S2M-477 Integrated Rural Development

The Presiding Officer (Mr George Reid): Good morning. The first item of business is a committee debate on motion S2M-477, in the name of Sarah Boyack, on the Rural Development Committee's report on integrated rural development.

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Stewart Stevenson (Banff and Buchan) (SNP): I was deeply envious of the fact that the clock stopped two minutes and nine seconds into David Mundell's speech. If he tips me off about how that is done, there will be £5 waiting for him.

Alex Johnstone: If anyone has that information, I would pay them £10 for giving it to me and keeping it from Mr Stevenson.

Stewart Stevenson: As usual, the Tories turn to the subjects of money and bribery.

It has been about a year since the Rural Development Committee did the bulk of its work for the report on integrated rural development. That brings to mind the old saying, "What a difference a day makes", which is of particular importance to the Tories today. Although an awful lot has changed in that time, my support for the report's recommendations has not changed. I congratulate the new Environment and Rural Development Committee for securing this debate on the report.

I want to challenge, firmly and substantially, a number of issues that relate to rurality and our countryside. Many members have referred to housing. Alex Johnstone's face lit up when he commended the move in the countryside away from tied housing towards ownership of housing. That is fair enough, but the trouble is that we now have a monoculture of owner-occupation, which is no more desirable in the countryside than was the monoculture of poorly managed council estates that used to exist in many Scottish cities.

Our economy is tied up in housing to an extent that inhibits our ability to invest in other activities, industries and enterprises. Developed countries throughout Europe do not have the same patterns of housing ownership. We must try to move towards greater diversity and greater availability in our housing patterns in towns and, especially, in the countryside. The fact that current patterns are a disincentive to the effective use of capital is not good for the countryside.

On education, one of the great difficulties with the increase in the number of young folks who are going on to take university and college degrees—more than 50 per cent of young people are now taking degrees, which is great—is that, to a large extent, people have to leave the countryside to do those courses. In due course, the university of the Highlands and Islands will make a contribution to offsetting that. However, that covers only one part of rural Scotland.

We have to find ways of ensuring that there are jobs in the countryside for those people, whom we train in urban settings and with urban skills, because so few of them return to the countryside. There are people with get up and go in the countryside, but the problem is that they are getting up and going. However, people with get up and go are also coming into many parts of the countryside.

I live in the parish of Ord in Banffshire, which is part of the administrative area of Aberdeenshire. Approximately half the children in our local school come from outwith the area. They bring energy and new ideas, and a welcome commitment to the community. We have to try to replicate that throughout Scotland.

Let me say a little bit about CAP reform. It is a good thing. Farmers are going to be rewarded for stewardship of the countryside. We are moving away from unreasonable reliance on production in farming. However, we have not yet addressed the wider issues for businesses in the countryside. What are the agricultural engineers going to do if the farmers produce less? The farmers are okay, but agricultural engineers are not protected. Other industries and businesses in the countryside will be radically affected by CAP reform, but we have not yet debated that.

My colleague Margaret Ewing referred to fishing, and members have heard me talk about it on previous occasions. We have not taken full account of the effects of the decline in the fishing industry in rural areas. The economists call them third-level effects, but I refer to them as the two-butchers-in-Strichen problem. Strichen, a town of 1,000 people, is 10 miles from the sea and has two butchers. Rather unusually, those butchers supply the fishing trawlers. Decline in the fishing industry means decline in some of our rural communities. By the same token, changes in CAP will have the same effect.

Tommy Sheridan referred to the need for the labelling of Scottish food. I support that but I would go much further. We have got to stop obeying the spirit of European regulations and start obeying the letter. That means that in public procurement, for example, we could say that crops have to be gathered no more than 48 hours prior to delivery to public services. That is a permitted way of ensuring that public services buy locally. We cannot say that we must buy Scottish produce, but we can work the system. Let us start to do that.

I end by saying something fundamental that will show where I differ from many of those who are not in the chamber or are not members for rural areas and who might have a different attitude to some of us. Scotland's countryside, not Scotland's cities, is the future of Scotland. In Scotland's cities there are diseconomies of scale. Mass transportation is necessary to offset those diseconomies of scale—the time taken to travel to work causes loss of productivity. We have to subsidise our cities to make them work at all.

Our countryside is the lungs of Scotland, converting the carbon dioxide that is a result of human endeavour in our cities. It is also where people will look to discharge the stress of city living. If we do not support our rural areas, we will lose our cities as well.

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