Seòmar agus comataidhean

I turn to the text of the bill, at the start of which two statements of intent are set out. The first is to

“reduce economic and wealth inequality”—

I can fully get behind that—and the second is to

“support economic growth in and across Scotland”.

I am interested in hearing your thoughts on how we measure economic growth, because witness after witness at our evidence sessions has told us that GDP is not a good measure of what we are trying to achieve with the bill. Is there a way of measuring or describing the economic success that we wish to achieve, other than by using GDP to measure economic growth?

While discussing community wealth building, we have heard a lot that community and employee-led businesses are so important for community wealth building but, when people want to start a co-operative or other such organisation, the resources to do that are not necessarily available. I would appreciate that being discussed.

I have a couple of specific questions about the bill. First, the bill provides for three years for bodies to come together and create a community wealth building action plan. From the evidence that the committee has received, a quarter of councils—eight out of the 32—are already doing something on community wealth building. I do not know what that means for the rest—whether they are doing nothing or not enough.

Three years seems like quite a long time, because it will be three years after the bill has been passed, which will be several months off. As councils have already started on that work, could we make that period more ambitious? Would it be reasonable to say two years?

That is brilliant—thank you. My second question is about the intentions behind the bill and how we measure success. Right up front, the bill says that its intention is to

“reduce economic and wealth inequality ... and ... support economic growth”.

In various evidence sessions, we have heard how we might measure economic growth or success. If economic growth is measured simply by GDP, that does not necessarily measure the things that we are trying to achieve with community wealth building, such as quality of life, crisis management and the human connection piece that we know is so important but is not necessarily captured in GDP.

How do councils and COSLA measure economic success? Do you have standard metrics? Is there something that you look at? How would you decide whether the bill was working in your areas?

I have two questions that are largely about exploring the same theme slightly more. If I understand correctly, the intention of the bill is to allow the UK to align more closely with the EU. Is that written into the bill or is that just how the current UK Government has said that it intends to use the bill? Could a different UK Government use it to diverge from the EU?

Morven, do you have anything to add?

My second question builds on an issue that Matt Pearce has already spoken about—that of who else should be on the list of organisations that should be around the table. I am interested to hear everyone’s thoughts on that. In particular, I am interested in why some people need to be around the table.

During our evidence sessions, we have been told that some people need to be at the table because they own the assets—they own chunks of land—or because they have significant procurement powers. That is the case with the national health service, for example.

Matt, could you give an overview on why certain organisations need to be around the table? After that, I would love to hear from everyone on whether we have the right people on those lists and who else should be on those lists.

It concerns me also that there appears to be a creeping rolling back of devolution. Each piece of legislation, such as this bill, does not seem so bad by itself, but the accumulation means that the powers of the Scottish Parliament to diverge and to put in place our own legislation to protect Scotland’s environment are absolutely being restricted. I share your frustrations on this. I would like to feed back to the Scottish Government that I certainly support it pushing back harder on protecting Scottish devolution. The direction of travel is very worrying to me.

Does anyone else have a view on who should be around the table?

On that point, we have heard from other witnesses that the financial pillar is often the most difficult of the community wealth building pillars to address. Is there anything that the Scottish Government should do, or that should be included in the bill, to increase the capacity of such financial players to be involved?

Councillor Macgregor, I will pick up on a point that you made about Business Gateway, given that you are familiar with it. I have heard from stakeholders that Business Gateway cannot support and mainstream social enterprises, co-operatives and other more democratic business models as much as people would hope. If people are trying to start such an organisation, Business Gateway does not necessarily have the tools to support them. Is that true or is that not your experience?