Chamber and committees

Gordon MacDonald wants to come in briefly on that.

There is a need for some coherence in the thinking there. Neil McInroy wants to come in.

There is a clear message there.

In his submission, Iain Gulland provided a really interesting perspective on valuing our buildings, so I would like to hear about that, but I will bring in Angus Hardie first.

It is tremendous that you mentioned waste and its value. There needs to be a shift in consciousness, because we do not really value it. I love the expression “There is no such thing as away.” We really need to shift our sense of what we value.

Thank you for that. We definitely need to get communities and local people leading on these things.

Neil McInroy wants to come in, then I will bring in Angus Hardie.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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