Chamber and committees

Will you clarify your last few words?

The economic outcomes are thriving, prosperous and happy communities. Language is embedded in community—there is no community without language. We can often make arguments, which I think are important, about the economic contribution of Scots or Gaelic, because clearly they have an impact on tourism, on all the heritage industries and on the Scottish economic brand. They have a huge economic impact. However, I am a lot more interested in what is happening at grass-roots level.

When you have communities that are able to work, live and access public services in their language of choice, that is meaningful for the economy. If you think of some of the communities where those languages—

I think that the bill will get us closer to that. Engaging in intensive community work in particular localities is more likely to get us there, and that is what the bill seeks to do. When it comes to the choices that people make about what language they speak, those choices are nearly always made in response to their environment, whether that is their home, their school or where they do their leisure activities. If there are environments in which it is instinctive for people to use Gaelic, they will continue to use Gaelic, and they will have the depth of fluency that Liam Kerr asked about.

That is why I think it starts and ends with community—we all live in a community, and our lives revolve around the community. The bill is trying to get more of a focus on that. The bill makes some changes to education, which is important, because school is at the heart of community, but more than that, it relates to communities.

We have to get it right. The bill creates the legal pathway, but how something is ultimately delivered is what makes the difference. If we have a community that feels more empowered to access help, advice and support, and if we can give people who are already trying to battle for that a bit more of a leg up, we can get there.

In the forefront of my mind are the communities in my constituency, such as Staffin. It is very similar to what I described already; however, until a couple of years ago, the guy in the local grocery store would have just instinctively responded in Gaelic, but that has probably changed even in the past few years because of changing personnel. We need to reclaim that.

I know, it is.

Some of that work will be on-going, but there is a commitment in the bill to just under £700,000. There is a recognition that there will be some new costs in terms of pivoting work away. I do not know whether anybody else wants to say anything about the process of coming to the financial memorandum.

I will make a couple of points on that. First, if there is a legal duty on a body to produce a Gaelic language plan, that will need to be considered. Clearly, that will be considered as part of budgeting processes.

Secondly, I am a lot more interested in what those public bodies are actively doing rather than them just producing plans for the sake of producing plans. The scrutiny is on what those public bodies are doing already.

My last point is that the real focus is on the areas of linguistic significance. Bòrd na Gàidhlig will also have provisions when it comes to its role in supporting public bodies in terms of providing advice, assistance and so on.

There are three quick answers on that.

For the first time.

I have been there on a visit. I am not hugely across all the details of how it operates, but I have been in post for two weeks—I think it might have been a week and a half—

It is important to try to find a way of co-ordinating all the organisations and bodies that currently exist and ensuring that there is a formalised structure of sorts to underpin all the work, but it is also important just to let them get on with doing the good work that they already do.

This is not an excuse, but I am only 10 days in this job, as I think that I have established, and I am still considering all the evidence that I have taken. I have made a commitment to Willie Rennie to engage with some of those who have given evidence, and I am very much in listening mode.

I appreciate that that is unfair to the committee, as it has been taking evidence for quite a while. However, being new in post, I want to familiarise myself with the issue. If there are opportunities to improve the bill and expand it in line with its objectives, I very much want to be constructive and respond well to any amendments that you might want to lodge.

On Gaelic, it is important, but it is not the full story. I was speaking to officials who have counted that, across the different Gaelic organisations, there are about 50 community workers with a mission of Gaelic revitalisation and support. I confess to being quite surprised by that number. My question was whether there is any form of unity and consistency in approach and objectives. That work strikes me as being important when it comes to the community. It does not need legal backing, because it is already happening. It is being done well, and it is happening on a very devolved basis in different organisations.

I do not think that legal routes are the primary or only route to revitalisation. The bill is critical because, if there are no legal rights or legal backing, it is a lot more difficult to get, for example, public bodies to do the things that we want them to do. I do not think that we can ignore that. However, I will maybe come back to the committee at some point, if you are still interested, and talk about what is happening more generally on housing, social interventions and work opportunities, because that is where the real excitement and potential exist.

The bill cannot be dismissed. It has to be part of the picture, and I think that, if you speak to those who are heavily invested in the bill, they will say that having the legal backing matters. When people engage with a public body and they want to be able to access a service in Gaelic, they either have the right to do that or they do not, and they want the right to do it. We cannot dismiss the legal underpinning of that work.