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There would also be the distribution aspect. I have heard about communities in my region getting incredible wealth, while neighbouring communities have not. How do we make sure that everybody benefits?

I will bring in Rob Davidson and Matthew Brown, then go back to Mark Griffin for a final question.

Do we therefore need to reverse engineer our national performance framework?

You mentioned planetary boundaries earlier. The sustainable development goals are embedded in the national performance framework, so there is an opportunity to look at doughnut economics—or whatever we want to call it—along with community wealth building. This conversation has been brilliant because it has pulled together a lot of strands, including those relating to the circular economy and the local government review.

Okay. Gosh! What a brilliant conversation. I feel that, in a way, we have just scratched the surface, but we got to some very useful points. The reason for our conversation was that a community wealth building bill is coming and we wanted to consider whether there is a need for such legislation. I think that it has become clear that there is, but we have also heard about the shift in culture and consciousness, in a way, to do with co-operation, collaboration, working together and communities leading. There is lots for us to take away. I think that we will get back to some of you, or maybe all of you, for a bit more detail. We have had a very rich discussion this morning. Thanks for letting us go on for quite a bit longer than we planned.

I suspend the meeting briefly to allow our witnesses to leave the room.

The second item on our agenda is to take evidence, in a round-table format, as part of our community wealth building inquiry. We are joined in the room by Matthew Brown, who is the council leader at Preston City Council; Rob Davidson, who is the strategy manager for community wealth building at South of Scotland Enterprise; Iain Gulland, who is the chief executive of Zero Waste Scotland; Angus Hardie, who is the director of the Scottish Community Alliance; Louise Kirk, who is representing the Ayrshire community wealth building commission; Neil McInroy, who is the chair of the Economic Development Association Scotland; and Linda Somerville, who is the deputy general secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress. Online, we are joined by Stacey Dingwall, who is the head of policy and external affairs for the Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland. I warmly welcome you all to the meeting.

I will begin our conversation by inviting everyone to briefly introduce themselves. That might seem odd, because I have just named you all, but it is also partly because we get to hear your voices and just speak into the space.

I am Ariane Burgess, convener of the committee and an MSP for the Highlands and Islands region.

You do not need to operate your microphones—we will take care of that. That is one less thing to think about.

Thanks so much for joining us. We will turn to questions from members. I will give you a bit of information on how to involve yourselves. Usually, a member will initially direct a question to somebody, but if you want to comment, please indicate to me or to our assistant clerk, Kath Byrne. Stacey, as you are online, put an R in the chat function if you want to come in. As I said earlier, there is no need for you to turn microphones on and off, as we will do that for you.

I am delighted that we are having this round-table meeting. It feels as though we are making quite a start with regard to the fact that the Government is talking about a community wealth building bill. However, my sense is that community wealth building is already happening in Scotland to some degree, and some of you are certainly representing that. Therefore, initially—I will direct this question to Neil McInroy to start with, just to give you a heads-up—I am interested to know whether you have a sense in your work that we really understand that community wealth building will bring benefits. Is there agreement on that across Scotland? How does that approach differ from what has gone before—for example, with community empowerment and inclusive growth? Neil—I know that you talk quite a lot about the predistributive and redistributive models. How do we ensure that that is taking place?

Thanks for that.

I am hearing from people around Scotland that there is concern that community wealth building could end up being just another form of economic development. From your experience, how can we ensure that that does not happen? How can we make sure that what happens is about community wealth building and that it has the redistributive and predistributive aspects? How have you done that in Preston?

That is a really interesting question. How do we take the people with us?

Louise Kirk—I want to bring you into the conversation. We visited Great Cumbrae and saw some of the work that has been happening in North Ayrshire. As part of the Ayrshire community wealth building commission, you have been doing that work. We are looking at the topic now because we are anticipating a community wealth building bill, so it would be good to hear a bit about your experience in all the work that you have been doing as part of your commission.

Also, what have you bumped into that has indicated that we need some primary legislation? What is in the way of you being able to really flourish in what you are doing?

That is helpful, and thanks for pointing us to that resource.

I will bring in Rob Davidson and then Neil McInroy, and then I will come to Matthew Brown with a question about legislation. Iain Gulland also indicated that he wants to comment, and some of you may want to come back in on things that others have brought up. Please feel free to do that.

Matthew Brown, I said earlier that I wanted to know how Preston has done this without legislation, but perhaps there is legislation. How have you done this?