, is the need for all members of a community to have the ability to turn up to watch their children participate in an activity on a Saturday morning, and for parents and friends to be able to be part of that, whether in an official capacity or otherwise.
However, community assets have been systematically ripped out or allowed to fall into disrepair, and the ability of communities to engage has been eroded. Too often these days, if people are to participate in any kind of activity, they must come home from work or school and then go somewhere else. That affects the less well off to a much greater degree.
We must look to schools much more for their facilities to become community hubs. We must open up the school estate and use it for community activity. That is surely now more important than ever. Open spaces for people to play and learn in should be in all our communities; my colleague, Liz Smith, has long championed that. Such opportunities are becoming rarer.
Connecting communities is another issue that has been allowed to drift. It has such an impact on a community’s ability to grow and prosper.
Ever since I entered the Scottish Parliament, we in the Conservative Party have been crying out for investment in transport infrastructure, especially in the south-west of Scotland, in my case. Ministers should speak to people in the communities along the A77 and A75, not to mention the A76, A72, A71 and A70, and ask them how easy it is to get to work and to access basic service amenities. How on earth does the Scottish Government expect itself to be taken seriously discussing community wealth building when huge swathes of the country remain ignored, with infrastructure that has not been invested in for decades? We have a Scottish Government that is so insular that it will not engage with the UK Government on its desire to make extra investment in our community infrastructure, as my colleague Douglas Lumsden pointed out.
On the train link in the south-west, I was going to suggest that it needs a significant investment to bring it up to the standard that is required, along with investing in train services generally, opening up stations and rail links, and encouraging the use of public transport. However, that is a bit of a moot point at the moment, given the fact that so few trains are running. There are two trains a day from Stranraer to Glasgow, and, in some cases, the time of last trains to busy Ayrshire stations will be brought back by hours, with some final journeys leaving Glasgow as early as 6.20. Instead of community wealth building, communities are being cut off, so when the Scottish Government has the audacity to mention net zero in its motion, we are left wondering how far out of touch with communities it really is. The only way for communities to reach out just now is by car, and those will not be electric cars because rural communities are the very last places to get electric charging points.
I want to mention public procurement, as I recognise that it was an element in Daniel Johnson’s amendment. I agree with him completely that we should invest money in the local economy wherever possible. Surely that goes without saying. However, again, it is not true for this Government. For as long as I have been a member of the Scottish Parliament, we have been debating with the Scottish Government the need to revise public procurement policy, and encouraging and cajoling it to do so, to no avail.
Specifically, the public procurement of food should be an easy win. We should support our local food producers, the rural economy and the health of our children in school, patients in hospitals and all other public office staff. It is frustrating for me to listen to Fiona Hyslop talk about East Ayrshire. East Ayrshire Council has shown us for years that that can be done and the way to do it, yet the rest of the country is not following suit. How frustrating! Here we are still importing the majority of our food, which is often of a standard that is far lower than that of local produce.