Meeting of the Parliament 11 June 2026 [Last updated 19:16]
In principle, we need stability of funding and to recognise the great work that happens in community organisations, which I see every week in my constituency. That work is absolutely critical, because those organisations are, to a large extent, the front line, and their ability to deliver for local communities is absolutely critical and needs to be enhanced.
The second issue that I want to talk about is prevention, which Andrew Baxter spoke extensively about. I have his invitation to Skye but I also have a competing invitation to Falkirk, and I am not quite sure which one—if not both—I can fit in over the summer period. The issue of prevention is really important and it is one of the core principles of Christie. It is very easy to talk about and, in principle, everybody gets the idea, but being able to understand and quantify the impact is not as easy as it first appears.
Extensive work on that is going on in Government. Last year, we published our reflections on 25 years of preventive interventions—not just to list them, although there are many, but, more importantly, to understand their impact and the process that was gone through, as well as how the numbers stacked up, what the multiplier was and over what time period those preventive interventions made a difference.
That data is really important. Members can rest assured that extensive work is going on in Government to develop that understanding and to tag budget lines at various levels of prevention—it is not just one preventive bucket; there are many different layers of prevention—depending on their impact and the logic between them and the outcomes. That work is going on, and I would be very happy to engage further with members who are interested in going through the details of it.
A number of members, including David Green and Dawn Black, who made an excellent first speech in the chamber, talked about the importance of local communities. As Jenni Minto identified, that gets to the core of what should be national, what should be regional and what should be local. There is a tension—I will not pretend that there is not—between how we drive economies of scale and how we drive local empowerment. We are keen to work with partners to find our way through that, and we have ideas for how that can be taken forward. It does not make sense to replicate many times something that can be done efficiently once for Scotland. We are focused on that work.
We have saved hundreds of millions of pounds, which we can get to the front line, because of what we have done on procurement and elsewhere. However, that obviously had to be led by what communities want—by what is important to them and by their priorities in the decision making about how resources are allocated. We are working through that in a mature way, and we are happy to engage with others on that.
Alyn Smith made a fabulous contribution, although I am not sure that he is so delighted that he got plaudits from the Reform front bench for it. However, his comments on redesigning the state, about the fact that we have a huge opportunity and about inviting parties across the chamber to be part of that were profound and important. There are some great examples of working together. I know that local government in his area is very much focused on that, and some great initiatives are coming forward from there.
There were too many other ideas in Alyn Smith’s speech for me to cover in this contribution. However, he also hit on a point that we, on these benches, certainly recognise, which is that we are doing this to make Scotland better and to make Scotland ready to be a normal independent country. Getting that foundation in place and rewiring the state is an important stepping stone on that constitutional journey.
Although I am not surprised, some of the contributions were a bit tired, repetitive and less impactful, and they suffered very much from a lack of innovation.