Meeting of the Parliament 21 May 2025
Our islands are wonderful places, and I am honoured to represent all but two of Scotland’s populated islands. Each island is different, with a different personality, but all islanders have things in common: they are resilient, self-sufficient and quick to help and support others in their community. That is the reality of island living.
The Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 built a level of expectation that, I am sad to say, has not been met. The promise was that policy would be island proofed and that islanders would not be disadvantaged due to where they were born or where they had made their home, and the hope was that legislation would help build island economies and stop depopulation. Sadly, that has not happened. Our amendment points to examples such as highly protected marine areas, the ban on wood-burning stoves, the island bonds plan and many other policies that have been designed with no knowledge of islands or their needs.
We need a rural first policy approach in which every policy is tested in rural or island communities to ensure that there are no unintended consequences and that those policies are designed for our island communities. We know that policies designed in rural and island areas work well in urban settings, but the opposite is not the case. Government agencies ignore their obligations under the 2018 act and do not carry out island communities impact assessments; for example, there have been decisions such as the closure of tourist information offices that were obviously detrimental to those communities, but no impact assessment was carried out on them.
The communities of Mull have expressed concerns about the new school campus, but their concerns have been absolutely ignored. That is, of course, an issue for Argyll and Bute Council, which should be subject to the 2018 act and therefore should be island proofing that policy; however, it is also an issue for the Scottish Government, which will provide funding for the campus. It could step in to ensure that all islanders’ ambitions are met. Surely it is wrong that in a modern Scotland children are being forced to leave home to access education.
The act is a huge disappointment to islanders. It could have been a game changer, but it makes little or no difference to their lives.