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Plenary, 28 Oct 1999

28 Oct 1999 · S1 · Plenary

Item of business

European Structural Funds

Watson, Mike Lab Glasgow Cathcart Watch on SPTV

It is inevitable that much of the back-bench debate on this issue has revolved around parochial matters. After all, we have been sent here to look after our constituencies, however those may be defined.

I make no apology for continuing the trend of the debate. I have considerable concerns that reflect a number of representations that I—and I imagine other Glasgow MSPs—have received from Glasgow City Council, the Glasgow Alliance, the Strathclyde European Partnership, Heatwise and, from my own area, the Castlemilk Partnership, about the effects of operating objective 2 status.

I do not think that there is any general objection to basing funding on wards instead of on local authorities, and we broadly accept the logic behind that plan as outlined by the minister. However, we need to question how some of the wards have been selected. Cathy Peattie, Sylvia Jackson and other members eloquently outlined the problems in their areas, and I have to do the same for Castlemilk. The ways in which those ward boundaries have been chosen cause real difficulties in that area of the Cathcart constituency. Although there are three wards in the Castlemilk district, the Castlemilk ward itself is to be excluded—the organisations that operate in the ward find that inexplicable.

I do not know whether it will be possible to have a rethink on that issue. The detail emerged only relatively recently. I understood from the minister that the European Commission could amend the UK submission, and I hope very much that any amendments can be made before the EC announces its final decisions.

Castlemilk stands to suffer if the centre of the district is excluded from objective 2 status. Although Glasgow City Council wanted such status for 75 per cent of the city, only 61 per cent will be covered. That is serious. I know by talking to MSPs from other parts of the country that Glasgow tends not to get much sympathy. It is thought that, as Glasgow has had considerable assistance in the past, it needs less assistance now. All the now widely accepted poverty indicators are most obvious in Glasgow, which is not to say that other parts of Scotland do not have them. Although Castlemilk has improved greatly over the past 10 years as one of the partnership areas in the new life for urban Scotland programme, the area still has serious problems, which is evident from many of the poverty indicators.

For the first time, the new European structural fund boundaries will create boundaries within Castlemilk, with the potential to set communities and residents there at odds with one another. I have to tell the minister that the proposed boundaries seem to run contrary to the tenets of the social inclusion policy. Although Castlemilk cannot be one of the social inclusion partnerships because of what has happened over the past 10 years, the Glasgow Alliance regards the area's needs to be sufficiently important as to merit funding and to allow it effectively to continue as a social inclusion partnership area.

Local people and organisations will not understand the divide being drawn within the council ward boundaries. We might have a potentially divisive situation whereby people are refused access to opportunities because they have the wrong address in an area such as Castlemilk, and that might destroy some of the community consensus built up over the past 10 years.

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Plenary, 28 Oct 1999

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