Hansard

It is now 20 years since the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 was passed. The vital question for us all now is where the Gaelic language will be in 20 years’ time.

In 2020, research by academics at the University of the Highlands and Islands, entitled “The Gaelic Crisis in the Vernacular Community”, revealed stark findings. It said that the social use of Gaelic within communities was

“at the point of collapse.”

The decline in the number of Gaelic speakers was steepest among young people, the majority of whom were not using Gaelic either socially or in the home. The researchers warned that, without changes to policy and intervention at community level, the then-present Gaelic vernacular community would not survive beyond the next decade. That was five years ago, so time is clearly running out.

I have genuinely appreciated the Deputy First Minister’s collegiate approach since she took over dealing with the bill. Various members with far greater and longer-standing knowledge of this policy area than I have have told me that there is a desire to maintain the consensus on Gaelic matters that has underpinned previous laws, and I think that that is represented in parts of the bill’s approach. We should certainly not risk joining the prevalent culture wars by politicising the Gaelic culture and language.

However, the Parliament’s cross-party group on Gaelic, of which I am a member, is genuinely concerned that cosy consensus is simply not working and that we are continuing to go in the wrong direction. We were therefore disappointed that, in the face of this existential crisis for Scotland’s ancient language, the Scottish National Party Government chose to introduce a narrowly drawn, education-focused bill. I have expressed that view to the Deputy First Minister.

Of course, education is important for the survival of Gaelic, but it is not the principal means by which the language will be saved or where changes are required. The underlying reasons for the decline in the number of Gaelic speakers, particularly among younger generations, are not in the excellent teaching that is found in Stornoway or in the Gaelic-medium education schools in Glasgow or Edinburgh. The principal issues that endanger Gaelic are economic and social ones. Young people grow up in traditional Gaelic-speaking areas, but they find that there are not enough homes, well-paid jobs, reliable ferries or roads there to enable them to build lives for themselves and their communities. Instead, they leave for opportunities in urban areas, in Scotland or further afield, which are far from the Gaelic heartlands, and, increasingly, they are unlikely to return. Those are the issues that the Parliament and, I hope, the Government should tackle, but they are all outwith the scope of the bill.

Scottish Labour’s 2023 policy paper “Gaelic: An Economic Plan for a Living Language” argued that economic issues including housing, jobs and other critical infrastructure must be addressed in order to arrest the decline of Gaelic. The short-life working group on economic and social opportunities for Gaelic, which the Deputy First Minister herself commissioned in March 2022, made similar arguments in its report. Although its members perhaps did not go as far as Scottish Labour did in our paper; their comments were similar in tone. The Government does not appear to have listened to those arguments, though. I ask the Deputy First Minister to reflect on them in her closing remarks. I fear that the SNP Government has turned its face against the real prospect that, in 20 years’ time, there could be no Gaelic language left to save, because it has been put in the pile of issues that are too hard to deal with.

I welcome the amendments that the Government has worked with members across the chamber to lodge and the modest and incremental changes that they bring to the bill.

I was struck this week that the focus of the Government’s press activity on the bill has been Gaelic-medium education. We are strong supporters of Gaelic-medium education, and minor tweaks have been supported by all parties to ensure that that is provided. However, it is, inevitably, peripheral to whether Gaelic survives as a living language. That is part of the evidence that comes out, and perhaps part of what the Deputy First Minister referred to as the challenge that emerges from the census figures—although there is a larger number of people speaking a basic level of Gaelic, the number of people who continue to use it beyond childhood is decreasing rather than increasing. We have to be concerned about the ability to use Gaelic as a living language rather than as peripheral to people’s lives, or as an add-on to Scottish culture; it must be integral to the way that people live their lives.

Scottish Labour will support the bill at decision time, but we will do so while sounding the alarm that, in the words of the Deputy First Minister, merely building on what has come before will be insufficient to meet the sure trust of our ancestors, with a near certainty that if we do not change course and Gaelic is lost in this generation, part of Scotland will be gone forever.