 Welcome to the seventh meeting of the Royal Affairs, Island and Natural Environment Committee in session six. Before we begin, I remind those members using electronic devices to switch them to silent. Our first item of business is the decision of whether to consider our work programme, pre-budget letter and approach the stage 1 scrutiny of the good food nation Bill in private at future meetings. Agenda item 2, European Union Withdrawal Act 2018. I refer the members to paper 2, the official controls transitional staging period, miscellaneous amendments, Scotland regulations 2021 are made using powers under the EU Withdrawal Act 2018. Under the protocols between the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government, the committee is required to consider whether the procedure attached to the SSI is appropriate or should be changed. The instrument is subject to the negative procedure and Scottish ministers have categorised this instrument as low significance as amendments are solely in making relatively minor amendments to the traditional arrangements in place. The DPLR committee considered the instrument at its meeting on 21 September and agreed that the negative procedure was appropriate. As the committee is content that the negative procedure is appropriate for this instrument. Thank you. I will move to agenda item 3, subordinate legislation. I refer members to paper 2 to 4. As the committee agreed that the negative procedure was appropriate, we will now consider the official controls transitional staging period, miscellaneous amendments, Scotland regulation 2021 and the meet preparation import conditions Scotland amendment number 2, regulations 2021. Both are subject to the negative procedure. Does any member wish to raise any issues regarding either of these instruments? I would like to write to the Scottish Government on the response that it made with regard to the positioning of checkpoints and where it stated that they were no longer appropriate and insufficiently flexible, so I would like to write to the Government on that point. As any other members have any comments, are the members content to note the instrument? Agenda item 4, European Union withdrawal act 2018. I refer members to paper 5 and 6. The committee will now consider five statutory instrument consent notifications. The first two instruments are the phyto sanitary conditions amendment number 2, regulation 2021, animal health, plant health, seed and seed potato, miscellaneous amendments, regulations 2021. Under the protocol between the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government, those consent notifications have been categorised as type 1, meaning that the Scottish Parliament's agreement is sought before the Scottish Government gives consent to the UK Government making secondary legislation in devolved competence. Does any member wish to raise any issues with either of those consent notifications? No. Is the committee content that those provisions set out and the notifications should be included in the UK SIs? Is the committee content to delegate authority to me to sign off a letter to the Scottish Government informing them of our decision today? We now move on to consideration of three retrospective UK SIs that were made over the campaign recess, which are the trade and official controls transition arrangements for prior notification, amendment regulations 2021 and the official controls temporary measures coronavirus amendment number 2, regulations 2021 and the official controls extension of transitional period, regulations 2021. As those instruments have been made, the Scottish Parliament will not have the opportunity to agree to Scottish Minister's consent as it has already been given. The committee has invited to note the decisions and write to the Scottish Government for more information about the Scottish and UK Government's longer-term plans for import checks for plant and animal products as a consequence of EU exit. Are members content with that approach? Thank you. We are now going to briefly suspend till I broadcast to connect the witnesses for the next agenda item. Before we move on to members' questions, I would like to first invite our panellists to make a brief presentation of the service findings and I would like to invite Philip Raines, the interim director, deputy director for rural economy and communities in the Scottish Government to make some open remarks and then I will hand over to Dr Ruth Wilson. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you convener. I hope that you can hear me clearly. I hope that my American accent carries well as well. I want to thank you and welcome this opportunity to talk about the survey and indeed I guess the way in which the survey is going to underpin the approach we have to ensuring that the national islands plan and our strategic ambitions with the islands is going to be well grounded in an understanding about what is actually happening within the islands and make sure that that happens through the five-year lifetime plan. Members will need no reminding of the duties under the Islands Act in 2018 to set up the to create the national islands plan and the creation of that plan by December 2019. I think that the national survey, the island survey, should be seen as a key chain in being able to make sure that that plan and the underlying strategy is well grounded and continues to be well grounded and ever better grounded on an understanding of what is actually happening within our island economies and communities going forward. The initial work was done through consultation to create the plan by December 2019 involving visits to 40 islands and consultation with 1,000 people and that plan was published in 2019. That exercise revealed significant data gaps, limits in our understanding, our statistical and indeed our qualitative understanding of what the needs are and what the opportunities are within islands at that disaggregated level. Recognising that those gaps would take some time to be able to address the Dr Wilson, Dr Hopkins and their colleagues at James Hutton Institute were commissioned to produce the survey as, if you will, a staging post in making sure that we had robust data to be able to go forward to ensure that the development of the plan and the continuing, particularly the implementation group map, so the delivery of the plan, was well grounded in an understanding about what was going on within islands. The plans, I think, for going forward on the back of the survey, is to ensure that there is a research group put together that will successfully and continually address those research gaps over those five-year periods. We should be seeing the survey as a stopgap, if you will, but an important one that highlights some very key points that are going on with the islands, which no doubt members will be interested in and will come out of the workshop discussions later. I will hand over now to Dr Hopkins and Wilson in setting out what those results are and saying a bit more about how the survey was put together. Thank you. Dr Hopkins, you want to kick off? Hello. I believe that Ruth is going to give the first part of the presentation, but I am just checking that you can all see my second screen okay. We can now, yes. Okay. Good morning and thanks very much for inviting us. We are really pleased to have this chance to share our work with you. I am Ruth Wilson and I am here with Jonathan Hopkins. We are both social researchers in the social, economic and geographical sciences department at the James Hutton Institute. The department has a large portfolio of expertise in rural and island issues. Last year, we were commissioned by the Scottish Government to conduct the national islands plan survey. I am going to outline briefly what we did and then talk through some of the main findings. I will then hand over to John, who is going to explore some of the nuance in the data. Next slide, please, John. This is what we did, the survey people living in Scotland's islands to explore their perceptions of island life in relation to the objectives set out in the national islands plan. We were helped in this by a research advisory group, comprising representatives from the Scottish Government's islands team, the Scottish Islands Federation, Islands and Islands Enterprise, Podol and Scottish Rural Action. The process that we used is set out here to flag a couple of aspects that needed particular attention. One was the wording of the survey questions. We wanted to know about aspects of normal everyday life on the islands, but this time last year, when the survey was carried out, we were very much in the midst of Covid-19 and lockdown, when life was turned upside down for many people. A number of our questions, for example, about daily habits, asked people to think about times before March 2020 so that we have a sense of normal everyday life that we can use as a baseline for comparing the findings of future surveys. We also really wanted to remove barriers to people completing the survey. We sent it by post with the options to complete it on paper or to fill it in online, or there was also a telephone option. All three of those options were available in English and Gaelic. In the end, we sent the survey to 20,000 adult island residents aged 18 plus on 76 individual islands. The survey covered all of the main objectives in the national islands plan itself. There were questions about population, economy, transport, housing, fuel poverty, digital connectivity, health, social care and wellbeing, the environment, communities, culture and education. They were really very wide-ranging. Just to note that some of the islands in our sample have very small populations, and it would not be appropriate to apply statistical tests to such small numbers. At the same time, we wanted to be able to draw meaningful comparisons between the islands with greater specificity than is sometimes afforded by local authority boundaries. In particular, we felt that it was important to consider outer islands separately from mainland islands and islands that are connected to the mainland. In consultation with the research advisory group and the statistician, we came up with nine island groups that you can see highlighted on the map here. Those are Gael islands, Arran, Bute and Cumbria, Guy and the Small Islands, Lewis and Harris, Euston Barra, Orkney mainland, Orkney Outer islands, Shetland mainland and Shetland Outer islands. Next slide, please, John. 4,347 people responded to the survey from 59 islands, with an overall response rate of 22 per cent, which is very good, so we have a huge set of results. We won't be able to go into everything today, so instead we're going to highlight findings that particularly stood out to us, either because people feel very strongly about them, because they attract very different responses or because they indicate areas of concern. Next slide, please. Aspects of island life that scored highly included environmental indicators such as air quality, seeing a lot of wildlife and having green or blue spaces within a five-minute walk from home. High proportions of island residents also engage in pro-environmental behaviours, notably buying food locally and generating their own renewable energy. Another area that scored well was community spirit, with a majority of island residents feeling a sense of belonging to their local area and agreeing that there are physical spaces where the community can come together. Next slide, please. Aspects that attracted more negative responses included economic development. A minority of residents felt that there were jobs available locally to suit different interests, skills and ambitions, that businesses in the local area are growing and that there is access to childcare services to suit their working hours. Housing indicators also scored quite poorly. A majority of residents did not feel that there was a variety of housing types, sizes and tenures to meet people's needs, that affordable housing was available locally or that there was enough housing available to meet demand. On the other hand, a majority of residents thought that there was a high proportion of holidaylets in second homes in their local area. Digital indicators show high levels of access to the internet from home at 96 per cent, but only two thirds agreed that their connection at home is fast enough to do what they want online and fewer still agreed that their connection was reliable. That proportion decreases again with respect to availability of a good mobile signal at home or in the local area. With regard to education, although there was strong agreement that children have access to good quality primary school education, fewer people felt the same about secondary education and fewer still about the availability of college and university courses that can be accessed online or in person. Those are some high-level findings. Next slide, please, John. Probably one of the most important observations to emerge from the survey is just how diverse the islands are, with a high degree of variation in responses to many of the questions across island groupings. It is great that we now have a source of data that reveals some of the things that make our islands different. Some of the differences exist between the main island groups. For example, there was greater agreement in Orkney Mainland that there is a variety of housing available to meet people's needs compared to the small isles. Access to secondary school education that offers a wide range of subjects was higher in Shetland Mainland than in the Argyll Islands and used in Barra. An 81 per cent of residents of Shetland's outer islands agreed that there is a strong sense of community compared to less than two thirds in Lewis and Harris. Next slide, please, John. The most striking differences occurred within local authority island groups, for example, between Orkney and Shetland Mainlands and their outer islands and Lewis and Harris and used in Barra. Focusing in here on Shetland as an example, more Shetland Mainland residents felt that jobs were available in the local area compared to residents of Shetland's outer islands. Almost all residents of Shetland Mainland report that they can easily access a hospital, a dentist and a pharmacy. However, substantially fewer residents of Shetland's outer islands report that. The proportion of residents able to access a bus within walking distance of their home was much higher in Shetland Mainland. Speed and reliability of internet connections are a particular concern in the Shetland's outer islands compared to the mainland. By dividing Shetland into mainland and outer island subregions, we can see very clearly that there are differences that are often masked by local authority boundaries. Next slide, please. We also looked at differences between ages, genders and income levels, and age emerged as an important factor in shaping people's views of island life. We were particularly struck by some differences between young people aged 18 to 35 and older age groups. Compared to other age groups, young islanders were less likely to say that they would stay in the islands for the next five years. That can partly be explained by people in this age group leaving for further and higher education opportunities. However, only a quarter of respondents felt that young people are supported to remain in, move into or return to the local area. Less than a third of respondents agreed that it is easy for young people who want to live in their local area to do so. Our responses to some of the other questions suggest that young people actually feel more positively about aspects of island life than older residents. Young people are actually more optimistic than older people about all measures of job availability. They have a greater sense of empowerment than older people, and more of them feel that they can influence decisions made by community organisations such as development trusts and community groups. Notably, sense of empowerment is very low for all ages at the level of local and national government. There is higher use of local language and dialects among young people. Gallic and Orkney and Shetland dialects are read as written more widely among young respondents than older respondents. The emerging story here seems to be one in which it is generally acknowledged to be very difficult for young people to live and work in the islands, but young islanders themselves have a higher degree of optimism in the local economy and local decision making and stronger engagement in local culture if we take language as an indicator of that in older age groups. There is a tremendous amount of detail and nuance in those findings when you look at the differences between island groups and island residents. John is going to drill down into some of that and show you an online tool that you can use to explore the results yourselves. Over to you, John. Thanks, Ruth, and hi, everybody. Yes, thanks to Ruth for giving a very, very good overview of everything in the survey. As she noted, the survey is very broad and it covers several topics and several questions. Accomming the report, we have produced an online results explorer, which is available by the web link at the bottom of the slide. It enables anybody to access a large volume of summary graphs and tables and explore the responses between different groups, either the island groups that we have just outlined or age groups, gender groups, gender, household income, whether respondents have health problems or disabilities and whether children under 16 lived at home. A screenshot of the explorer is on the right-hand side. It is a very simple interface with drop-down menus to identify questions and variables that you are interested in and to put them to press to show the summary results. In the following slides, we are going to show some of the graphs from the explorer to illustrate these interesting observations and insights from the survey, either expanding on what Ruth has just described or additional results. We focus in particular on the island group differences, age group differences and some insights related to household income. We should emphasise that the interface does not show whether the results are statistically significant or not. The following slides show examples of what we view as interesting differences or information about important issues that could be prioritised in future for more detailed analysis. The slide on the screen demonstrates particularly interesting differences in the responses across different age groups, which was noted earlier. The age groups on the slide are shown as columns. The height of the column is equal to 100 per cent of responses with the number of responses in the survey beneath the columns. The survey asked whether people thought that they were likely to stay on the island for the next five years. To the nearest whole number, 92 per cent of respondents who were aged 66 and over said yes to the question, as did about 90 per cent of people aged 36 to 50 and a similar amount of those aged 51 to 65. As Ruth mentioned, for the younger age group, a somewhat lower proportion, about 71 per cent, indicated that they are likely to stay on the island for the near future. The next slide shows some more detailed perceptions of how easy people feel it is for younger people to live and work in the local area. The slide shows the overall responses across all islands in the far left column and the responses for those in the nine island groups in the remaining columns. The dark blue shows strong agreement, and the light blue shows agreement. If we add those up, 31 per cent of people across all islands agreed or strongly agreed that it was easy for young people to live and work locally. However, there are much more positive perceptions in the Ardney mainland and Shetland mainland, so 53 per cent agreed in the Ardney mainland, with a sharp contrast with the views in the outer islands, where the overall level of agreement was a bit lower. When we look at the same question, looking at perceptions across the different age groups, we see further evidence of the great optimism among younger people that Ruth highlighted. 39 per cent of people aged 18 to 35 agreed or strongly agreed that it was easy for young people who want to live and work in the local area to do so. Although 45 per cent of that group disagreed, shown by the red and dark red, you can see through the visual comparison across different age groups that the younger age group was the most positive overall. The slide picks up the very salient issue of affordable housing and differences in perceptions between nearby island groups. We show that we highlight the west in particular. For instance, if you take the Argyll islands, only 19 per cent agreed or strongly agreed that there was affordable housing in the local area. There is a similar figure in the Sky and the Small Isles, but respondents were much more likely to agree that there was nearby affordable housing in Arran but in the Cumbrakes, where 49 per cent agreed. There is also a considerable difference between Lewis and Harris and Hewysden Barra in the western isles. The next two slides relate to the issue of job availability and show further differences between the island groups, in particular the mainland and outer islands of Argyll in Shetland and great optimism about younger people. The survey asked residents to consider their local area and whether they thought that jobs were available to suit different interests, skills and ambitions. Across all islands, 30 per cent agreed or strongly agreed with that, but in Argyll in Shetland, 58 per cent agreed and 42 per cent agreed in the Shetland mainland with somewhat less positive views in the outer isles of those regions. The slide illustrates the same question that people aged 18 to 35 were again more positive about local job availability of any age group. If you consider the people who agreed or strongly agreed, 38 per cent of the youngest age group agreed that jobs were available locally, compared with 29 per cent of respondents aged 38 to 50, with low proportions in the two older age groups. The slide and the following two slides show very contrasting views and perceptions among residents related to tourism and its impacts. Just focusing on the all responses column, when asked whether there were job opportunities in tourism within the local area across all islands, 62 per cent agreed or strongly agreed with that, although there was some variation across the island groups. When respondents were asked if tourism had a positive impact in their local area, views tended to be very positive overall. 76 per cent agreed or strongly agreed, but when respondents were asked whether there was adequate provision for the number of tourists in the local area, there is clearly a much more negative view overall, with overall 67 per cent either agreed or strongly disagreed. That is shown again by the light and dark red. If you look at some island groups, for instance Sky and the Small Isles, 93 per cent overall disagreed, and in the Argyll islands, 82 per cent disagreed. The survey has identified other subtle but important differences between different demographics. We asked whether people were confident in using the internet to do a number of tasks, including attending health and social care appointments. If we divide that based on age group, we can see that the percentage of people who felt very confident in using the internet to access those appointments, shown by the dark green on the slide, in doing this declined from 67 per cent of people aged 18 to 35 to 32 per cent of respondents who are in the oldest age group aged 66 and over. Lastly, two slides which highlight some other interesting regional differences that the survey has shown. People were asked whether they had installed equipment to generate renewable energy for use at home, and we see clearly that there are high rates in Argyll, particularly in the outer isles, where 36 per cent had installed such equipment and in the mainland, 22 per cent had done so. The final slide is on the topic of fuel poverty, which is split by the gross household income. Respondents were asked whether they had to choose between keeping their home warm and buying food or essentials within the past year, and for island residents whose household income was below £20,000 a year, it is notable that 18 per cent stated that they had to choose between warmth and food or essentials in the past year, and in other groups, the proportions were much lower, but it is clear that some respondents in the higher income cohorts were also making those decisions. We hope that the following slides and the full presentation have provided some insights into the survey, and it is very broad. We hope that we have highlighted some of the nuances between different groups and different island residents, and we encourage people to investigate these further. Following on from the survey, the subregions of island groups that we used are being taken forward in a Government consultation on the islands bond, and Ruth is involved in supervising two PhD students who have just started to work on aspects of migration. We very much hope that the survey findings will be used in the island community impact assessments that are coming up. The final slide just highlights the contact details, the links to the outputs that we have mentioned previously, and we acknowledge our funding by the Scottish Government. Many thanks. Thank you very much. We are now going to move to questions from members. I am going to kick off. We have got about 22 per cent of islanders who have responded to the survey. Given some of the slideshow, there are huge differences between even individual islands. We know that data in itself is not banned, but how it is interpreted can lead to the wrong conclusions being made or the wrong policies put in place. To do that, we also need to have an idea of what our targets are to show how things are improved by the policies that we have put in place. This is the first survey of its kind, so we have no baseline information to decide whether things are actually improving. What are your views on how we can measure the success of future policies that are based on the survey? Ruth Davidson The purpose of the survey is to gather the baseline data that is currently missing. The intention is to repeat the survey in future years and to compare results against the baseline data. We have had a huge number of responses to the survey, and if we are able to achieve, we will be building what is going to be a substantial evidence base regarding the islands that are thus far being missing. Given how different it is, even when we look at the outer Shetland Islands and inner Shetland Islands, is there the potential for an islands policy to cover all the various extremes that we can see in the feedback? How do you think that the survey is going to help form policy when we see such a different feedback, even between age groups? There is quite a difference not even looking at whether it is the inner or outer Shetland Islands. How will we use that? That is one of the reasons that we have made the results explorer available that John showed you, so that people can go away and look at responses to questions in depth for different age groups and different island groups. I think that, to my mind, the purpose of islands-related policies should be to be highly sensitive to the differences between the different island groups and different types of people. That is what an island policy should strive to achieve. Easier said than done. I know, but now that we are building the evidence base, it should help to inform the development of that place-based policy. With islands too often in the past, they have maybe been grouped together with mainland rural and remote rural regions. It is great that we have a focus now on islands, but it is really important to acknowledge the differences between outlying islands and mainland islands in policy. I think that your question really goes to the heart about how we have to use this data going forward. There are maybe a couple of points that I might make. I am relatively new into post, and I would say that I was really struck with the fact that it is not an island policy as such, it is an island policy. I think that emphasis is on the fact that we have to avoid unreasonably or inappropriately lumping together different communities and different circumstances is essential. Ruth was saying about the importance of developing a longitudinal comparative dataset that will be building on the excellent work that the James Hutton Institute has done that will be critical. At the same time, we will need to get more nuanced in how we get that regular, what you might call every day data that needs to come, those gaps that were identified as part of the development of the plan. That is where that research group that is going to be informing the delivery of the plan going forward is going to have a critical role. It has to be different things in order to ensure that there is a more nuanced approach to how the strategy is going to be delivered to support very different communities. I am now going to move to Karen, who is going to ask some specific questions on the pandemic and Brexit and how that might affect the survey. You mentioned questioning people and guiding them to think of life pre-March 2020, but things have significantly changed in many ways and ways that will never be the same again. Do you believe that the post-EU exit and post-pandemic landscape is adequately accommodated within the plan? If not, how could the new landscape be incorporated into the plan? What would that look like in terms of changes of direction, aims and objectives? Thank you. Thank you very much, convener. The pandemic is going to create significant challenges right across Scotland, if you will, determining the difference between and determining what needs to happen to support recovery and how much things have changed as a result. That was one reason why we are going to absolutely need continuing data coming forward and things like the survey being repeated at a later date to be able to continue to get that. One of the ways that the island's plan has adapted, if you will, to the changing circumstances of the pandemic and what we might say the new sets of priorities that may be coming forward is that the partnership working group, which was one of the groups that was initially set up to help steer the delivery of the plan, commented on or were asked to review the 13 strategic objectives within the island's plan to determine what might be, I guess, what might call the early set of priorities, the post-pandemic priorities in order to help address the circumstances that the islands were facing and, as you say, with respect to Brexit as well. They identified there were five key priorities that probably needed early-door activity, not across the whole of the five-year span, because the 13 priorities covered that. There has been, if you will, an inflight adjustment to adjust those priorities going forward. There is no getting away from the fact that, as well as adjusting to the pandemic, there remains fundamental issues that are going to continue to affect islands going forward. They affect much of rural Scotland as well, of course, and we cannot lose sight of those as well, so it is getting that balancing act. It was just to point to flag that we at the James Luton Institute and at SRUC have undertaken a joint bit of work looking at the impacts of Covid in rural and island areas. We are just on the cusp of going back to re-interview some people that we spoke to last summer to find out how things are panning out. Just to point out that there is work going on there and that we were able to respond quite quickly to the pandemic in that respect. It has been really great to be able to conduct a lot of that research online. There is a suite of research there under a report that we can provide a link to if you would like to have a look at that. Thank you. I am interested in the way that you have grouped the islands together. If I live on Islay, which is one of the Argyll Isles, and even within the Argyll Isles, you have different subsets of islands there. You have islands off islands, islands linked by bridges, and you have islands linked to the mainland by ferries. I wonder if you have been able to find different evidence or different information from each of those different groups. I am also interested in exploring a bit more because I found it quite stark the differences between mainland Orkney, for example, and the Orkney smaller islands. I wonder if we are maybe missing a wee trick here as well, because looking at the Argyll islands, they are separate from the mainland, so the difference between blended local authorities versus island-only local authorities comes out in the evidence. Just a very quick one on the panel. Eighteen-year-olds was the youngest. People can vote in Scotland from 16. There are a lot of strong views from young people, so I am concerned that that is a huge area of evidence that we are missing out on here and what plans you have to expand the criteria for selection. I will start with Ruth on that, and then perhaps to Philip, and maybe Jonathan can answer on the criteria of selecting people. John is probably a good person to speak to the island groupings, because that was very much his work. Further refinement would be great to do what we are trying to balance, is getting enough people in the island groups to not be able to identify people individually and compromise anonymity, but to make meaningful comparisons. Certainly, having seen the differences that are emerging between outer islands in Orkney and Shetland and the mainland island, that is something that we would look to change for our guile in the future. Now, I am trying to remember what your other question was. I was asking the difference of the islands that you have touched on, but also the difference of local authorities, the fact that you have got island-only local authorities and blended local authorities, and the age range that you were surveyed? The age range was 18 plus. We wanted to speak to adults. You started to get into ethical questions about surveying people younger than that age, but that is definitely something that we would want to address. I have a feeling that there was a practical issue around acquiring names and addresses of people under the age of 18. We basically acquired our sample of names and addresses from another organisation. I have a feeling that they perhaps did not have the data for younger age groups, so that was a practical limitation that we were working towards. That is a critical age group of 16 to 18-year-olds, because they are making big choices that affect their future lives. I am happy to do so, though I am conscious of the time, and I suspect that John might be able to answer some of those questions a bit more effectively. I would simply add that your point about 16-year-olds is a very strong one. I suspect that there are some technical issues about how we can gather that data in the future. I absolutely would hope that we would find a way through that, shall we say. John, you are probably a better place to pick up on the nuances of the committee member's question there. No problem. Thanks, Phil, and thanks, Ruth, for a really good overview answer earlier. The Scottish Islands, if you are designing a survey, is a very difficult area to design a survey for. There are four islands with a population over 10,000 at the last census, and there is a large number of islands with a very small number. It is important that we had groupings that enabled us to produce statistics that were meaningful and were based on large enough numbers. As a geographer, I am very aware that as soon as you have started to group different islands, different areas into quite arbitrary units, it is a very emotional issue. It can be a very contentious issue, and that obviously was not our intention. We absolutely agree that it is important to consider islands areas such as Argal and Bute, where you have a mainland area and an island area. We made sure that we were able to pick up the responses from just the islands. Just to note something related to that, something that we did not look at in the survey, is that we did not have that mainland comparison. It would be interesting to, in the future, think about how we could measure sort of progress in the islands against progress in mainland communities, and consider maybe whether some of the findings from this survey could have relevance to mainland communities as well. Perhaps some of the age group differences might reflect mainland situations as well, although we cannot say that with the data that we have, but it is something to consider in the future. I think that it is now appropriate to move on to questions on young people from Arianne. In your work, I thank you so much for going through and explaining it. I really love the online results explorer. I would love to see if it is possible to see the breakdown of fuel poverty. Is there a slide for the fuel poverty bit? That is not my question, I just wanted to ask that, because that is very much an issue at the moment that we are working on here in the Parliament. In the survey, respondents felt that, in some cases, there was lack of support for young people to remain on islands. Of course, one key reason is that residents leave the islands because of lack of jobs or jobs within their skillset. I wonder if we are starting to get enough data on the current provision of jobs in different locations, in different island groupings, in different sectors. What I am looking for is some kind of mapping exercise where we can see where the well-paid jobs are with secure long-term contracts. Part of what is underlying this is that, right now, I am working on the issue of Hyal wanting to centralise air traffic controllers to Inverness taking away good-paying jobs. The sense of taking away those good-paying jobs is that that destabilises the community. I would love to start to understand if we have good-paying jobs in the islands that give good prospects for young people. I will direct that to Philip to start, and then maybe Ruth. I am happy to take that up. The fuel poverty question is obviously one for colleagues in the James Hutton Institute. To be honest, I think that that is a fantastic point and question that we need to get into. I would look to working with SDS and others to be able to provide that kind of mapping of the profile and the landscaping of those jobs across the islands. I think that you are right. It is a question about understanding the impact of changes in businesses and economic activities and public sector decisions and things what have you in terms of how that would ripple through, if you will. It is a relatively small palm, so a small stone can still have a huge impact. It is also critical for thinking about where the jobs will come in future and thinking about what the potential is. Having an understanding about where those better-paying jobs, at the very least, are going to be located, not just maybe in the islands. I think that that applies across rural Scotland more generally, because they will have the same issues everywhere. It will be important for us to be able to think about how we take advantage of some of the new economic opportunities. I am thinking particularly about the collective environmental ambitions and how we can ensure that those high campaign jobs are there as well. That nuanced data is critical. My sense is that we probably do not have enough of it and we probably do not use it as systematically as we can, but I think that it is going to be essential for going forward. Just to point out that we did not show it in the presentation, but there are questions in the survey that ask about particular sectors. There is an overarching question about whether jobs are available to different interests, skills and ambitions, and then there are separate questions about fishing, agriculture, forestry, tourism and low-carbon renewable energy. There is some detail there. In response to the question about fuel poverty, yes, it will be possible to look at it. I think of what you were getting at was fuel poverty by age group. That information is available through the Results Explorer. I have not attempted to bring that up live during the meeting, but we can certainly put you towards the relevant graph afterwards. I would like to continue with your questions on housing. There seems to be a low rate of satisfaction with housing availability and affordability on many of the islands. Do you think that the Scottish Government's commitment to delivering 11,000 affordable homes in remote rural and island communities is enough? How can we ensure that enough of those are on the islands where they are needed? I travelled around all the island groupings not enough to Argyll, unfortunately, but certainly to Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles over the summer. I talked about the Western Isles. Each island all had housing issues, lack of housing, but the issues were all different. I am not sure if we have a true understanding of the reality of what it means to create housing in those places. I think that I am going to put that to Philip again to begin with. Absolutely. I am very happy to pick that up. I think that you will not be surprised, I guess, in asking a representative of the Scottish Government about whether we, in a sense, got it right, that I would certainly endorse and be very positive about the commitment that has been set out in the programme for government, and, indeed, through the earlier Housing 2040 Strategy. I would note that one of the commitments that was set out, which I know colleagues and the right-of-cross Government are working on, is this rural housing plan, which will be taking account of the distinctive issues that, as the committee will well understand, do not just affect islands, obviously affect remote and rural locations as well. It is very much at the forefront of people's minds that the ambition is there. I guess it will be for others to judge whether we are going to get it right, I guess, in due course. I know that Jonathan wanted to come in at this point, but that would be my answer. Can I just come back in on that? I think that one of the concerns is about labour and is also about getting materials to islands, and I just wonder if there is consideration for that. In some cases, communities have land, but housebuilders do not want to build in those places because they are difficult to get to. All those challenges are being—certainly my colleagues and colleagues across the Government are very live to those challenges—how they are going to play out in individual areas is probably where we are going to have to be tailored and specific in terms of how that strategy plays out. I know that housing colleagues in particular are very alive to the fact that it has to be about developing those local relationships, both to understand what the local conditions are, and that is not, as you say, just in terms of the housing stock and shortages, but absolutely in terms of, if I can put it this way, the potential for developing housing. So what are the local issues? Is it to do with materials or people, or maybe it is to do with land availability in some cases and things what have you, and therefore they are going to be working to develop those solutions there? Harry Ann, I guess the best I could probably say at this point is that if you will in the early days of developing or developing the delivery of that commitment within the programme for government, people absolutely understand those kind of issues and things what have you, whether they can find their way through to the solutions to address it, and this maybe feeds into some of the bigger issues that were alluded to at the start of this session around things like Brexit and other things what have you, needs to be seen through, but there's absolutely the will to make this happen. Thank you. I think Jonathan would like to come in on this. Yes, just, no thank you, it's a really important point, I think. We've had a number of data collection exercises in rural areas, both qualitative and quantitative, and housing is, strikes me, is the absolute, you know, it's an issue which is linked to so many other issues, and it has so many knock-on effects with demographic change, for instance, and linking to different jobs. Well, and just to agree with Philip's point about there's a balance between having a national strategy of planning where housing should go and also having that local level data on where the housing need is and where the housing affordability issues are particularly pertinent, and we hope that this data that we've collected in the survey could point to that. But I think that Ruth has been engaged with island communities much more than I have in the past, and she'd be able to provide some more insights on that. Allianne, you've got a brief supplementary. Yeah, I'm not sure if Ruth is coming back as well. Okay, I've got, I'm going to change the subject, I've got, it's actually different, but this is addressed to colleagues in the James Hutton Institute. It's about boundary commission, so I'm in another committee, and we were looking at boundary commission changes, electoral changes for Shetland, Orkney, Western Isles, Argyll and Bute, Highland and North Ayrshire. I'm not necessarily looking for an answer, but flagging up that Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles were happy with the results, so was North Ayrshire, but Highland and Argyll and Bute, which are, as Jenny calls it, a blended situation where you've got mainland and then a lot of islands, because given North Ayrshire does have some islands, but Argyll and Bute and Highland have a lot of islands, and it just seemed to be that in those cases they were the least happy with the results from boundary Scotland, and I just think that that would be something that would be very much worth somehow tracking in this work that you're doing, because it's about representation of rural farflung areas and this blended piece, and the fact that actually what ended up happening is that rural areas on the mainland started to be less represented in some cases, and islands that felt more connected to the mainland also felt that they were losing something as well, so I think that there's something, you know, maybe cross work that would be good to bring into what we're doing here. Ruth, would you like to make a comment? I agree that that's certainly something that has come up in our other work when we've been interviewing people in those local authority areas, and even speaking to members of local authority areas, it's a really difficult job to deal with all that diversity. I mean, the diversity that we've shown today is just in the islands. When you bring in mainland parts of Scotland through that, it becomes a really difficult thing to manage in terms of responding to understanding what the different needs are and responding to them, so absolutely our research has been taking more and more of a place-based approach to start to understand those differences, and I think that policy has been moving in that direction as well, but I think that the more of that that can be enabled the better as far as we are concerned. Thank you, Ruth. Okay, thank you. Allister, you have some questions. Thank you very much, convener. It was very interesting to read the report. It was a valuable piece of research, I felt, although I was keen to know whether some of the questions were road-tested on people from islands before they were asked. There were a couple that came to mind, but the first one was the one about fuel poverty. The very people who are most likely to suffer from fuel poverty are older people in certain parts of the islands, who are also culturally, I would have thought instinctively, the very least likely to answer a blunt question, can you afford to heat your house and eat, and also the least likely to be convinced about the anonymity of the results? There may be no way around that, but I just wondered if you considered it. Jonathan, or Ruth. Jonathan, perhaps. I can answer to a couple of points. Ruth might be able to talk a bit more about the testing of the questions, because there was a thorough testing of the wording of the survey questions. We are just on the differences that you kind of pick up on in different responses, different response rates between different age groups. That was something that we found, and we found that older residents were more likely to respond to the survey. If you look at the sample of people that we sent the survey to and the response rates that we got, we got much higher response rates among older people. We did not look at that by question, and we would agree that actually looking at the fuel poverty questions, there were quite a high percentage of people who said that they did not know. Obviously, we cannot interpret that as anything else, and I do not know, but that might suggest some of the reticence to respond about issues like this that you suggest. We absolutely have to treat that data very sensitively. We do not believe that there are any issues related to anonymity because of the way that the survey has been reported and set out, but it is a very important point. The other one that I was going to ask about is about Gaelic. In your summary there, Dr Hopkins, you said that younger people were more likely to use Gaelic. I would love that to be true, but it is not. It might be important just to look at the results that you have about Gaelic to be clear of the distinction between what is a very welcome increase. The question did refer to the opportunities for the minority of younger people who speak Gaelic to use Gaelic in reading and writing and the prevalence of Gaelic use among younger people. Those are two different things. Given the sensitivities around that and the amount of misinformation that goes out there about Gaelic, I would be keen that, whenever the report is summarised, we will make clear that those are two different things and that anyone who lives in the islands will be able to say, as I am sure that you realise, that Gaelic use, sadly, among younger people is less than among older people. Can we ask Philip to respond to those comments? It is difficult for me, and I think it would probably be a bit too impish of me to be able to comment on age differences among Gaelic speaking. In a sense, I can only go with the wisdom of folk like yourselves, Alistair, but also the research that is coming out. What it proves to me is that we need to be alive both to the prevalence of how the language is being used and the culture that lies behind it among existing communities, particularly among the older people of those communities, as well as what seems to be clear enthusiasm, at least in pockets, that younger age groups are taking up the language and the culture and the distinctive identities that come with it. With all these things, and indeed with all things to do with the island, you can probably have a lot of different results that are probably true across the different islands, if you will, just because of the diversity of the islands. It may well be the case that much of this is true in different parts, but whether that presents a national picture, particularly in terms of those groups that may be more rooted in the language and culture than otherwise. We might be talking about it slightly across purposes. I think that the point of making is that all of what you say is very true and very welcome, but it is nonetheless important that, when we present those results, we do not give the impression that it would skew our understanding of what we need to do to revive Gaelic. We do not want to skew the picture by suggesting that Gaelic is used more in the islands among younger people than older people, because that is by any objective measurement not the case. I think that we just have to be clear about that fact. When we present data about Gaelic, not to be a prophet of doom about Gaelic, I am quite the reverse, but it is important to be factual about it. To be honest, some of the way that this is presented risks conflating the issue of prevalence of Gaelic use and the opportunities for reading and writing Gaelic among a minority. I think that we just need to be clear about what the data means. I want to make two points there. In essence, it is just a great and it strikes me that the points that you are making are not just specific against the Gaelic, but to any of the conclusions that you may draw from the survey. I would say that there are maybe two key things that we need to do there. The survey has clearly been published in things, but certainly just ensure, as I am sure our colleagues in the Jane Soutton Institute would probably wholeheartedly agree, that the right caveats are being presented around things about the way the data is collected and the issues about how many conclusions you can draw from it, given the way it was collected. The second thing is how we use that data. To me, the interesting question because there would be why are some of those rules coming out when, as you say, there is a lot of other data that is suggesting otherwise? Maybe, can that be used to create a more nuanced picture? I guess that it is using that data in the full context of all the other things that you know about and well understood. That becomes a responsibility of ourselves and the Government to be able to work our stakeholders to do that. Thank you. I think that these are very important points. I am glad that we have got the one record. We will now move to the final questions. We have only got five minutes left from Beatrice and then Rachel. I would like to ask about transport and the data that has been collected on it in the executive summary. I feel that there is a bit of pulling together and perhaps mixing up inter-island ferry travel and mainland travel. What account was taken when you were looking at different island settings with islands that have small populations and perhaps only one form of travel off their island to mainland Shetland? What consideration was given for travel out with the islands? Some islands have got ferries only, some have got a mix of ferry and inter-island air travel. I would be interested to know what account was taken between the islands with small populations and outer islands with larger populations. Jonathan, you are nodding. Would you like to come in first? I do not think that I was nodding. I apologise if I gave that impression, but I might suggest that Ruth could answer that without putting her on the spot. I can try to answer it. We did ask questions, separate questions, about inter-island travel and travel to the mainland by ferry and by plane. We have not done a detailed piece of analysis around looking at the responses from different islands to those questions, but the data is exactly the type of query that the results explorer would be able to help with. It is important to note that although we have the report published with the main findings in it, there is a lot more detail in the survey data and there is a great deal more that it can be used for. There are a large number of questions on different modes, and it is there to be dealt into in more depth to answer those questions. Without proper transport, the islands cannot survive and thrive, so it is a very important question, especially when coming to look at future policy. There is a comment here about older people, sorry, middle-aged residents, more likely to make use of inter-island ferries. If that is the only choice, I think that that cuts across the whole population. Result of the data gives statistical evidence that transport is an issue in the islands. However, for me, what it does not give is a picture of the impact of the connectivity on the islands. How can that be looked at? Do you feel that there was a deficiency in the survey that did not represent the impact of the people of the islands on the lack and the gap in the transport connectivity? Ruth, would you like to take that one on and then we will move to Philip? I think that that is a really good question. In the survey, we focused more on the use of transport and availability of transport. There was one question about if I want to make a journey to or from my home, I can easily connect between different forms of transport, which maybe gives a bit more of a kind of qualitative view of people's experiences. Possibly that is a deficiency in that there was not really a question asking about how people felt, because that is certainly something that we try to think about in our research. When somebody on the islands steps outside their house in the morning and goes about their daily activities, how do those sorts of things like transport, digital and healthcare impact on their daily lives? Perhaps the survey has not captured that. Dr Wilson, can I just follow up on that? Within the survey's capability, were there extra notes or other notes where you gathered the thoughts of people and where are those accessible? We did gather people's thoughts. There was a box at the end where people could share their views. We have got that data. It is being processed to go to the Scottish Government to look through. It is basically undergoing a really thorough anonymisation process because we cannot have people being exposed as being the person who made that comment. We are doing that anonymisation process at the moment. The data sets, just with the quantitative data, will be passed to the Scottish Government. I am not sure what the plan is to do with the qualitative comments after that. Would anyone else on the panel like to comment on my question about the gaps within the survey with regards to people's overall thoughts about connectivity? I might offer the more general observation that the way I would tend to view the survey is that it is something of a gateway survey in that there are clearly going to be ways in which, given its trailblazing nature, in certain terms of the Scottish Islands work, there are going to be ways in which we can improve it and get better questions going forward. To me, one of the critical things is where it is identifying areas that, in essence, we are going to need to go into in a more targeted and a more forceful way, shall we say, in a research way. I do not think that we should be using the survey to address all the kind of questions that you are picking up, but you are rightly picking up on the complexity and nuances. This goes back to your colleagues' previous question about each island area, each locality is going to have a different mix of transport and things that have you, so what the impact is going to look like is going to be different. In essence, just as for transport, this is true for housing, accessibility and a number of other issues that we have covered, we need to use this data to think about what more do we not know, but we basically are getting indications from this to go into. That is where I hope our research group will be able to give us a clear highlight going forward. Thank you very much. That is a fine note to conclude on, so I would like to thank the witnesses for their evidence this morning, and we will suspend until 10.56 when we get our next panel in front of us. Welcome back, everybody, and I would like to welcome to the meeting our second panel of stakeholders. We have got Camilla Dressler at the chair of Scottish Islands Federation, Douglas Cowan, director of communities and plays Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Artemis Panna, national co-ordinator Scottish rural action, Derek Logie, chief executive of the rural housing Scotland, Jenny Milne and Alec Reid, Scottish rural and island transport community, Jane Craigie, director of rural youth project, Kieran Sinclair, rural youth project and Ailsa Rayburn, chair of community land Scotland. We have a very big panel today and we have only 90 minutes for a huge range of questions, so if you could try and keep your responses as brief as you can. I am going to kick off with a question that will be very difficult for you to answer briefly, but if I could get your opinion on what is the main challenge facing Scotland's various island communities, and if I could start with Camilla, please. Thanks for this question, convener. I think that that is a really main issue. I think that the survey has really highlighted all the issues currently problematic for the islands, which are housing, good access to connectivity and availability of jobs and population retention. I am pleased to see that the survey has given some baseline indication, although I would agree with Philip Brain that it is a gateway survey and that we need more information and more definition of what the issues are, islands by islands, because the survey has indicated that there are big differences between island groups and between mainland islands and outer islands, as in the case of Shetland and Orkney. I think that there are probably short-term economic challenges on the islands, on how islands recover from that. I guess that islands generally, one has to generalise, given the sectoral make-up of the economy in large proportion of food and drinking tourism businesses, islands have been relatively harder hit than other parts of the islands and islands, which have been relatively harder hit than the rest of Scotland. There are some specific economic challenges in the short term. For me, longer term, the main issue is around population. We have seen in many of our islands and island groups that long-term population decline, which is projected to accelerate in the coming years and decades. For me, that is the biggest long-term challenge, and it picks up many of the issues in the survey and in the island's plan. Thank you, convener. All the challenges that have been outlined in the survey, and from what Douglas and Camille have said, I would like to make a distinction, however. All the issues and all the challenges that are interlinked and depopulation are an outcome of those challenges. It is not a challenge in itself, it is an outcome. If depopulation is the outcome of those challenges, we need to be looking at what the root cause of those challenges are, and that is institutional, specifically the tendency to centralise the design of policy, the design of services in a way that fails to grasp the complexity and diversity of rural and island areas. That is why the island plan is such a fantastic piece of work in the survey itself, because in order to grasp that complexity and that diversity, we need data and we need a vision. Thank you, Derek. I echo just what Artemis has said about policy being developed for island circumstances. I think that that is really, really very important going forward. I think that it is interested to see the survey that those islands or those areas where there was no—people thought it was relatively easy to get a house or housing was an issue, where those areas where that is where housing investment has gone previously, so that is where the social housing is. Lerwick, Kirkwall, Stornoway, those areas were relatively easy to get a house. I just did a quick analysis of where investment went in the last lot of data that I have in the Scottish Government. Amongst the 150 houses that were built with Scottish Government investment in 2019-20, most of those were built in Stornoway, Lerwick and Kirkwall. Despite the fact that those three communities just make up something like a fifth of the population of island communities, we really need to start finding ways to island-proof our housing policies so that we meet housing needs within those communities. As Artemis also said, deep population is a symptom of the lack of housing within those communities. Good morning and thank you very much. I know that we have already touched briefly on transport earlier on. As an organisation, we have spoken with a large number of organisations that are represented with our stakeholders from regional transport partners down to communities. Everybody has said that it is about the practical problems that are facing islands when it comes to transport. We are looking at practical problems relating to ferries, which Alex will elaborate on in a minute, but also about the lack of infrastructure. Particularly when you are starting to look at decarbonisation and how you actually get vehicles to other outer islands such as Alvar, such as an electric quad bike. However, we are also looking at practical issues relating to the duplication of bus services in the areas, and there is also suitability and accessibility. 22-seater buses are not required to be actually accessible, neither are taxis, yet we have people trying to access those that just can't. We touched on skillset earlier on, a massive challenge for islands, where we are starting to look at electric vehicle maintenance and installing chargers and the skillsets on there. Those are very practical things. I will pass them over to Alex now to follow up on some of those. I am very, very briefly conscious of time, convener. Ultimately, as Jenny has highlighted, transport is a real challenge. We should remember that all demand for transport is derived from something else. It is derived from the need to get to services, and it is derived from the need to get to work. Ultimately, it is quite important that, when we look at the challenges that Scotland faces, it is nuanced that those challenges are very specific to different types of islands. Ultimately, we need to design solutions that take account of that, and take account of the fact that, assuming beings, we need to move to and from different places. How we move using transport is always going to be a core component of that. Thank you, convener. I will pick up on what Alex was saying. I often describe the situation with young people as they have to deal with a trio of woe, such as transport, housing, jobs, opportunities and earnings. They are all interlinked. One feeds the other. If we look at the young people that we have been dealing with, particularly in island communities, they have to have multiple jobs to earn sufficient income, yet their income will be 20 per cent lower than their urban peers. They have practical implications. For example, Amy Dunahy, who lives on Dura, has a development role between Isla and Dura. She has to have a car on each island. For her, she is a young person trying to make ends meet, yet she has this trio of issues. In terms of housing, it is very often practical issues that deter young people from living or returning to islands. Finding accommodation that is right for them, that is cheap to heat, that they have space to leave their tools or their Wellington boots when they come back from work is very simple things that often can make a real difference to young people. I think that all those issues are fundamentally important. I really echo what Jane is saying. I live on Hoi, and some of the housing issues that we have are that there was a demand for housing to be developed, but councils and different groups said that you have homes, but those homes were derelict ruins that cost about £300,000 to afford to buy a property like that or to finance the redevelopment of it. I might also say that it might not be the most important, but I think that something that often gets left out is diversity and equality. Looking at LGBT people living in very rural parts of the country, I think that we need to pay attention to how that affects their lives and embracing what we need to do to improve lives for LGBT people. You have the equality network providing research that says that young LGBT people will leave for Glasgow and Edinburgh, for example, because they do not feel that their remote communities have enough there for them. Discrimination is about double in rural Scotland than it would be in an urban area. I think that that is not statistically the most fundamental issue, but I do not think about equality and diversity. I think that we should pay attention to that as well. Thank you, Kieran, and Ailsa. Thank you, convener. We really welcome the survey and particularly the nuances that it highlights across the various islands that we are talking about today. In terms of the key issues, one that everyone has mentioned is around the lack of affordable housing for all tenure types, particularly for young people that we have talked about, but also for professionals that want to come and move to the islands. We know that there are big issues across the islands with retaining and securing new staff, because there is no housing available. As well as the chair of Community Land Scotland, I am also chair of the Isle of Egg Heritage Trust. We are in serious danger of losing a teacher who has been in a house that was holiday-led and joined Covid. He managed to secure a tenancy, and the owners are now thinking about selling. We have no other accommodation for him, so it is really critical and impacting on local services. We have also seen, and I am sure that we will hear again today about the impact that a lack of affordable housing has on businesses and their opportunity to retain and attract staff and the impact that that is having on services. The survey also came out really clearly, and Ruth mentioned it about the impact of second homes and short-term lets and how that is removing really significant numbers of stock from available housing. In terms of businesses, it is about support for small businesses and start-up businesses, which we know tend to be more prevalent in islands, and the availability of business space. We have seen communities on Mull and Jora recognising that and looking to provide that sort of business space. We also need to realise and find ways of ensuring that island communities can benefit from the natural capital resources that they have, and there are ideas coming forward there around wealth funds and better developer contributions and also greater ownership of natural capital. There are issues around growth in land and housing values, which are really taking forward around natural capital interests from the private sector. Finally, the impact on communities, particularly in very small islands, are performing such a huge number of roles around providing housing and providing business space. They are the local development and housing agencies in some regards, but they are having to fight for even the most basic resources. It would be good if there is an opportunity to talk about that in a bit more detail today. I appreciate your opening comments. I have just got one more question before I move on to the other members. It was subject of quite some debate about organisations ensuring that they represent islands and that we will try to select members who actually lived in islands and could experience that first hand. Douglas, first of all, and then I will move on to Derek. Can you tell me how you can ensure that your organisations are actually representing the diverse nature of islands, particularly given the diverse nature of the survey results? I will start with you, Douglas, and then move on to Derek. Thank you very much. Our structure is such that we have got eight area teams across the islands and islands, delivering support to businesses and communities and social enterprises around the world. Three of those represent island authorities. We have a team in Shetland, a team in Orkney, a team in Outer Hebrides, a team in Lechabraschai and West of Ross and a team in Argyllunar islands. We have staff across a number of islands. We engage broadly through stakeholders, through the likes of community planning partnerships and direct with businesses. We account manage around 170 organisations across the islands that we engage with regularly. Many of those are community anchor organisations, the type of organisations that Ails have just mentioned that have deep roots within island communities. I guess that we engage pretty broadly and feel that we have a reasonable handle. We have been in economic community development across all our islands for 55 years or so, so I think that we have a reasonable understanding of island's issues. We are a small charity. We work all over Scotland, including the three archipelagos and Argyllunar islands. We have done significant work in all those areas. In terms of representation, we have two members of staff based in island locations. We have our head office in the Isle of Mull, and we have a member of staff based there. Our comms person lives on the Isle of Dura and works for us from there. We have made a bit of a speciality over the years of working in island communities and helping different island communities to deliver affordable housing starting off way back about 20 years ago in Isle of Gia, helping them to build about 18 new affordable houses there. We are also working in places like Collin, St I.D and Collle on the Isle of Mull, where we helped to deliver the first community-led project on the Isle of the Ferry. I think that we have done fairly well in different island communities over the years, and we have been working quite closely with the storage used over the last year to develop new approaches to helping to enable young people to stay in places like South East. We announced last week that we had secured funding from the Isle of Ferry to employ a new project manager to deliver a programme of what we are calling smart clacken in Newest, hopefully in Tiree and North Ralsy, too. I had a question related to island impact assessments for the panel. Obviously, it is important that impact assessments are done so that they do not just become a box-ticking exercise, so that, if any concerns or issues crop up through those that they are acted upon. I was wondering if the panel was able to share any examples that they have come across where a concern or an issue raised in impact assessment has had a substantive impact on a public body's course of action, so something that has actually been implemented off the back of that. I think that the fuel poverty has been subject to an island impact assessment, and we are looking forward to the results of that impact assessment to be incorporated in the current work on fuel poverty. That is a very positive and useful way of using that tool. Another way of using it is that I can contribute a very local example in that, when CalMac decided to up the freight and changed the way the freight delivery would be happening in the small aisles, we requested an impact assessment, and that is currently being done. Even though CalMac was not a statutory body that was having to do an impact assessment, it has been considered, and I think that it is very welcome that any policy changes, any different direction, is subject to that impact assessment to see exactly how it is going to impact the islands. Thank you. If we could ask that question to Alec? Yes. From a transport standpoint, can we always briefly cover that in terms of actions that have been taken? Freight unquestionably is a huge challenge. Moving freight to and from our islands is unquestionably a real challenge. The economic impact of not being able to move freight on and off islands really needs to be clearly understood. In the case of islands that have to be benefited through the road equivalent tariff, that has created benefits but also unintended consequences. That ultimately means that, in peak periods during the summer, demand for limited space and ferries can exceed supply. That becomes a particular concern not just for residents but for the businesses who have to move freight on and off the islands. The clearer we understand the impact that the ability to move freight to and from the island is having, the better decisions we can make in terms of how the ferries are organised in order to accommodate the freight that needs to be moved. This is even more of a case right now when we are looking at what is happening through Brexit and also that it comes from Covid. I am not actually a director of an organisation. I live on an island. Perhaps Jane would be probably better to answer that one on behalf of rural youth projects. Yes, absolutely. Jane, would you like to come in? Certainly, convener. We are an organisation that represents young people. We work with individuals to help to build their enterprise leadership and activism skills and give them the confidence to have their say to make the changes in their local community. In terms of impact assessments, we would look at people-based. Have they grown in confidence? Have they developed a business? Have they created mentoring partnerships to be able to make the change that they want? In terms of proof of concept of what we have been doing, I think that the rural youth project Smart Village is a really good example of the impact that we have had, where we took together 15 young people from all over Scotland, including Kieran, and using the leader funding that we had, they have come up with a Smart Village, which is totally down to them what they thought they needed on that Smart Village, and they have generated all of the content. It is a really good place to see the impact that young people are working together to talk about the things that they need. It is all there on that Smart Village. Hi, perhaps an example to demonstrate the limitations of island impact assessments. This goes back even before the island plan. As everybody knows, in August 2015, the Scottish Government rolled out the extension of free nursery care to three and four-year-olds and a lot of eligible two-year-olds. As you are aware, the provision has increased over time, and the benefits of the policy are unquestionable for parents and children alike. However, there have been unintended negative outcomes in rural areas and in island areas, and that is specifically that play groups, which are a form of support for parents and children. Once free nursery provision came in, a lot of play groups lost their funding, and some play groups closed just because children were being put into nursery and there were not enough children to run the group. I am not sure of the impact on children of this unintended negative outcome, but certainly the impact on parents was detrimental and continues to be so. That would not have taken place in an urban setting where I think that you would have had a lot more choice and support about where you go as a parent to socialise and to get peer support and all that. The reason that I am raising this example is because I do not think that, with all good will in the world, if we were developing this policy now that an impact assessment would pick it up from the outset, would pick up without extensive consultation and understanding of local areas and how things interlink. When you are talking about education and parenting support, how they interlink in rural and island areas, when you are talking about, for example, the different subjects of health and social care, how they interlink. Island impact assessments are a fantastic tool that they cannot be relied on as the only tool to develop national policy or tailor national policy to island and rural areas. I am now going to move to Arrianne for questions on population. I am going to direct this to Jane, Panna and Elsa. I would love to hear from all of you, but we just don't have time. Only 24 per cent of the respondents feel that young people are sufficiently supported and encouraged to remain, move or return to islands. I would like to hear your thoughts on how the forthcoming Scottish Government budget could be directed to address population and re-peopeling issues in Scotland's islands and, in particular, for young people. If we could start with Jane, Panna and Elsa. Quite timely, and I have circulated this to the clerk, we put together a manifesto that we presented to Ms Gougeon last week, so there are a lot of asks within that. The things that young people feel that they need the most is to be given the time and space to be able to have their say in what they need to see in their local communities. I think that the intent of the Scottish Government for more community-led local development is great. Our ask would be to try and include at least 30, but preferably half of those young people involved in community-led action, be young people. We all know that they have great ideas, great energy and great sense of can-do, and also those are the people that are going to be living in those areas in the future. We have found from our work that the creativity comes from young people. They see things through different lenses. They also have the power to embrace what is needed from an environmental consciousness point of view. They live where they do because of two overriding things. One is community, the other is the landscape or the environment in which they live. To them community is really important. I think that for Scotland to tackle some of its big and endemic challenges, put more power in the hands of young people to be able to make those decisions, but not without the support of elders. Where you see really good intergenerational mentorship and partnerships, for example in the Harris Tweed industry, looms bought by young people and when that sale is made to that young person also comes with that support of the older weaver teaching the younger weaver, but then you get those new ideas where you start to get the vibrancy of young people thinking, well, how could we become a modern fabric for young people rather than the old reputation that it had maybe 20 years ago? Bringing young people in, getting them involved, and not just in community action but also in solutions like housing. Rural housing Scotland is looking at smart clackens, for example, so combined living and working space and we look at planning permission to be more pro-yuth. They need smaller units, perhaps combined work and living space. How can we be more creative? I think praise to the Scottish Government compared to Westminster. Having select committees like this where you listened to communities and you listened to creative solutions, just keep doing that but bring more young people in. I would like to go back to something Ciaran said, which is a really important point, and it is about equality proofing every action that we take in relation to supporting island areas. Certainly, what you would expect from the budget is that it takes into account consideration of equality. What support do we need to put in place, for example, for young women entrepreneurs? Specifically, what additional barriers can we address through the budget that might be faced by older LGBT people or people living in disability with a disability, sorry, or in poverty, or from a black and minority ethnic community? Secondly to that, but linked, is very much reinforcing something that Jane said and that Ciaran has also said through the manifesto, the rural youth project manifesto, which is that in order for this budget implementation to work for the beneficiaries, so these are young people who wish to return or wish to remain in the islands, you need to involve young people in the solution setting process, not just in consulting them for their views and then taking that away and doing something behind closed doors. That process of participation, the mechanism that goes beyond consultation and co-production is expensive. To be done well, it needs resourcing and the budget needs to allocate significant amounts to that, adequate amounts. Finally, I would urge the committee and the others responsible for the budget to consider devolving as much of that budget as possible to local areas, but then to design local services and use local mechanisms to identify local needs. Again, that looks into the CLLD narrative that Jane offered. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we now move on. Sorry, one more, Elsa, sorry. Oh, sorry, I was going to say. Thanks, Ariane. Sorry, I'll be quick in responding to your question. I think first I'd start with a fantastic positive that it's great that so many young people want to move to the islands or stay on the islands and they recognise what a great place they are to live, a great sense of community, and that's come across in the survey. So, it's how we facilitate that. Access to housing is obviously number one. Some communities are already looking at that in gear. We've got a great scheme going forward where they're looking at building housing, a mixed generation scheme, so a cross-generation scheme housing for young people to stay on the island and take the jobs that are there and they're specifically designed so young people can share together with older housing. So, there are some great examples coming forward of how we can start to accommodate more young people to stay, and we need to be sharing those lessons. It's about access to land, which we've talked about before, crofting or play a part in this because lots of young people are interested in crofting, but there are big issues around allocation of crops and particularly absentee crops. We cannot be expecting our young people to stay and just offering them really poor temporary substandard housing or caravans. It's our responsibility as community leaders to be providing the accommodation that will encourage all these people who want to stay. There's also issues around providing the right support and flexible space for start-up businesses, which lots of young people are interested in. So, how are we going to do that? I don't think we've quite cracked that yet. A point that Jane made, which I think is a really good one, is around engaging more young people in governance and community development, and I know on Islay that Jenny Minter will know that South Islay there have got a youth board, which feeds into the work of the development trust. So, there's lots of good lessons that can be shared more widely about different ways to encourage young people to stay in the sorts of services and resources that we need to put in place to enable that. Thanks, Arianne. Thank you, and now questions from Jenny. Great, thank you very much, and what a huge panel. I'm going to direct my questions, I think, specifically at Douglas and Ailsa. I think that Ailsa has just referenced the way that different communities work and other people have given them examples, and I think that's one of the big positives that we're seeing from the size of the panel. With regard to sustainable economic development, I'm interested to know how you tailor your support to different types of islands, because we've learned from the survey that not every island is the same. Dura has been referenced a couple of times. It's had a really strong community action plan and is now in a point where everyone's working and they're needing volunteers or they're needing some level of support to move it to the next level. It's how do areas tailor their support for different islands, but also for different types of business, because you have the public sector, you have private and you also have communities, so I'm interested to know how different organisations are supporting different types of business as well. I touched on our structure earlier in an earlier answer where we've got eight area teams who effectively look after how we deliver and what we deliver within each of those areas. The teams are led by senior executive members of staff who have got a fair bit of delegated authority to flex what we do regionally to affect local circumstances, based on their knowledge of the local area. In terms of businesses that we work with, we don't do an awful lot with the public sector. We deal with them as partners and stakeholders, so we work collectively on things, but we don't directly support what we do. In terms of our account managed portfolio, I think that I touched on the numbers at an island level. We currently account managing around 488 client organisations across the highlands and islands. Of those, 173 are on our islands, so disproportionately more on islands than across the rest of the region, but for many of the reasons that we've talked about and you fully understand. Those cover a broad range of sectors. Of those 47 are 47 are other social enterprises in total. There is a significant number of social enterprises within that cohort, and a large number of those are, I guess, the community anchor organisations. I think that at the moment, 33 of those community anchor organisations, organisations such as LFCA, Heritage Trust, for example, do a variety of services within the local area. We frequently alongside the Scottish Government fund development officer type resource to look at the needs and opportunities in the local area and help to implement actions to address those opportunities or threats to the island. There is a large number of them. In terms of the business sector, it is probably the largest number of account managed clients in the food and drink sector, which is large in our island areas. There is also a significant number in tourism, but we also have clients across creative industries and life sciences, including some significant players. BASF in the west of Lewis, for example, are a significant employer in any language. There are also some quite small organisations in other areas, such as businesses or social enterprises and communities. We engage quite broadly across our whole patch, if that answers the question. We help those organisations in a variety of ways, whether it is, as I mentioned, for the community anchors on a whole broad basis. Businesses and social enterprises will help them with a range of things, from pressure to advice to capital investment, where they are looking to invest to make a difference in some way, either grow or change what they are going to do, and a whole range of tools around that, in terms of how we support clients. Ailsa, have you got any comments that you would like to add? Yes, thanks Jenny. Community Land Scotland, we have got members across all of the islands, and they really differ. That has been great that has come out in the survey of how different the islands are. Up in Shetland and Orkney, our members tend to be around facilities, shops and renewables, but then you go over to the Outer Hebrides and its large crofting estates, and then you come down to ag and gear, and it tends to be general estates with housing, stock and hotels and restaurants, etc. Community members of ours are really broad, and they operate a huge range of assets, and they are now involved in a huge range of projects, so I mentioned in an earlier answer that they are the local economic development agency, and they are incredibly well supported by HIE, where there are account management, where account management is available. There is a whole range of Scottish Government schemes, a couple of grant schemes, a tourism scheme, a rural housing fund, etc. There is a lot of resource out there, and if I have been asked to answer the island community's impact assessment, I probably would have pointed to that, to say that there is a real recognition that islands are different and they do have different requirements, and particularly things like costs are a major issue on island, build costs are hugely greater than they are on the mainland. So, there are a huge number of different types of organisations, dealing with a lot of different assets, all very responsive to the local issues, but again, I would come back to the point around these are groups of individual volunteers, the boards, who are unpaid and they are doing this because they love where they live, they want their families to have a place to stay and to come back to, and they want their old folk to stay on the island and not be shipped off to a mainland care home, because there is no care if they want the school to stay. So, these are people that really love where they live and they want to see their community survive, but very often they are jumping through hoops, even for the very basic support around staffing and around access to these funds. So, I think that would be my main point, is that we need to find ways to support those community anchor organisations in particular, and we are not talking about big amounts of money, it is just about ways that these funds are managed and administered. So, I think that if there is an opportunity to input into that, that would be very helpful. Thank you. Thank you, I also reflect very much on what you have just said there about the effort that communities put in, and perhaps that is something that we have learnt from the Covid pandemic, that actually if the funding can get there more quickly and easily, it actually gives you better value. So, thank you for that. Thank you, now move on to Jim. Thank you very much, convener, and as Jenny says, there is a huge panel. I actually see that as quite a positive given the disparity of the populations that we are talking about and the range of challenges that the island communities face. But I am going to focus pretty much on a particular area. Job opportunities in fishing, job opportunities in agriculture, job opportunities in tourism. The first question that I want to ask is, how is that, which is clearly a big economic driver in the communities, going to be affected by Brexit? David, can you remember coming to you with that? Douglas, can you remember coming to you with that, please? Yes, you can. I think that two major issues affecting the economy or EU exit and the pandemic we are currently facing are just coming out of perhaps. It is clear that we have got more food and drink and tourism businesses in our islands and, indeed, in the islands and the islands and elsewhere. I think that we are going to see a bigger impact and maybe a slower recovery coming out of that in terms of the region. I think that we will see our businesses changing the way that we trade. We are already seeing signals that exports to and imports from Europe are decreasing, but equally there are opportunities elsewhere in the world that is happening. We will be touching on the tourism sector specifically, but at the moment we are actually seeing significant job opportunities within the sector. We are actually hearing from businesses across the islands and across the islands in fact that the businesses are unable to get sufficient number of employees and staff to address demand at the moment. We are seeing a number of businesses closing for periods of time because the staff that they do employ need breaks. I heard just a day or two ago that one significant business in the sector has had to cancel bookings because of staffing issues. There are a whole range of issues in detail in there, but that is my overview of some of the issues relating to EU exit, which is, I suppose, compounded by the pandemic. I am not going to go around the panel on this one. I just wanted to get a very brief overview. Unfortunately, there are just too many of you there. That is a good thing and also a bad thing in terms of our time. However, I was interested to see that there is a perceived low opportunity in low-carbon and renewable energies in the islands. Now, I have always imagined—and I am possibly wrong here, maybe you can tell me differently—that the islands are a low-carbon and renewable powerhouse. Why is the perception that the opportunities in that industry are greater than they currently are? I do not know whose best place to answer that, for somebody who wants to stick their hand up. I probably have a generic young person's perspective, but I think that lots of local people are excluded from that market. I am on Orecney, and I think that it is very much an industry where probably people from further away come in. Actually, we are not looking and saying what training can we provide in rural communities within Orecney. What job opportunities can we create? Orecney has the highest fuel poverty, and yet we are a powerhouse. We have resources right here, but whoever—I do not know who they are necessarily—is making the decisions about power and energy on our doorstep. Local communities, particularly young people—and it is not just that. It comes into lots of other things. The whole landscape needs to be more attractive, so people want to stay and work here, but people are alienated from that opportunity. They do not know how to get into that industry, I think. Thank you. For me, it is really around ownership of those resources. On egg and canna, the ones that I know particularly well and gear, where the communities own the renewable resources, they are able to maximise the benefits from those, both in terms of jobs and keeping that money within the local supply chain. We are starting to develop the whole concepts of community wealth building and the circular economy, but we know that there are going to be fantastic opportunities that come across in the survey. Just recently, the announcement about the Scotland potential leases, which is running into the hundreds of million pounds of potential revenue to Scotland, community and unscotland of put forward proposals as to how a percentage of those revenues should be used to reinvest back into local community renewables, to give communities ownership of their renewable resources. They can start to deliver against so many broader objectives of Scottish Government around community wealth building in net zero and the circular economy. For us, I think that it is very much around ownership of those resources, either 100 per cent ownership or ownership in partnership. Can I very quickly touch on that? One of the other things that struck me in this report was that, in general, tourism has a positive impact here. That was one of the questions that was in the report. 76 per cent said that, yes, it had a positive impact on that area. I really want to focus on the fact that I think that Highlands and Islands have a massive opportunity right now, and I am not quite sure that what we are doing is tapping into that opportunity properly. 76 per cent of respondents said that, in general, tourism has a positive impact, but 67 per cent said that there was not enough adequate provision for the tourist industry to come there and get the benefit of the islands. However, there are natural resources such as wind, tide, solar and all the other things that they can pull together. If that was community owned, how could that be invested into the community and allow them to put the provision in for the tourist sector to flourish in the way that it possibly could? I see that as a massive opportunity, and I am interested to know how members of the panel think. Camilla, how would you feel about that? It is a force for the good, but it is also a problem in that it may not always be as sustainable as we would like it to be. So, community tourism schemes need to be developed where the communities are in charge of the tourism strategy, not outside bodies. We have seen the issues in the sky, we have seen the issues in the north coast 500, so more community organisations on islands to develop their tourism strategy, work with the communities and develop skills in young people so that they can respond to the demand and make it a good career prospect, not just a low-end service industry. What is important is to see the impact of Brexit in the way that, before, islands would have been able to access a substantial amount of funding for cultural and projects based on the quality of their resources in terms of archaeology, in terms of resources of the blue and green economy. I do not think that we will see that happening now, but I am very worried about that. There might be a couple of points. We recognise the opportunities around tourism and we have done a couple of things. Over the past couple of years, we have had a programme around communities leading in tourism to provide community leaders across rural areas with the skills to engage better with the sector and to take greater ownership of tourism in their area. I guess that is not unrelated to that. Over the past year, we have put in place support to community organisations for local infrastructure. Communities are investing in infrastructure to address their very local needs. It is them taking ownership of that issue locally. There are a couple of things that might touch on, if I may, the energy opportunities. As well as Ails's thoughts on Scotland, we are doing a fair bit of work at the moment, collaboratively with potential developers, with supply chain and, indeed, with communities on how to leverage that benefit to our island areas, which are at the front-end of much of the opportunities around renewable energy. I think that there is a perception issue. There are negative perceptions around employment in a couple of sectors. Tourism, although there are opportunities, might not always be perceived as good opportunities. There might have historically been an element of truth in that. I think that the opportunities in that sector are much better. Similarly, around agriculture, there are really good jobs in the sector in very rural and island areas, and they are not always filled easily. I have to say that the issue that you raise about the attitude to jobs in the hospitality sector in general, I take your point, but I also think that it is something that is societal, not just in the islands. That is something that we need to address. The hospitality sector is a fantastic sector at working, and we need to make it far more professional in how people believe it as an opportunity. It should not just be for students or people who cannot get work elsewhere. Jenny Milne has asked to come in, and then Jane Craigie. I just wanted to pick up on a few of those points. SRITC has a broad range, and we are a community interest company, and we are all volunteers here. We have a large number of people who are based in islands and our communities, and what they are feeding back about the energy side of things is that skill set. We have briefly talked about it earlier on, and we have touched on it just now. The islands are relying on a residing skill set. If they want to put in technology or energy-related products or an electric vehicle charging point, we just need to look at Orkney at how much of a hub that is for alternatively fuelled vehicles, for example. That skill set is having to come from the mainland. I say the mainland, we are all islanders ourselves. We are on an island in the mainland of Scotland, but we need to think about those issues. How do we address those skill gaps that are there? We have this desire to harness this energy, which is great. I can give you an example in Tomaten, north of Arbynwyr, not on island, but they have taken the money that they could get from the wind farm nearby and created a fantastic community hub, which is available for tourism. It has an electric vehicle charging point and it is on the A9. It has a fantastic hall, if you have not been there, it has a great cafe, looking at three bridges. We need to be able to harness that in a lot better manner, because it is the same with school teachers, is it not? We have people who are restricted on islands because of housing, but we have the same problem when we are starting to bring specialist people to islands. Where do they stay? From the tourism point of view, we have to remember about green tourism and how people are really interested in travelling in a different way to get to their destination. I will give you an example. You cannot really do the north coast 500 by public transport. There is a glitch. You have to wait a day and a half to get a bus. If we are looking at tourism and energy and transport together, we need to do that, because that is what people are wanting and that is where people are going. They do not want to always be taking their car post Covid. They want to look at different options and they definitely do not want to be taking a camper van on a ferry. I could ramble about it, but I won't. That is a really good observation, Minister, about the potential of tourism. I will frame it in a young person's perspective. There are a few things to consider here. Young people are very receptive generally to tourism if they are in a good mental space and they are entrepreneurial and have ideas. Tourism is a really good entry point for them to come in and start up and try new businesses. We have seen a lot of young people start up businesses during Covid because they have ended up at home, so they have had to do something. Cupcake businesses, real micro enterprises, food trucks, things that do not generate a huge income, but for them £18,000 to £20,000 of income from a tourism venture is significant for their lives. I think that that receptiveness and also that we see young people start up food businesses, crafts, arts, so there is also a really important link back to heritage there as well. They also have a real sense of can do, so Miriam Hamilton, on Lewis, is a weaver. She has only been a weaver for three years, but she has set up a little shack on the outside of her house to sell her products. They have that real sense of can do and they will make the best of what they have. I also wanted to mention standard private companies who are involved in food drink and also tourism. The two of them that have come across our radar through young people that we are involved with are Brookladdy and Harris Distillery. They have a real intent to employ young people and to embrace their ideas, but they also are an important part of the tourism economy. Whilst we do look at the public purse, it is also really important to look at how private companies are really being a catalyst for change in these communities and really empowering young people or brilliant young people locally to learn to become a distiller, to become a marketer rather than looking further afield. I think that private business, the receptiveness of young people to tourism and also that real sense of can do amongst young people to start up their own businesses. Anything that we can all do to encourage more of that in local places on the islands is really important. I will now move on to transport questions with Red Rachel. Convener, I am going to go right round the panel and I would like short, sharp answers, not long sentences because this is so important because transport issues were one of the most frequently mentioned in the consultation on the islands plan. The two questions are, what would witnesses like to see in the island connectivity plan and what are your priorities for the island infrastructure plan? I am going to start with Alex Reid. Alex, I cannot hear you. Is that better now? Can you hear me now? Yes. To be brief and hopefully fully sustained, in terms of priorities, I think that there has to be a devolution of administration and governance when it comes to how connectivity or transport is managed. We have talked already just about the nuances in different islands, so that responsibility does have to be devolved. Secondly, very importantly, while the road equivalent tariff has created quite a number of benefits for islands, it could be described as a little of a blunt instrument. There are a lot again of nuances in terms of the frequency and type of travel that happens from different types and locations of islands. I think that more focus needs to be placed on how RET can be more fine tuned to the needs of different islands. Thirdly and finally from me, I think that from a skills standpoint that we have touched on already, I think that it is very important that the skills that are ultimately going to be required to improve transports both today and also on the route to net zero have to be locally developed, because again, as Jenny has just type touched on, we cannot import and we shouldn't import all that skills from the mainland. We have to look at schemes, policies and programmes that help to naturally and organically develop those skills. Jenny, have you got anything to add as the Scottish rural and islands transport community? Yes. One of the reasons I founded this back in 2018 was to give a voice to islanders and people living in rural areas, so it has been great that we have been given that opportunity today. Obviously, we haven't talked massively about ferries, but ferries obviously underpin a lot of what is in the media and also for those living, residing and travelling. For the connectivity plan, we need to see some real commitment to our ferry service. The fleets are old, we have capacity issues, and it is costing the Government more money to maintain them at the moment than it is to look at the longer-term plan. We need to look at that. From a budgeting point of view, wish list in the future, please give some money to the communities. The communities know what they need, they know what they want to do and I have lots of them. They just need a little money, and we are not talking hundreds of thousands of pounds, we are just talking a little bit without too much procurement paperwork in it. That is where you will actually see the difference, because they know what is needed, not necessarily all of us, they do. Thank you. In terms of priorities for the connectivity plan and ferries, I would agree with Jenny that ferries are the big issue. We are hearing about it all the time. Reliability and resilience issues are impacting our communities across the islands at the time when there are enough other problems to be getting on with. I think that ferries, but also maybe it roots to and from ferry terminals, so I think that we cannot forget the roads network to and from. We also have aviation opportunities that are interested in the low-carbon pilots being done, and we might not forget about that. In terms of infrastructure funds generally, I think that some of the big issues impacting our infrastructure related, we have talked a number of times about housing at ferries, but also digital connectivity. An infrastructure fund should probably be used strategically and will be used to leverage in other funds to address some of the real difficult issues. Have I got time for one more? Camille, please. That low-carbon transport within the island should be a no-brainer considering the renewable resource that we have on the islands, and that needs to be really looked at, particularly with the hydrogen revolution. I've seen a hydrogen fuel station that only takes the space of a car park in Brittany. I don't see why we can't have them in Scotland. Also, addressing the problem of freight and passenger delivery to the islands, I think that a new model for ferries will need to be looked at for the future, particularly to address the net zero issues for ferries, so a lot of work to be done on infrastructure. We've got significant public ownership of transport infrastructure for the islands, including ferries and also Hyal, which has experienced industrial disputes recently because of the centralisation of the air traffic controller jobs to the mainland. I suppose that my question is for Jenny and Alex. Just to see if you have any views on the responsibility of Scottish ministers to island communities in regards to public ownership of transport infrastructure as it relates to connectivity and jobs for the islands. Jenny, would you like to kick off on that, Alex? I think that a valid point here is that when you have public ownership, it would be good if the public ownership had all of their employees based in island areas and rural areas to understand fully the problems that are there, whereas at the moment that is not happening, and it can be a very remote issue for somebody who doesn't take this the wrong way sitting in the central bullet Edinburgh Glasgow, so to have that involvement would be appreciated. I don't know if Alex wants to add something else. I'll just echo that because ultimately, if we look at what our members are telling us, the biggest frustration is a feeling that there is a lack of regular engagement between them, the challenges that they're experiencing and the ministers that ultimately are responsible for building policies that will hopefully resolve those challenges. As I touched on earlier, more of the devolution of administration and governance within the likes of CMAL and the other transport operators would start to address that, we feel, because a lot of the challenges that we have today can, at the centre of all, come down to communication and the frequency and the quality of communication that it takes place. I think that to ensure that locals and islanders feel that the pains that they're experiencing are being fully understood and being addressed in a more agile way as well. I think that that's particularly true coming out of Covid. I want to address Beatrice. Thanks, convener. My questions for Jenny and Alex, but can I just come back on a comment that Derek made in his opening remarks? I wouldn't like people to have the impression that it's easy to get a house in Lerwick. I can assure you it's not, but I do completely agree with the fact that we need to be building more outwith Shetland's central belt. I think that you made a valid point about the population and the number of houses in the Lerwick area. Building two houses on an island that's got a population of less than 50 could make a huge difference and bring people in. My question is about the reliability that you've highlighted in your paper about Scotland's ageing ferry fleet and how it's damaging island economies. I ask what your thoughts are about connecting islands with tunnels rather than replacing ferries, where it might be geographically possible to do so? Alex, would you like to answer that and then on to Jenny again? Yes, I'm glad that question is being asked because that's feedback we've had from some of our members, particularly from those in the likes of Shetland, where there are smaller islands and there are shorter trips that are currently served by ferries that could, I think, and I think we believe, with a slightly bigger and bolder vision be served by fixed links, be it tunnels or be it bridges. I think that that also addresses the fact that, while ferries are always going to be an important part of how people move back and forth from islands, it also does open up a bigger question about the cost and the economics of running different types of ferries, different sizes of ferries on specific types of routes. Indeed, I think that we believe that a clearer cost being of analysis in the longer term of whether a ferry versus a tunnel or a bridge might actually serve communities better would be appropriate in terms of opening up further economic opportunities for those islands. Jenny? Yes, I'll just echo that. We reached out to over 400 people that are part of SRITC to ask for evidence for today. A number of organisations, individuals and communities came back saying to explore the option of tunnels. We're not necessarily looking at joining up with Ireland, but we are looking at the smaller connectivities here. I hope that that's something that can be taken forward. Can I also put that question to Derek? It's a bigger part of Douglas. Is this something that Highlands and Islands Enterprise have looked at in the past? Actually, we have looked at fixed links. A number of options are in fixed links in the past, and I think that one of the key things to look at is the basis on which those are looked at. So it's looking at, I guess, the longer term of social and environmental impact as part of that whole-life cost-benefit analysis, rather than just looking at the economic impact. So it is something that we've looked at in the past. I don't think that we're looking at any right now, and I don't think that we've looked at any very recently. Certainly in the past, I've been aware of a number of fixed-link studies that have looked at options, linking islands and islands with Newland. So I'm just picking back up on the islands infrastructure fund. When the Scottish Government announced it, it said that it would have a transformative effect on the community as a whole. I'd like to hear your thoughts on involving how we could involve communities in the design and allocation of the fund to ensure that it is truly transformative. We heard earlier, of course, that community-led initiatives like this need to be funded, so we need money, obviously. I'd love to hear from Camille and Artemis. I think that's a very good point, Arianna. I think that in all these schemes, community participation from the island is absolutely crucial for the infrastructure to be targeted adequately, and there's a really need to find a mechanism to continue with this participation in the violent that has started with the consultation mechanism on the national island plan, and that will be crucial to the success of application of the infrastructure plan. And Artemis? Yes, thank you. It's a tough question, I would say, because this infrastructure is very much linked to planning, and the opportunities potentially also presented through the national planning framework for NPF4. So it would be good to streamline opportunities for communities to have their say on local infrastructure with the processes that empower them through that planning system. Local place plans are very, very contested at the moment, because though they are a very good idea on paper, and I'm sure you're aware of this considering your role as convener of another very specialized committee, Arianna, but if there were ways of investing in communities, does their views not only were taken on board in terms of, you know, this particular infrastructure fund, but also in terms of wider planning issues for their locality, that would maximise the impact of any investment that you would put into that community for the particular outcome that you were asking about. Thank you. I just want to say thank you to the panel. It's been a very insightful session and I've been able to learn quite a bit this morning slash afternoon, so thank you for that. I did have quite a specific question on education, but it may have grown arms and legs the more that I heard people give their feedback, so I'd like to ask, you know, when considering how to close the attainment gap for children in an island context, you know, it's clearly important to recognise that inequalities are not just caused by poverty, but a range of situational factors surrounding each household, and this could include access, for example, to subject choices, which suit the need of that young person. I also think that it's really pertinent, you know, what Keane raised in regards to access to support for the LGBT community. Professionals need to be able to make a holistic multi-agency approach to assess and respond to need within each individual individual situation. Could you comment on what a holistic approach would look like when it comes to seeing poverty through that lens of not just educational attainment but also social support, GP provision, housing, for example? How can young people on the islands be ensured the same opportunities as young people on mainland Scotland to close that gap? I'm happy to be directed by the panel who wants to answer that. I think that if we could go to Keane first. Oh, that's a big question. Thank you. It probably comes down to funding, but I went to a really good school. I went to Kerrpo Grammar School in Orkney, and actually it was quite diverse, and I felt it captured equality really well. I really do think that's because we had access to probably every subject that you could choose from. We had a thriving drama and music department, and I don't know—I think there's something about the expressive art that is the essential subjects. People are going to be better at certain things, but by having that diversity of subjects and choice and options, it draws in teachers from different backgrounds. It brings in such a variety of skillsets and personalities that I do think it starts to eradicate certain senses of levels of bullying in terms of LGBT people in a drama department. I can speak from experience and start to find each other. You start being able to express yourself and, generally, not to put too much pressure on a drama teacher or someone like that, but in that case, we're really good at creating a safe environment, and having that safe, open environment in schools in a really remote place like Orkney, Shetland and different islands is really important and fundamental to leading that sense of social depravity. I can become a really good centre for people, whether it's a cultural exchange where it's bringing everyone together, regardless of their background. We don't really have all we have as a public funding school, and that brings together people from every background, whether it's economically, socially, culturally, whatever your identity. It's a really good melting pot. I think there's almost an opportunity in remote areas like these that, if they're funded properly, I imagine what it comes down to so that you do have the choice of subjects. I think it's that expression, just giving people choice. I think it does alleviate so many problems personally. It makes that happier place for people to be in. I guess there are broader problems as well with services outwith schools, but, as a really fundamental essential base, all can do that. That's probably where I would start. There are many other things in local services, in terms of things like mental health to support people and other levels of poverty. However, I would start with schools and make sure that people are getting a really good chance of investing there first. I think that that's a point where people are at a particular age, where if they're given the opportunity and invested in, they will have a really good chance of bringing themselves out of whatever state they're in. Thank you, Jane. Thank you very much. I think that it's a brilliant question, Karen. I think that everything for me comes back to community, but also listening to young people. I think that there are some really good examples here and made the point about schools, but I think that leadership in schools is really important. If you look at inclusive school, and I've got an example on the mainland, we've just done a 360 interview in our latest issue of TRED, the magazine that we produce for the rural youth project, and it looks at this very issue. How do communities really embrace what the place needs, but also what young people could learn to feed into that place? The headmaster at the school in Alipol has done a really good job at engaging with local businesses, land managers, food businesses, manufacturers, fishing industry, and he is at the heart of that community. The other person that's really influential in that community is the harbormaster, who allows things to happen on the harbourfront. Young people setting up a food business, for example. The way to reduce the attainment gap is to involve young people in what they want their future to be. Some of them, as we know, want to do something practical, not academic. I think that we're also very lucky that we have UHI, for example. What a great organisation that is to be able to, and Alipol is a really good example. I know it's not Ireland, but some of the issues are very similar in Alipol. UHI comes in and you have lecturers coming in to teach young people about fish harming or about stalking. Having the community decide what the young people need and asking young people what they want to learn, that's exactly what that headmaster does. It's just so poetic listening to those young people and the inspiration that they've taken from their elders, from people outside their community, and also for them to see what the place that they see is home is. It could be their place as their home for the next 20, 30, 40 years, and for their children. I think that community has to come first and engaging young people in what they need and want. Thank you very much. I appreciate that education is a huge topic, but times against this. I'm now going to move on to an equally huge topic on housing and ask Alistair for his questions. I'll be brief in that case, convener. It was really to ask Derek, specifically in the interests of time, one or two specific things about housing. A few folk have touched on this issue that there is money going in from the Government end to housing in the island areas, affordable rented housing, but it's obviously up to local authorities and housing associations to decide where those houses are built. I say that not as a criticism because I understand the difficulties, it's difficult to evidence demand in areas where there hasn't been any houses to apply for, it's difficult to build houses in places where it's more expensive and there are no economies of scale and so on. But how do we get past this problem, and it was alluded to by Beatrice, where there is a risk unless we fix some of these problems that houses don't get built in rural areas, they get built in a town? I think that what we need to do is to get away from just housing just being about meeting evidence to housing needs through waiting lists and things. I think that we've got to look at how the housing's impact on the economy, housing's impact on community wellbeing and sustainability and on regenerating and preventing depopulation. I think that housing targets a huge number of policy areas and I think that investment has to be directed by reference to those policy areas as well as just meeting housing needs, which is a very inexact science and tends to be a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy in as much as you get told that housing needs are stored away because that's where the houses are and that's where people sign up for houses. Where the houses aren't, you don't have any housing need because either there never was any socialising or it's all been sold off. So I think that we need to look at the different ways in which housing investment, the different policy areas that it targets. And finally in that case because I appreciate what we're on next time here but in the other issue obviously that was alluded to I think in the report as well was about the fact that in some places, not all places but in some places in the islands, it's becoming increasingly difficult or bleak impossible to buy a house and that the housing market is obviously influenced by second homes and short-term lets. There's some measures in place to try and address some of the issues around short-term lets but again a question for Derek. I mean what do we have to do where can we learn examples from and other parts of the country and other parts of the world and what do we have to do to get round the impact that second homes have not just on the availability of houses in some places but in the prices of all the other houses in some places because you know without rehearsing the obvious there are places in my constituency and I'm sure other people's constituencies where it is not really possible any more for a young family to buy a house. I think there's two things that we need to do or maybe more actually but one is we need to help young people in particular to be able to build their own homes and we need to provide grant funding to enable that to happen. We got rid of rural ownership grants for some reason I don't know why and we need to bring something like that back and maybe the island bond will be that so we need to do that but we also need to look at how we restrict airbnb and short-term lets in the particularly pressured areas so that we can mean for example the long-term residential letting sectors we've hauled out by airbnb you know to set to the extent that a lot of people in very very good jobs can't find anywhere to live in the sky and places like that so we need to as well as looking at control areas which which are going to be brought in we need to look at how we we really you know help people to get yeah so so yeah I think I think that's those those are the two main things I look at. Thank you. I'm interested to know a bit more about the idea that in the government's plans about 20 minute neighbourhoods and I think Artemis I think you've got some research on that and possibly Derek as well. Artemis, would you like to kick off? I will do and thank you very much for that question. It was discussed at length at last night's cross-party group. I don't actually have any research on that other than the feedback from the Scottish Rural Parliament and the feedback is very very mixed you know that there were currently as a country do not have a set definition of 20 minute name policy areas of government use very different definitions and what we're waiting for I suppose is NPF4 for men with its consultation and that will outline I suppose what what the government's view is on what a 20 minute neighbourhood would look like and that will be our opportunity as rural and island communities and stakeholders to comment and see whether or not that is applicable in our situation. I mean it certainly will be applicable across quite a bit of rural and island Scotland because remote rural towns are basically the model of a 20 minute neighbourhood the problem is and I'm quoting from someone here from a Scottish Rural and Island Transport community conference you go three miles out with those remote rural towns and suddenly you're in a community which is as far removed from a 20 minute neighbourhood as possible but the ways around that it's just we need to get the definition right and whatever investment comes with that definition right as well. Thank you. Could anybody else like to respond someone else indicated there? Is it Camille? The issue of housing is obviously a huge huge problem because with that housing you won't have the young people coming back because even if they have the jobs they don't have the housing they can't stay so I think that maybe also in the case of community land trusts that have been able to give some of the land to young people to do some self-build there's been an issue of the banks refusing to lend money for self-build or for mortgages to to build their houses if the land still remains in the property of the land trust and I think that's the situation that needs to be to be looked at to give more flexibility for these land trusts to be able to use that land for building new houses but without encouraging an opportunity for making money further down the chain so looking at these new models and how they could be strengthened could be really good and addressing the problems of banks confidence in that model would be really transformational. Thank you and Jenny and then Jane. Hi yes I would agree with Artemis last week we discussed 20 minute neighbourhoods and the mobility hubs within our annual gathering and had a number of examples presented to us and the key point for us is that when there is a definition of form that this is an urban centric terminology being used and deployed in rural areas and island areas that we as an organisation and we as a group of enthusiastic rural and island participants need to be part of that process because 20 minutes on Prince Street is very different from 20 minutes in Kirkwall so that is key. Yes and Jane. Yes it's something we're beginning to look at but to be honest we haven't really moved that far yet convener but it is but I just echo really what Jenny was saying that what we see in an urban situation is very different to rural but it is something that we're very keen to look at. Thank you and Derek. We talked earlier about the idea of smart clack in that we were developing which is about live workspace in the same place and minimising the need to travel and about encouraging greater sharing of resources within those spaces so we're kind of looking to that as a bit of a kind of rural model for a 20 minute neighbourhood and how you might take it forward. Thank you. We've now there's a couple of topics we're not touched on we're not even started to touch on health but we're coming to the end of the session but there is one topic that's very much the foremost of everybody's mind particularly when we've got COP26 coming up and that's climate so our final question is going to come from Marianne. Thank you convener. I've been asked to direct this to one person which is very very difficult but I'm going to ask this to Artemis and maybe we can sneak one more person in. So the national islands plan encourages government and public bodies to put in place adaptation plans on islands that are at greater risk from climate change and to link those adaptation plans closely to development plans for those islands. This is important to ensure that development plans which contribute to infrastructure and town planning consider changes such as rising sea levels and stronger storms and increase the resilience of communities and local economies without increasing emissions. I'd really appreciate hearing your thoughts on these priorities for climate adaptation plans. That was a lot I know sorry. If Artemis could come in on that. No I will come in just to say that it tears a lot and that is probably something that needs its own discussion but very very quickly. There is a real lack of information in rural and well in islands around the potential impact of climate change and how quickly that impact is going to hit and what the concern is at the moment is that once decisions are being made around how you mitigate that impact it's you're right it's how do you how do you involve communities in deciding how that impact is managed and yeah I'm Arianna I'm sorry I'm probably not the right person to to take that question at the moment but maybe somebody else on the panel is thank you is there someone else who would like to speak to that Camille just wanted to to say that that having sustainable energy and climate plan for each regional authority for each local authority is really important and that community plans island plans for energy transition need to feed into these plans so if each island is encouraged to devise their own clean energy transition agenda that will look at every opportunity to mitigate climate change issues obviously for islands that are quite low um there's a there's a huge problem of of um of the level of seawater rising and and planning authorities have to be mindful of this so it's it's a question of working together between the island communities and the planning authorities to really embrace the issue of climate change in the planning process thank you thank you thank you very much and and thank thank you all for your contributions this morning we've had lots of questions answered which have just led to more questions that need to be asked and I'm quite sure that over the coming months and years that you'll all appear in front of us again as we take our work relating to the islands forward so thank you all very much we now move to agenda item six which is taking in private and the consideration of evidence heard we now move into private session thank you