 Rwyfand eu ddigwyddol i'ch ddisgymorth rhagor am mwyidiol 1.5.322 ar y cyfrifwyr Gwarksson i'u'r osan brifnwyddiad yn ei ddweud eu cyfrifwyr yn barchio'r ddigwyddol yn ei ddweud. Rwyfand eich ddigwyddol i'r ddigwyddol i wedi eu cyfrifwyr yn byddwodd yr agor o hyd i gael â nhw, a ddigwyddol i'u ddweud i'u ddweud i chi i gael â'r ddigwyddol, ac mae'n gwyllwch i ddweud i chi'n gweithio i gael i amlwg. Rydw i ddim yn gwybod i'n ddechrau i Rob Gibson, Mr Gibson, seven minutes, so thereby please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. For my final speeches MSP for Kate Ness Sutherland and Ross since 2011, I want to explore bringing more local control to the people who I have had the immense privilege to represent. I want to reflect on where the Highlands and Islands region I represented from 2003 to 2011 and my huge mainland constituency, the size of Northern Ireland, have suffered without sufficient say in their affairs. Hopefully, I'll point out how decisions that affect local lives can be sustainable, socially just and, I believe, by applying subsidiarity all our communities around Scotland can thrive. First, I recall some of the pressures that have shaken our land and shaken out its people. The so-called improvements by layers in the early 19th century evicted the age-old, garlic cattle-raising communities from the most fertile land, and then brought in sheep farming plus deer shooting and salmon angling for personal gain and the pleasure of the rich few. The results are stark. Since around 1810, the exodus of surplus population to the industrial areas and to the ends of the earth has been augmented by losses in war after war that undoubtedly makes this clearances country. I wholeheartedly welcome the 2015 Community Empowerment Act, which can pave the way to build on the act of 2003 act that has enabled 500,000 acres to come into community ownership. This cause is a long back story. Early protests against individual clearances led to the major victory of the 1880s of the Crofters War for secure rented tenure. In 1920s, the Stornoway Trust gained local control, but it was in 1992 fight by the Ascent Crofters in my constituency to win their land, which ignited the modern debate. Professor James Hunter talked of new lights shining in the glen when Crofters won. In praise of their 20,000-acre purchase, my old friend, the singer-songwriter Andy Mitchell, told it like this. No love nor commitment those past layers did display. A playground for the wealthy always was their way. This landy one stole from us, they've now been forced to sell and since we've paid for what we own, we'll try to keep it well. Our Scottish Parliament will leave its teenage years behind and reaches adulthood before 2021. There's a new mood of hope for more diverse land ownership, as discussed in the strategic report of 1 million acres under community control that is ready to roll. This opens up wider questions about democratic deficit in local government, the need to build confidence and capacity building and to use every possible resource to maintain and hopefully repopulate more of our land beyond the crofting communities, create more small holdings, 1,000 huts and allotments across the land. We must apply human rights under the UN covenant for social, economic and cultural rights that can ensure local people the right to decide how to provide affordable housing, safeguard their most cherished environmental features, supervise local health provision and develop a vibrant local culture. When I was a district councillor in Ross and Cromarty from 1988 to 1996, our policy had to cope with a steep downturn in the economic activities such as the then oil slump. Ross and Cromarty District Council promoted the quality of life at the core of our work. Fais Roche and arts provision were created alongside environmental adaptation and modern affordable house building. In 2010, as an MSP, I consulted a decentralising services in local government, arguing that small works. Today, the urgent need to develop local control could not be clearer. Local management of Crown Estate coastal funds is looming. The strategic planning of considerable community benefit funds from renewables is urgent. The need to break up Highland Council, covering the size of Belgium, is widely discussed. How can 80 councillors meet local needs in an area of that size? Cathiness has always wanted its council back and deserves to, and other areas should do too. In Highland, the democratic deficit shows one elected councillor per 4,000 voters. Germany has one to 500 who would have full planning and service powers in thousands of communes. In Scotland, we must gain the right for local communes around groups of secondary schools and their catchments to decide local taxes to meet local needs. That is the urgent business for us as this Parliament grows up, so should local democracy. Environmentally, my constituency has been heavily subject to conservation by command. All manner of designations hamstring scattered communities. We have a quarter of the high-profile core wildland areas in my constituency. Our hinterland is criss-crossed with restrictive designations. What we need is conservation by consent. We are caught between the zealots of the John Muir Trust, who want no wind power and fail to manage deer culls acceptably, and some retirees and the rich who often object to renewables or other developments in sight of their properties. Doogie McLean described the latter in his song, Homeland, Douich Macri. He sold his house in the city, put it on the market and did so good. Now you have bought yourself a little piece of something that you do not understand and you have misunderstood. Despite the growing constraints, I have witnessed many leaders emerging over the years even from the smallest communities to make a difference. Open debates and the ability to spend taxes will bring out many more local voters if we have more local elections. Those who led the communities to own their own land included the late Alan McRae of Asund, Maggie Pfeife in Egg, Willie McSporran on Gaea and the real David Cameron of North Harris. They have made their own land places of possibility aided immeasurably by the late Simon Fraser of Carlyway. At last, the poor had gained a lawyer. Of so many folk to thank in my constituency for advice and support, my staff over the years, two of whom are now MPs, I want to thank my current staff, Neil MacDonald, Maureen Forbes and councillor Gail Ross. They call me the Moss Boss. I will not explain why, but some of you know. My sincere thanks go to the clerks of Racky Spice, my MSP colleagues, not least the Racky members and most of all my family and partner, Eleanor Scott. She is my rock. We live in a better land thanks to the huge support for the Scottish Parliament that will soon reach adulthood. I will be cheering it on and helping to make our land fit for a sustainable future. In conclusion, a dozen miles from where I stay in Easter Ross at Kildermory in the winter of 1921, Christopher Murray Greave taught the children of the estate gamekeeper, whose then-layered Dyson Perens of Worcester sauce fame was philanthropic, at least in the village of Alness, near to his private kingdom. Much later, Greave, the founder of the Scottish Literary Nesons and, having adopted the nom de guerre, Hugh McDermid, reflected in his long poem Dieru 3 about the act of surmounting difficulties. Thinking of the rugged coolans of the sky, he wrote, what can be shaken, be shaken and the unshakable remain. The inaccessible pinnacle is not inaccessible. My case for deepening local decision taking is unshakable and rests on the solid ground of an increasingly confident Scotland where full powers are not inaccessible. Members will wish to note that this was Mr Gibson's valedictory speech, and Mr Gibson has given devoted service to this Parliament in a variety of roles. He has been, as we have heard today, a constant champion of the crofting and rural communities and particularly his own community in Caithness, Sutherland and Ross. Most recently, he has convened the rural affairs committee with enthusiasm and zeal in the land reform bill particularly. His contributions will be much missed in this place. We wish him, we, the Presiding Officers, wish him and Eleanor every success in his future endeavours. We now move on to the next speeches, which are speeches from Ken Macintosh and Graham Day, around four minutes, Mr Macintosh. I thank Rob Gibson for bringing forward today's debate and for his powerful personal and moving remarks. Very fittingly and historically for securing the last member's business of this session on what many of us might regard as some of the defining ideals around which this Parliament was established, promoting local control, land reform and community empowerment. In fact, I noted that Mr Gibson concludes his motion by calling us to apply the principles of subsidiarity, sustainability and social justice, and I couldn't agree more. Another term, which neatly encapsulates that same approach as the word devolution, and in many ways sums up why I stood for Parliament myself in the first place. Whether applied to the land or to community rights, it is an approach that encourages each of us to take more control over our own lives, to have the self-confidence to speak up and to see Government and decision making as something participatory rather than something done to us. I am tempted to digress somewhat and have a more philosophical discussion on the limits of localism, for example where we have to apply national standards. Given our proximity to the election, I am sure that Mr Gibson would also understand the temptation for me to tease him slightly over the centralising tendencies of his own Government. However, Mr Gibson and other members will be relieved to hear that I will do neither, and instead I want to use my short contribution to join forces with him and across the chamber to talk about how we can now use the powers at our disposal to empower people across Scotland. My own interest in the land reform agenda comes at least partially from my Highland and Island routes, but I have long believed that it is a view shared by most of my Labour colleagues that urban communities have as much to gain from land ownership and community empowerment as rural and isolated communities. The example that I want to give is much closer to home in the form of the Nielsen Development Trust. Nielsen is now in my colleague Hugh Henry's constituency, but originally it was part of Eastwood, and the origins of the trust were when the Clydesdale decided to close the last bank in the village. That caused considerable alarm, as members might imagine, and a group of residents came together in response. They drew on the powers in the Scottish Parliament's land reform legislation to take over the premises and turn it into a community facility. I cannot do justice to the amount of work that local residents put in, the crucial moments such as securing funding from the co-op and, to be fair, the Clydesdale bank itself, which was very sympathetic. In the end, they were successful and the bank was often running as a community hub. It is no exaggeration to say that it has gone from strength to strength, coming up with plans to regenerate the whole village, promote cultural activities and, in what I regard as the most significant development, jointly developing and owning a small wind farm. That wind farm has the potential to generate hundreds of thousands of pounds in income for the local community. It is a fantastic example of how we should be co-operatively making the most of our renewable energy resources. I am not saying that the trust is perfect, and the members of the trust themselves are more aware than anyone of how they could do things differently if they had a chance. For example, despite my unreserved support and admiration for the trust, I am conscious that it has tended to be dominated and driven by the more middle-class members of the local community and that there were initially at least tensions with the more traditional community council. I mention that simply because we can pass legislation here at the Parliament, but sometimes it is everybody as important to build the capacity and communities to access and use these new powers. Nielsen Development Trust used the initial land reform legislation, but it is only just qualified as a small village at the edge of that vast conurbation that is Glasgow. Not only do I hope that the new land reform legislation will make things easier for communities, I am hopeful that the community asset transfer powers will open up a whole new avenue for local residents to assert themselves. In East Remshire, again as an example, the local Muslim community has already taken over a rundown pavilion and turned it into the wood farm educational trust. Members would struggle to find a better example of a local community taking a liability and turning it into a hugely valuable and well-used asset, and it will be an interesting test of our new community empowerment act, whether it allows the wood farm educational trust to move to the next phase in its own development. I want to conclude, if I may, by paying—I am afraid that it is albeit a brief tribute to the contribution that Mr Gibson has given this Parliament—his passion for this country of Scotland and for the issue of land reform in particular—has always been evident, and he has never been more animated nor more persuasive than when arguing this cause that is so clearly close to his own heart. It is fitting indeed for Mr Gibson to end his parliamentary career on this positive, contential but still radical motion that was before us today, and I am proud to extend my thanks and those of my party for all the work that he has given to his community, to the Scottish Parliament and to Scotland. Many thanks. I now call on Graham Day to be followed by Alex Johnston. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am delighted to speak in this debate, which, as we have heard, marks the final contribution of the Scottish Parliament of my friend and colleague Rob Gibson, at least in the capacity of MSP. This is the third opportunity in a matter of little less than a fortnight I have had to highlight Rob's contribution to the Parliament. It is starting to feel like he is making as many farewell appearances as one Frank Sinatra. As I said in paying tribute to him at the final rural affairs climate change and environment committee recently, I suspect that it is highly unlikely that this institution is hearing the last of the current member for Caithness, Salland and Ross, all joking aside, that it would be a great pity if it was. Rob has made an enormous contribution to the work of this Parliament, at least of all around the issues that he is so particularly knowledgeable and passionate about. I have heard a very great deal thanks to his generosity. As we touched on during the land repayment and reform debate, the generally consensual and effective nature of the Racky Committee over the past five years has owed much to Rob's approach to convening the committee. His contributions to the committee and indeed in this chamber, and Rob, you yourself will be missed. I am sure that we will continue to hear from you in matters such as land reform in the years to come, I certainly hope so. Presiding Officer, at the risk of giving away the speaking order tonight, I understand that Dave Thompson, another distinguished representative from the Highlands, will also be making his final speech tonight. Like Rob, Dave has left his mark on this institution. I have very much enjoyed working with Dave on the Racky Committee over the past couple of years and watching him argue so passionately for causes such as crofting and fishing. A debate around localism is the perfect way for Dave, like Rob, to depart the scene as it were. He and I have chatted many times over his views, and views shared by Rob, that there is a democratic deficit in the Highlands, with so massive a geographical area with its diverse communities, represented by a single local authority. As we may hear in a few minutes, it is a case that Dave Thompson argues well. Between listening to Dave and Rob and serving five years on Racky, I have come to share the view that this Parliament needs to commit, as it is already doing in a number of areas, to handing power down to a local level. However, at the heart of localism lies empowerment, and empowerment, if it is to be delivered on the scale that we all want, will require significant capacity building. If improving how we manage our communities in the best interest of those communities and the environments in which they exist, for example, involves enhancing community councils, we have to ensure that those community councils function effectively. The county of Angus, which I represent, is concerning that two community councils are in danger of folding, whereas two others have just started out on the comeback trail. Perhaps we need to, as Rob Gibson's motion highlights, carry out a fundamental review of local government, a review that I think should consider the effectiveness of the multi-member ward system used by councils. I have to say that I am unconvinced that the present system delivers accountable local representation. Yes, there are fine examples of good local councillors across all parties and none, but the present system also allows people to coast along on the strength of a party vote or an anti-party politics vote. Localism is not just about tiers of governance. It is also about encouraging and facilitating local people to come together and deliver in the best interests of their communities to, for example, acquire land or buildings in order to put these to better use for the wider good. The Community Empowerment Act and the Land Reform Bill have opened the door for that to happen, but we need to facilitate capacity building to support communities who perhaps have little understanding of what is entailed. That is why, during the passage of the Land Reform Bill, I argued for community land Scotland to be empowered to proactively go out there and raise awareness of the opportunities that exist for change and the support that would be available to communities. It is also why I raised with the Crown Estate the possibility of their deploying post the Scotland Act and their coming under the auspices of the Scottish Parliament the experience that they have built up in working with communities to deliver local management agreements again proactively to enhance capacity. I hope that, in the course of the next parliamentary session, we will see real progress made in those regards. I now call Alex Johnson to be followed by Dave Thompson. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate tonight. The main reason I want to speak in it is to pay tribute to the work that Rob Gibson has done during his time in Parliament. There are some things that have been mentioned already, but there is one that has not been, and that is the work that he has done to ensure, along with a handful of us, that the Burns Club continues to be a success within this Parliament. Rob, during his opening speech, made a number of quotes, not from Burns, but from artists known in the Highlands today. It is very much in Rob's nature that he takes the lessons of life from those who have experienced it and expressed it through poetry and song. That is something that I will remember positively about Rob. Another thing that I will remember positively about Rob is his enthusiasm for localism. Localism means different things to different people, and there is a point in this progress where Rob and I will diverge and take a different view. However, I agree that it should be one of the responsibilities of this Parliament and a whole range of fields to avoid the tendency to gather power to ourselves here in Edinburgh. The devolution of power is something that should be carried on wherever possible down through communities and right to the lowest possible common denominator, because only by ensuring that decisions are made locally can we have truly local views and needs reflected. That is probably where I come to the point where Rob and I will disagree, because Rob's experience, particularly in land ownership, is one that he gained in the Highlands. Land ownership and its functionality are something that exists in a number of diverse forms all around Scotland. My experience was different. It was in a small farming community in Concardinshire. It was an area where most farms were relatively small and were occupied. That is why I have found the land reform process in this Parliament to be one that is obsessed with a particular version of history and perhaps centred on a particular form of land ownership that is not universal to the whole of Scotland. As I have said before in Parliament, it is true that most land in Scotland is in the hands of a relatively small number of people, but the vast majority of landowners are small landowners, and we must be prepared to defend their rights, and their right to the private ownership of land is something that we should cherish. That is one of the areas where I do have some worries about the position that, perhaps Rob, but certainly others in this debate, have expressed tonight. The concept of community is one that can mean different things to different people. If community means a press towards some form of collectivisation, then it is one that I will not support and I will defend the rights of the individual. I have looked deep into my heart, I have shone lights into the darkest corners, I have even turned over one or two of the stones that I found in there, and I did not find anything that resembled socialism. I believe that it is never appropriate for us to dictate that the needs of the many should outweigh the rights of the few, and we should be prepared to defend the rights of the few wherever we find them. As we go forward, it is absolutely essential that I express once again my true and honest support for the principles that Rob has laid out, but my desire is to ensure that, as we go forward, the rights of the individual and the rights of the private land owner will always be defended, because only by defending them can we defend a truly free society and one in which the rights of the individual will always be defended. And before we move on to Mr Thompson's speech, I would just draw members' attention to the fact that this is Mr Thompson's second valedictory speech. Having given his first last week more farewell tours, I am presiding officer suggested than Tina Turner, but Mr Thompson too, seriously, has given this Parliament a distinguished service in his case since 2006, faithfully representing his constituents of Skyloch Aberyn Badnach, and his enthusiasm and care for his rural constituents, as well as his fishing communities, serves as an example to us all. Mr Thompson, we thank you for your contribution over the years and we wish you well in whatever your future endeavours may be. Thank you, but you may speak now. Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and my apologies for having another go at having a last speech. I had intended last week to make that my last speech, but I hadn't realised that this debate was coming up when I saw it was Rob's debate and it was to do with localism. I just could not resist putting my name forward. I've known Rob for many years. He's been very active in the highlands and islands on land issues and my constituency in Sky and elsewhere, and he has an excellent knowledge of the subject and a passion for it as well. It's been a privilege working with him, Graham Day, Mike Russell, Angus MacDonald and the other committee members in the Rural Affairs Committee over the past couple of years. It's been hugely interesting and very appropriate to my constituency. I've thoroughly enjoyed it and being part of getting the land reform bill through as an act has been a real privilege. I was a trustee of the Stornoway Trust, so I was a landowner for a couple of years, many years ago. There's no doubt in my mind that there's a real appetite in the highlands for change. I have approached the Government in relation to the islands bill, and the minister will be well aware of that, suggesting that the inner hebrides, which I believe are the neglected part of the highlands, if not of Scotland, need to be considered as well as Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles when we're looking at the islands bills. When you look at Skye, when you look at the small isles, when you look at the Argyll islands and when you look at places like Neudard, which is basically an island unless you want a 10-mile hike over the mountains and places such as Aberdechyn and so on, those areas in the west highlands have exactly the same problems and issues as Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles do. I have asked the Government and I put a submission into the consultation asking them to consider creating a council for Skye, Lochalsh and Lochaber, and I know that Argyll is a council at the moment, but there are many islands there. I think that we need to look at those areas in the inner hebrides and the west highlands as a special case, they're different. Many, many miles from Inverness, if you are in Uig in Skye, you're 130 miles from Inverness. I know that because I was over there on Friday again, 115 miles to Portre and then down to Raze for a wee while on the Saturday and back home on Sunday, it's two and a half hours non-stop driving and that's all within my own constituency. It's crazy, it's too big. Geography needs to be taken into account when we're looking at council boundaries and sizes and also when we're looking at constituencies for the Scottish Parliament. It's not fair in constituents that they have so far to go to meet their MSPs. What we actually need is going back to the borras, so the little places from 10,000 to say 50,000 in Highland, in the greater Highlands area, maybe covering for Murray to Argyll, we could have a regional authority dealing with strategic matters but then right down, so a Skye and Lochalsh council again, a council for Tain, for Wick, for Thurso, for Oban and give real power and real money to these small councils. It's up to other people to argue in relation to their own areas but my remit is for the Highlands and Islands and we really need to make sure that people engage again with their local communities. Community councils are failing all over the Highlands, they're disbanding, they're resigning in disgust, they've no power, they've no money. You wouldn't need more politicians because you wouldn't need community councils if you had really small councils with 10,000 or 15,000 of a population and you wouldn't need to elect people to the strategic element of it because you would nominate from the small councils up to that level. All you would elect are people in small councils across the... Well, the Highlands and Islands, why doesn't the Government actually give us a wee pilot project? Pilot it in the Highlands and Islands and then you'll see if it works elsewhere in Scotland. Anyway, I'm conscious of my time, Presiding Officer. I could say an awful lot more but I will stop there and wish Rob and everyone else in this chamber all the best for the future as I head off into the twilight as well. Many thanks, many thanks. Before we move to the closing speech from the minister, although he hasn't let us know that this is also his valid rectory speech, although perhaps he has when I check my notes, members should be aware that this is also Marco Biaggi's last speech in our Parliament as he moves on to greater things. Mr Biagi has made a huge impact in a relatively short time in this place and having been first elected in 2011 and in that time he's served as a convener, the deputy convener of the Equal Ops Committee and he took through the same sex marriage bill. In 2014, because he's the fast track young man, he was elected or selected to be the minister for local government and community empowerment, a position he's held for the last two years and carried out the work of that office with great distinction. Mr Biagi, we wish you well in your endeavours whatever they may be in future. Good luck. I think that that was a call to speech and I'd actually like to start by saying how much of a fitting send-off this motion is for my colleague Rob Gibson because a bit like him this motion is packed with ideas for local democracy, communities and land reform and taking together their unifying message is a testament to the role their proposer has carved out for himself as a dedicated, thoughtful and occasionally just the right amount of outspoken champion for the Highlands and as a committee convener an esteemed voice on rural affairs, climate change and the environment in this Parliament. As was just said this will be my own final full speech and I would therefore beg the Presiding Officer's indulgence to take some time to develop a broad response to Mr Gibson's equally broad motion which I believe is fundamentally linked by the question of the amount of control people and communities have over their own affairs. That applies in Rob Gibson's rural Caithness and my own beloved urban Edinburgh central. When I was elected in 2011 my acceptance speech was a product of three things euphoria, sleep deprivation and a lot of rehearsal in the Ingolston toilets. It has been immortalised by the former First Minister as this victory is statistically impossible. I maintain I said no such thing, I only thought it. But what I did say was that this would be the Parliament and Government that really changed Scotland and did so for the better. I contend that we have done so, but not in quite the way that I expected at 6am in Edinburgh that evening. The voting buttons of this Parliament have brought much change, probably too much for Alex Johnson's liking, raining down on the nation's heads over the past five years. We are not just the nation's Parliament, we have a growing sideline in being a job creation scheme for political historians. The Community Empowerment Act of the Motion, which I had the privilege and indeed challenge to take through, is still sitting there like a present under a Christmas tree. It is wrapped, we have noticed it but we have not yet opened it to see what wonders truly lie inside. We also empowered people individually and tackled social injustice by passing equal marriage, which gave me two stand-out memorable experiences—testing the Presiding Officer's discretion by tweeting a photo taken in the chamber of the yes button highlighted in front of me—and, more enduringly, being a witness at one of Scotland's two first simultaneous same-sex weddings, both of which were very atmosferically asignations at midnight. Those are two personal highlights, but the real change has been the spirit that has run through the country. It is a spirit of that subsidiarity, sustainability and social justice. Scotland has changed. It was not principally through the actions of her Government or her Parliament, indeed, but of her people. Though she was offered full control of her own country, the people of Scotland drew back. In that process, they built a great, loud, irreverent, sometimes rowdy public square and threw the great questions of state into it like fruit into a smoothie maker. In 1971, Chinese Premier Jiu Enlai was asked what he thought of the consequences of the French Revolution. He answered that it was too early to say. We will likewise be working out the consequences of these years for a long time to come. However, if we or the next Parliament think that those desires were just for greater national independence and not greater personal and community independence too, then we are misunderstanding the people more than history has misunderstood Jiu Enlai. Although that is how the question is famously remembered, it is a misattribution. Its meaning was lost in translation and he was not referring to the revolution two centuries before but the events of Paris in 1968. The ambitions of the people of Scotland must not be lost in translation. They wish to be closer to the decisions that hold such sway over the places they hold dear. They ask how much control they have over their own lives. They ask it of the nation but they ask it of their cities, towns and villages, who they pay their taxes to, in what form and how it is decided, who owns what and to what purpose. Those are great questions of community as well as of state. This country now needs to be changed materially. Like clothes grown out of, our institutions now hang uncomfortably on broadened shoulders. I am proud of our record but community empowerment does not come from one act. It comes from every act taken to make society more just, taxes more fair and control more local. It will not be for this Government but for the next one to build on the work done already to recognise that great challenge and meet it. I have chosen not to be part of that next Parliament or indeed that next Government and I wish everyone who is very well. At the end I am just reminded of some wise words that I heard spoken on a departure. There must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine. Many thanks. I now close this meeting up on one.