Meeting of the Parliament 27 September 2022
No, I do not, but I take the opportunity to invite Mr Lumsden and other members to read the document that we are debating and to reflect on the fact that we are trying to approach the challenge in partnership with representatives of local government from different parts of the country and with representatives of different parts of Scottish society. I would genuinely welcome a serious attempt by the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party to take part in that debate.
Last year, this Government published Scotland’s first population strategy—one that was endorsed by the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and that sets out the actions that we will look to take at local and national level to address our population challenges. Those actions were set out against four pillars, which set out that Scotland should be family friendly; be a healthy living society; be an attractive and welcoming country; and have a balanced population.
I chair a cross-cutting ministerial population task force, which is looking across Scottish Government to identify where policies should be strengthened and what new actions we need to take. In the past year, my task force colleagues and I have developed a new talent attraction and migration service that will be launched in 2023 to support both Scottish employers who will recruit and individuals who want to come to Scotland. We have committed to publishing an addressing depopulation action plan, working with communities facing the most acute population retention challenges. We have refreshed the independent expert advisory group on migration and population, which continues to provide expert advice, as it has done since 2018. We have commissioned new research looking at attitudes to family size and how those have changed over time and have looked to learn from work that other nations have done to address similar demographic challenges.
Scottish Government ministers have continued to reflect our demographic challenges in their own portfolios, through work such as the housing to 2040 strategy, the fourth national planning framework and the national islands plan.
Despite that work, there are crucial levers that are not within Scottish ministers’ control, most notably immigration. Scotland’s population is not a monolith. From Edinburgh to the Orkney Islands, from the Borders to Argyll and Bute, every local authority feels our demographic challenge differently. Some local authorities are experiencing rapid population growth, while others are experiencing population decline. Rapid population growth and depopulation both bring challenges, and we are committed to working with partners to support population balance.
I will focus today on the specific challenges that are faced by our rural communities. Let me be clear: there is no easy fix to local population challenges, such as depopulation. That is why we are working collaboratively, with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and local authorities in general, and through structures such as the convention of the Highlands and Islands and the convention of the south of Scotland, to ensure that we have a partnership approach that best addresses our population challenges. Migration is a crucial part of that approach, yet current UK Government immigration policy does not reflect the needs of Scotland’s rural communities.