 The next item of business is a debate on motion 11896, in the name of Mary Gougeon, on Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament. I invite members who wish to speak in the debate to press their request-to-speak buttons. I call on Mary Gougeon to speak to and move the motion up to 10 minutes, cabinet secretary. Thank you, Presiding Officer. As we approach a number of pivotal points for rural policy, including the emerging rural delivery plan and the agriculture and rural communities I believe that it is of the utmost importance that the voices of young people living in our rural areas are more than just heard. We have a duty to listen as well as to work in partnership with them to achieve better outcomes for our rural and island communities. I had the pleasure of meeting with over 70 delegates at the very first Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament in Fort William in November as part of the wider Scottish Rural and Islands Parliament. I really welcomed the opportunity to discuss with them the priority issues that they are currently facing, how they are working to address them and how they also want the Government to take action. Today presents a really important opportunity to discuss some of these issues in more detail. I am especially glad that we were able to support delegates from the first Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament to attend and that they are in the gallery here with us today. It is also great to see some familiar faces from when we met in Fort William. I want to take a moment to acknowledge that it is not just the conversations that we will have here in the chamber today that are important. It is also the conversations that young people have had and will have with each other as a network of rural and island youth. For my part, I am committed to continuing to engage with young people across rural Scotland following today's debate. It is so important that rural and island young people's voices are not only heard but that they actively influence Scottish Government policies. Hearing those voices will help us to drive forward the First Minister's policy missions of equality, opportunity and community. That is a critical time for that as we build the key levers for future rural development. We already have a strong track record of engaging meaningfully with young people in our rural and island communities, but we also have many future opportunities that we can look forward to. That will include the publishing of a rural delivery plan, a full review of the national islands plan, the new agriculture and rural communities bill, publishing the addressing depopulation action plan, the good food nation plan, as well as the implementation of the rural and islands housing action plan. There has already been engagement with young people through groups such as the community-led local development youth local action groups, the young islanders network and the Scottish Association of Young Farmers. I just want to ensure that young people have a voice in the decisions that affect them. Following their discussions with each other and then with myself, the young people at the rural and islands Parliament presented a number of key priority areas for action. I just want to take a little bit of time today to do that now and briefly address some of those priority areas. I really look forward to exploring those topics further through the course of today's debate. One of the areas that are identified as a key priority was housing. Housing of the right type in the right place can have a powerful and generational impact, enabling young people to stay in the communities where they grew up. Despite the UK Government austerity and the fact that we are facing the worst budget settlement since devolution, the Scottish Government continues to prioritise housing and affordable housing in rural areas, with investment of more than half a billion pounds for affordable homes planned for next year. We remain committed to delivering 110,000 affordable homes of which at least 10 per cent will be in rural and island areas. I am happy to take the intervention. I agree that, as somebody from the rural and islands area, housing is absolutely vitally important. We have a crisis. How is cutting the housing bill by 200 million pounds to prioritising housing? I would want to emphasise, first of all, again the point that I have just made about us facing the worst settlement that we have had since devolution. We have had some very difficult choices to make and we face a capital reduction of 10 per cent, so we have still continued to prioritise funding for housing. The funding for rural homes remains unchanged, and I think that that is absolutely vital. Our demand-led rural and islands housing fund has now become a recognised feature of the affordable housing supply programme and it continues to play a critical role in helping community organisations and others to deliver affordable homes. In October, we published a rural and islands housing action plan and many of the actions included in that plan seek to address the key challenges and put in place the systems and support for the delivery of the right homes in the right places so that our rural and island communities can thrive. It is frequently communities themselves that are leading the way in building new housing stock or freeing up and refurbishing existing stock so that it meets local needs. I know that my colleague, the Minister for Housing, Paul MacLennan, is looking forward to attending rural housing Scotland's conference and will be highlighting the importance of community-led housing in our broader approach to delivering more homes in rural and island communities. Transport was, of course, identified as another important issue and the youth delegates asked for sustainable transport, which works for everyone. I couldn't agree more about the importance that this has for our rural and island communities. I know that many of the youth delegates participated in the Scottish rural and islands transport community workshop at the rural Parliament. I am looking forward to seeing some of the specific recommendations that came from that as well as the views on a rural and island mobility plan. I also recognise, though, the impact that recent disruption has had on rural and island communities. I want to underline our commitment to investing in ferry services and rural transport. Our national transport strategy is for all of Scotland reflecting the different transport needs of island, rural and urban communities. Our planned island connectivity plan will replace the ferry's plan, but it will also be broader in scope, taking into account aviation, ferries and fixed links, as well as onward and connecting travel. On mental health and wellbeing, the youth delegates called for empathetic interventions and for recognition of social support spaces, as well as tailoring solutions to specific age groups. All of those are key components of the Scottish Government's new mental health and wellbeing strategy, which was published in June last year. In the Borders, which is a rural area, young people, young adults, it takes 39 weeks to get the first appointment for CAMHS services. That is just unacceptable, and young people are calling for this Government to apologise to them because of that. What does the cabinet secretary say to that? I would say that that is why the work that we are doing and the work that I have just mentioned there that was published in June last year is so important in trying to make that difference, understand how critical those services are and, of course, it is important that we provide that access to those services too. Again, that is why that work is so important. The action plan, which is going to underpin that strategy, is still in development, and it is important that the views of our young people in rural and island areas now help to shape it. On skills, education and employment, the youth delegate is called for a youth-led reform of education. That is really timely, given the developments that we are seeing both in the school sector and in our economy and in the skills sector, especially as we transition to net zero. Education and skills provision must be tailored to what young people want, to where they live and to what they want their future to be. That is not just in terms of employment but as well as in terms of that wider fulfilment and wellbeing. We have opportunities to make that a reality. I am sorry, not at the moment, but I need to make some progress. We have opportunities to make that a reality through education reform, through the acceleration of flexible and remote learning, apprenticeships and wider work to co-ordinate and deliver skills for rural Scotland, and that includes through our response to the review of land-based learning. In our discussions at the rural Parliament, the importance of arts and culture and its role in community development was also discussed. We are exploring how that role will be recognised in the forthcoming rural delivery plan. We are increasing funding to the cultural sector by £15.8 million next financial year, and that is the first step in demonstrating that on-going commitment to the arts and will contribute to the cultural richness and resilience of our communities. Of course, agriculture and our environment were also among the key areas that were highlighted and discussed by the youth delegates, ensuring that farmers and crofters have good livelihoods, that they can work their land in environmentally friendly ways and help to feed Scotland's people. We are due to publish our Good Food Nation plans soon, and the Agriculture and Rural Communities Bill is currently progressing through the process of parliamentary scrutiny. Through those key pieces of work, we will explore ways to promote local produce, reduce food miles, ensure our food security and recognise the quality and high welfare standards of the food that we produce in Scotland. I cannot at the moment. Another key matter that was discussed was the role of carers. The Scottish Government absolutely values the support provided by Scotland's young carers, and we want to ensure that there is that appropriate support in place for them, and we recognise that the issues that are faced by young carers are often exacerbated when they live locally. That is why it is so important that we hear from young people directly to better understand and address those issues. Finally, there was also a very specific ask of me. I was honoured to be asked to act as the spokesperson in this chamber for delegates at the Scottish Rural and Islands youth Parliament and to commit to publicly demonstrating what was learned from the event in Fort William last year and taking tangible actions. That is why I am delighted to be holding this debate in chamber today and to bring this to Parliament directly some of the issues that we discussed at the inaugural Scottish Rural and Islands youth Parliament. Not only that, I am also delighted that the young people who are here with us in the gallery today have also had the opportunity to put their issues directly to the First Minister and each member of this Government just prior to this afternoon's session. In closing, I would just lastly want to say a massive thank you to all of the youth delegates in the gallery today, those that I met in November. I want to thank you for your ideas, your energy and your passion. In particular, I want to thank Ellie Muir, who I know is also in the gallery today, for representing the youth delegation and presenting the statements to the audience on the final day of the Scottish Rural and Islands youth Parliament. To finally finish, I just want to reiterate the Government's commitment to listening to rural community and youth voices and acknowledging the important contribution that the Scottish Rural and Islands Parliament makes in influencing policy development. The Scottish Rural and Islands Parliament is a unique success in the UK and without the dedication and hard work of adult and youth volunteers it would not be possible. So I just want to say a final thank you to them, to our youth delegates and I look forward to continuing to work with them. Thank you. I might ask you to move the motion. With that, I move the motion, Presiding Officer. Thank you. I now call on Rachel Hamilton to speak to and move amendment 11896.2 up to seven minutes. I move the amendment, Presiding Officer. The Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament serves to unite people. However, Presiding Officer, unfortunately, the cross-party groups in the Parliament were not invited to meet with the youth Parliament, but I welcome them to the chamber today and hope that they have enjoyed their day. This today offers a platform for young people in Scotland to have their voices heard on the issues that matter most to them. It is important because it stimulates discussion and debate, ideas, aspirations and inspirations to take root and grow those ideas. That is what our rural communities need most and I represent one of those rural communities. However, I do believe that this SNP Government is more interested in sowing the seeds of division and building up the backbone of tomorrow's rural Scotland. We have to double down on our engagement with the next generation. Too often, young people's voices in rural communities and island communities are ignored and overlooked by this Government. The youth Parliament seeks to see action on several priorities that the cabinet secretary has highlighted, such as transport, education and environment. Many of those challenges are similar to those experienced across urban Scotland, but there is one difference. That is that this Government is not delivering on those objectives for the people of rural Scotland. Young people in rural areas are equally entitled to a good education and a rural upbringing should not detract from their access to opportunities. This Government is denying people the opportunity to travel from island communities with the issues on ferries. If the member is concerned about young people being able to travel, does she regret the loss of Erasmus? Jim Fairlie has clearly missed the UK Government's delivery of the Turing scheme, so I am just quite surprised at that. With 13.2 per cent of schools in rural areas classed as being in poor or bad conditions, compared to just 5.2 per cent in urban areas, students and teachers in rural communities have been unfairly forgotten about a Government that has failed to invest in the fabric of the future of the next generation. On housing, the SNP has presided over an unprecedented depopulation of our rural communities by failing to deliver on the affordable home targets for the next generation. Does she feel that it would be helpful in many rural communities if local authorities had the power to consider whether a given community had too many second homes and would that help young people trying to find a house? Of course, it is important that the economy is driven by tourism. A lot of the accommodation in Scotland is important to rural areas, particularly the borders, because it attracts people to come and stay and visit. Families that want to come to Scotland to enjoy Scotland people are ensuring that if they have a pension they can buy a second home and also rent it out at the same time, so I think that that could be a good thing. I am grateful to the member that this is an important issue that is raised by Dr Allan. I am just wondering whether she thinks that it is slightly hypocritical given that the health secretary has a second home. The Government pledged £25 million to boost rural housing in 2016. However, as of 2023, only £18 million of that has been spent. That is failing to secure affordable homes for young people, young people being forced out of their communities for that very reason, Alasdair Allan. By failing on their commitment to investing in rural housing, this Government has failed to support young people. We must value our rural communities with strong traditions, a sense of belonging of our towns, villages and island areas that hold such an important role of culture and history in Scotland. If we continue to continue this cultural and historical nature of our rural communities and allow people to contribute to rural island communities, we must offer them every opportunity to stay. Transport, of course, the cabinet secretary mentioned as the list of challenges highlighted by the youth Parliament. That is one of the key areas where the SNP has failed. It has not sorted out the A9, which is a lifeline for many rural communities across Scotland. We recently found out that works to dual the A9 will not be completed until 2035. Meanwhile, 83 people have tragically lost their life on that particular road since the SNP promised to dual the road by 2025. It is just another example of letting down rural Scotland. To list all the transport failing of this Government and its impact on young people would take up a lot of time. However, one of the key areas that the cabinet secretary did not mention, which was the issue with the ferries, was the 689 ferry cancellations across Scotland between 1 January and 16 May 2023. That is just appalling. We heard the issues that islanders have running businesses on the island or ensuring that they are able to stay, work and live where they grow up. Many farmers and crofters are deciding on their future right now. We have an agricultural bill in front of us. They want to take the next steps to securing Scotland's food future, agriculture future and crofting future. However, the Government is blindfolding our young farmers and crofters by failing to give them the ability to plan for the long term. If we want Scotland to be a market world leader producing wonderful high-quality produce, we must back the next generation. There has been a £78.4 million cut to rural affairs in our island's budget and a further £33.2 million cut from the agricultural budget. The message is not a positive one to young people. I know that I have a limited time, but if you were to place yourself in the shoes of young people growing up in rural Scotland, I think that you would be as worried as I am about what the future holds for you. I speak to many young people who are not positive about their future because of this Government crumbling schools and reliable local transport. Poor employment opportunities and a lack of investment in their future are a number of challenges that they would face. On a positive note, what I want to do is to make sure that we can provide a good vision for them that provides ambition and not a stale and foosty SNP Government that has let down young people of Scotland. I was really glad to be able to attend the rural and island's Parliament in Fort William this year, and to see so many young people there was really refreshing. The Parliament gave them the opportunity to talk about the very issues that impacted on them. It is very important that we listen to young people because they are the very people that we need to retain in our rural and island communities to address depopulation. I welcome the tone of the cabinet secretary's comments in that regard, and I hope that that leads to a step change in dealing with their very real concerns. At the moment, we are forcing young people out of those communities rather than retaining them. Rightly, housing was one of the main issues that they talked about, and they called for reform of the housing market to meet the needs of rural and island communities, because the market is failing those communities, and there needs to be a rebalancing of power between communities and the market. Those communities need to be empowered, so they need affordable housing, but by affordable housing we are not talking about what urban communities would see as housing association housing, as council housing. They need that too, but the truth is that price inflation is so great that it does not reflect the market conditions in those areas. It does not reflect the average wages in those areas, so a lot of people simply want to buy like everybody else and be able to enter into that market. However, we also need to look at a range of other things on top of that, such as council housing, affordable housing and through housing associations, but the croft housing grant does not allow for things such as an office, an extra room for bed and breakfast or a room for a weaver. It does not allow for remote working from your croft house, so we need to look at different solutions for different people, and there has to be a diverse range of solutions for young people. Also investing in housing at the moment is good, and that impacts on one person. However, if we do not look at ways of retaining that housing within the population of those who live and work in those areas, we are wasting that money, so we need to look at things such as rural housing burdens to make sure that those houses cannot be sold on as second homes or holiday homes. The young people rightly talked about health and wellbeing, and you understand that when you speak to young people about their access to health and their distance from services. They also focused a lot on mental health, as young people do, and talked about self-help and online support, because there is no such thing as privacy in a rural area. There is no access to public transport. You cannot go and access services on your own. You need to involve others, and that comes with a stigma as well. They talked about the desperately long waiting lists for CAMHS, and they talked about the transitions from young people to adult services, and Pam Duncan Glancy, my colleague here, had really tried to address that through her transitions bill. Sadly, this Parliament voted it down, but that would have met some of the concerns that those young people had. We also need to look at transport with regard to health again. The A9 North is blocked again with snow. Imagine being in labour and giving birth. It is blocked in a snowdrift on the A9. That is a possibility for people today, because they tell us with any complications that it is unsafe to give birth and wick. We need to make sure that those local services are in place, so that people will never face that situation. It is the same with ferries and buses. Very few ferries are cancelled, which means that young people cannot access the services that they need. However, it was not all doom and gloom. The young people talked about lots of opportunity. They saw themselves as being involved in the reform of what was wrong. They wanted to be directly involved in the reform of education that did not meet their needs. They were very clear that there were opportunities not just in the traditional industries but also in the new technologies. They wanted to be able to access them. Because of the way that they are delivered, there is no reason that those people cannot. That gives them a huge opportunity to be able to stay within their communities but not be able to access jobs, not just the traditional jobs but also new and different jobs. Those are issues that we in the Scottish Labour Party are taking to this Parliament every week. We need for the Scottish Government to listen to those young people, to support them, to attain their ambitions for themselves. Their ambitions are for the very survival of our rural and island communities. Without them, they will not survive. I move the amendment in my name. I welcome this debate this afternoon and the opportunity to speak on behalf of Scottish Liberal Democrats. Firstly, I would like to express my disappointment at not being able to join you in the chamber. I had also hoped to meet with some of the youth delegates who are in Parliament this afternoon, but Arctic weather conditions have defeated me and Ellie Ratter from Shetland, who had also hoped to be present today. Our rural and island areas can often feel distant from Holyrood and even distant from bigger settlements where local decisions are often made. We should not allow for such a feeling to be the entrenched means of conducting politics and decision making. Scottish Liberal Democrats fundamentally believe that decision making should be done as close to the people as possible in powering communities and individuals. The Scottish Rural and Islands Parliament and the Rural and Islands Youth Parliament are a great means to allow for direct contact between rural and island community members and the Scottish Government supplementing more traditional mechanisms. As the only projects of the kind in Scotland, it reflects the unique challenges of Scotland's geography. It is particularly commendable of those who have involved themselves in the Rural and Islands Youth Parliament. To those delegates, I say that in giving up your time, you are helping others in the best civic tradition and I hope the experience will encourage you to continue to engage. After all, it's those who turn up who make decisions. The Rural and Islands Parliaments fly in the face of popular opinion that young people don't want to be involved or have no interest in politics Rural and Island areas have their own needs and challenges but ultimately residents want a good life with reliable services and connections. Making the asks of the Rural and Islands Youth Parliament not unexpected, long-term thinking to protect nature and the environment, sustainable transport that takes people where they want to go, a focus on sustainable food, reducing food miles and carbon costs while also promoting Scottish produce and our high animal welfare standards, a desire for greater community empowerment in local housing sectors as others have highlighted, youth-led reform of education with the freedom to choose incorporating life and work experience out of school support for young carers, accessible mental health with empathetic interventions. We find ourselves in a world of spreadsheets and algorithms that can't estimate the dramatic difference long-term investment can make on smaller communities. Young people don't want this model to govern their lives but long-term, compassionate thinking is the roadmap to change. I'm hopeful that the voices of the Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament will continue to steer the Scottish Government in such a direction. Before I conclude, I would like to highlight the work of other grassroots movements attempting to steer Government policy. It's no secret that I'm a long-term advocate of short subsea tunnels to connect islands in Shetland and at the end of last year I brought that wider debate to the chamber. During that debate we heard about the transport connections of rural and island Scotland and the appetite of local residents to have their voices heard. The island tunnel action group set up in Shetland highlight that appetite and I hope their engagement with Shetland Islands Council, local representatives and the Scottish and UK Governments will result in the investment they are pursuing. The reason I raised tunnels in this debate is because I believe that they will reinvigorate the local economies of Shetland's islands presenting opportunities for a more prosperous future for the young people of those communities and a reversal of deep population in our islands. To conclude, Presiding Officer, the young people getting involved in the youth Parliament and their contemporaries are our future and investment in them and their communities is an investment in all our futures. Thank you Presiding Officer. Thank you and we now move to the open debate. I call Evelyn Tweed to be followed by Stephen Kerr. Gathering 75 young people from across Scotland, the inaugural Scottish Rural and Islands youth Parliament was a real success. Feedback has been resoundingly positive and it's clear that attendees gained a great deal. One of the asks from the 2023 Parliament was about leadership, engagement and participation, which I'll focus on today. The delegates asked that they have a voice in Parliament and I'm pleased to hear the cabinet secretary speak to this. It's also great that we have a number of the delegates here today who have met the cabinet secretary and the first minister. I do think that it is on all of us in this chamber to have a responsibility to act on behalf of our rural and island youth. In everything that we do, so much that happens in here will impact them. We need to ensure that this impact is positive and is informed by the views of young people. When it comes to engaging young people, the issue isn't supporting them to develop their ideas. They know exactly what they need. Their understanding of the challenges and opportunities for their communities are sophisticated. When schools from my constituency come to visit me, their questions are thoughtful and incisive. The issue here is how we change our processes to include young people. The Government has taken some excellent steps towards this already through the Scottish Youth and Islands Youth Parliament as well as the Cabinet takeover by the Children's Parliament and the Youth Parliament. However, I would also like to see conversations around how we can widen participation in consultation processes. Some young people in my constituency have started the 4th Valley Youth Local Action Group and they also joined us today. It was lovely to have a chat with them earlier on to hear how the day was going. They were really enthusiastic about the work that the Government is doing. They attended the Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament and, ahead of the debate, one member talked about making it easier for young people to find out about and contribute to local consultations. They highlighted the need to make the consultations themselves less hostile to those who do not have professional experience in lobbying. Indeed, children in Scotland say that young people should be given the opportunity to influence the methods of their engagement in policymaking. I call on the Government to work with young people to allow them to shape the way that they can engage with our consultations. The Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament and the 4th Valley Youth Local Action Group—lots of words there—have both highlighted the importance of resources. Research has found that engagement work with young people has had big impacts, but that could still be increased. Children in Scotland note that, when projects had long-term or permanent funding streams, participation work tended to be more meaningful. More resources would allow for increased participation, deeper engagement and crucially greater impact. Secure funding streams would also ensure a wider range of views. It is important to remember that, although there are a lot of commonalities across our rural areas, there are also specific needs and challenges. For example, Strathard, in my constituency, has been working hard to design community life plans. However, in this one community council area, four separate life plans have been developed. That is because the needs, the requirements and the priorities of our rural areas, even in one small area, are very, very different. It would be wrong of us to homogenise those rural areas—they all must have their voice. The SRIYP is a great way to identify the shared issues and the common themes, but it must also prompt us to hold space for those challenges that are more specific. Children in Scotland have also highlighted that, including the views of young people whose voices are seldom heard, requires time, resources and planning. Large engagement events are useful, but do not work for everyone. I am eager to hear how the Government intends to balance that. Consensus is powerful—we know that, but it is not always the case—we also know that. It would do a disservice to the vibrance and the diversity of our young people and our island and rural communities to homogenise them. I am looking forward to the national islands plan and progress on the implementation of other plans. I am also eager to hear how the Government will increase engagement with rural and island young people and, crucially, how that will be resourced. I think that Evelyn Tweed hit the nail on the head in her last couple of sentences, because it is just not good enough to produce lots of plans, lots of strategies and lots of talk and not actually implement them. I welcome the Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament to the Scottish Parliament. I do not think that I am going to be very controversial in saying that it is absolutely vital that we as parliamentarians are committed to engaging with our young people. We need to give our young people reasons to have trust and faith in our democracy and in democratic institutions. It is very important, too, that we do everything within our powers to foster aspiration among our young people. I hope that we will have generations of young Scots, such as generations of young Scots before them, who want to change the world for the better, who believe in equal opportunity, who believe in justice for all, who believe in freedom of choice. Those are the things that have imbued this country with the energy that we have needed through our long history to make progress. So much rests on the shoulders of the rising generations. I would say gently but directly to the cabinet secretary that lots of talk about listening is not the same as delivery. Lots of talking about talking is not the same as delivery. The making announcements does not presuppose that the thing that is being announced has suddenly happened, and this Government, were there an Olympic sport for speaking and making announcements and issuing strategies and having reviews and talking about setting up this body in the next body, my goodness, we have a clutter of public bodies that this Scottish National Party Government have created in Scotland in the last 17 years. None of that adds up to delivery. It is not the same thing and we must patronise our young people by talking to them and with them on the basis of engagement and pretend that somehow that automatically brings through a bunch of implementations or deliveries. Audit Scotland has repeatedly pointed out to this cabinet that while they are great at producing the strategies, lots of paper, lots of consultations they do not actually deliver and it is very hard to measure anything that is actually delivered. I have great concerns, as I am sure the young people of Scotland do, particularly those who live in our rural areas and on the islands about issues relating to depopulation. The one thing that we have to do is give young people who live in rural Scotland on the island of Scotland the real belief that their future can be lived out in the places that they are growing up in, because currently too many of them make plans on the basis of the fact that they are not going to be in the place that they are growing up in. We have got to give them real, and that is why it is important. I welcome the priorities that the Scottish Rural and Island Youth Parliament has come up with that are published on their website, because I think that they are talking about the right things and we have already mentioned issues to do with housing. I believe that it is a good thing to inculcate into every young person that it is a good thing to desire to own their own home. I absolutely delighted to. I thank the member for giving way and I absolutely agree that it is a great ambition for people to have to own their own home. Does he recognise that there are parts of Scotland where the free market and houses that currently exist means that owning a home is entirely, entirely out with possibility for many young people? Dr Allan raises an important point. I think he may have mistaken me for someone else. I do not believe that the market is the answer for everything. I believe that Government have a very important role to play. That is why I am a conservative. I believe that there needs to be a partnership in our country, in our society and in our economy in order to make good things happen while those good things are housing. We need to instill within our young people the worthy ambition and aspiration to own their own home. We do not have a free market in housing. We have incredibly restrictive planning rules that mean that, for example, in rural areas, farmers want to earn some extra income by selling off building plots. Young people want to access those building plots to build their own homes. They cannot access that land because planning makes it so difficult. If we freed up our planning system, we could create more low-cost housing that is accessible to the families that Dr Allan is referring to. Stephen Kerr. I am very grateful to Murdo Fraser, who invites me down a rabbit hole in the sense, because he knows very well and feels very passionately about the fact that when I speak about a partnership between the people and government, between business and government, between communities and government, I think that at the minute we have too much government in this country. We need to be looking at how we rebalance things in Scotland, so there is more devolved power to communities so that some of the things that he has been describing in his intervention can happen. I have run out of time. I have not had a chance to talk about education, which I have a passion about, and the need for local services and connectivity. Connectivity is such a big issue that I will wind up. I will wind up by saying this, that when the cabinet secretary talks about listening to the young people of rural Scotland and then she talks so flowerily about that, she should remember this. Much of rural Scotland does not think that this Government cares toughens about their concerns. I just hope that these young people, when they were speaking to the cabinet secretary, got through, because so many other people have tried and failed. I would like to open my contribution today by first of all congratulating Finlay Shand, the Scottish Gamekeepers Association Young Gamekeeper of the Year from the Angus Blends. Why would the young get involved? What would be their incentive and how would that be encouraged? They are all perfectly valid questions that require action and engagement if we want to be truly representative. I found myself remarkably agreeing with an awful lot of the ambition that Stephen Kerr was just talking about. I remember meeting a young lad in my constituency by the name of Ben Grant, not long after I was elected to this place. He was attending the Octorard of the Community Action Plan community engagement day, which was a fantastic event that allowed the community around Octorard to voice their opinions and develop plans for what was happening in the town and what they would like to see happen. Ben was there with his colleague Hannah Lewis, and they were encouraging the young folk of Octorard to get involved as members of the Scottish Youth Parliament. He was a member for my constituency, Aperture, South and Kenosha, and I was struck by his enthusiasm and his determination that the voices of the young should be heard. Despite him being a member of the youth Parliament, as opposed to the rural youth Parliament, he was absolutely advocating for rural areas that faced different challenges to their peers in the more urban areas. It was striking and refreshing to see such a fresh-faced young pair of folk being so passionate and engaged in a sea of middle-aged folk like myself. Stephen Kerr is making a really important point, and it is a point that I did not get to. I hope that people agree with me. It is good that we have a rural and island Parliament for our young people, but it is the need for people who live in rural parts of Scotland and people who live in urban parts of Scotland to come together and try to understand each other's ways of life better, surely? As the person who started the farmers market in Scotland in Perth 1999, for exactly that reason, I could do nothing more than agree. The youngest member of my office staff in Perth John Redpath stood as a candidate in the Scottish Borders constituency of Ertrick, Roxburgh and Berwickshire. He was just pipped to the post, but the whole experience for him was bruising, which I am sure we can all relate to in here, but it was also extremely inspiring and it enthused him to want to get more involved going forward. He now uses as many opportunities as arise to encourage young folk and his peers to get involved so that there is not that malaise that is all too common these days there, but what can I do syndrome? That is the crucial point about the rural Parliament and the rural youth Parliament. Its purpose is to give voice and to change that phrase from but what can I do to simply what can I do? I must of course give credit to Alasdair Campbell because that is exactly the tack he is promoting in his excellent book of the same name. I couldn't attend the conference last year, but I took great comfort from looking at the website, giving details of the programme for the youth Parliament held in Fort William, and there were some key asks from that session. There is no getting away from the fact that we face some significant challenges, but one particular for young folk is the ability to live in a rural location that does not require staying with mum and dad till he is saving enough money to get a deposit to be able to compete with second home buyers with much, much deeper pockets and only inhabit their home for a few months of the year. With that in mind, I was delighted to see the Government bringing forward proposals to allow local authorities to increase council tax on second homes by 100 per cent, with the process going on to help and build more rural homes for the future. I may have gone a bit further personally, but at least it is a good start. If you cannot get a house, you cannot live there. So I will be very keen to see how the £20 million fund for purchasing unused rural housing stock helps to deliver more rural homes. At the top of the commitment of the 10 per cent of the planned 110,000 homes that the cabinet secretary was talking about, I am hoping that that will improve the number of homes that are available for young people. I was also intrigued by the proposal that came from the Parliament. Supermarkets must have a target imposed that a percentage of produce must be offered for sale from the region to reduce food, miles and carbon costs, promote food security, recognise quality and high welfare standards of Scottish produce, for example seafood, protein, fruit and veg, meat, dairy and eggs. That is a proposal that is well worth drilling into, not just to have a puppet supermarket, but a method of finding out how much of that already happens and, more importantly, what more can be done. It will be very interesting from my point of view to perhaps encourage the rural youth Parliament to instigate an inquiry in the same way as committees in this Parliament does, take evidence from the stakeholders and present it as a report of the findings for all of us to scrutinise. If you take up that challenge, I will be fascinated to find out exactly how they get on with engaging with the supermarkets and how the supermarkets deal with, and I am speaking from experience here, the very direct questioning that comes from the confidence of youth. I look forward to hearing if that develops and wish the members of the rural Parliament every success in their endeavours, and I will be paying very close attention to the deliberations of the young people who represent the future rural Scotland and will have many ideas of what that future looks like. The rural and islands youth Parliament provides a great opportunity for young people to help to shape the future of Scotland's rural regions and islands. Those young people who attended the inaugural Parliament in November should be commended for the invaluable insights that are shared in the challenges that our islands and rural regions face and what we can do to build stronger, more vibrant communities. I welcome many of them here today, but the Parliament has to be more than just a platform for young people to voice their concerns and share their ideas. It needs to lead to action, yet when it comes to action, the Government does not have the best track record. We have had strategies, we have had working groups, but delivery has not been good enough. The themes that are raised by young people who gathered in Fort William have been flagged over and over again. The need for affordable housing at a time of homelessness is on the rise, but housing budgets are falling. Better public transport at a time that bus route after bus route is being axed in rural areas and improved mental health support at a time that calms waiting lists in areas such as the borders are at record levels, better support for young carers in rural areas, further and higher education opportunities in rural communities, not just in our big cities and, crucially, the high-skilled, well-paid jobs needed to keep young people in those rural communities when low pay, frankly, plagues far too many of those communities. If we fail to act, young people will continue to leave our rural towns and villages for the city. The crisis of depopulation will grow and grow. I will always remember a conversation that I had with a six-year class when I was a teacher at Strunrar academy. It was just before the end of the term, and I asked them what they planned to do when they finished at the academy, and many said, leave Strunrar. They did not believe their opportunities locally to stay, or if they left for college or university, the opportunities to attract them back home. That echoes concerns raised almost eight years ago during a workshop in Dumfries and Galloway in 2018, organised by the National Council of Rural Advisers. One young person there said, young people want to have a purpose to stay, to live, to bring up their families locally. Another said, we need affordable housing for young people who want to stay, to bring up young families to stay for education. Those concerns have grown. Last year, Dumfries and Galloway Council's excellent youth work team surveyed an excess of 10,000 young people aged 10 to 25. The majority said that they wanted to leave the region unlike in 2018, when the same questions were asked and the majority wanted to stay. I would like to ask the member about the problems that are in the rural community and how people want to leave. One of the biggest problems that farmers have is the fact that they have no certainty of funding from the UK Government post 2025. Do you think that the Labour Government that is due to come in next year or later this year will give a commitment to on-going funding on a five-year basis? I am delighted to hear the phrase from Jim Fairlie that the Labour Government is due to come in and I very much look forward to that. We need to give rural communities certainty both at the UK level but also in this Parliament as well. We have not had that when it comes to the legislation coming forward and future agricultural support. As we have already heard commitments around a depopulation action plan, there is also a rural delivery plan on its way, but we have been here before. We cannot have more recommendations and more strategies left on a shelf to gather dust. We need to see action being delivered. In 2018, the National Council of Rural Advisers published an economic blueprint for the rural economy. When they examined the legacy of rural policy making and listened to the voices of rural Scotland, it became clear that there have been ambitious recommendations in the past, but I quote, the same challenges remain. That conversation that I had with young people in Stradd has stayed with me for more than two decades. It drove me as a local councillor when I chaired the local economy committee to campaign for that South of Scotland enterprise agency, which is action I do very much welcome. It was one of the reasons that I stood for the Scottish Parliament to fight for better opportunities for young people in a rural part of Scotland, which frankly is too often forgotten, but the voices of those young people in that survey of 10,000 people, the voices of the members of the rural and island youth parliament has shown us all that so much more work still needs to be done. We need to channel the passion and energy of those young people into action and deliver the real change that they need. As we have heard already, one of the asks from the Parliament— The member concludes that he has been generous with the time for the intervention, so the member's confusion marks to close, thank you. Absolutely. One of the asks of the Parliament was that we need to be the spokesperson in this Parliament. That is a message for the cabinet secretary, but it is also a message for all of us who have the privilege to represent those young people in this Parliament, and we need to start to deliver for them. I now call Kate Forbes, who is joining us remotely, to be followed by Ariane Burgess. I congratulate all the members of the rural youth parliament for the work that they do. I got involved with politics in the first place because I was particularly exercised by the way in which young rural people, particularly from the highlands and islands, but this would extend to all rural parts of Scotland. The way in which they felt disenfranchised and disempowered with decisions being taken that felt like they were being done to them without thought of them. That is why the youth parliament and the rural parliament are so critical in terms of offering a mechanism by which young people in rural parts of Scotland, as well as general communities, can have a say over the issues that are of particular importance to them. It is also important to reflect on just how critical this is for rural Scotland. The census figures will, I am sure, be unpacked in greater detail over the coming months and years, but what we are already seeing in the initial census figures confirms what most forecasters, whether that is the Scottish Fiscal Commission or the National Records of Scotland, have been warning us about, namely that we are facing enormous demographic challenges in rural parts of Scotland. In fact, particularly along coastal parts of Scotland, we are seeing our population decline considerably over the next 40 years. We also know that in some of these rural areas, particularly the Highlands and Islands, those figures are probably masked by growth in some parts, particularly in the cities such as Inverness. What the figures also do not tell us is that it is the working age population primarily that is in decline. It is the generation of young people right now growing up in rural parts of Scotland, like the Highlands and Islands, that currently are either going to choose to leave these rural areas or are going to choose to stay in ever-declining figures. That is why I have previously talked about this being a national emergency in terms of the need to focus very much on how we bolster and support rural parts of Scotland for its very survival. That is why all the many policy areas, whether we want to unpack housing or unpack transport, digital connectivity, all these issues are all part of the approach that Government and others need to take in order to change the trajectory that I fear we are on in rural Scotland. That will only exacerbate inequalities. It is likely to increase poverty, and it will certainly put strain on public services. When the working age population reduces, it is a vicious cycle of struggling to recruit and retain staff in our public services to support those who need it, particularly those who are in an ageing bracket. I want to briefly commend the work that the Rural Parliament has already done in raising these issues, but perhaps say that the real recognition of the importance of their work will be in how decision makers in this Parliament, decision makers like myself and the Cabinet Secretary and others, the extent to which we take their requests and their considerations seriously and genuinely deliver on policies that will transform lives. The number one issue that is constantly raised is, of course, housing. I heard the exchange between Stephen Kerr and Alistair Allen to that effect. We already know that the supply of housing is increasing significantly, but we also need to make sure that there is a diversity of tenure available to young people in rural Scotland, including the ability to rent, which we know is one of the most affordable routes to being in safe accommodation. That is at the heart of how we rebuild these communities. As I said in an interview that I did with the West Island Free Press this very week, our focus should be on retaining the population that we have, because it is a lot harder to attract people in once we lose that critical mass. On that, I will close. Thank you, Ms Forbes. I now call Ariane Burgess, who is joining us remotely, to be followed by Alistair Allen. Ms Burgess, and I hope that we have Ms Burgess with her camera on. Or indeed that we have Ms Burgess. I think I'm here. Hello, Ms Burgess, please. Thank you. Presiding Officer, it is a pleasure to participate in this debate and discuss the priorities of young people across rural communities. Having participated in the first Scottish Rural Parliament in 2014, I know what a fantastic place it is to share ideas, and it is inspiring to see how it's developed and that it's taken this year, that this year the Scottish Rural and Island Youth Parliament has taken form. I had hoped to attend this year's parliament in Fort William, but parliamentary business, including a Rural Affairs and Islands Committee meeting, kept me away. Perhaps next time, and going forward, the committee may benefit from attending as part of our formal business. My green colleague, Orkney Councillor Christopher Lease, however, did take part in the discussions at the first Rural, the Scottish Rural and Island Youth Parliament and remarked on the value of young people coming together to work on common challenges and finding common solutions. The priorities of the Rural and Island Youth Parliament will be familiar to all members who've engaged with young people in their rural constituencies, and we have heard that today. Indeed, in some regard, they are the same concerns we hear from all residents, a lack of warm affordable homes, poor transport links, and a failure to fully grasp the challenges of the climate and nature crisis that faces us. Look deeper though, and as well as common challenges, you will see new solutions. On transport, their priority isn't building more and bigger roads, it's sustainability, it's looking at all the ways we travel, not just cars and its reliability. On housing, they identify the market failings that need urgent solutions and the importance of community-led solutions, something that I've highlighted through championing the community-led housing trust that are challenging the failed commercial status quo and creating a high-quality affordable homes and community enterprises that Rural Scotland urgently needs. The importance of the arts to young people in rural Scotland can't be overstated, as well as providing a key economic driver for rural Scotland. It is vital for creating vibrant communities and often underpins hubs like village halls and local cinemas. Creative practices enhance the sustainability of rural communities, and they are vital to the quality of life, community development and social cohesion, and it's a sector integral to our changing employment landscapes and has a huge potential for growth in the just transition to a low-carbon economy. Young people have been seeing the failings of the short-term approach to tackling our climate and nature crises and are rightly calling for long-term funding that supports rural communities to prioritise nature restoration, and the nature restoration fund is an important step along that path. Many of our carbon neutral island projects have employed local young people to lead on their communities approach to tackling climate change, and I was fortunate enough to meet some of them, including Tom and Rosie on Rase this summer. Their vision is absolutely inspiring, and they're working very hard to take forward the project, and they bring so much energy and real-life experience to the development work they're carrying out, and this kind of work offers opportunities to young people who are seeing many of the industries that provided employment for previous generations becoming increasingly automated. A youth-led reform of our education system can create a generation of young people with flexible life and work skills that enable them to adapt to the changing workplace as well as our changing environment. Depopulation and ageing do not need to be the defining characteristic of our rural communities, they are extraordinary places to raise families, start enterprises and build communities. So let's heed the youth parliament's request to listen with purpose, not just acknowledging their priorities but looking at how well we work to deliver on them. For too long, young people have been at the periphery of our ideal of rural Scotland. Let's take this opportunity to move their concerns and priorities to the heart of what we do. Thank you, Ms Bridges, and I now call Alice Rallon, who will be the last speaker in the open debate. Dr Rallon. Thank you, Presiding Officer. As others have said, making sure that young people in Scotland's rural and island communities have a say is not just a good idea, it is essential for the survival of those communities. My island constituency often faces unique challenges that can have an impact on all age groups. Indeed, one of those challenges, as has been alluded to, demography, has been compounded even further since Westminster's decision to take Scotland out of the European Union against our will. Historically, in the case of my own constituency, the Western Isles, we have faced the serious consequences of a decreasing population, whether through the impact of global conflict such as the First World War, if you want to look that far back, or more generally, a perceived lack of opportunity for young people. However, if we listen genuinely and actively, there are many good news stories to tell about young people in rural Scotland. For instance, in my own area of UST-BO, which represents a group of young people who have dedicated themselves to making UST a home for their families and a base for their businesses, in the face of sometimes daunting challenges to do those things. Members of UST-BO were in attendance at the Scottish Rural and Islands Parliament and its youth counterpart. Indeed, many of the younger islanders from UST were in attendance and, to use their own words, did not hold back in providing their valuable input and experience to help ministers, to help strengthen future generations of island communities. To some extent, of course, young people can already express their voices to legislators either directly or through their members of the Scottish Youth Parliament. However, the Rural and Islands Youth Parliament has a different function. That body provides young islanders and people from rural Scotland between 16 and 30 with the opportunity to assemble, discuss and agree policy ideas. As MSP for New Zealand in a year, I believe that the Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament can play a hugely important role in constructively collaborating and influencing policy making. There are many successes that show the way in which Scotland values its young people. I can think, for instance, of Scotland's investment in social housing in rural areas or I can think also of free bus passes and indeed the imminent introduction, I would hope, of free ferry journeys for young islanders. Of course, there is a great deal more still to do and the Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament will have a role in achieving that. When it met most recently in November 2023, it was able, with one clear voice, to express young people's desire to see the housing market reformed in rural communities and to ask members of this Parliament to develop housing policies that empowered them and their communities. The Scottish Government's continued support, including up to £30 million for the Rural and Islands Housing Fund, will be helpful in that respect. Can it be understated how critical affordable housing is to ensuring the future of young people in our rural and island communities? I welcome the way that the Scottish Government has acknowledged what the Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament has said on that and many other issues. To conclude, I hope that we all recognise the work that the organisation does, its unique role and the way that it involves young people directly in the way that our policies are developed and pursued in Scotland. In that vein, I am very happy to support, as a member representing an island constituency, the motion that has been brought forward by the Minister today to recognise the work that the Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament does today. Thank you, Dr Allan. We will now move to closing speeches. I call on Pam Duncan-Glancy to close on behalf of Scottish Labour around five minutes, please. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and it is a privilege to close the debate today for Scottish Labour. There should be nothing about us without us. It is a mantra of the disability movement, and it is one that I think applies today. The people who live in rural areas are the best place to know what those communities need, and this is especially true for young people whose future is at stake. I am pleased that the minister and others have stated commitments to that in their opening remarks, and I note in particular Evelyn Tweed's comments that not all rural areas are the same. The Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament does crucial work in ensuring that young people's voices are heard. As my colleagues have said today, including Beatrice Wishart, they do so by giving up their own time, and so I would like to put my record on thanks to them today and to those who are here in the gallery joining us. We must value the Rural and Islands Youth Parliament not just for the sake of voice alone, but because, as is often the case, it is at the forefront of highlighting and offering solutions to the challenges ahead in the communities that it represents. Those challenges have, as my colleague Rhoda Grant has said, in some cases forced young people out of rural areas. That is something that I think that we can all agree that we have to address. A good place to start is, of course, the issues highlighted by the youth parliament, housing, transport, arts and culture, food and agriculture, the environment, mental health, deep population, young carers and skills and education. All areas that we in the Scottish Labour Party believe are crucial to protecting the future of our islands and rural communities. I would like to spend a bit of time talking about education before I make some reflections on other contributions today. Young people across Scotland must have the opportunity to reach their potential with high and rising standards in our schools, to aspire to change the world, as Stephen Care has noted. As Rachael Hamilton said, young people in rural areas have an equal right to education too. However, like elsewhere in Scotland, education is facing considerable challenges in rural areas, which is recognised by the rural youth parliament as an area of concern. I went to a rural school, Milne's High School in Focobers, and I loved it, but I know only too well the challenges that we faced then and many remain. Despite that, rural schools punch above their weight, but we know that they are struggling with recruitment, with the conditions of the school estate and with access to wraparound childcare for some staff. The youth parliament is right that we need to embrace technology and innovation to ensure that they too can access the education and the jobs of the future young people in rural areas. As my colleague Colin Smith has said, ensuring that young people feel that there are opportunities for them in rural areas is essential to encourage them to stay there. Key to that are colleges. That is why I have to say today that I am deeply worried about some of the cuts to FE and HE budgets. They are having real-life impacts not just on the number of Scottish students who cannot go to university but also on the impact in colleges. In particular, one such example of that is the impact of the proposal by UHI Shetland to offer voluntary severance to 18 full-time lecturers. That is one third of lecturers at Shetland College. The two worst-hit areas will be community learning and business and creative courses, both needed for the future of our country and represent a loss of opportunity. In addition, many of those courses include students with ASN, so they do not fall equally. I understand that, despite that, no island impact assessment has been carried out or equality groups consulted, so I hope that the minister may reflect and confirm today that she may look into that. There are also incredible organisations working locally that I think we need to mention, too. One such organisation that I would love to mention is the usual place in Dumfries that I have had the pleasure of visiting. They work hard to support education in young people, including on transitions that my colleague Rhoda Grant mentioned. I want to thank them again for all that they do. They have not been immune to some cuts, so we have to please remember that it is important that we cannot allow organisations like that to feel precarious. They are needed to support young people across the country, but specifically in rural areas. We have heard a lot of the lack of suitable housing in our island and rural communities, and that that is a factor in the challenges for the people who live there and in the number of people who come to live, work and study. Kate Forbes and others have focused on that, and I encourage the minister to consider seriously Rhoda Grant's suggestion that we introduce rural burdens to ensure that homes cannot be sold on for holiday lets, which, of course, could help to address some of the points that Jim Fairlie, my new favourite prophet, made earlier in the chamber. As many members noted, good transport links are also crucial. Fears have been stuck on islands and do not encourage people to come or stay. They discourage people who live there from leaving, and encourage people who live there to leave. Access to culture that we have also heard, particularly from Ariane Burgess, is crucial. There is a growing culture sector in our rural and island communities. However, with the impact of Covid restrictions and budget cuts, they have weighed heavy, including in their rural areas, so we have to address culture cuts and teacher shortages in those areas, too. We do not just need to encourage more people to live there, but we need to ensure that people who are already there do not leave, and that they have the services that they need, health and social care, for example. The key to that is the sustained and connected action on depopulation, as members, including just before me, Alasdair Allan, have said, key to keeping and attracting people in rural areas. In closing, the debate has shone a light on crucial issues facing young people in the islands and rural areas and has given us a chance to recognise the key role that young people living there can and have made. Scottish Labour believes that a full strategy listening to young people, putting them at the heart of it, covering access to health services, homes and opportunities where the timeline attach must be developed to address the challenges so that we can halt depopulation, retain young people in our rural areas and deliver the reality of opportunity for all across Scotland. I now call on Jamie Halcro Johnston to close on behalf of the Scottish Conservatives around six minutes. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. First, given the subjects that I intend to cover in my contribution, I remind members of my register of interests as a partner in a farming business and as a member of the NFUS, the Scottish Land and the States and the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland. I am also somebody who lives in rural Scotland on one of our islands and who was once a very long time ago considered youthful, although I appreciate those days are very long gone. This has been an interesting and an important debate, and it has highlighted many of the issues that I have raised a number of times in this place as a Highlands and Islands MSP. We all know that it can be challenging living in rural Scotland and growing up in rural Scotland or on one of our islands. That is why responsible Governments recognise the need to support rural and island communities, to help to overcome or reduce those challenges where they can. However, that is not the record of the Scottish Government for which rural Scotland, as others have said, have too often been an afterthought. That does not appear to be about to change anytime soon. The Holyroods Finance Committee, of which I am a member, is currently scrutinising the SNP Green Government's latest budget. It is a budget which, as I raised last week with the Deputy First Minister, sees rural Scotland hit hard. Agriculture support has been cut by over £33 million. A similar amount has been cut from forestry. Seven million has been lost from the marine budget. Nearly two million slash from islands funding. Land reform funding is down by £3.5 million. That is nearly £80 million in total cuts to the rural affairs land reform and islands budget alone. That is not all, because the budget for Highlands and Islands Enterprise has been cut by another £8 million next year, while the South of Scotland Enterprise Agency loses £7 million. Those are important because those are the body's task with supporting businesses, creating jobs and driving economic growth in much of rural Scotland and on our islands. At a time when we have a housing crisis, as others have mentioned across the chamber, much of rural Scotland has cut the housing budget by £200 million. While the SNP pushes ahead with its plans for a visitor levy making visiting parts of Scotland more expensive even for those of us who live here, it has cut the tourism budget by nearly £6 million. Tourism is important to so many rural and island communities. Education has not escaped either, with college funding cut by nearly £60 million, while 1,200 fewer Scots will be able to attend Scottish universities. Local council budgets have been under increasing pressure for years, hitting public services and councils that have to deliver those services to some of our most remote and vulnerable communities. Pressure on housing, farming, crofting and fishing, tourism on support for hire and further education and local government and the services that it delivers. That is the record of the SNP-Green Scottish Government, and it is not a record to be proud of. The Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament is right to raise concerns over housing provision and more must be done to ensure housing meets the needs of local people, as others have highlighted, including Rhoda Grant and Stephen Kerr and Kate Forbes, and that young people can stay in the communities that they grew up in. They are right to push for transport, which meets the needs of local communities, and I would repeat my support for access to our island ferries being treated as one would with buses on the mainland so that young people in our islands are not disadvantaged. As a farmer, I would certainly welcome calls for supermarkets to ensure that more local produce is available on our shelves and that we continue to meet high welfare standards. I also very much recognise their concerns over the provision of mental health support in rural areas and the need to provide better support to young carers who often face additional challenges but with less support because they live in rural Scotland. If I can turn to some of the contributions from other members, Rachel Hamilton and Pam Duncan Glancy rightly highlighted the appalling condition of many rural schools, and only last week my Scottish Conservative colleagues on the Highland Council brought forward a motion calling for a school of state emergency to be declared in that area, but it was voted down by SNP and Green councillors, one even blaming the poor state of Highland schools on Ukraine, Brexit and Liz Truss. What a shambolic and shameful deflection of responsibility. Rachel Hamilton was also stark in her warnings that this SNP Green Government has failed young people and they have failed our rural and island communities. My colleague Stephen Kerr is absolutely right when he says that the problem is not that the people of rural Scotland do not have a voice but that the SNP and Greens often do not listen to it. We have seen that time and time again across a myriad of issues from the fairest crisis to the contempt shown to Highland communities over the reluctance by Government ministers just to admit what everybody knew that they were going to miserably fail to hit their targets to dual the A9. One of the recommendations from the rural and islands youth parliament I respectfully disagree with is relating to leadership and where a call was made for the cabinet secretary to be their spokesperson in the Scottish Parliament. It highlighted an area where the youth parliament must go forward and engage more widely because, as far as I am aware, there is not being a widespread engagement by either the rural and islands parliament or by the rural and islands youth parliament with MSPs other than those in Government. However, I would say to them that those who shout loudest for our rural and island communities are not on the Government benches. They are here on these benches and on the Oppositions and even to humzae uses frustration on the SNP's back benches. This is from where Scottish ministers are held to account, where pressure is exerted on them to deliver on their promises and to meet their responsibilities to rural Scotland. Presiding Officer, it is important that the voice of rural and island Scotland and those who are the next generation of in my region highlanders and islanders are heard in this place. However, hearing is not the same as listening. They must be listened to as well and their concerns acted on and that ministers deliver on those actions and those promises. This SNP green government has never really been very good at that. I now call on the cabinet secretary, Shona Robison, to close on behalf of the Scottish Government, to respond to the debate. If the cabinet secretary could take us to decision time, that would be very helpful. It is a pleasure to close what has been a mainly constructive debate. I want to reiterate my gratitude for the opportunity and address some of the critical issues that are facing our rural and island young people. I also want to pay tribute and welcome those delegates from the rural and island youth parliament. It was great to be able to meet many of them in the Scottish Parliament earlier today. The points that they raised at the rural and islands parliament, which I also had the privilege to attend in November, have been integral to shaping our discussions here today. This debate has been testament to the collaborative spirit that defines our shared commitment to better outcomes for all of our rural and island communities. I should say that at this point we will be accepting the labour amendment but rejecting the Tory amendment. This debate has also provided an opportunity to discuss in more detail how the Scottish budget, which I presented to Parliament on 19 December, will support our rural and island communities. It is a budget that is a reflection of some of the stark consequences of the spending decisions by the UK Government. I want to point to two in particular that have been touched on today. The spending decisions of Whitehall departments flow directly into the Scottish Government's budget availability. One is the housing and communities budget at Whitehall being cut by nearly 53 per cent. That has a direct impact on the housing budgets that are available here in the Scottish Parliament. The second would be the environment food and rural affairs budget, which is cut by more than 12 per cent. It is fine for members to come to make demands of the Scottish Government, but when they do not follow through in the funding and budget decisions that they make in their own Government, it is a bit rich, given the impact on our budgets. Despite that, our budget aligns very much with the commitment to tackle many of the issues that we have discussed today, where we have the power to do so. I will come specifically to a couple of those in a minute, but I will take the intervention just now. The SNP promised to dual the A19 back in 2007. That was over 15 years ago. Can the cabinet secretary still use the same grievance and excuse about the highest block grant ever for that particular failure? Manny McAllan laid out the plans for the A9. What is not helping the infrastructure plans for investment in Scotland is the more than 10 per cent cut to capital budgets that we will see over the next five years. What also does not help is the reduction in financial transactions available that have supported the affordable housing supply programme over a number of years. I want to come to housing because it has been mentioned a few times. It is important to recognise that the affordable housing supply programme has delivered more than 10,000 affordable homes in rural and island communities since 2016. However, there is more to do. In recognition of the importance of housing for key workers in rural and island areas, we are making up to £25 million available from the affordable housing supply programme budget over 2023-28. That is in addition to the £30 million for the rural housing fund. Kate Forbes was quite right when she pointed to the need for a diversity of tenure. That is absolutely right. Rhoda Grant also raised some important points on the practical issues of crofting housing. We will be happy to look at that further. Rhoda Grant also talked about rural housing burdens, which some organisations have housing associations and rural housing community trusts have been able to deliver some of those rural housing burdens. We will be happy to look into those further. You do not take any interventions. On the point about second homes, which has been raised, a very important point because the loss of too many homes in rural communities to second homes is a point made by a number of young people at the Parliament that I attended. It is good to see the widespread political support to empower local government to take action on second homes from most parts of the chamber with one obvious exception. We have also looked in the budget to address some of the challenges faced by the hospitality sector in island communities and will offer 100 per cent relief in 2024-25 for hospitality businesses located on islands capped at £110,000 per business. We will also invest a further £12.1 million in our rural and island communities to support community-led local development and similar initiatives, in addition to the £24.5 million that we have invested since the closure of the EU leader programme in December 2021. Some action is taken but I absolutely acknowledge the need to go further, which is why I am working with Mary Gougeon to take a cross-government approach to make sure that every part of government is interrogating the work that they are doing to make sure that it is delivering for rural and island communities and to challenge ourselves and our agencies to make sure that they are delivering for rural and island Scotland. Of course, Jamie Halcro Johnston did not take into her any interventions, but perhaps in the spirit of consensus, let me do what Jamie Halcro Johnston did not do and let him make an intervention. I am grateful to the Deputy First Minister for taking an intervention for her increased time than I have. I was just going to ask her. She has talked about collaboration across a number of departments. How does that work when the rural affairs and island budget has been cut by £80 million? How much collaboration across departments can help when that amount of money has been taken out of that budget? Of course, as I set out at the FPAC Committee on Tuesday, we have prioritised the spend on front-line services on health, local government, police, fire, which of course are services that those in rural and island communities rely on. If Jamie Halcro Johnston thinks that that is the wrong priority, then, of course, he has the opportunity to come forward with alternative spending proposals and I will await him doing that. I welcome support from across Government to enable younger generations to thrive in rural and island places. We have more work to do to make sure that that is the case, but I think that what was already clear, but which my attendance at the rural and island Parliament in Fort William confirmed, is that there is an incredible opportunity across rural Scotland to build fairer, stronger communities and a stronger rural economy where the opportunities are shared. The ideas, the energy in the room was palpable and the delegates who attended the very first Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament are testament to that energy and ideas. We want to work with all those young people in that institution in order to make sure that they hold us to account for the delivery of the aims and ambitions that we have set out. In closing, as I said at the start in the main, this has been a very constructive debate. It is the start of a process of delivering, listening and then delivering what needs to be delivered, focusing on those key priorities, working with young people and being held to account by them for the delivery that we will take forward. Thank you. That concludes the debate on Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament, and it is now time to move on to the next item of business. I call Keith Brown for a point of order. Thank you, Presiding Officer. Can I raise a point of order in relation to First Minister's questions today when, during his questioning, Douglas Ross mentioned the case of people from Fife, Postmistress Mary and her daughter, Myra. At the start of Douglas Ross's question, he talked about the obligation as he failed on the Lord Advocate to come forward with a process for questioning the convictions and finished his question with a demand that convictions be overturned. However, the actual example that he gave was a harrowing one around Mary in the Ochtamakti Post Office. He was wrongly suspended from her job with a devastating impact on her family and also on her daughter, Myra, in particular. He mentioned that Mary died before the horizon scandal came to light. As Mr Ross said, she died without knowing or being proven that she was right, and that is a tragedy, a harrowing story. However, he then made demands for the Crown Office to overturn those wrongful convictions, but he also said that there had been no prosecution nor conviction in this case. Surely it is important when this Parliament decides and discusses those issues that we know where accountability lies. In this case, accountability clearly lies with the Post Office, whose egregious actions caused the distress to the family and many others, and with UK ministers not with the Crown Office. Does the Prime Minister agree that we should be very clear in this place where accountability lies when we make those demands in Parliament? I thank Mr Brown for his contribution. The content of members' contributions is not ordinarily a matter for the chair, and therefore it is not a matter that I will rule on. Members will be well aware of the need to ensure that comments are accurate and wherever there are any inaccuracies members will be very well aware at this point in the session 2 of the mechanism that exists to correct those. We move on to decision time, and there are three questions to be put as a result of today's business. The first question is that amendment 11896.2, in the name of Rachel Hamilton, which seeks to amend motion 11896, in the name of Mary Gougeon, on Scottish Rural and Islands Youth Parliament be agreed. Are we all agreed? The Parliament is not agreed. Therefore, we will move to a vote, and there will be a short suspension to allow members to access the digital voting system.