Meeting of the Parliament 10 February 2026 [Draft]
My amendments 14 and 18 would replace the word “investment” with the words “funding and finance”. The line that is affected, which reads
“promoting access to investment opportunities that provide a benefit to the community and to local businesses”,
was added by the Scottish Government as a late stage 2 amendment. It was not made completely clear to me why that was added. It did not come from any of the evidence that we took at the Economy, Energy and Fair Work Committee, although many questions were raised about funding for community wealth building and access to finance.
The problem with the phrasing in the bill, which refers to
“promoting access to investment opportunities that provide a benefit to the community and to local businesses”
is that external or foreign investment in local assets would meet that criteria if it created jobs or facilitated the building of infrastructure. Neither of those is a bad thing, but that is absolutely not what community wealth building is about.
Community wealth building is about the community and local people owning and benefiting from the assets. It is absolutely necessary for community wealth building projects to access “funding and finance”, however, and I think that the distinction is important. I ask members, therefore, to support my amendments, so as not to inadvertently undermine the purpose and intention of the bill.
I am unable to support Richard Leonard’s amendments 2 and 6, because I do not think that it is appropriate for the Government to try to influence commercial lending, as the amendments propose to do. I think that Scotland’s enterprise agencies should improve their support for co-operatives and other democratic and employee-owned business models, and that more should be done to support mutual banks and credit unions, and I would have supported any amendment that was framed in that way.
I am happy to support Paul Sweeney’s amendment 13, which would include co-operative finance organisations.
I find that Richard Leonard’s amendment 1 is too prescriptive. I would support increasing in-sourcing, but I cannot accept that it is always, and in every case, the best option.
Finally, I cannot support the amendment in Murdo Fraser’s name, which suggests that the interests of the generic term “businesses” should be considered on an equal footing with “the community” and “social enterprises” in a community wealth building bill. The amendment would make a substantial change to my amendment to the bill that was agreed to at stage 2, which was all about ensuring community engagement. Mr Fraser’s amendment would allow that to be hijacked by local business interests and would do much to undermine the intention of the bill, and I ask members not to support it.