Meeting of the Parliament 07 November 2024
The biggest challenge in rural areas is the lack of affordable housing. If Rachael Hamilton and her colleagues keep opposing any additional funding for public services and the public sector, that will continue. The biggest threat to rural communities would be more austerity under the Tories, who are not prepared to say where the funding would come from. We can only assume that they would make more cuts, as they have done over the years.
The lack of housing is holding back the local economy. It is stifling growth, fuelling depopulation and blocking the ambitions of those who want to get on in our rural communities. We are simply not building enough affordable homes to meet demand and to meet the needs of our rural communities. That is partly because of house-building capacity. National house builders have no interest in building what they view as small-scale developments in rural areas, and we have seen a decline in the number of locally based house builders. The house builders that exist are increasingly facing skills shortages, and they cannot get local contractors—yet, astonishingly, we have seen funding cuts to colleges, which have led to Skills Development Scotland reducing apprenticeship contracts. At my local college in Dumfries and Galloway, place numbers were cut by 13 per cent, at a time when demand for apprenticeships is at a peak level. The college now has a waiting list for apprenticeship places in construction. That is the economics of the madhouse.
We have also seen a lack of investment in construction when it comes to our infrastructure. The A75 and the A77 are key trunk roads to the ferry terminal at Cairnryan, which is the gateway to Ireland and, for many businesses, to the EU. Despite roads being a devolved issue, the only planned investment for the A75 is coming from the new UK Labour Government, after years of promises that were never delivered on by the Tory Government.
I could highlight, too, the uncertainty for our rural communities that was caused by the Scottish Government’s eight years of dithering while it developed a new rural support scheme, the ferry fiasco or the dismantling of our bus network in rural areas.
It is already clear from the debate that, yes, we need to reset that relationship with our EU partners to get the trade and co-operation agreement right after the failure of the previous Tory Government, but we must also get our own house in order by delivering the jobs, housing and infrastructure that Labour’s UK budget will make possible with the record investment that we will see in Scotland.
I move amendment S6M-15253.1, to insert at end:
“; welcomes the UK Government’s commitment to reset the UK’s relationship with the EU, and calls on the Scottish Government to prioritise the use of all the levers already at its disposal to improve the economy of Scotland’s rural areas, through supporting jobs, providing housing, progressing infrastructure and improving transport links.”
15:28Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.