Meeting of the Parliament 19 June 2024
There are many perverse realities in our current economy, such as the one that the member highlights. My colleague Lorna Slater will speak later in the debate about how the vision that we want to present can be made real and tangible in order to deal with some of those perversities and create the kind of industrial strategy that Scotland so desperately needs.
Our answer to the second question—what is it that we want to grow?—is key. It is not the sterile statistic of GDP, but our capacity to thrive as a nation, as cities, as towns and villages, as families, as communities and as unique and inspiring human beings. Under the current devolution settlement, our resources are limited. Indeed, our agency is significantly challenged. That is why, as Greens, we argue for an independent Scotland that has the powers and capacities to act as radically, as swiftly and as compassionately as the intersecting crises require.
However, we cannot let those resource and agency limitations distract us from the work that we can do today. If we advocate for independence for a very different kind of state, it is more important than ever to pay attention to what we are doing now and to exactly what kind of future we are investing in. Does it plant seeds of care and creativity as well as of science and technology? Does it support co-operatives and social enterprises as well as ambitious entrepreneurs? Does it measure success by equality and wellbeing as well as by productivity and export? The current model does not do those things. The purpose of modern state capitalism is to socialise the costs and risks of society and the economy while privatising the profits. That does not plant those seeds of care and creativity or generate and sustain equality and wellbeing.
That is where this debate crucially connects with one of the debates that I spoke in last week, on our shared priority to eradicate child poverty. It is by looking at our economy through that clear and focused lens, by asking what impact each of our decisions about investment, policy or practice has on the poorest children and the adults that they will become, and by making their rights real and realised that we will find the direction for the economy that we need.
I move amendment S6M-13679.1, to insert at end:
“; acknowledges the important contribution that community and social enterprises, cooperatives and other not-for-profit structures make to local economies, including local resilience and community wealth building; recognises the need to promote science and technology, but also creative and caring work that sustains Scotland’s society and culture, and agrees that proper investment in the green economy is required to deliver the urgent transformations that are needed to develop an economy that has equality and fairness at its heart.”
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