Publication - Minutes

Convention of the Highlands and Islands minutes: October 2022

Published: 24 July 2023
Directorate: Jobs and Wellbeing Economy Directorate
Topic: Economy
Date of meeting: 3 October 2023

Minutes from the meeting of the group on 03 October 2022

Attendees and apologies

Attendees

Cameron Anson, Scottish Government
Raymond Bremner , Highland Council
Fiona Brown, Transport Scotland
Amanda Bryan, Crown Estate Scotland
Mike Cantlay, NatureScot
Robin Currie, Argyll and Bute Council
Rob Dickson, VisitScotland
Alastair Dodds, Highlands and Islands Enterprise
Morven Fancey, Highlands and Islands Enterprise
Jenny Gilruth, Scottish Government
Mairi Gougeon, Scottish Government
Aidan Grisewood, Scottish Government
Alan Hill, North Ayrshire Council
Bill Lobban, Highland Council
Mairi MacInnes, Bòrd na Gàidhlig.
Mary McAllan, Scottish Government
Frank Mitchell, Skills Development Scotland
Grant Moir, Cairngorms National Park Authority
Kathleen Robertson, Moray Council
Paul Steele, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar
James Stockan, Orkney Islands Council
John Swinney, Scottish Government

Items and actions

Agenda

10:30 - 10:40 Welcome and Review of Previous Outcomes
10:40 – 11:20 My Life in the Highlands and Islands
11:20 – 12:30 Cost of Living / Doing business
12:30 – 13:15 Lunch Break
13:15 – 13:35 Update from the Regional Economic Partnership (REP)
13:35 – 14:05 National Strategy for Economic Transformation(NSET)
14:05 – 14:55 Population
14:55 – 15:45 Transport
15:45 – 16:05 Break
16:05 – 16:20 Outcomes
16:20 – 16:30 Forward Look & Close

Start of Transcript

John Swinney:

Morning, colleagues. If we could make a start please, can I extend a very warm welcome to everybody to the autumn meeting of the Convention of the Highlands and Islands here in the Corran Halls in Oban. First of all, can I express my thanks to Argyll and Bute Council - Councillor Robin Currie, Leader of the Council, is with me here - for assisting us in hosting this meeting today which is a gathering that draws together a range of public service leaders in the Highlands and Islands for dialogue with the government about the shared priorities that we intend to pursue. We've got an agenda that reflects that today, which has been comprised by the teams that work in support of our activities. Now it's the first meeting that's taken place since the local authority elections in May of this year. It's just this year. Yes, it is. I feel as if I often have lived through a week in a day actually or it certainly feels like that these days.

I think we'll just go round the table so that everybody knows who's who since there are quite a number of new faces round the table. I'm John Swinney, the Deputy First Minister.

Mairi Gougeon:

Mairi Gougeon, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands.

John Swinney:

I should also have stopped, Mairi - can you use the microphone, please? Because it's all being recorded. We can only have one microphone on at the one time, so I shall switch my microphone off now, Mairi.

Mairi Gougeon:

Mairi Gougeon. I'm the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands.

Jenny Gilruth:

Jenny Gilruth, Minister for Transport.

Bill Lobban:

Bill Lobban, Convenor of Highland Council.

Raymond Bremner:

Raymond Bremner, Leader of the Highland Council.

Fiona Brown:

Fiona Brown. I'm Interim Director at Transport Scotland.

Amanda Bryan:

Amanda Bryan, Chair of Crown Estate Scotland.

Rob Dickson:

Rob Dickson, Director of Industry and Destination Development at VisitScotland.

Grant Moir:

Grant Moir, Chief Executive of Cairngorms National Park Authority.

Alistair Dodds:

Alistair Dodds, Chair of HIE. Highlands and Islands Enterprise, that is.

Morven Fancey:

Morven Fancey, Highlands and Islands Enterprise.

Cameron Anson:

Cameron Anson, Scottish Government Islands Team.

Frank Mitchell:

Frank Mitchell, Chair of Skills Development Scotland.

Mairi MacInnes:

Mairi MacInnes, Chair, Cathraiche of Bòrd na Gàidhlig.

Mary McAllan:

Mary McAllan, Director of COVID Recovery and Public Service Reform.

Mike Cantlay:

Mike Cantlay, Chair, NatureScot and Chair of Scottish Funding Council.

Alan Hill:

Alan Hill, North Ayrshire Council.

James Stockan:

James Stockan, Orkney Islands Council.

Kathleen Robertson:

Kathleen Robertson, Moray Council.

Aidan Grisewood:

Aidan Grisewood, Director of Economic Strategy, Scottish Government.

Paul Steele:

Paul Steele, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar.

Robin Currie:

Robin Currie, Leader of Argyll and Bute Council.

John Swinney:

Okay, thanks all - so a very warm welcome to everybody to the discussion today. I'll invite Robin to say a few words of welcome and then I'll set out some points on the agenda this morning. Robin.

Robin Currie:

Thanks very much, Deputy First Minister. May I, too, extend to all of you a very warm welcome to Oban. Argyll and Bute has been waiting for a while now to be able to meet with you all in person. We're delighted to be able to do so at long last as we take our turn as hosts of the autumn CoHI session.

It's incredibly useful to be able to gather together, I would say, like this, local and national government together along with our key partner agencies to consider the strategic issues that really matter to the areas that we represent. Each of us knows our own areas have their unique challenges and opportunities. Those who have come to Argyll and Bute in person today will see a glimpse of some of those at first hand. While those challenges and opportunities may have different drivers or characteristics, there's inevitably common ground to be identified and the benefits to be found through working together, bringing all levels together round the table we are doing today. I'm looking forward to our usual positive and constructive discussions. Thanks very much, Deputy First Minister.

John Swinney:

Thanks very much, Robin. Very grateful to you and your colleagues for hosting this event and for your warm welcome. You remind me in the course of those comments, of course, that this is the first meeting of CoHI in person since all of the disruption that we've been going through, so it's lovely to be back face to face with colleagues.

Let me just say a few words about the Convention of the Highlands and Islands before we start, because I am conscious there's a range of new faces round the table here. The Convention of the Highlands and Islands was established before we came to government in 2007. It was a concept to do exactly what Robin has said, which was to create a forum for open dialogue at all levels of government and recognising the fact that there's a whole range of different perspectives have to be brought to the conversation about how we address some of the mutual challenges that we face and how we can maximise the effectiveness of working together to achieve the best outcomes for people in the Highlands and Islands. I've chaired every one of these meetings since 2007. It's been an enormous pleasure to do that and a personal commitment I've wanted to make to make sure that this forum could be influential directly into the heart of the Scottish Government.

What I would encourage - we have a formal agenda. There'll be various contributions to be made in terms of presentations. All of that will be excellent. But what I would encourage people to do is to just basically say it as it is. There's no point us having a conversation round this table that isn't an accurate reflection of the hard realities that we are all trying to address. Nobody's precious round the table or certainly I'm not precious anyway. I see the Chairman of Highlands and Islands Enterprise is chortling at that. He's probably had far too much experience of my preciousness over the years. I just would encourage people, make your contribution. The agenda's open for us to have an open discussion about some of the issues that we face and to do that in a constructive spirit. The government will engage on that basis.

I should say for housekeeping there's no fire alarm, so if it goes off, we've got to do what we've got to do. All the catering, et cetera, will be provided in the room where we assembled beforehand.

The agenda today, you have. The first item will be My Life in the Highlands and Islands, led by Highlands and Islands Enterprise. We'll then look at I think what is the absolutely central issue that we are all wrestling with, which is the cost of living and the challenges that the current conditions are throwing up for us all. We'll get an update from the Regional Economic Partnership which again is a crucial element of drawing together our shared agenda, the National Strategy for Economic Transformation which is guiding the government's Economic Strategy. We'll then look at the population questions, which we've looked at before and which we recognise to be of significance and which parliament actually just debated the other day there. Lastly transport issues. Last but by no means least I should say, transport issues, because transport issues are never very far away from the conversations that we have here. That's our agenda.

I'm delighted to be joined by my colleagues, Mairi Gougeon and Jenny Gilruth, whose responsibilities spread across these different questions that we have in front of us today.

With that, we'll move on. Just to acknowledge, there's an update on the outcomes from the spring Convention of the Highlands and Islands paper which has been circulated. I don't know if any colleagues have got any issues they want to raise on any of those points, but they're largely reflected in the agenda that we have in front of us today.

Okay, we'll then move on to the first session which is on My Life in the Highlands and Islands. I'll invite Mairi to open up this - sorry. Kathleen, yes, please.

Kathleen Robertson:

Yeah. Thank you. Sorry, just on the outcomes and obviously being new to this as well, I'm just wondering about the timescales for delivery of the outcomes and how achievable that they've been and how we move forward with things going to the future.

John Swinney:

I think one of the points that we often wrestle with here is that our discussions can often lead us to conclusions which are that we need to talk about that further. It becomes a perpetual conversation. There's a number of items of that nature. I think part of how I'd explain that is that - we were having a convention just shortly before local authority elections where people are not in a position to commit particularly to what's the direction of travel.

I think what I'm keen to make sure is that we get to concrete items that can be delivered and delivered within reasonable timescale and that what we try to identify here is where there are any particular obstacles that we need to try to get out of the way. Now if I look at other issues that we've looked at in the past - for example, some of the issues that have concerned us about renewable energy, for example, and some of the interrelationship with Ofgem or issues around connectivity where we've had issues with BT and Openreach and all these characters and mobile phone companies - we've actually made very concrete progress on some of these items. I think I would simply say at the outset the more we can focus on very specific propositions, the better, to enable to us to make more headway and to be able to monitor the progress that we make. James.

James Stockan:

Yeah. Thank you very much, DFM. This is maybe a really good chance for us to have a look back. I can understand completely, Kathleen, because I came in here as a leader five years ago and the outcomes came thick and fast at me. But I did realise now that we've got almost the same items on the agenda just for us to review what we have managed to do and because we're interested in actually an action list and see what's been completed. But really to help us, because we need to make the very best of this forum, because we value it. We want to make sure that it delivers and is in a way - I found it difficult, at the end of the meetings, coming to terms with outcomes coming at me just in words right at the end of the meeting, because being a dyslexic as I am, I found that difficult to grasp. But I do know that we need to make the most of this forum.

We will have the same agenda in five years' time too, because these are really big Highlands and Islands issues. But we want to actually milestone the things where we've made interventions that have worked and face up to the things that we've tried to do that haven't worked, know where we can support the Scottish Government in pushing things where the matters are still [(a) reserved], but actually challenging the government where the issues are devolved so that we can all get a better outcome. So it would be quite good just to have a bit of review, particularly with so many new council people round the tables.

John Swinney:

Okay. I think it might be a bit of a challenge to do that today, but certainly I'm very happy to do that, James. We are at the start of a local authority term. The government's only 12 months or so into its term, so we've got clear line of sight for at least a four-year period. As I suspect we will come back to on countless occasions during today, we have got shared challenges, so how we navigate our way through those will be helpful. But in the course of today, we can identify those. The other thing I would say about the outcomes, there's a lot of work goes on in-between meetings of the convention, so we've got to make sure that there's proper opportunity for various voices to be heard to ensure that we're making satisfactory progress on all these questions. Okay. If we're done with that point, Mairi, I'll get you to take us through the next part of the session.

Mairi Gougeon:

Okay. Thank you. I'm delighted to be taking us through and opening this agenda item on the results of the survey of My Life in the Highlands and Islands and, I think as Robin mentioned in his welcoming comments, just about the unique challenges and opportunities for communities across the region. I think the survey really provides a comprehensive overview of a lot of that. The data that's ultimately within this will help shape policy at national, regional and the local level too. With that - and of course, want to allow as much time for discussion as possible - I'll hand over to Alistair Dodds from HIE who's going to take us through the presentation.

Alistair Dodds:

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. I think just picking up on the first few comments, I can agree with James, but I also know that DFM looks for action as well. It's for us all around this table to take action and to work together, not just policies and strategies but implementation. I think that's where I'd agree with James. It's really important that we take information like this and use it but use it in action, not only to create future plans and strategies. That would be my challenge to us all in here, including HIE. Next slide.

This survey has been done - and apologies from Stuart Black. He was supposed to doing this but is indisposed this morning, Cabinet Secretary. You have myself standing in. I think quotes are really quite pertinent here. The first one comes from the National Economic Transformation Strategy. I think probably what I would emphasise there is the need for transformation, that we really need all to work together to make sure that Highlands and Islands in Scotland are a successful place. The second bit of information there really refers to the DFM's and Scotland's strategy about COVID recovery and the need to build on what people, families, businesses, communities all need, what their priorities and how they perceive their local area. Next slide, please.

This just gives a bit of background to the survey. There was over 5000 responses from over 4000 households, so it's quite a comprehensive survey and probably much more depth of coverage than other surveys undertaken in Scotland. There were then focus groups to pick up qualitative information. I actually think the information here will be really helpful to us going forward and particularly with the agenda we've got today. I think it helps reinforce the actions we've got to take, whether it's housing, transport, broadband. They're all coming out here as priorities for local people. Next slide, please.

This refers to the facilities and services. One of, I think, the aims of government policy at the moment is to create 20-minute neighbourhoods. I think it's absolutely vital that policy developers in Scotland realise that across the Highlands and Islands that's not terribly helpful. It might be in Inverness. It might be in Dingwall. But there are lots of places where it just won't cut it. Quite a lot of the information in here is actually based on 20-minute driving times. Even then, there are significant numbers of communities that are left out.

This one looks at services. I was having a conversation with Mr Stockan last week. At the moment, I'm actually really positive about the Highlands and Islands. There are amazing job opportunities coming up all over. I've never been as positive about this in the eight or nine years I've been on the HIE board, but there are a number of things that have to go with that. These services are some of them, because that's what people are looking for when they move in or want to stay in an area. But really, really important. This one refers to general services.

The next slide refers to health services. Again these are things that individuals are looking for in their local area. Fairly good access to services like GPs. I'm quite surprised about the dentist statistic, but it's there. That's the response that's coming. But when you get into the more complex services, you see that there's obviously less availability. Next slide, please.

This, as you'll see, is about housing. The one common theme that comes out really strongly wherever we go across the Highlands and Islands is housing. It's not just social housing. It's a whole range. You go to the Outer Hebrides. You go to Uist. Young people might want the short-term access to social housing, but they also want the ability to get plots to be able to buy a house. I think we need to look at that mix and we'll be talking about that later on, but you do see some of the issues that come up. They're all a variety of multiple reasons really for the issues around there, but they are critical for economic development and for population growth. Next slide, please.

Again this is picking up some of the issues around about housing. It focuses on heating and fuel poverty which is a huge issue across the Highlands and Islands and is increasing. Very difficult to retrofit a lot of the houses up here. Probably difficult to retrofit houses in the rest of Scotland. But the issues that came up were about cost, sometimes lack of interest - which we [could] probably do something about - but also lack of financial support. That survey was actually done before we really got into the crisis of costs, so it's likely that these statistics would be worse now than when the survey was undertaken. This was done in the early part of this year. The next slide, please.

This one relates to transport. Huge dependency on cars in the Highlands and Islands, again as you'd expect, with 80 per cent reliant to some extent on cars. That actually increases, the more rural areas and the island authorities. Looking, of course, it's part of government policy and government developments to look at electric vehicles. At the moment, what we're getting is that they're too expensive but also the difficulty and reliability about charging points. Again I suspect that's not necessarily confined to the Highlands and Islands. Big reliance on island households for ferries and I'm sure the Transport Minister will be well aware of these issues by now. Then quite a significant number also reliant on air travel, the islands. Again we need to focus on there. Next slide, please.

This one relates to employment. As you'll realise, there's big reliability on public sector employment here and also self-employment. The other interesting thing is, which you certainly see in the more remote and rural areas, about the plurality of employment so getting a number of jobs to make a real living. I think it's something that again we need just to be aware of. Next slide, please.

Sorry, I should say that these will become available for participants here. It's important that they are used.

This particular slide is about the importance of trades that came up to local people. In relation to start-ups - and again there's quite an interest in self-employment across the area. This probably particularly applies to HIE and Business Gateway that people have the right advice at the right time and that advice is accessible. There's been quite a lot of work going on about that. Next slide, please.

This slide refers to a fairer, more equal society and skilled workforce. There was a big interest in green jobs. There's significant interest in retraining to take up these job opportunities that we've got. But what was quite interesting is that because of the dispersed population, it's not always easy to access training, either because of poor broadband or travel distance. I think Skills Development Scotland and others need to be aware of that. How do we try and get to these hard-to-reach individuals who are keen to improve their lot? I think there's probably investment needed to get that change. Next slide, please.

Again this is about fairer, more equal, how people feel about their current jobs. Still significant. This has been a big issue in the Highlands and Islands about low pay and the types of jobs that have been available in the past. That's still an issue. People like their jobs, high levels of job satisfaction and again a real significant interest in fair work practices. One of the things we have done, Deputy First Minister, in Highlands and Islands Enterprise, I think probably unlike some of the other agencies in Scotland - perhaps the Scottish Government itself has - we have introduced fair work criteria for the support we give. It's been introduced from 1 April. Just to give you some, I suppose, positive feedback is we're not getting a lot of kickback about this. There has been from some third-sector organisations that are probably dependent on grant, but generally it's been received very positively. I'm really pleased about that. I'm pleased that we've introduced it, both in terms of grant assistance but also around procurement. Next slide, please.

This slide is about pride, optimism and participation in their communities and very, very positive returns here. People are proud to be part of the local area. They want to contribute to their local area and are also positive about the future. Again really good to see how the Highlands and Islands population is feeling about their lot. Next slide, please. There's not too many left, you'll be pleased to know. If anybody else had been doing this presentation, it would probably have taken significantly longer.

This is about migration. I know there's quite a lot of work going on about this just now. We have a definite need for more young people across the Highlands and Islands. We have to work with government, and I'm sure yourselves with the UK government, to look at how we can really tackle this problem. It's related to some of the other issues that I've raised about transport and housing. But generally people that have moved here have moved for positive reasons. This is no denigration to myself or others in the plus-60 age range, some probably more than that, but this isn't just about attracting those that maybe want to come, a good place to retire because of the quality of life. It's also about getting, as I say, a balanced population to take up these job opportunities which are right across the piece. Next slide, please.

This slide relates to priorities for communities. I'll only pick on the top 4. First one, housing. Second one, jobs, job opportunities. Third one is quite interesting, because it's not something that's really come up in our own conversations across the Highlands and Islands. But successful communities seem to be really dependent on having good tradespeople there and presumably helping people to live but also to help expand businesses. The fourth one is broadband. Now you can read the rest for yourselves, but three out of these four are continually coming up in the conversations we have both with our partners across the Highlands and Islands and businesses and community organisations as the things that hold them back. I'm really pleased to see that they're all part of the agenda today. Next slide, please.

This slide was there to show variations across the Highlands and Islands. While there are some local variations, there's a huge commonality across every part of the Highlands and Islands. Now that's actually really helpful if we take action, if we actually do things to implement the improvements that we've been talking about. But it's a powerful slide and I think a really helpful bit of information for us. Next slide.

This is the summary and the next steps. It'll be interesting to hear what individuals' contributions are to this. I think a lot of the contributions can come up in later items as well. But you can read them for yourselves, the kind of things that we see. I think it's now really important that we use the information in this over a whole range of different things. We're looking at our own Highlands and Islands Enterprise Strategy coming up. We'll be taking that to the Regional Economic Partnership. We'll be taking it to local areas, local authorities across the piece. It's important it's used. It's important it's used in, I think, Community Planning Partnerships across the Highlands and Islands, because it's significant evidence for us.

I think the last thing I would ask is that it's used to develop local, regional and national policy. Now you can delete this, you can stick it in a drawer, but if you're doing that, you're ignoring what a significant number of people across the Highlands and Islands are saying. To me that's probably more powerful than listening to one or two anecdotes from here and there. That's my lot, Cabinet Secretary. Thank you very much.

Mairi Gougeon:

Thanks very much for that, Alistair. Just to assure, that's definitely not what will be happening to the results of the survey, because I do think it's really powerful in that regard. I do think some of the challenges that it identifies aren't necessarily a surprise. They're issues that we're aware of. But I think getting the idea of the scale of some of those issues - and like you say, some of the other things that it throws up about the importance of local trades I think are really important, so I do think it's vital that we use that as we're developing policy in each of these different areas. With that, I'll open it up if anybody has any questions or comments that they'd like to make on the presentation. James?

James Stockan:

Thank you. I can't have nobody commenting, because I think it's a really good piece of work. It's great to hear Alistair taking it forward, because I think this is [setting] a framework for us to look to. But I would just want to rehearse what you've already said, Alistair, is just the fact this was taken pre-crisis, energy crisis. Everything that we have in space is compounded significantly more for the Highlands and Islands than anywhere else on every single metric that we look at with regard to that. I think that is really important for our next paper. But beyond this, actually forming a way forward and finding real actions that we can take collectively in this and we can measure them, would be really useful. We can see the things that are at the top there.

If we can move on to the next item which is on the cost-of-living issues - we're running a wee bit behind time. I will have to conclude this at 12:30, because I'm afraid I've got some other government business I need to take forward at 12:30. But let me just open up this conversation on the cost of living. Paper number 4 has been made available to colleagues. Aside from the vital issues of housing that we've just talked about, this is, by a country mile, the most pressing challenge that we face. There's a number of different elements to it, which we need to consider.

Essentially we find ourselves in a situation where, in the aftermath of COVID and the very significant interventions that were made to support livelihoods during COVID, I think we were all looking to a period of significant rebuilding. As we've talked about in the last item, there was economic opportunity to enable us to realise that. I think some of the early signs - certainly if I look at the economic data around the performance of the economy, we have most sectors back to where they were pre-COVID with some minor variation and some sectors back well beyond where they were pre-COVID. But the disruption of the war in Ukraine and the significant inflationary pressures are obviously undermining the cost-of-living situation. The significant upsurge in energy costs is fuelling that difficulty.

Now the combination of much higher inflation and the significant pressures of higher energy costs creates an incredibly difficult situation for households and businesses and also for government, so the interventions so far from the United Kingdom government to take the edge off energy bills is welcome. It takes away some of the vulnerability but not all of the vulnerability that affects both individuals and businesses. Certainly in my interactions with the business community, we find there is huge vulnerability from the potential rises in energy costs affecting the viability of perfectly sustainable businesses but businesses that just can't possibly cope with the scale of increase that is estimated. We've got to - and obviously in the Highlands and Islands context, HIE has got to look very carefully at what impact energy costs, even in a tempered fashion, are having on the business community. But even with that focus, there will still be significant vulnerability and risk within the economy, so that monitoring of cost is absolutely vital.

There is then an impact of the effects of inflation and energy costs, although they'll be tempered to an extent by the arrangements that have been put in place on the value of public expenditure. The government's budget is now, in real terms, worth £1.7 billion less than it was worth when the budget was set. That puts enormous pressure on the availability of public expenditure when [unclear] I spent a lot of time talking to local authority leaders in recent months about pay issues. That pay pressure, because of the effects of inflation, puts even more strain on our budget. As I was explaining to some trade union figures last week, in this financial year for pay deals to exceed the two per cent that were envisaged, hard cash has to be found to afford that during this financial year. Obviously as colleagues will have heard, I've already had to reduce public expenditure by £560 million. I don't think I'm quite yet finished having to do that before the end of this financial year to enable us to support pay deals and to live within our resources.

The cost-of-living crisis comes together to affect households, businesses and the public purse in, well, frankly a perfect storm. Then as I look forward, the outlook does not look any brighter to be honest, because the inflationary pressures are not going away. This is not a partisan forum, but the decisions of the United Kingdom government a week past Friday have undoubtedly fuelled further pressure within the economy, leading to increases in interest rates which will affect some of the issues about housing.

Ultimately there will have to be a strategy set out to balance the public finances. My fear is, as is now becoming clear, that will emerge on to public expenditure with reductions in public expenditure in the years to come. All of that adds up to a particularly pressurised situation that we have got to work through to try to address many of the challenges that we've just talked about in relation to the quality of life of people in the Highlands and Islands, because a lot of the public services that were referred to in Alistair's presentation will be affected by the pressures on public expenditure that we are wrestling with.

As the government works to prepare its budget for the next financial year which - we're obviously trying to formulate that against a pretty uncertain climate in relation to the specific numbers around public expenditure, but I think the trajectory I think would look as if we're dealing with reducing public expenditure in the years to come. That's a particularly difficult backdrop to the conversations that we've got to have around this table about how we meet some of these challenges. It puts all the more importance on being able to realise the growth opportunities, because from growth comes more employment, comes more tax. That's all welcome. The more we can find the ways in which we can support a growth-based agenda, the better. I'm interested in a discussion this morning, for the remainder of our session, on how we can best focus on that agenda and how we can assist people facing greatest challenge.

The final point I'd make is that I'm currently doing an exercise just now, looking at the government's existing financial commitments for this financial year, to do two things, to make sure that our budget can be affordable this year, because obviously if pay deals are - if we've got to find £700 million for pay deals that we didn't think we'd have to find, then we'll have to find that money, because it's got to be paid. Secondly to try to identify resources to support people who are facing the greatest degree of hardship. We've obviously taken a number of steps through measures such as the Scottish Child Payment. It's doubling and then it's increasing to £25 per week, or the work to expand the Fuel Insecurity Fund. I'm conscious that a number of local authorities themselves have brought forward a number of measures to support those who are facing greatest challenge. I noticed some output from North Ayrshire Council just recently on that question, but there will be other measures that colleagues will be involved in.

I'll leave it there other than to say that the challenges are acute at an individual, business and public spending level. The requirement to address that will be a particular challenge for us in the period going forward. I'll invite contributions. Right, Raymond, [unclear].

Raymond Bremner:

When we were in Orkney last week - and I refer to that because this was one of the ones that I homed in on a lot at that convention as well. We can be as partisan or nonpartisan as we like, but sometimes it's really, really, really difficult when we are all leaders of councils and we see old people coming into our service points. They're in absolute floods of tears. They're breaking their hearts. They're breaking our hearts because of the fact that they cannot see where they're going to ever get out of the bit in terms of the challenges that we've got in the Highlands and Islands. Some of the statistics that we were reviewing last week showed that the Western Isles is sitting [unclear] top of the tree with 57 per cent fuel poverty in their community. We're next in the Highlands with around about 48 per cent. Argyll and Bute is next, one per cent behind us.

So well. A couple of things just maybe to consider with Ofgem and how they undertake their duties. It has been fairly restricted in the past of what they can and can't do under those duties as they've outlined for them. However, the Scottish Energy Advisory Board where Ofgem come along to with the First Minister was postponed due to the sad passing of the Queen. That's to be reset.

There's a good opportunity then if there are practical things in the makeup of the tariffs to be addressed. The window of opportunity is now, because the distribution companies - and that's ScottishPower's distribution company in central and south Scotland and SSE's in the north and islands - are due to finalise their price reviews for the distribution companies in December. Once that's set, it's set for five years. If there are mechanical things to be sorted out in how the tariff on the grids are being allocated or whatever it is, now is the time to try and make that change happen, either directly through this forum or indeed a rescheduled - putting that on the agenda for the next Scottish Energy Advisory Board that I think must be coming up soon. I haven't seen the reset date of it yet.

John Swinney:

I'd also think there's a need to look at how we deliver certain things. You mentioned COVID. I think there were some great examples about how local authorities, enterprise agencies responded very quickly to get money out to businesses or individuals. When the government's setting up funds, what I would again ask you to do and to do across the government - you might not like this, but instead of setting up new teams, look at what you've got already and use them. You've got some really good local authorities up here. You've got a cracking enterprise agency up here. Use them first of all rather than having internal costs. Get the money to where it should belong. That's Highlands and Islands people and Highlands and Islands businesses and communities. I think that I'd just ask you to look at that slight difference and emphasis or additional emphasis.

John Swinney:

It's a point well made, Alistair, because I think the lesson of COVID for me - one of the main lessons of COVID - was that difference between generic support across the board and the resources that were available to be deployed in response to emerging challenge at a local level if I can put it that way. I think that combination is critical. The difference just now - this is the acute challenge at this moment is that I don't see the - COVID attracted a huge amount of additional new funding for deployment. I don't really see that on the horizon just now at all unless I'm missing something, but I don't think the outlook on public spending looks great. Right.

Yeah. You'll recall one of the points that I made earlier on and Mairi's absolutely bang on the money in terms of the third sector. They are already ahead of us in terms of preparing for what they see as being a fuel and energy and cost-of-living crisis. I think it's important that government at the various levels acknowledges that, because what's really important is those third-sector organisations that have access to funding where local government just doesn't have that ability, whether it's wind farms or [unclear]. We all know who they are. They can often complement anything that we manage to bring to the table. It's really important where we complement rather than duplicate or triplicate, because that means that whatever the funding is that gets brought to the table by everybody goes a lot further.

I notice that the paper was asking what short-term measures could the UK government or the Scottish Government take that would have the most impact on helping at this time? I suppose you could add, and would have the most immediate impact as well. Something our local authority's been looking at is how to allow certain groups to be supported where we know that there are areas [unclear] they are the most vulnerable and sometimes our younger generation through our schools. Is it something that the Scottish Government could actually look at in terms of policy for free school meals, enhancing that, say, even to seven days a week or enabling the different approaches to meal provision, the likes of vouchers? That's something that's been discussed at our own local authority meetings. But the main point is to make sure that the money that is out there goes as far as we possibly can get it without duplicating and triplicating as a local authority.

John Swinney:

Okay. Thanks very much, Raymond. That's helpful. There's a number of points emerging out of that, some on the energy side of it about the importance of pursuing the reform agenda with Ofgem, both directly reinforcing what leaders have said already but also through the dialogue with the Scottish Energy Advisory Board. There's a specific issue about heating oil costs, [nonmainstream fuels], representation to the UK government. Then a general plea for alignment of intervention between government, local authority, third-sector organisations and effectiveness of spend as a consequence. We'll reflect that in the outcomes that we look at in due course.

Okay. Right. Thanks, everyone. We'll draw things to a close there. We'll reconvene at 1:15. I've got a bit of government business I have to transact. I'll hopefully be clear by 1:15, but if not, one of my colleagues can reconvene just at that stage. But thank you very much. Lunch is in the café area just alongside. Thanks.

[Break]

John Swinney:

Let's reconvene for the afternoon session. We've got a couple of discussions on the economy followed by population and transport, all of which of course are closely interrelated. The first part of the economic discussion is an update from the Regional Economic Partnership, so Paul, you're going to open up on this. Thanks.

Paul Steele:

Thank you very much. Since the last meeting of the convention, the Regional Economic Partnership has met on two occasions and have discussed a range of topics of critical economic importance to the Highlands and Islands. These topics have included the National Strategy for Economic Transformation, ScotWind, population issues and a major piece of research under the heading, My Life in the Highlands and Islands, undertaken by HIE.

Looking briefly at each of these major areas in turn, so the National Strategy for Economic Transformation, the REP was encouraged to see that there is a strong regional dimension to NSET and that it recognises regional inequalities. It notes that rural and island areas face issues around labour supply, infrastructure and housing, which are impacting on economic growth. The REP was encouraged to see that there is a positive commitment to ensuring that regional differences are taken into consideration, especially in rural and island areas. It's good to hear that there's work ongoing on the development of delivery plans and related delivery mechanisms. The REP was disappointed, however, that there was limited engagement and collaboration with regional partners and local government in the development of these plans. The REP members were keen to seek greater levels of engagement with the development of NSET and the delivery plans and would ask that this be given serious consideration by the government for the next period.

The REP also agreed to develop a regional vision to both align with and deliver NSET. The REP was keen to see a regional vision that offers a translation of NSET for the Highlands and Islands with that vision focused on the aspects of NSET that would most benefit from a regional response. The REP was also keen that the regional vision should be action orientated to allow delivery of the ambitions set out in the NSET programmes. The work on the regional NSET vision will be led by HIE through the REP Senior Officers' Working Group. We are keen to see a strong draft emerge from the next meeting of the REP.

Going on to ScotWind now, Crown Estate Scotland provided a detailed REP presentation to the REP, introducing the ScotWind processes, summarising supply chain statements, overviewing the Innovative and Targeted Oil and Gas or INTOG process and facilitating discussion with the REP around next steps, particularly around opportunities for coordinated activity. A follow-up energy deployment workshop was subsequently organised to further explore the scale of the opportunities, the rising skills demand and to identify potential areas for joint working. Understanding and actioning on these areas of potential collaboration will be a major focus for the REP over the next period.

REP members are highly focused on ensuring that the Highlands and Islands can achieve maximum supply chain and community benefit from deployments in the waters around the region. There is significant work required to ensure our communities benefit from ScotWind and that there is a transparent methodology for benefits to flow into the communities. As part of that, it is important that commitments to the islands around Crown Estate revenues are honoured.

In terms of population which we'll discuss later but from the REP point of view, population and population-related issues remain an area of focus for the REP. I've been updated on the work - sorry, REP has been updated on the work being undertaken through the Population Working Group and through the Repopulation Zone work. Morven Fancey from HIE will be providing a more extensive report further into the agenda, so I don't propose to go into too much detail here other than to note that the population work is underlining what we already know, that housing is an area of extreme concern with pressures accelerating rather than being alleviated. We heard earlier from the My Life in the Highlands and Islands research that it also identifies housing as being at the very top of the areas of concern.

At our last REP meeting, members spoke about the housing situation in detail. Across the Highlands and Islands, the situation is becoming increasingly urgent. From across the region, there are reports of job opportunities being unfilled and significant skills gaps emerging due to potential employees being unable to secure accommodation. The REP is more convinced than ever that housing is a significant and a growing economic and community development inhibitor that requires a fresh approach.

REP members discussed a range of potential remedies. They noted that there were long-term market intervention measures that could be introduced that would take time to materialise and have an impact. The REP was keen to focus on short-term actions that would allow more houses to be built in the immediate term. One such measure would be to devolve affordable housing monies down to local areas to take these monies outwith the affordable housing framework and to allow maximum flexibility at local level to do what is necessary to alleviate issues and build more houses at a local level. It seems clear that the present system does not provide the flexibility to allow what's required at the local level or the pace that is required. This sort of approach opens an opportunity to do something different. The REP would ask that the Scottish Government gives this approach careful consideration.

In summary, the REP is now beginning to evolve and gel into quite a strong strategic body that wishes to engage on some of the challenging issues. It's developing a good portfolio of activity and [unclear] beginning to develop a set of issues that it is keen to collaborate with government on. I overviewed some of these issues earlier and a few critical requests of the government at this point being (1) that the REP members have greater levels of engagement with the development of the NSET delivery plans and (2) to alleviate the housing challenges, that affordable housing monies be devolved to local areas and flexibility provided to address local issues. Thank you.

John Swinney:

Okay. Thanks, Paul. Any contributions or comments from colleagues about what Paul's shared with us or any other dimensions about the Regional Economic Plan? Alistair, anything from - obviously, there's an interrelationship to the work of Highlands and Islands - well, very directly to HIE, because you'll be in the vanguard of delivery here.

Alistair Dodds:

Yeah, just - a new organisation's always difficult to set up and takes some time to mature. Probably the most relevant discussion we had was making it different from CoHI. I think it will be different from CoHI, partly because we've all got representatives of business sector there and also from the third sector. We're getting a broader perspective. However, it was also about having an organisation that does things, so it's not just a mirror of CoHI. It has to be different.

I think one of the things we did speak about, and was maybe one of the hooks to get Mr Stockan and others there, was that it should influence this agenda. This shouldn't [have been] managed by the government. It should be our agenda. I think the REP gives that ability now. It sounds a bit impudent when I say that, but I think it's really important that we pick up what really matters and that we try and get action as we've spoken about this morning. [There's] been really helpful discussion today. I think as long as it's relevant, it'll continue. I'm sure the fellow members - if it's not relevant, then it'll be in a bit of bother. But I think it settled down pretty well. I think it was - was that the third meeting we've had? We've got a really good range of participants now, so I'm confident that we'll keep it going and address the right things.

John Swinney:

Thanks, Alistair. Any other observations before I reflect on this? Robin?

Yeah, talking about landing opportunities, we're not the only ones that - we have a bid in from the Cromarty Port Authority for the free port and a green port. During the conversations in terms of attracting business, similar to what James was saying there just now, you come across businesses that are looking to develop, looking to expand. Then you find out just exactly what their needs are and their requirements are and especially in terms of the green energy agenda which I keep on going on about. But it's a fact. It has huge opportunity for us.

We have a council programme we're putting together. We're hoping to have it ready for December. I think these are the opportunities that provide local authorities the ability to be able to shape their agenda and to be able to accommodate the opportunities and the challenges and see how we can manage to meet that in terms of working with HIE, working with other partners and agencies and being able to identify what's not just the work for just now but actually for in the future and even beyond that term, looking for - this has to be sustainable, so the work that we do now will sustain it beyond terms of councils. We need to have that bigger vision in terms of that.

I noticed it was talking about particularly sections 3 and 4 and developing new market opportunities and productive businesses within our regions. We see that as an opportunity that we've got to be able to shape that going forward just now, but it has to be sustainable going into the future. There's a fair bit that's going to be - even the work that we've done in terms of the Cromarty Port Authority, that has obviously - anybody who's done that level of work, it's opened up our eyes to what other opportunities that could be prevailing for us as the result of that work done. We need to be lining up more than just a green free port bid in terms of hydrogen opportunities that there are and other green energy opportunities out there. Thanks.

John Swinney:

Thanks, Raymond. There's a natural follow-on from this that goes into the discussion that Aidan is about to lead for us, but let me say my piece about this just now just to link into that. One of the key aspects of the National Strategy for Economic Transformation is the greater significance that is reflected in policymaking around regional priorities. If I was to be answering questions about what is different about NSET compared to previous iterations of government Economic Strategy, that would be one of the critical elements that I would highlight.

If I can try to illustrate that with a couple of examples, if you look at - and Alistair will be very familiar with this from his previous and current role, but the Beechwood campus in Inverness which was put to me by HIE probably in about 2008, I would think, as a strategic opportunity to develop an educational and business focal point of activity in Inverness which would have strategic regional significance. A lot of land acquisition, a lot of money, a lot of moving parts. Not all the parts moved as elegantly as they were supposed to move at all times, but if you look back on that, that is a significant regional economic contribution which has opened up phenomenal development in the Inner Moray Firth.

Another example is the Stornoway deep port proposition which is ostensibly, on the face of it, about trying to make sure that cruise liners can actually conveniently arrive in Stornoway and get passengers onto hard surface. But phase 2 is about the development of a hydrogen plant and all the opportunities that come from ScotWind, the generation of renewable energy, the ability to create green hydrogen and therefore what that does for the contribution toward net-zero economic opportunity blah blah blah. In a sense, when I then focus on Amanda's plea for a focused discussion on these points, that's the type of point I have in mind. We've been round the houses of this at different stages in the past where we've looked for in this convention - I appreciate not everybody's been involved in these discussions in the past - what would be strategic economic interventions that we can make happen.

Now they won't all be in the one place. They'll be spread around about the Highlands and Islands. But I think that a core point of the Regional Economic Partnership has to be to help us focus on what might those opportunities be and how can we marshal all of our activity in behind them. Because we could find that some of these things can happen as an economic opportunity. But we can't deliver the housing behind them and we can't deliver the people behind them and we can't deliver the construction skills behind them. You get my drift. There's very much an open door on that question, which I would very much welcome as a contribution from the Regional Economic Partnership.

On the question about dialogue and engagement about delivery plans, Aidan will take that away. We should rectify that right away. There's no reason why that shouldn't be okay. We'll sort that bit. But the profile - the portfolio of activity I think is a really exciting question, because that allows us to think through what might be the next generation of Beechwood campuses or the Stornoway deep ports or whatever it happens to be? Paul, yeah.

Paul Steele:

Yeah, I agree with what you're saying there. I think it makes a lot of sense. There's the interconnectivity of enabling. We're putting economic opportunities in by enabling things to happen. Say ScotWind [off] the West Coast, we don't have the funding as a local authority to improve, say, a port facility on the West Coast of Lewis, but if there's something we can do through ScotWind, [unclear] something to do.

I just want to go back to the last point. I know we had a big discussion about housing earlier on, but I think it is something that - as local authorities specifically, we'd really like some flexibilities around the monies that are given to us. The situation in the Western Isles is we have one RSL and they've told us they can't spend 14 million of the money that's been allocated to us, so that's money that's not going to be spent on housing when we really need money to be spent on housing. There are things that we could do.

John Swinney:

Why can't they, Paul?

Paul Steele:

Because they claim they don't have the capacity as an RSL. They've got enough workforce to do what they hope to do. They're doing quite a bit. But because you've allocated us quite a lot of money, we don't want to miss out on that opportunity while the money's there, because it's not always going to be there.

John Swinney:

It's the generosity of the Scottish Government.

[Laughter]

John Swinney:

I simply make that as an observation, Councillor Stockan.

James Stockan:

Thank you very much. I'm glad that you said you were going to do things that are across the whole patch so the generosity can be spread as well. We'll look forward to that. No, the one thing I would say is just when we come into housing and into this space. I completely support the government policy on some of the short-assured tenancies, giving security to tenants. But in years gone by - well, from my father's time, we had a business and we provided houses for our staff. When the Flotta oil terminal came along, Occidental provided - they built really good houses for their staff. If we've got this other opportunity, the challenge is going to be if you provide houses, if that person's no longer working, they're going to have to give that house to that person forever. I'm just interested to know if there's any opportunity to work on that space on specific things like ScotWind so that we can actually pull in some resource from these developers to build houses too. That's just something for us to think about.

John Swinney:

Have you finished, Paul, what you were saying? Aye, you're okay. Right. Anyone else? Okay. Aidan, I think that brings us neatly into the national strategy. Perhaps you can say just a little bit more about all of that. Yeah, on you go.

Aidan Grisewood:

Yeah. Thanks, Deputy First Minister. Thanks, Paul, also for the comments from the Regional Economic Partnership and discussion earlier, a lot of which is very, very relevant in terms of the national strategy. I know you're keen to get an update on where progress is. I'm Aidan Grisewood. I'm Director of Economic Strategy, so I've been in post for about five months. I was appointed to oversee implementation of the strategy.

As you'll be aware, the plan is very open about the challenges and opportunities facing the Scottish economy, many of which we've touched on. Areas where Scotland needs to do better, so increasing the number of fast-growing businesses would be a good example of that. Areas where Scotland's doing well, trade and foreign direct investment, examples where we need to build on that. Areas where we need to transform, so evidently the big challenge of net zero and high levels of inactivity in our labour market. It was also informed by contributions from Regional Economic Partnerships, so thanks for that, including Highlands and Islands. Many of those themes flagged already. Yes, huge opportunities but those challenges, constraints in actually realising those. Next slide.

The economic plan has wellbeing right at its heart. Yes, wealthier but also fairier - not fairer, fairer and greener as well and built on five programmes of actions. Focused on the core pillars of economic transformation so enterprise, productive regions, new market opportunities, skills and a fairer Scotland. Then as DFM flagged earlier, all underpinned by that six programme to transform the culture of delivery so to make this happen.

As we discussed, we've got immediate economic crisis. Whenever you have a 10-year strategy, there's also risk of strategy gets pushed aside to focus on the immediate crisis. But I think the nature and characteristics of this crisis really emphasise the need to transform our economy so to reinforce the need to meet net-zero targets, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels, ensuring our skills system can respond quickly to changing priorities and circumstances, strengthen our supply chains and that increased importance and focus now on reliance, embedding that focus on wellbeing economy, tackling poverty, appreciating how fragmented our current system is and improving our productivity so that businesses and workers can remain competitive and support high wages. Next slide.

This is a bit of a high-level assessment. There's a lot in the strategy. It's got six programmes. There's 77 actions in there as well. I'm certainly not going to go through all of those. I think it's a bit of a conversation, so I was really interested to hear [unclear] about just what are the things that the Regional Economic Partnership really want to focus on? Some of those we covered on here. What are the things that [unclear] really need that leverage from national government or the big mission-wide projects that could make a big difference? But I guess from our assessment, it was just an initial go at just what are the things that are particularly relevant to the Highlands and Islands, looking at the key priorities and issues flagged already?

Just examples, productive business and regions, obviously Strategic Transport Review [unclear] in that and that rollout of broadband evidently critical in terms of those networks. We've got transport later. But also just make sure that businesses are able to adopt those digital technologies and increase productivity at the same time.

There's also work - we haven't talked about that today, community wealth building. I know the Western Isles are taking forward one of the pilot areas in that and developing, implementing community wealth-building action plans. That's a core part of NSET as well.

On skilled workforce, evidently Population Strategy and taking that forward - and we'll speak about that again later - is critical and providing that skilled workforce sufficient to meet business needs.

On new markets, again we've covered already a lot of this. I think there's existing great products of international [unclear] something about expanding the reach of those and work that's done in international space, increasing trade envoys so maximising the opportunities of existing strengths in Scotland but also new opportunities. We've touched on some of those in terms of net zero but also green finance, peat restoration and renewables, of course, as well.

Then finally on delivery, making sure that we monitor what we're doing and we're doing that well and that regions themselves are able to benchmark progress against those national indicators. The work on the wellbeing monitor, which you've now published, and then taking that forward in terms of making sure that that's something that's practical and applicable locally is really important.

In a lot of these things, you probably recognise in terms of local, regional economic activities align really well in terms of the priorities in NSET itself, so I think it's important to say that NSET isn't exclusive. There's a set of actions in there. There's programmes. But it needs to flex. It needs to make sure that it complements and is sometimes challenged by what's seen as priorities locally and regionally as well.

Just in terms of next steps, we flagged earlier the delivery plans, so delivery plans have been drafted. I'll come on to governance later. That's involved quite a bit of engagement across the piece, including Highlands and Islands Enterprise, local authority representation. Really keen to see if we're missing particular angles on that and input from the REP. As I say, we can talk about that. But also engagement with businesses direct too. Those have been developed. We're now prioritising actions within those that will benefit businesses, households now through the cost crisis, recognising limitations within what we can do there but nonetheless doing what we can. But also recognising it's a long-term programme, so we can't deliver all the things in the plan all at one. It'll be important that we do this in a phased way, so there's a lot of things that we're already delivering on. Next slide.

I won't go through all of those, but those are things that are already being delivered across all the programmes. We can share this separately, because it's slightly more up to date than the paper shared. But there's also things that are in the pipeline. There's opportunities there to flex those. We've got a process in place [and been] developed by our rural economy colleagues to make sure that we do get that rural input. That might be a good way of making sure that we get input from the REP around all of that but also things that still need to be designed and developed and taken forward. That's something we'll need to update [and be] very transparent about progress and monitor where we are in delivery but monitoring importantly and critically how we're doing against the outcomes and indicators of success we've measured ourselves against. Next slide.

John Swinney:

Thank you, Mairi. Right, any - Raymond and then Grant and then I think I better bring things to a close. Raymond.

Raymond Bremner:

I was mentioning previously about the opportunities that are prevailing. I take the point that Mike's making. If challenges were insurmountable, we'd be giving it up. We would be giving up the future just now. But we've still got to hold on to the vision that we've got in each of our areas.

When I went to the Green Energy Conference, I did a keynote speech there with Michael Matheson. I was just a little bit sceptical about the fact that there we were, so many potential partners in the room, looking at what is bound to be an exciting opportunity in front of us for the economy, for the Highlands and for the islands in terms of our natural resource. We've got the opportunity to be able to shape that vision and know that we're going to do it with really big challenges in front of us. Some of them will be insurmountable. But if we put our heads together and work at it to be able to see how we can actually [corporately] deliver on the opportunities, that is exactly what we should be doing. That is the opportunity that we've got for us at the moment, understanding what are the opportunities?

When we were talking about relating it to population decline earlier on, I see that there just - there are hints that that actually might be reversing in some of our rural areas. If it does, we need to be absolutely certain that we have turned on certain taps to be able to make sure that that is sustainable and that we build on that.

In terms of council programme, in terms of the opportunities that are prevailing for us just now, I think that we have got really, really exciting times ahead of us in terms of economy. I hope that we manage to work together to be able to grasp those opportunities and get over the problems that we know that are in front of us. They're not [going away].

John Swinney:

Thanks, Raymond. Grant and then I'll get Aidan to close.

Grant Moir:

Yeah, no, thanks very much. It's just on - I think it's project 7, I think, in the strategies around the natural capital side of things. I think some of the points that [Mike makes] is absolutely fundamental. But the carbon market and green finance has massive potential in the Highlands. However, at the moment, a lot of that is round a voluntary regime around that. The long-term regulatory regime around that is going to be absolutely crucial, mainly around if the Highlands or rural Scotland is [going to] become a significant carbon sink for emissions that are from urban Scotland. How do you get local benefit from that within the Highlands? How do you make sure that some of the benefit of that carbon stays within rural areas? I think if you can do that, you can see how you can then pay for some of the things that lead to a just transition within rural areas.

But that carbon market, whilst it's quite new and it's still growing, it can be used - I think it's got extremely positive potential, but also if we don't get our act together quite quickly, we're likely to lose a lot of that value. There's an awful lot of changes happening around land within Scotland at the moment that are happening extremely quickly within the Cairngorms and other places, so there's a bit of pace needed on that side to actually catch up - with the regulatory regime to catch up with the potential in there, because the benefit is significant if we do it right to pay for some of the things that people have been discussing today around some of the other issues.

John Swinney:

Thanks very much, Grant. Right, Aidan, do you want to draw us to a close? It'd be helpful if you could just really draw out of your summary any of the interrelationship issues with some of the other topics that we've wrestled with today.

Aidan Grisewood:

Yeah, happy to do that. If I just kick off a bit with just the question about investment, because I think a lot of that - and the question about that, because actually the conversation seemed to cover quite a few themes there. I guess there's core bits of investment [unclear] in terms of transport, housing. Things that government does is the core infrastructure, digital.

I think the interesting and the transformative bit around the plan going forward is these new opportunities, net zero, new markets being created, the regulation that supports that. I'm so pleased you talked about that, Grant. I was speaking to NatureScot only on Friday around just that whole area of work. The potential around green finance is a really good example. I think there's something about, in a time of limited government funds going forward, where is it that public sector can add value in terms of that overall investment part and getting the most leverage? What can government do but only government can do in some of this to make things work? Regulation would be a really good example of that. It's not particularly sexy or attractive, but it can have a big, big difference.

I think there's certain things there. Some existing markets would be examples, so some of the work that's being done around salmon farming would be another example around that [unclear] getting the regulatory environment right that supports growth. It's a challenge to ourselves as part of the overall strategy, but I suppose a bit of a plea for support as well in terms of things that are getting in the way of investment coming into Scotland and growth. What are the areas there? Some work by ourselves, a bit of leverage. Some of the work that SNIB is doing is a good example of that as well where they're going into places that others aren't going into, but it opens a door to much greater leverage. It's very valuable.

I think in all of that, really keen to work collaboratively and collectively on all of these. I think that point about identifying the specific things, including in the REP, about what would make the really biggest difference - so where are the things that national government can really act and make a difference - I'd really put it out there in terms of just identifying those. Also making sure that you're in the right rooms because, as I say to a lot of people, not everyone can be involved in everything in the actions taking forward the strategy, because it needs that focus. But I'd really identify the things that would make the biggest difference. Where you can bring support and leverage to yourselves as well, it'd be really, really helpful.

It's ongoing work. As I say, we've got these delivery plans that are coming out imminently. There's still a lot in play within those in terms of making that happen. Look forward to updating at future conventions on progress made but having a really good conversation on the back of the emerging work of the REP as well and our own delivery plans and making sure that we're getting that engagement we need.

John Swinney:

Okay. Thanks very much, Aidan. I think one of the things I'm keen that we do in the light of the conversation today, bearing in mind the fact that we're at the start of our convention term in office with the change of local authority leaders or the local authority leadership elections, that we try to keep our agenda - so one of the things we do is often air a range of different topics. I think this is perhaps a period of some focus required so economy, housing, population. I think we need to just make that - and then see how much headway we're making on all of these different topics in a very focused way and draw our thinking together in that respect. I think if we can all reflect on that as a consequence of our conversation today, I think that will help us enormously, which brings us on to one of the other issues that we've wrestled with as part of this, population. Mairi, can you take us through this one?

Mairi Gougeon:

Thanks, DFM. As you were saying earlier, this was the subject of a debate in parliament last week where we were talking about our proposals for a rural visa pilot and a Scottish community immigration scheme proposal as part of that. But then throughout the debate, it obviously touched on a lot of the issues that we've discussed earlier on today as well, because I think largely it's recognised there isn't one single cause of depopulation. There isn't one single solution for it. But I think that a key route towards us addressing some of the issues that we face is the discussions that we're having here as well as the work that's being undertaken by the working group on population as well.

Also at the last meeting, I'd announced that we'd be progressing our commitment to develop an action plan on depopulation and we'd be looking to publish the draft of that next year. That work is being taken forward by officials in the Islands Team. But of course, it's something that we can't take forward, we can't develop and deliver by ourselves. It's not something that we should be doing alone. Of course, again the work that we want to take forward with you is going to be critical in relation to that, too, and will ultimately ensure that it has more of a meaningful impact when we publish it as well. With that, I'll hand over to Morven who's going to take us through and give us an update on the work of the Population Working Group.

Morven Fancey:

Thanks very much, Cabinet Secretary. I'm pleased to be here on behalf of the working group, the Population Working Group, to give you an update on our work so far. I thought it would be worthwhile giving a little bit of background for - because there's been a change of CoHI membership. Over the course of, oh, at least the last five years, there's been lots of ongoing discussions around population challenges at CoHI. It's actually been quite difficult and it was quite difficult in many of these conversations to pin down actions because of not just the range of issues wrapped up in depopulation but also because of the diverse situations of our geography. We had lots of different situations.

In 2020 two things happened. One was the launch of the Scottish Government's Population Strategy which recognised the particular challenges of, well, remote and rural Scotland but the Highlands and Islands in particular and confirmed the need to take proactive steps, in particular to looking at balancing Scotland's population. That was quite a big step forward from our point of view. At the same time, the National Records of Scotland produced a set of population projections which gave a sharper focus to those places that were suffering most severely from population loss. That really allowed us to - and CoHI agreed to hone in on those areas that were most acutely suffering as opposed to trying to do a Population Strategy for the whole of the Highlands and Islands. Those places were the Outer Hebrides, Argyll and the islands, the Northwest Highlands and some parts of North Ayrshire.

On the back of these developments and the conversations, it was agreed to set up a CoHI Population Working Group with those particular local authorities and [SGS] involved to look at how we can improve our understanding of the issues of these places, narrow down our focus and specific areas of action in these locations, develop new and target existing interventions to test the impact on depopulation or retention and work more closely with the Scottish Government, particularly the Community and Islands Team and the Population and Migration Team but other parts of government too, to look at what longer-term solutions might be. One of the proposed longer-term solutions was Repopulation Zones which the Scottish Government is looking into at the moment and Cameron will update a bit on after myself.

Our latest report in front of you today follows three previous papers, so we've been at the last three CoHIs, updating on where we're getting with our deliberations. From the very beginning, the working group identified five key areas of focus. Housing was predominantly at the top of the list. Jobs. Critical infrastructure, particularly looking at digital connectivity and transport. Access to services, which we saw in the presentation that Alistair gave this morning and the importance of that. The fifth area was talent attraction and retention. It's probably fair to say that it's been a difficult one to move forward. Without the housing, without these conditions that we know are required, it's very difficult to do a strong promotional aspect for talent attraction. It's holding us back, I think, is what we're saying.

The report outlines a lot of the activity we've been involved in. It tells you a bit about what we've managed to do. But briefly we've introduced settlement officers into three areas, who are people on the ground, looking at the issues, talking to the people who are experiencing the difficulties and feeding that information back to us so that we've really got eyes on the ground if you like. We've been looking at targeting investment through childminding support in rural childminding, directing some of our graduate placements into rural parts, in particular areas that are suffering from depopulation. We're developing or looking at developing a skills fund which will target islands in particular. We've also been engaging quite significantly with Scottish Government on housing matters and hopefully helping to inform their Remote, Rural and Islands Housing Action Plan which is under development and I'm sure we'll hear more about.

At the same time, we're establishing localised place-based plans in each of the acute areas, the most advanced of this being in Uist. This work is evolving over the coming months and reflects the multifaceted approach to joined-up investments in local infrastructure, so it's not about just doing one thing in one area. It's about addressing the housebuilding requirements. It's about creating the jobs and the investments there. For instance, the investment where we saw in South Uist [unclear] just at the end - the opening at the end of August, which was an investment into education as an attraction for young people to come to that part of the world. But you can't just do these things individually. The idea is that they have to be wrapped around in a very localised set of projects and investments.

There's a lot going on. We're doing a fair bit. However, our work over the last 18 months leaves the working group even more convinced of the important and serious nature of two of the most significant barriers and one key opportunity. No surprise to the barriers. Housing just comes up at every opportunity and it is the blockage. Deputy First Minister's right about the huge array of economic opportunities that the region is facing and yet housing is the blockage that we keep hearing about, not just in the areas that we're talking about in terms of experiencing acute depopulation but in many places. Digital connectivity hasn't had much recognition in the discussion today so far, but it does remain - it really highlights the inequity of access across the region and the really wicked, tricky problem that exists in terms of really rolling this out to the really hard-to-help areas. These two things remain the biggest barriers, so what I'm proposing today is that we hone in on these in particular.

Also the other opportunity - there's many opportunities, but the opportunity round about job dispersal - there's been a comment made already about we've seen a slight uplift in the population figures as a result of COVID and hybrid working. Now we don't know yet if that will remain. It's not fixing the problem by any means, but it's something. How can we do more of that job dispersal and basically just help with that balancing pillar of the Scottish Population Strategy which is so important? There are lots of other things that are important, but I just wanted to bring these to your attention today.

In the paper, the working group has suggested a range of potential actions within the housing, within the digital and within the jobs dispersal areas. I wasn't proposing to go through each of these in any great detail. They're written there for discussion if you want to take up on them. But perhaps just a comment on the housing side of it. I am by no means an expert and the working group is not an expert in housing matters. We have spoken to lots of different parts of government, lots of communities. It seems to me that one of the challenges is the complexity of the range of stakeholders and players that are involved in that housing market, that housing landscape. It's not necessarily about enough money not happening in the right places. It's pulling together the different approaches to developing houses that is really, really complicated. I'm sure that's what the Housing Action Plan will be picking up. I'll stop there and I'll maybe just pass to Cameron to pick up from the government's point of view.

Cameron Anson:

Thanks, Morven. It's an easy one to follow there, isn't it? Yeah, I guess picking up on a number of [unclear] things, I think at the heart of our work in looking at addressing depopulation has been working closely with CoHI Working Group and other members. Just as a bit of a context around about the Addressing Depopulation Action Plan that we are looking to develop, it might have raised a few eyebrows as to why Islands Team are leading for that across rural and islands areas, but it stems from a National Islands Plan commitment to develop an action plan to support the repopulation of rural and island communities. That action plan is going to be sitting underneath the National Population Strategy that Morven mentioned as well.

But in regards to what would be included in the action plan, we would see there being three components, so there is a rural and islands element. The action plan itself will be national repopulation sort of plan, but there'll be a specific rural and islands component. There will actually be another section looking at urban challenges, so we know obviously the likes of Inverclyde. But there will also be - and key for us and I think where this sort of forum comes into it is there will be an element looking at mainstreaming depopulation so, in actual fact, picking up on a lot of the points that have been raised today, trying to make sure that everybody - not just Scottish Government but all partners involved - understand that we can't be looking at addressing our population challenges through focusing on population figures. That - (1) that masks the demographics within that, but the approach to a sustainable addressing depopulation challenge is by looking at that infrastructure and looking at the enabling opportunities that we have.

Yeah. Thank you. I just want to support Kathleen. Morven did bring up - I don't think we need to lose the fact that we still have areas and pockets that don't have digital connectivity. We really thank the Scottish Government for taking the UK government together to put out another funding package to cover more, but we still have a [rim]. What's really interesting is that money that was taken worked out at £13,000 per property and were offered 6000 in the voucher scheme. We know that the last bit is even harder to reach, so we need to take some of that analysis and get back to the UK government to say - they took an average price across the UK for the scheme. We need to be able to go back and say, we have proved it's far more expensive here. We need to upgrade that figure so that we can do something with it. I think that would be a really useful thing for us to do from here.

Then I have one just last absolute fly-a-kite statement to make on this paper if that's okay. I was just thinking about [unclear] the Islands Bond in here. One of the biggest benefits that I - I live in Stromness and Heriot Watt came and put a campus in. Amanda was one of that first [unclear] in that campus. What really happened from not graduates but postgraduate studies was it gave people a flavour of the life in the remote areas and so many people wanted to stay. Sometimes we can't keep them because we don't have the jobs. But if we never give them that first flavour or taster, they don't know [what like it is] to do it.

I'm just wondering if we could have used some of that resource actually to put in a little bit of a support mechanism, because we've lost a lot of that post-Brexit. Just a support on the islands, that opportunity to have postgraduate - and people have got to be there for a particular period of time. I would almost say if you're on an island [unclear] island with that double disadvantage with a double ferry situation and even higher resource, because once people come and they stay, they often meet somebody or they find a reason to stay even if it doesn't keep them in the thing they're trained for. But they're incredibly valuable for our society, our community. Also you're catching people at the right age, because there's no point in taking folk in at 60 years old or whatever with five years left to work. We need to see if we can do it and get people in early in life to contribute long term. That was just me flying a kite, which I hope I'm permitted to do.

Mairi Gougeon:

Mairi Gougeon:

Oh, sorry.

John Swinney:

Can I just come in on that point, Bill? I agree completely, Bill. There may be a way through this. I don't know. The UK government is making a big push on the idea of growth. All the economic theory I've ever read is that population growth is the biggest factor in relation to economic growth. Fundamentally we can do our level best and [unclear] issues around this table, but if population's going down, we're swimming against the tide. I saw some commentary the other day there about consideration being given, as part of the growth agenda, to targeted population growth measures or is it - sorry, targeted migration measures. I'm very keen that we explore every possible opportunity we can do.

If there's a consensus of view here that population decline or lack of growth, whichever way you put it, is an impediment to realising opportunities - and particularly given some of the ideas that James and Alastair were kicking about there that people can come at this from almost [unclear] - we should start marshalling some of those ideas and start putting them to the UK government as representatives of the whole of Highlands and Islands to try to bring them about, because without that - I think that listening to this conversation today, it's been very, very encouraging, but one thing which worries me is where are the folk coming from to deliver it? That worries me. That's before we get near the houses [unclear] folk first. I'd add that in as something we can develop as part of our agenda.

Mairi Gougeon:

But I think we have got quite a positive policy proposal put forward through what we're suggesting for the rural visa pilot. That was something that previous UK governments had agreed to looking at and to implementing. We're waiting on the feedback to that so far, but I think that could be potentially a positive step forward. Oh, Alistair.

Alistair Dodds:

Thanks. Yeah, I really liked the idea of the migration service. I thought it was a good thing to keep pushing, because I do see a weakening in the UK government towards bringing more people into the country. I'm absolutely convinced it's starting to weaken now, so I think just keep pushing on that. I think one of the reasons that the young people stay in Orkney is because of the excellent council leadership shown.

[Laughter]

Male:

That was in the past.

Alistair Dodds:

Just keep that up. Thing I liked about this paper is that there's a lot of actions in here, so it's not just about another plan or policy. There are specifics. I'd really encourage today that we pick up on some of those. One of the issues we've not spoken about really is about jobs dispersal. I don't know what you thought of the Scottish Government's response to that. It was about talking to ministers, talking to the unions, but that was six months ago we raised this. I'd hope ministers are keen on jobs dispersal. I'm not talking about forcing people out that are already in jobs. But if we've got new jobs or new [sections], let's look at where they're located, whether it's the south of Scotland or up here or some remote parts of the Scottish Enterprise area. I think there's scope to do that.

But I do think there's a real range of good initiatives here, good suggestions, practical suggestions. We should try and take them forward and measure our success against some of those. This sometimes sounds like quite a difficult day, but it's actually really positive that we're - we're talking about doing something about them. That's fantastic, because there are really bright people in this room, people that want to make a difference. We need to focus on that. Thanks.

Robin Currie:

Oh. It's probably not going to help this conversation, but you know what? It must be my age or something, but this is not a new thing. This always happened on the islands that young people left away for their education, quite often away for work as well and then came back. It's not new.

But what it is we need to do now, I think, is because young people and not-so-young people have a different way of life - they want to get to concerts and social events on the mainland, wherever that is. They're doing it on a regular basis, not just once or twice a year but probably maybe once a month or something or even maybe more regular. We've got to put the facilities in and, dare I say, the ferry services that can keep up with the demand. But then we're very lucky where I come from, the amount of work that there is, so there's people wanting to go to Islay and Jura. Jura, example, is now seeing its population at its highest level since the 1960s, which is really good. It's bucking the trend. But that's because there's employment there. There's now 27 people, going up to 40 people in one development. If you provide the jobs, provide the facilities, the services, people will stay there.

Mairi Gougeon:

Thanks, Robin. Is there any other comments? Oh, Paul.

Paul Steele:

Thanks. Yeah, I agree with what Robin was saying there. One of the things, I suppose a challenge as local authorities is we have to make our areas attractive for people to come and live in. One of the things that Morven touched on earlier was childcare. I think in the whole of Uist we've got one childminder, so it's a challenge. We need to be able to allow people to work if they want to work and have the facilities behind them to do that. I was really excited to hear the rural visa pilot scheme and rural immigration scheme. There's a lot of things that could be done round that. One area I'm just going to throw out random was possibilities of having favourable tax regimes for rural and island areas, because if you make it more attractive to work in those areas, that will also attract people.

[Break]

Mairi Gougeon:

Okay. Sorry, Cameron, you wanted to come back in.

Cameron Anson:

If I can, just a few points obviously that have been covered in the discussion today. Picking up Councillor Stockan's point about encouraging postgraduates to stay and that side of things, we are working closely with UHI to map out what their provision is across Highlands and Islands and see if we can then align that with some of the skills work that HIE and SDS are leading on as well so that we can see what skills needs there are in rural and island areas and then see if we can match that up with providers. Then hopefully, if there's the infrastructure in place to keep them there, these people will stay. I can speak on that as well as somebody that moved to an island 12 years ago, 13 years ago and stayed and met somebody and married, Mr Stockan, so I'm part of that story.

On the childminding, that is something that we have been looking with, particularly with Women in Agriculture colleagues, to understand how that can impact there and help women back into the workforce, but we have been working with a pilot in Mull. We would hope to get some more learning out of this, because childcare - through the Islands Bond consultation as well, childcare was one of the top 4 barriers to population retention and population growth, so it absolutely is on the agenda.

As Ms Gougeon had said earlier, these are the kind of things that we've picked up through that consultation. Obviously, the bond isn't going ahead, but a lot of that feedback and information that was provided, there's no reason why we can't consider that as part of our Addressing Depopulation Action Plan. Everybody's time and effort in engaging with us - we had a very lively debate with the council in Orkney as well - none of that goes to waste. We can hopefully then show that we've actually listened to folk's input.

Mairi Gougeon:

Thanks, Cameron. Morven, you were wanting to come back in.

Morven Fancey:

Yeah, just maybe sticking with the education theme, we know that despite the advances of the University of the Highlands and Islands that we're still losing a significant number of young people, what looks like something like 2500 every year that end up graduating outside of the Highlands and Islands. Now I think that that probably is a number that will stick, but actually what we need to be able to do is to offset that by attracting in a similar number of young people back into the region. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for that is student accommodation. It remains a really tricky challenge for the UHI as a university to provide that, not least of which are the problems of actually building student accommodation in small numbers rather than the big developments that they do in the cities. I think student accommodation could really help hugely to address that and to offset that student loss going forward.

Mairi Gougeon:

Okay. Thanks very much for that. I think it's been a really helpful discussion as well and also from the update because I think it gives us - like you were saying, Morven, there's a set of tangible actions there that we can actually get on and do that I hope by the time we have the next CoHI meeting we'll be able to show meaningful progress towards that as well. As ever, really appreciate the feedback and also, as Cameron was saying too, welcome that challenge that we have as well. Yeah, look forward to continuing to work together to try and address some of these challenges and, of course, keep you updated on the work and work with you as we develop the Depopulation Action Plan too. Thanks very much for that.

John Swinney:

Right. Thanks very much, Mairi. We'll come to some conclusions on that towards the end of the afternoon. We'll now move on to the last of our substantive discussions before we break to finalise the outcomes. That's on transport. Jenny, can I get you to take us through this? Thank you.

Jenny Gilruth:

Thank you, DFM. We save the best for last, so we come to transport. We've had a really interesting conversation today around a number of topics. I think that when I was hearing some of the contributions from people this morning and earlier this afternoon, transport is the thing that links lots of these together so whether that's housing or we just heard about some of the educational challenges in terms of childcare, I think Paul was mentioning, but also just in terms of cost-of-living crisis. I think there's more we need to do in that space in relation to transport. Very pleased to be with you in Oban today. I was here I think six weeks ago Councillor Currie was reminding me, not that long ago. Ms Gougeon will be back later this week as well so a host of Scottish Government ministers coming to Oban. I think it's hugely important, certainly in the job I do, looking around the room, that I recognise so many people after the last nine months as Minister for Transport. I know how important transport is to this part of Scotland.

Now reflecting back on the spring meeting of the convention, we at that time focused on STPR2 and the recommendations for the Highlands and Islands region. Today's meeting is going to focus on the paper that you have. I think it's paper 7. It looks at recent, current and forthcoming projects to support and enhance connectivity and also to address transport challenges across the region. I'm really keen to hear feedback today from members on the item, in particular where transport projects are being delivered by all three transport authorities and importantly any challenges or opportunities which might be faced in their delivery.

I think from my own perspective, as I mentioned, we know - at the forefront of our minds in government at this moment in time is the cost-of-living crisis. What more can we do in government and right across the country, working with partners in the room, to make public transport, for example, more affordable? We also recognise - I'm [very alive] to some of the challenges that our transport providers are facing at this moment in time in relation to the inflation rises but also labour shortages bluntly. But challenges, I think, around about patronage are in the background of this in relation to COVID, because the sector hasn't yet fully recovered.

We are delivering on a number of key projects right across Highlands and Islands, of course. Somebody mentioned, I think, ferry services earlier on and I'm sure we'll come to that in the discussion today. But we are providing significant funding, so it's £580 million of investment in ports and vessels over the next five years. A couple of weeks ago now, I brought a statement to parliament on Project Neptune which looked at governance of our ferry services on the CHFS network. I'm sure we might hear some views on that today, but I just want to acknowledge that Angus Campbell's in the room today. I'd asked Angus a couple of weeks ago now to lead on the community consultation work that will need to sit alongside what comes next in relation to Project Neptune, so I'm glad to see Angus here with us today.

We also, of course, support concessionary bus travel for over two million people in Scotland, so that is a hugely significant policy. It's becoming increasingly more important for people as the cost-of-living crisis starts to bite further. We have forthcoming the Islands Connectivity Plan. That's going out to consultation later this year. Alongside that will sit our Investment Strategy and then, of course, I'm sure we'll come to discuss some of our investment work in relation to the trunk road network. I'm going to pause here and pass to Fiona Brown who's going to open today's discussion. I look forward to contributions from all members in the room.

Fiona Brown:

Thank you, Minister. Thank you, everyone. Yeah, as the Minister said, recent papers at the convention or transport papers have focused on the strategic transport policies and programmes that have been undertaken given the publication of the National Transport Strategy, the Transport Act and the draft Strategic Transport Project Review in recent years. But nonetheless the convention has also discussed the transport challenges for the region regularly, including today, and in the context of the other topics that transport impacts such as economic development and population.

In the spring outcomes, the three transport authorities were asked to bring forward a paper which looks at more specific projects and more specific topics but also where we work collaboratively and innovatively to deliver against national and regional and economic and transport strategies. I worked with fellow officers on this paper, which was really to showcase the projects' actions and progress being undertaken on three themes on connectivity. That's island connectivity including proposals for the Island Connectivity Plan, fleet replacement across networks, works at ports and harbours and Project Neptune as the Minister mentioned, regional public transport, [unclear] funding for bus priority, vehicle replacement, the Community Bus Fund and some innovative and local regional bus service and demand-responsive projects and then also improving strategic connections via the trunk road and rail network.

Just really, in reference to the paper, invite you to comment on the projects and actions within these themes, noting the paper is not an exhaustive list. Then would like you to highlight any successes in your area on these transport projects and, of course, any ongoing challenges. Thank you.

Jenny Gilruth:

Thank you, Fiona, so I'll pause there and hear contributions from members around the table. Bill, on you go.

Bill Lobban:

I think it would be remiss of me not to mention the fundamental economic importance of the A9 between - or the dualling of the A9 between Inverness and Perth. I've got a wee problem with part of the paper in today, which basically points out the success the speed cameras have been on the A9. In my own ward, in Badenoch and Strathspey, there have been eight fatalities in three months. None of these have been on the dualled sections, so some of these could have been alleviated or got rid of altogether by the continuing dualling. Please don't forget about dualling on the A9. It's of real economic importance, not just to the Highlands but I think to everywhere else. I realise the challenges and especially the financial challenges, but just keep it on your radar.

Jenny Gilruth:

Just to reassure you, Bill, it's very much on my radar. Some of the fatalities you spoke to recently have been at the forefront of my mind in terms of what more we might be able to do in relation to road safety. There have been a number of incidents recently. I think there was one only at the end of last week, involving two HGV vehicles. Obviously, the police have a role in relation to investigating incidents as and when they occur. However, I have asked officials for advice on what more we could be doing in this space, because I recognise it's very challenging. I also recognise the economic importance of the road, having driven it many times myself [unclear] grandparents in the - well, on the Black Isle. Some of you [unclear] used to spend many holidays up and down the A9. It's a hugely important and significant road, so we have a commitment to dual it and hope to be able to say a bit more on that in the coming weeks. Councillor Currie.

Robin Currie:

James Stockan:

Thank you very much, Minister. I've got 30 points to take up. But I'm only going to speak about three, because I could speak about this all day.

I'm sorry that HITRANS isn't represented, because I think they're a really good moderating thing across the patch. But we're 10 years on now from the Scottish Government Ferries Plan, 2012, November 2012. Five years after that, we met in this exact location in November 2017 when we were speaking about transport. We all made an agreement that we should try and make sure that everybody got a service level across the Highlands and Islands. That was one of the outcomes agreed by council leaders. I just want to thank government for working some way towards that. We've got a couple of issues that we've not quite finished off on that before we go on to a Connectivity Plan, because I know that Argyll and Bute and the Inter-Island Service in Orkney is just a bit short. That was the last part of that that needs to be sorted for ferries, so I'm just keen that we manage to get that done this year.

I would say that innovation and looking at transportation rather than ferries is important, because I think there's ways to [cheapen] us to get to that level. I have discussed it with you before. But I'd like to push that on a bit further, because I think before we go on to a Connectivity Plan, we should finish the pieces of work that are residual from the Ferries Plan before. That was the first thing.

I've got to say the second thing is I've got to thank the Scottish Government again for supporting us in looking at a second-hand ferry, but if the truth be told, it's not working very well. We bought one from Norway and it's hardly been in service. It's had multiple problems. We've got berthing problems at the pier that we didn't anticipate. Sometimes we've just got to watch and make sure that we grasp the nettle and get the permanent long-term solution in place, because sometimes short-term things don't fit.

The third thing I would say is I very much applaud the under-22 free bus service. I've spoken to you about this before, but I think it goes beyond Orkney. I can't understand why where the ferry is used in the same way as a bus between islands and services, not for holidaymakers and not for people going once or twice a year but where people use it every day - [I can't] see the unfairness of that not being ruled out to these ferries. I've got a small café owner on the island of Hoy who takes their children to the swimming pool several times every week in the summer to teach them to swim. They've got to pay for their children. The consideration, as far as finance, is tiny. But it's the equity issue that I really want to make sure that we get addressed so that these services that are taking people from their island to the only place of doing certain things - whether it's shop, hospital, whether it's education, these things should be covered on that idea, making it fair across the community.

These are my three things that I'll restrict myself to, but you'll get plenty more when I get a chance to speak again. Thank you very much.

Jenny Gilruth:

Thank you, James. I heard a few of them earlier this year as well. But I think I'll come back on some of these points and then maybe see if we can move on to other people in the room.

First of all, I think Robin, just to your points on the Rest, I thought last week's taskforce meeting went very well. Of course, we had the technical consultants appointed just at the end of the summer period there, so that's £25 million worth of Scottish Government investment to give us the medium and long-term solution for the Rest. I went up to the Rest earlier this year. It's not without challenge in terms of a long-term solution, but we'll have to get there for local communities. I recognise how long this has been a challenge.

In relation to your point on the delivery of ferry services, could things be done differently? Yes, and I think they're going to have to be in the future. I think that's what Project Neptune gives us in terms of an opportunity to look at how we deliver services better for island communities. You talked about islanders on the CalMac board. These are all things I'm very sympathetic to. We might need to be a bit more radical though. I think we need to think about strategically how do we deliver services? But I don't want to prejudge the outcome of Mr Campbell's work who's sitting at the back there, because I think it's really important we ask island communities what they want to see delivered on the ground before prejudging the outcome. But I hear what you said about the previous consultation with CalMac in the past. If you have any more detail on that, I'd be keen to hear how it worked previously.

Councillor Steele, you raised the issue around about additional sailing. Now we did have this raised, I think, in relation to the Uig outage by Angus Brendan. I might bring in [Laurence] at some point on that. We had considered it. There are a range of resilience options we're looking at at this moment in time. You might know that I've reconvened the Islands Forum which will bring together Ms Gougeon and Mr Brown, who has responsibility for resilience in government, so that when there are outages we have a cross-government approach. I hope that that will help to bring greater resilience in terms of our response.

Councillor Stockan, you mentioned the Ferries Plan and service levels across Highlands and Islands. I thought in relation to the ICP - a number of points on inter-island ferries. I think this was raised with me by Mr [MacArthur] and others, a challenge that - we wouldn't be considering that. We are considering, of course, inter-island ferries as part of the ICP. They will be referred to. They will be part of that wider approach from government. We need to have a strategic view that doesn't ignore inter-island ferries bluntly, but I recognise there's a difference here.

James Stockan:

Can I come back on that? We were referred to in this Ferries Plan. We were offered that we could actually transfer our ferries back at no net detriment to the government. We have offered that and we have been refused, so [we are] very keen - the only place that you can get support for ferries - that depends if you want to maintain the devolved situation on this - is the fact that the only place you can get support is from the fare payer, from the fare box and the government. We don't have any other magic money trees to support, so we have to keep speaking on that. It would be wrong for it not to be included. Thank you.

Jenny Gilruth:

We discussed some of this over the summer, James. Obviously, the government did provide funding this financial year through the Inter-Island Ferries Grant which was additional funding. I think that was welcomed broadly by yourselves. However, I think as the Deputy First Minister has previously committed to, these are things we will have to look at in the future, recognising some of the challenges local authorities face.

In relation to your final point on the under 22s, I am very sympathetic to the points that you make. They have consistently been made to me by islands MSPs. Of course, we are carrying out a Fair Fares Review which will look at public transport right across lots of different modes to better join up people's experience of public transport but particularly to speak to that inequity that you've highlighted there, potentially which exists in relation to young people's experience of the scheme who live in our island communities.

I'm going to pause there and see if we maybe have contributions from other people. The paper itself is quite detailed and touches on a number of different projects. Councillor Bremner.

Raymond Bremner:

I had a similar-sized list to James Stockan, but you know that you and I had a discussion at the end of last week. You've probably had all 25 of them. It would be remiss of me if I didn't take the opportunity while we're at this forum to be able to discuss some of the key points in terms of the mainland and inter-island connections that we require in Highland Council.

First of all, in terms of the engagement and the process that we went through with yourself and the Deputy First Minister and our friends from our Western Isles in terms of tackling the issue in terms of the Uig outage, that was something high on our agenda during the summer. I think collaborative working there, looking at all the options that we could possibly get on the table and then the ones that eventually came up on the table, which are now here and referred to in the paper, are welcome. It's never going to be easy for either the communities on Skye or on the Western Isles when it comes to tackling those kind of outage issues, but thanks very much for doing that and well done to the teams in terms of that. There will be other challenges coming up. I hope that's a similar way of working that we can expect. When we get that way of working sooner rather than later, we can avoid an awful lot of the pain and the heartache for either community, so thanks very much on that.

In terms of our own ferries, the biggest one on our agenda is the Corran Ferry itself. That's something which you and I spoke about last week. It's something that our Chair of Economy and Infrastructure is looking to facilitate and bring forward. I think actually that he pre-empted us having a discussion. He's actually been in touch with your office, giving you a date. That was rather forward of him, but we'll see how we can take that forward. We'll appreciate the support and the focus of Scottish Government in terms of how we work that one forward, especially if we could - Angus Brendan came up with an absolutely fantastic idea. We should just tunnel all the connections between all our islands. We would solve the problem overnight if that's something that you could consider. Forget that one.

But one of the other ones [is similar] in terms of the public bus networks. We have a real problem in terms of the limited ability to be able to have bus operators over the huge expanse of Highlands. Stagecoach virtually has or tries to exert a monopoly. We are desperately trying to look at ourselves following a similar path to Councillor Steele's local authority. I don't know how successful that was in terms of the [unclear] own bus company. But it's something that I think we're having to focus on more and more because of the operations that we're seeing in terms of when we're putting contracts out to tender and how they're coming back. We were mentioning to you about the coincidences of how those contracts are being submitted to us are rather unique. Bookmakers would make great money on how we are seeing those contracts coming back. There's obviously some sort of collaboration going on out there in the market.

In terms of how we can provide for the under 22s is determined by how we can actually manage to get a public bus service put in place. Our last one was in terms of our road network because of the challenges that we've got being able to service that road network. Materials, cost of materials is becoming a huge challenge for us. Because of our communities, wherever we are on the Highlands and Islands, we need a huge focus on how we manage to make these communities connect. The existing road network is a massive asset. If we haven't got the ability to make sure that that's sustainable in the future, that's going to impact on our communities going forward as well and everything so far that we've talked about in this morning's agenda. Thank you.

Jenny Gilruth:

Thank you, Raymond. Sorry, is that Rob with his hand up? Or is it Grant, sorry?

Rob Dickson:

Thank you, Paul. I thought it was a really sensible suggestion around about transport poverty. We'll certainly take that away as an action point and perhaps an outcome from this section if others are content, recognising the cost-of-living pressures on operators but on working people and how we could help support local authority partners in that regard.

To come back to some of the substantive points, I think from Raymond first of all, on Uig, it was mentioned by yourself and also by Paul. It was a really good example of partners working together. We got to a good outcome, in a large part thanks to some of your officers as well, so thank you both for the part that you played in that regard. Of course, £6 million of additional funding from Scottish Government, setting that aside.

Male:

[Unclear].

Jenny Gilruth:

Well, no comment. But I do think, though, some of the press coverage in recent weeks and months in relation to where we are on ferries has not necessarily been helpful at times. That has clouded some of the debate. DFM has been working quite closely with me on this over the course of the last couple of months. The CalMac service runs quite an efficient service. If you compare its performance to ScotRail as we sometimes do, it sits a bit better. These are not the things that you tend to hear as the Transport Minister. I'd just reflect that some of the reality is not necessarily the one that we hear in the chamber.

In relation to the Corran Ferry, I met with Ms Forbes on this - it must have been before the summer now - and, of course, committed to come to visit. We spoke about this last week too. I know that CMAL have been helping, I think, with some of the technical aspects of that.

In terms of Stagecoach's monopoly, we did again talk about this last week, Raymond, so I'm pretty sympathetic to what you've said on that. I think I may have mentioned to you - and forgive me if I didn't - I'm convening the Bus Taskforce next week, which will look at some of these challenges in a bit more detail. Met with larger and smaller operators over the summer. But I hear what you're saying in relation to Stagecoach in particular. There are opportunities for local authorities and we touched on some of this last week through the Transport Act, so there may be an opportunity indeed. Okay. Well, it might be an action point to come out of today or for a further CoHI meeting, because I think there are opportunities in that regard in relation to bus.

We also discussed some of the inflationary pressures in relation to the road network and cost of materials impacting on infrastructure projects in the Scottish Government in exactly the same space as our local authorities. If there are specific examples you can share with Transport Scotland officials today, we will certainly take that away. I'd be interested to see any figures you might have, for example directly impacting on projects.

Grant I think - it wasn't Rob - mentioned the tourism link. Of course, we now have ScotRail in public ownership, since the last meeting I think. Real opportunities there through publicly owned railway to better join up the opportunities in terms of tourism and perhaps might be an action to take out of this for ScotRail to look at how that could be brought forward and some tangible projects. I know that was the ask at the previous CoHI meeting that we have tangible outcomes in relation to transport.

Then in relation to Ukraine and the refugee situation more broadly, this was a commitment through the Programme for Government [unclear]. Our officials are working just now across government to bring forward proposals that we might be able to consider in relation to that ask, because I think it's a very fair one and a timely one too.

Any other contributions in relation to transport? Amanda.

Amanda Bryan:

Thanks. My day job, I have absolutely nothing to do with transport apart from using it from getting from A to B. I found it quite interesting, looking at this paper. Obviously, there's a lot of activity. It's something that affects us all in our day-to-day lives. But the one thing that I thought was missing from this paper was the point about decarbonisation. It's mentioned in passing about reducing emissions from ferries. There's a specific bus scheme. But given the challenges that we've got around fuel, that whole resilience going forward - I'm conscious we've got an Energy Strategy. Scottish Government's Energy Strategy is in the process of being updated, that whole piece. There's quite a lot in there, particularly in terms of future proofing infrastructure and so on. I'm just trying to get my head round where that sits in all of this, because I think it is something that we do need to embed in everything that we're doing now in all development activity.

Jenny Gilruth:

I don't know if Fiona was going to come in there. Sorry, was that a hand up? No.

Fiona Brown:

It's okay.

Jenny Gilruth:

Certainly in my work as Minister, decarbonising transport is one of the hugest challenges that we face. Transport's one of the biggest emitters bluntly, so we have to decarbonise. I'm sorry if it's maybe not fully reflected in the paper, but it cuts across a range of different policies in transport. Think of the work we're doing on decarbonising the bus fleet, for example, through the ScotZEB funding. Substantial amounts of funding have gone to support bus operators in decarbonising their fleet.

In relation to I suppose that modal shift - and I think Councillor Steele touched on this in the dependence of car. We heard a bit about this in the first presentation this morning. We have a national policy to reduce car kilometres by 20 per cent. I think that policy won't be applied in exactly the same way right across the country, because there'll be regional differences. You only need to look at the Highlands and Islands and the dependence on car to understand it won't work in this part of the country as it might in central Glasgow, so we need to better reflect that, I think, in government.

We'll be coming forward with [future comms] plans on that in a couple of weeks' time. But I'm really keen that we maybe revisit this in a future CoHI, particularly in relation to electric vehicles, because that was flagged at the presentation I think that Alistair delivered in relation to [unclear] so in terms of reliability of the network. That's something that it might be sensible for us to take forward as an action point, if people are content, in addition to Councillor Steele's contribution in relation to transport policy for the next CoHI.

Rob.

Rob Dickson:

Thank you, Minister. On that very point, that transformation to [unclear] energy vehicles and hybrid vehicles, in terms of the tourism economy, the pace of that is staggering. That's because the pace in more urban centres with people travelling particularly to rural Scotland is what we're beginning to see. We ran electric charging funding this year. We anticipated running it for six to nine months. It was closed in less than four months because of the demand. I think that just demonstrates probably what everybody knows.

In relation to the final action about next convention in reference to the focus on the preparations for the cycling championships which are August next year, it might be helpful just to do something wider about how we intend across the tourism piece to use the cycling championships to help with that modal shift [unclear] the bike and looking at the wider tourism bit. I think it would be appropriate for CoHI to understand what some of the thinking is on that, benefit to tourism, benefit to locals as well, because we're using the springboard of the cycling world championships.

Jenny Gilruth:

I think that's a really sensible suggestion, Rob, so we'll certainly add that to our outcome list from this part of today's meeting. If we're all agreed then with point 75, I think it is, at the end of the paper in relation to 2023 UCI cycling championships - and I know that after we've had the break, we'll come back to look at these outcomes in a bit more detail, but I think that addition there in terms of tourism is quite a strong one. I also am really keen to take forward Councillor Steele's suggestion in relation to transport poverty. If there are no other suggestions, I'm going to pause there and hand back to the DFM.

John Swinney:

Okay. Thanks, Jenny. Right, we're just a wee bit ahead of ourselves now, so we'll just take a break just now. We'll reconvene about quarter to four. That'll give us time to look at the outcomes and take our time over those. Okay. Thank you.

...have a look at the outcomes of today's session. I'm hoping that somebody's controlling a screen somewhere. Ah, there we are. Right. It's not too unreadable on the screen, but let me just read it through.

CoHI members appreciated the efforts, including from respondents, to complete the survey, My Life in the Highlands and Islands. The results provide a rich evidence base to better inform policy development and delivery. SG and CoHI members will ensure the survey results are disseminated as widely as possible within their organisations to ensure that a range of decisions on areas such as infrastructure, investment, the just transition to net zero and other key policy decisions will fully take into account the views and circumstances of residents. In advance of the next CoHI, the Scottish Government will coordinate collective action to respond to the survey discussion on housing, working with CoHI members and the REP to identify the obstacles to action and - informed by the developing Remote, Rural and Islands Housing Action Plan - create an implementable way forward.

That's [captures]. I think we were focused there on making - sorry, can we go back to outcome 1, please? Are we able to go back to - thanks. What the focus was there on is essentially on that last paragraph which is about the collective action to create an implementable way forward on housing, recognising the multimarket challenges that exist in this respect. Does that capture it for everyone?

Female:

Mm-hm.

John Swinney:

Okay. We'll go on to outcome number 2, please. This is on the cost of living. CoHI members noted the unprecedented challenges that households and businesses are facing as a consequence of energy price increases and that the Highlands and Islands are impacted disproportionately. The Scottish Government is committed to an Emergency Budget Review to assess all opportunities to redirect additional resources to households most in need, reduce the burdens on business within the limited resources that the Scottish Government has.

The Scottish Government CoHI members noted the specific issues relating to electricity distribution and transmission networks and the impact of the surcharge on customers. It was agreed that CoHI would collectively make representations to Ofgem and the United Kingdom government, including through the Energy Advisory Board. This would also include the disproportionate impact of high heating oil costs on Highlands and Islands communities. Scottish Government and CoHI also recognise the importance of Scottish Government [councillors and] the third sector sharing data and allowing their interventions to support households and business, drawing on the experience of COVID. Okay? That's grand. Thank you.

Outcome number 3, please, update from the Regional Economic Partnership. CoHI members welcomed the update from the Highlands and Islands Regional Economic Partnership and their advocacy and action to champion regional economic interests. Members agreed that the REP had a critical role to play in delivering the National Strategy for Economic Transformation, addressing the challenges of the current economic environment, including around housing and working-age population, and driving progress to ensure the region can reach its potential. This will include action to maximise the supply chain and community benefits from new investments, including around the transformational opportunities in ScotWind and the wider renewable energy field.

Identify potential future strategic economic interventions and drive progress on them. Ensure the right infrastructure, skills and assets are in place to support the region's economic priorities and opportunities. A constant focus at CoHI on delivering regional economic opportunities in the Highlands and Islands is essential through alignment in investment, tackling of obstacles and agreement of shared priorities. That last paragraph is designed to really embed this issue in our ongoing agenda. Okay, any...

Number 4, National Strategy for Economic Transformation. CoHI noted the update on the National Strategy for Economic Transformation and progress made. It will be important that priorities of the Regional Economic Partnership and the National Strategy complement each other as far as possible. CoHI noted the imminent publication of delivery plans for each of the six programmes and agreed the importance of engagement with the REP on the delivery plans. CoHI recognised the opportunity for the REP to identify key areas where it can make the biggest impact and work with the National Strategy for Economic Transformation programme to realise that. CoHI also noted the scale and scope of economic opportunity, particularly in new markets, and the importance of a shared focus by the public sector working with the private sector to leverage investment that realises the maximum benefit to residents in Highlands and Islands and Scotland as a whole. Any points on that? Okay.

On population, discussion focused on there being two key barriers to population growth and retention across Highlands and Islands, digital connectivity and housing. CoHI welcomed the progress made by the working group on population and that there were some clear actions in the accompanying paper to be progressed ahead of the next CoHI. Beyond the key challenges, specific focus was given to attracting and retaining graduates in rural areas and the constraint of a lack of childcare provision in rural and island areas. Workforce dispersal remains a key economic and population driver. The Scottish Government, local authority and agencies should provide an update at the next CoHI on specific progress made in this area. Scottish Government are committed to delivering an action plan to address depopulation for publication in 2023 and will ensure we remain actively engaged with CoHI partners. That sentence needs a bit of tidying up.

Discussion focused on there being two key barriers to population growth and retention. Right, you've got that at the beginning. That's a repeat paragraph. We'll just tidy up those last two paragraphs. Raymond.

Alistair Dodds:

[Unclear]. Sorry. Could you insert jobs into the digital connectivity and housing part? Coming up from the My Highlands and Islands, that was one of the four key issues that had been identified. I think it's quite important to retain it in there.

John Swinney:

Okay, will do, Alistair. Raymond.

Alistair Dodds:

Thanks.

Raymond Bremner:

Yeah, I'm conscious that - I agreed with the two main ones, the digital connectivity and housing, but I'm aware that during the whole day we've actually - it was referred to in terms of health services. So far it's not been reflected. Maybe if we get to the end of the points and it's still not reflected, maybe there's something we could do about that.

John Swinney:

Okay. Yeah, it's an absolutely valid point, but I think we just need to make absolutely certain we've got the focus, we don't lose any of the focus out of all these things.

Okay, lastly on transport, transport authorities collaborate on the actions being undertaken towards net zero, both in terms of decarbonisation of travel and reducing demand. Consider the timing of a future CoHI session on that theme. A further transport item to be considered at future CoHI [unclear] transport poverty and the impacts which have been felt across the Highlands and Islands and actions which all transport authorities could take forward to address. An item to be considered at future CoHI in spring '23 on the 2023 UCI cycling championships in Fort William, including the event planning and legacy for the Highlands and Islands with regard to hosting major events, [unclear] management and cycling. Fiona.

Raymond Bremner:

I share Kathleen's point [unclear] here too. But I'm offering to put my hat in the ring with a couple of points. There's a lot of local authorities here. There's a lot of folks who are intent on - you said about being focused on it. If we are going to be focused on it, how do we come back and say to CoHI, here's the outcomes that we have all agreed. Here's what we've done towards that. Where's the feedback process that's pre-emptive before the next CoHI where I, as the leader of Highland Council, go back - I've got officers.

Part of what I've been saying is the fact that I'll go to the council and they'll be saying, as part of our council programme, we will be looking to adopt and shape council's approach in terms of what our outcomes are here and in terms of the discussions at the Islands Forum. Where do I have my officers feed back to CoHI exactly what Highlands done in terms of looking to be part of that focus and part of the outcome and part of the action that actually happens here rather than a reflection? As I saw in the papers that came out before this meeting, where does that process take place where we actually give an update to CoHI, what we're doing as a local authority to be able to achieve some of the things that we've agreed here [unclear] the outcomes?

John Swinney:

CoHI Secretariat
Strategic Engagement and Co-Ordination Unit
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Agenda

Start of Transcript

John Swinney:

Mairi Gougeon:

John Swinney:

Mairi Gougeon:

Jenny Gilruth:

Bill Lobban:

Raymond Bremner:

Fiona Brown:

Amanda Bryan:

Rob Dickson:

Grant Moir:

Alistair Dodds:

Morven Fancey:

Cameron Anson:

Frank Mitchell:

Mairi MacInnes:

Mary McAllan:

Mike Cantlay:

Alan Hill:

James Stockan:

Kathleen Robertson:

Aidan Grisewood:

Paul Steele:

Robin Currie:

John Swinney:

Robin Currie:

John Swinney:

Kathleen Robertson:

John Swinney:

James Stockan:

John Swinney:

Mairi Gougeon:

Alistair Dodds:

Mairi Gougeon:

James Stockan:

Alistair Dodds:

Mairi Gougeon:

Raymond Bremner:

Mairi Gougeon:

Bill Lobban:

Mairi Gougeon:

Amanda Bryan:

Mairi Gougeon:

John Swinney:

Mairi Gougeon:

John Swinney:

Mairi Gougeon:

James Stockan:

Mairi Gougeon:

Grant Moir:

Mairi Gougeon:

Raymond Bremner:

Mairi Gougeon:

Mairi MacInnes:

Mairi Gougeon:

Robin Currie:

Mairi Gougeon:

John Swinney:

Alistair Dodds:

John Swinney:

James Stockan:

John Swinney:

Paul Steele:

John Swinney:

Rob Dickson:

John Swinney:

Mary McAllan:

John Swinney:

Raymond Bremner:

John Swinney:

Paul Steele:

John Swinney:

James Stockan:

John Swinney: