Meeting of the Parliament 03 February 2015
I agree with the minister that the five points that the society makes will form the basis of a discussion.
The letter that the society has submitted highlights a missed opportunity to link the bill to the food strategy and to health and wellbeing through the community planning partnerships, and to build its aims into local community plans. We should be able to have those discussions, and I am happy to join the minister in engaging in them. As I said, I am a very keen allotment grower and I would like to see allotments expand.
I will quickly highlight a few other issues. Inclusion Scotland states that
“in absence of genuine and meaningful community capacity building and engagement, the opportunities created by the Bill will not be”
equally distributed. It goes on to state that under part 3 of the bill
“Communities which are the most marginalised, fractured and impoverished are likely to benefit least whilst communities already rich in resources and human assets are likely to benefit most through their acquisition of new assets”.
The Local Government and Regeneration Committee highlights the same points, which are genuine and need to be taken on board.
Inclusion Scotland’s briefing also highlights the issue of how “community” is defined. I was quite surprised to see that, because I thought that the Government was looking at the definition more widely. However, I discovered from reading the cabinet secretary’s evidence in committee that that was not what was said, so we need to take on board Inclusion Scotland’s point.
To go back to the point that I made at the start and that the minister made in his opening speech, if we are serious about tackling inequalities and poverty, we must recognise that empowerment is one part of that and getting community planning right is another. In a previous role, I met the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Employment and Sustainable Growth and had a discussion about that. I am absolutely committed to community planning, but we must recognise the points that Inclusion Scotland makes, including that it believes
“that the requirement placed on community groups to request participation disempowers rather than empowers communities, as it leaves the power with the public bodies, which should instead have a duty to … engage with communities.”
There are some serious points in that that we must pick up and consider if we are serious about the principles of the bill. They are all highlighted in the evidence to the committee.
This morning, I read another briefing that came from Barnardo’s, Oxfam and others. I note that they talk about participatory budgeting. The minister has said that he is interested in that, and some pots of money have been made available.
I am a big believer in the idea that there is in Scotland a fourth tier of government—community councils. As we discussed in the committee, many people criticise them because they often tell us what they are against rather than what they are for. In my constituency, three community councils had elections only a few months ago. The turnout was 22 or 23 per cent, which is not bad when we consider that it was 27 per cent in the by-election in Kirkcaldy, which I thought was good for a by-election. That means that 20-odd per cent of the communities in Kelty, Cardenden and Lumphinnans turned out to elect local community councillors.
If we go back to the Local Government and Regeneration Committee’s previous report on empowerment and voting patterns, we see the argument that, if councils are perceived to have more powers, more people are likely to come out and vote. It is likewise with the fourth tier of government in Scotland. It is worth exploring passing budgets down through participatory budgeting to local level to empower communities to take local action.