Seòmar agus comataidhean

That sounds very positive. However, something that causes alarm bells to ring, and which I have started to think about it quite a bit over this session, is the fact that it is one thing to invest, but Scotland suffers from a history of wealth extraction. One of the pieces of work that we have been doing over this session has been on the idea of community wealth building. We are encouraging all that external investment, but how do we ensure that wealth is not completely extracted through shareholders and so on, and that the communities are actually invested in? How do we build that wealth?

Earlier, we were talking about place-based work with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government and the amazing work that is happening at Granton with out-of-silo funding. The main point is, how do we ensure that investment comes in but also that the wealth stays with the communities?

For clarification, you would work with community enablers on identifying need. They work to support communities to get the confidence and capacity when they are embarking on a £6 million housing project and they have never had the experience of doing that. Helping to build that confidence seems to me to be a crucial role.

11:45

I also like what you said about how it should not just be left to communities to do it. Councils need to take a facilitation approach in supporting the community to deliver rather than having a volunteer board that can be hung out to dry when any project goes on for quite a long time.

I want to pick up on something that you said earlier about building standards. At the beginning of your opening statement, you talked about the budget and what fits into that envelope, and you mentioned building standards. We have not really gotten into the detail of that, but I think that that issue is connected to the conversation that we have just been having about cladding and RAAC. Over this parliamentary session, the committee has started to really look at building safety and quality. In our evidence sessions on cladding, RAAC, and damp and mould, it has come up that sometimes the materials that are used—for example, the cladding technology and the chemicals that are in it—are problematic. Is there something that we need to do in that space?

We were thinking about a couple of issues. One is whether there needs to be an inventory of the fundamental materials that go into house building in the future, so that we know what materials our houses are being made of. The other issue is whether we are making sure that the materials that a construction company or a housing developer chooses to put in are actually up to standard. Nobody could have imagined a situation in which cladding led to the horrors of Grenfell tower, but do we need to be doing something to monitor that kind of thing?

It is helpful to hear from you the differentiation between cladding and RAAC and that you are taking a broader view of that forum. A question about its scope has come up at committee, because once you get into a building, you discover other things.

We both agreed, cabinet secretary, that we were straying a little from discussing the budget, but the issues were connected. We are now talking about cladding remediation in the context of a budget, because of the fact that we were misinformed about the materials that ended up being used. There is absolutely an interconnection—I do not know whether that is systems thinking or out-of-silo thinking. Are we using the right materials? Will it get us into a situation down the line?

I totally take your point, Stephen, that we cannot necessarily predict the future of something, but it is about having an awareness of what the construction industry is choosing to use and ensuring that we are getting the right materials into people’s homes.

You will possibly be glad to know that that was the end of our questions for you. It has been a very good discussion. The housing budget has had a wobbly time over this parliamentary session, and from this discussion, it feels like it is now in a much better space.

I really appreciate your focus and, I would say, diligence. As convener of this committee, I am grateful that we have a Cabinet Secretary for Housing, because we absolutely needed that level of leadership in this space. It is great that we finally got there in this session.

That concludes our questions and the public part of the meeting.

12:18

Meeting continued in private until 12:47.

That is very interesting. I was going to ask this question later, but I will ask it now, because you mentioned renewable energy and the idea that, given that Shetland islanders are hosting such infrastructure, they should get more infrastructure that will benefit them personally by transforming their lives and that will support them to help us to meet our carbon ambitions.

Has the Scottish Government explored opportunities for community ownership of renewable energy? Countries such as Denmark and the Netherlands are often cited in that regard. In Denmark, there is 50 per cent community ownership of renewable energy, although that could include community and local authority ownership. Have you thought about entering into those conversations? Ownership, rather than benefit, could bring considerable income for local authorities and communities to help us to achieve the ambitions that we are talking about.

For sure. Let us look at community and local authority ownership of onshore wind. Orkney Islands Council has done a great job in setting about offering ownership of a number of wind farms.

Although the scale is big and we need private finance, is there a space where the Government, perhaps through the Scottish National Investment Bank, could support communities to own a piece of such developments? The Government has the ambition of at least 10 per cent of energy being community owned. It is fantastic that the island of Yell has five wind turbines and that Tiree has one, but I am not talking about small developments. When big wind farms are put up onshore, communities need to have some ownership of them. I think that that would help with the general direction of travel that the Government wants to go in to meet its renewable energy ambitions.

Fulton, you mentioned that you might have a supplementary question. Did you manage to get a response to it?

You do not need to switch on the microphone; we will do that for you, Philip.

We might need to have a jargon-busting glossary to explain what Blue Petering means for some people who are watching this or reading the Official Report.

I want to pick up on the cabinet secretary’s points on Granton. Throughout this parliamentary session, there have been conversations about how we get out of silos. It seems to me that Granton is a very fine example of considering everything together, including transport and housing. I want to celebrate that and note that it can be challenging to get out of those budgetary silos. Once something is on a spreadsheet, it can be difficult. Granton is a fantastic example and it would be great to see more of that happening across Scotland.