 That's it. The next item of business is a debate on motion 17265 in the name of Eileen Campbell on adopting a place principal. I can invite those members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request to speak buttons now. I call on Eileen Campbell to speak to remove the motion. Cabinet secretary, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'm delighted to open this debate on the place principal because fundamentally it is an approach that seeks to ensure that we as policymakers a chynnig i rideidwch i chi i gyda blwydau mewn cymryd yma, a chynnig i gwybod amser ac yn ymddydd y byw yn ymddangos, a bydd geisig yn eu ffordd i'ch bwysig y pryd hypnodol ar gael i ymddangod i litu peitio erbyn byw i gydag am gydag amser, aib, bwysig i gyrtueddion. Rhywbeth cydnogion ydy, sy'n dweud bod y pethau yn ymddangos a chynnyddio plant, yn ymddangos i'r ffordd a'r hynny i gael eu can dysgloedd. It is probably very little to disagree with, but like so many other areas of public and social policy, while it sounds positive and commands respect and support, it presents challenge and it contests. The place principle seeks to help to overcome policy silos and organisational boundaries and to encourage better collaboration, resource utilisation and community participation to improve outcomes and tackle inequalities. Sometimes, is it difficult? In the pursuit of better decisions, better outcomes and collaboration and, to do so, centred around place, is a prize worth working hand for. We are not new concepts. What we have with this approach and with the agreement, support of our colleagues in Cozil is an opportunity to ensure that we can put people in place at the heart of better decision making, enabling more places in Scotland to flourish. The Place principle asks that all partners responsible for providing services and looking after assets in a place work and plan together to support inclusive and sustainable economic growth and create more successful places. Crucially, it recognises that local decision making and delivery informed by the people who live and work there are key to the social, economic and physical success of places. We agreed the place principle with COSLA and our joint focus now is on implementing the principle to create the impetus for ambitious and effective place-based approaches right across the country. We want to see a Scotland in which everyone can play a full part in society with empowered communities, be that town, village, city, rural, island or urban, able to shape their individual and collective futures wherever they are across the country and whatever size or scale. All of us in this chamber can add to the collective leadership required to make the place principle a reality because we all have a role to play in improving outcomes and addressing inequalities and supporting local economies in and across our communities. Back in the real world, what is happening in communities is that they are experiencing cuts to youth work, environmental services, the roads are in a poorer condition, the place is more heavily littered, fly tippings on the increase. All of the theoretical debate about place making is very interesting. Will the minister reflect the reality out there in the real world? Back in the real world for Neil Findlay, we have the collaboration and co-operation of COSLA of a whole host of different partners who want to make this a reality and also, not forgetting but most importantly, communities themselves. We are actually playing catch-up with communities who want us as decision makers to make decisions, take better decisions based on place. I will remind Mr Findlay that the budget and resource that the Government has given to local authorities has increased, and it is a fair settlement as well. That is about making sure that we use that resource wisely and effectively. That, in the real world, is what people out there expect of their politicians to be doing. Implementing the place principle is about asking questions across all spatial or geographical scales. What is this place for and how do people use it? As we seek the answers, we need to commit to engaging with and involving local people and communities in determining where and how we invest those finite resources and make the most of our combined assets. People in communities are often challenged by multiple disadvantages, and that means that addressing a singular issue while welcome will never resolve those deep-rooted issues that are often interlinked and permeate many facets of people's lives. The place principle gives a common focus and the potential to collectively develop preventative, sustainable solutions that enable us to tackle complex, multiple inequalities and disadvantages in a particularly effective and targeted way. Adopting and scaling up that approach will enable us to make good on the challenges set to us by Campbell Christie. He noted that, in order to deliver good public services with positive outcomes for people and communities, we must reform how we work, empower when we can, maximise the impact of the resource and be strategic in how we achieve our goal of reducing inequalities. That means working with our communities in partnership, building on their assets and not doing things to them. As we all know, when people feel that they can influence what happens in their communities and can contribute to delivering change, communities are energised and achieve huge benefits. That requires the discipline of a more joined-up, collaborative and integrated approach to services, land and buildings, improving cross-government working and improving collaboration between communities in the public, private and third sectors and the efficient and effective utilisation of our collective energy and resources to make the most of their impact. The place principle supports the effective and efficient use of our collective resource by redirecting available investments and resources to where they can make a positive difference and that extends to how partners collaborate in participating with the local community. The place principle can spark activity and action across different sectors, transport, health, private and third sector and across types of actors and unusual partners. The challenge going forward will be in the quality of our collaboration in planning decisions and investments, and there are opportunities ahead that, if we grasp in the right way, we can ramp this up and get on and deliver the place principles and the challenges laid down by Christie. Driving our work across government, local government and beyond, are the national outcomes set out within Scotland's national performance framework. It is important because it articulates a shared vision for the type of Scotland that we all want to work towards and measure success against more than just a growing economy or GDP, but instead measure success by ensuring wellbeing, thriving communities and happiness. Before I take Mr Rowley, just to say to members that there is time for intervention, you will get your time back. Mr Rowley. I do not know if the cabinet secretary is trying to rewrite the Christie report because one of the key messages in the Christie report was preventative spend and that we needed to start to see more preventative spend, but she has not really mentioned that in what she is saying. I did say preventative prevention in my remarks, but I certainly would not be seeking to rewrite Christie. I am absolutely totally subscribed to the principles of Christie and I think that this approach fits well with that and will enable us to make good on the challenge that he set out to us. He also set out that we need to reform public services, that we need to make sure that we maximise the resources that we have to improve outcomes for our communities and also to empower our communities as well. That place approach enables us to do all of those things. The framework of the national performance framework and the outcomes that we need to work towards, including its focus on place, provides a chance to make good on the vision that is set out within the NPF. It sets out the direction and it permits innovation and imagination. The place principle can act as an enabler of the national performance framework locally to make it applicable to where and how people and communities live and work. It seeks to drive forward an economy that works for everyone, providing opportunities to all creating sustainable and inclusive growth so that no one is left behind and recognises the potential in the assets that exist. The importance of building on the assets of all our places and communities to drive inclusive growth can be seen in our support for our city, region and growth deals. So far we have committed around £1.7 billion to those transformational investment programmes across Scotland aimed at delivering real benefits for communities in the form of jobs and other economic opportunities. It is important that our public services are responsive to the circumstances experienced by different places across the country. It is equally important that those working to assist businesses to create and protect jobs are focused on the asset base and economic potential of our varied local places and distinctive regions. New multi-partner regional partnerships inspired by the growth deal experiences are all looking to identify long-term opportunities and key areas of growth, as well as tackling shared challenges across their regions such as child poverty. As this work progresses, the need for the place principle becomes ever stronger as a way to blend our economic ambitions with our social justice ones. We cannot, on one hand, talk about tackling in-work poverty if we do not seek, for instance, to ensure that those catalytic deals and regional partnerships enable people to access jobs with decent pay. The place principle is about tailoring approaches to the needs and opportunities of different areas. That is why, recognising the different economic challenges that are being faced by the south of Scotland, we are establishing the south of Scotland enterprise. That new agency will be operational next year and will embed place-based support for businesses and communities at the centre of that approach. When the First Minister launched a programme for Government last September, we also embarked on a programme of work to develop a vision for how our homes and communities should look and feel in 2040 and the options and choices to get there. Since then, we have engaged with a wide range of housing that interests on a number of themes, one of which was place. It is clear that, from that engagement, the place making approaches are supported strongly by a wide range of individuals and organisations. It will be important for Government and stakeholders to consider the essence of the principle as we develop our vision for housing to 2040 in the milestones to get there. We also need to make that approach real and tangible. Fort William is on the cusp of a scale of investment that is potentially transformative for residents and visitors. Building the vision for Fort William around the place principle presents a great opportunity to illustrate how aligning national and local investment, coupled with the wider public sector leadership on place, along with the support of the local community interests, can stimulate positive place-based outcomes for this community and the wider area. Approximately 20 key projects have been identified to be implemented in the next 5 to 10-year period, transport improvements, a new hospital, STEM facility, port expansion and other cultural, commercial and tourist-related investments. However, many other examples across the country will exemplify the current inherent practices of the place principle. There is Children's Neighbourhood Scotland, which brings together people resources and organisations to work together to improve the lives of children and young people. We are supporting that work through the Tackling Child Poverty Fund. It builds on the learning from similar international initiatives in the Netherlands and in the United States. Recently, the grant and partnership agreed to adopt the place principle to help them to test how they collectively combine resources and work with the local community plan to make decisions and investments to revitalise the local economy and community. Our focus now in going forward needs to be on learning from what works and using practical examples to illustrate how the place principle can be adopted across the country. MSPs are uniquely positioned to support local partners and communities to take advantage of the opportunities that that approach brings. The approach represents the sensible marshalling of resources to maximise their impact, instead of doing a road here or a housing there and then working out how to ensure that folk will benefit from that. As parliamentarians, we are each privileged to represent constituencies and regions across Scotland. We know the unique, diverse communities that we serve and we know the challenges that are faced in Scotland—demographic, fiscal and environmental. We also know that there are too many who suffer inequality made worse by politically motivated austerity. Making and taking social economic decisions through the lens of place and guided by the principle of getting alongside our communities will enable better decisions in power communities and more impactful use of resources. It is an approach that our constituents demand that we take and can enable us to make more progress on the ambitions of Christy and the vision that we have set out in our national performance framework. However, it is an approach that we need to scale up. I am looking forward to the views and opinions and the contributions of colleagues so that we can all work together to make the place principle the way that we do business here in Scotland. I will move the motion in my name. Thank you just about to remind you to do that. I now call Alec Rowley to speak to and move amendment 17265.2. Eight minutes are thereabouts, Mr Rowley. Presiding Officer, this morning I read the weekly brief from Unison Scotland, my own trade union, and I noted that on this debate today they said the following. They said the place principle states a more joined-up, collaborative and participative approach to services, land and buildings across all sectors within a place enables better outcomes for everyone and increases opportunities for people and communities to shape their own lives. They went on to say that those are very fine words. Indeed, all the lack are words in favour of the delights of motherhood in apple pie. In other words, what is there not to like about the place principle? Unison then makes the point that they say that principles and budgets are different things. It is in the detail of the latter that the seriousness of the former is to be judged. An examination of the public realm in Scotland would surely be the starting point that the efficiencies and improvements of recent years have seen so many towns and villages lose police stations, libraries and public toilets, as well as other reductions in public services might suggest that fine words are being preached here but not practised. That is the view of Scotland's largest public service trade union. As in line with her amendment, I say to the Government and to all MSPs that if they fail to recognise the impact of austerity on local services and on local communities, then they are walking around with blinkers on when it comes to those issues. For example, last week I was contacted by a lady from Loch Galloway who has mobility problems and uses a mobility scooter. She said that the good weather is coming in but that the state of some of the pavements makes it very difficult for her to get around on her mobility scooter. That demonstrates that wellbeing, quality of life, physical and mental health, social and cultural life and sustainability are influenced by the quality and design of the places that we live in. The lady from Loch Galloway is entitled to all those things but, moving from the rhetoric to the reality, the state of the pavements and the need for action is being halted by the cuts to council budgets. The council is struggling to fill the potholes, never meant to fix the pavements, so let us not live in a bubble in this place. The reality is that in every community across Scotland those issues exist and we cannot gloss over the impacts of austerity and neither should we for austerity. I thank Alex Rowley for taking a brief intervention. Is Mr Rowley suggesting that potholes in our society are something that has only happened under austerity? What I am saying is that you only need to look at the evidence of the cuts to council budgets over the past decade to see the impact that that is having and therefore the major barrier to some of the nice kind words that have come from the cabinet secretary. Let us not live. The debate is about trying to make better use of the resources that we have to make good on the Christy principles, to make good on the notion of prevention to ensure that we can make better use of public funds. However, in a whole host of ways, the Labour Party has always failed to come up with something that is credible to help us to contribute to the marshalling of those resources. The budget debate granted you as an exception, but we have treated local government fairly and we are seeking to work with it on this agenda to ensure that we can take decisions around a place and to ensure that people can feel that sense of wellbeing that we all probably agree with. However, does he not accept that Labour needs to be able to come forward with positive ideas about how we tackle some of the vicious issues that he has described? Before you respond, remember not to use the term you but to speak through the chair please, Cabinet Secretary, Alex Rowley. Presiding Officer, if you look at the manifesto for the many not the few, you would see a plan for £70 billion investment coming into Scotland over the next decade. That is the kind of investment that we need to create. I am happy to work with other parties. I know that the Opposite party supports austerity, but I am happy to work with parties to look for investment, but that is the kind of level of ambition that we need for Scotland, the kind of ambition that John McDonnell, as shadow chancellor, is putting forward in the manifesto for the many, not the few. Let us not live in a bubble in this place. The reality is that in every community across Scotland, those issues exist—the potholes, the pavements, the cuts to local services—and we cannot gloss over the impacts of austerity. Neither should we, for austerity is not an economic choice, it is a political choice supported by politicians in this place. As the late Martin McGinnis said, austerity is devastating communities. The working poor, public sector workers, the disabled and the vulnerable are the hardest hit by this bankropped and ideologically driven policy. The place principle is a useful framework that recognises that communities must be central to decision making, and the most sustainable and beneficial outcomes are achieved when policy and practice integrate health, housing, environment, transport, community and spatial planning. Let us not use such frameworks to mass what is really going on and otherwise the people will not be the only people that we will be full and will be ourselves, not the communities that we represent. Now, a year old, the Jimmy Reid Foundation and Unison report on local government is more relevant than ever. It states that changes such as cutting library and leisure centre openers may, on the face of it, seem incremental change. However, those changes can prevent some individuals in communities from accessing valuable services. Poorer households are more reliant on a range of public services, so feel the cumulative impact of multiple small cuts. For those on low incomes, especially those small changes, may have a sizable impact and present significant and outright barriers accessing services. Labour's analysis, published in December, found that there had been £22 million of a reduction in spending for libraries over the past six years. A total of 69 libraries have closed across Scotland since 2011, according to official figures. That includes 13 2017 up 15 from the year before. The impact on cultural services has been far reaching with more than £5 million cut from museums and galleries. Almost £20 million has been cut from the budget for sports facilities, while more than £30 million has been cut from community parks and open spaces. I know that in five many really good projects that were built around the principle of social prescribing have disappeared as the funding has dried up. The place principle will never translate into meaningful community participation if people see not only the services that rely on being cut but also the services that enrich their lives and make them feel part of the community being cut. A recent survey by Unison found that council workers identified a lucky frontline staff as one of the biggest challenges facing Scottish local authorities. More than two-thirds of those questions said that local residents did not receive the help and support that they needed when they needed it, and 51 per cent were not confident that vulnerable people are safe and cared for. During the passage of the planning bill, RTPI Scotland has stated that between 2009 and 2016, local authorities on average lost 23 per cent of planning staff while over the same period planning service budgets were cut by an average of 32 per cent. I accept that people genuinely want to use place to make the changes that are necessary, but I say to MSPs in here today that if you do not recognise the impact of failed tourist therapy on our communities in Scotland, you will not wake up to what needs to happen and the levels of investment that need to go into Scotland in order to achieve the ambitions that the cabinet secretary sets out. Please move your amendment, Mr Rowley. When I was appointed to the planning committee as a local councillor in 2012, I was given a book entitled, Placemaking and Designed. I was informed that it was the good policy that would help to guide my decision making. Often, as a planning committee member, the phrase, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, came to mind, but I certainly learnt to look at things differently supported by some of that book and the wider information that I was given, but also by some sage advice from Robert McGuire, one of our 20th century leading architects who, after retiring, settled in the Scottish borders. Over good food and wine, Bob talked to me about how detail and beauty in architecture does not need to be lost in creating practical cost-effective spaces. Bob is famous for the churches and student accommodation that he designed, designs whose very nature was about inspiring and bringing together communities. Human beings have always seen design as important, he would tell me. For centuries, architects claimed that their designs would reshape society through the power of their art, which is a lovely, if I'm to substantiated, notion. In the 1400s, Italian Renaissance era architect Leon Bassetti Alberti claimed that balanced classical forms were so influential that they would compel aggressive invaders to down their arms and become civilians. U.S. architect Frank Lloyd Wright believed that when done right, architecture would save the U.S. from corruption and turn people back to wholesome endeavours, whilst the Swiss-born French architect Le Corbusiery claimed that the power of his design for his villa Savoy would actually heal the sick, a claim that was so inaccurate that he only avoided court due to the commencement of World War II. However, what we do know is that boring buildings and large grey landscapes have been found to cause higher levels of stress. Without variety and stimulation, the human mind gets confused and is reminded just how far out of its natural habitat it is. So, while there is no definitive answer as to how architecture can impact society, it is still widely understood and accepted that architecture will always serve more than simply a functional purpose. The broad strokes of the place principle have a good pedigree and point to a considered and locally empowering approach to planning and public services. However, there are some aspects of the Scottish Government's interpretation of the place principle that I would appreciate some clarification on as to how the approach will work in practice. The Scottish Government has divine place as where people, location and resources combine to create a sense of identity and purpose. Places can be streets, villages, cities, regions and even the country as a whole. I have questions about how well this definition will hold when placed under the weight of reality. When scarce public resources are being distributed, planning will involve different places at different levels. It will involve streets, parts of towns or the town as a whole. If the principle is going to be of practical worth, it has to outline how different places will interact when it comes to the planning and distribution of resources. The principle will have to determine how the needs and desires of some streets are weighed against the needs and desires of others and how those interact with the needs and desires of the town as a whole. The Scottish Government states that the place principle will not be prescriptive and should be viewed more as an approach to planning and resource distribution than a set of rules to be followed to the letter. The improvement service has already created a checklist for councils to consult for place-based working, and I hope that that checklist will not become in time a rubric for councils to be adopted as an official part of planning policy. I am going to be very quick in summary, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am supportive of decision making being taken at a local level, and I am an ardent believer in the idea that communities themselves know what is in their best interests. In many ways, that makes me a supporter of the theory behind the place principle, and I hope that we can see more clarity on how the principle will help councils to distribute resources when places have opposing or contradictory desires and needs. Linked to that, I would like to know how the principle will support the representation of different places when council decisions are being made. I would like to avoid over reliance on the new place standard tool and instead see a face-to-face and holistic approach to place representation that is in keeping with the values of localism and subsidiarity. I also hope that the minister will outline how the application of place principle by councils will be monitored, because I believe that without some form of monitoring, it will be all too easy for the reasonable principles of local representation and a joined up approach to planning to be neglected. I am in favour of many of the values that underpin the place principle, but I want to ensure that the Scottish Government can put theory into practice and deliver a strong policy that empowers communities to be able to choose what is right for them. Thank you very much, Ms Ballantyne. I now call in Andy Wightman. Mr Wightman, please. Thank you very much. I thank the Scottish Government for bringing this topic to debate this afternoon. Greens are happy to support this motion and are supportive of the place principle, although we do not support the assumptions underpinning the proposed outcome of inclusive and sustainable growth, but we will leave that to one side for the moment. However, we are rather sceptical of the vague nature of the agreement that is struck between the Scottish Government and COSLA, which, although it is no doubt worthy, appears to request that the bodies that are responsible for delivering services and managing assets work together to enable enhanced outcomes, which is a proposition that I thought had been agreed years and years ago. The motion talks about local decision making, but there is very little possibility of that in our view when there is no real local government in Scotland compared to other countries such as Finland, for example, with a similar population to Scotland, where there are over 330 municipalities with real power for communities to shape the place that they live in, including substantial fiscal powers to raise the finance to pay for the things that the community wishes to do. As the Macintosh commission noted way back in 1999, I quote, it could be said that Scotland today simply does not have a system of local government in the sense in which many other countries do, the 32 councils now existing are in effect what in other countries are called county councils or provinces. As COSLA itself observed in 2013, Scotland is one of the most centralised countries in Europe. It is no coincidence that our European neighbours are often more successful at improving outcomes and have much greater turnout at elections. Now I concede that in recent years we have seen a policy shift in community engagement across Scotland, thanks, yes, to the Community Empowerment Scotland Act 2015 and, of course, to the Christie commission on the future delivery of public services that preceded that. However, as Alex Rowley pointed out, it talked about preventative spend, and I think that there is a lot of work still to be done on the financing and accounting for preventative spend, because I have seen many projects in my own region that have not secured on-going funding despite having proven that they have managed to save other agencies' substantial sums of money. I see no real prospect of the so-called place principle having a kind of impact. I think that that might be envisaged by the motion, because, in my view, what we need is a completely new approach to local governance, and we do await with interest the outcome of the minister's deliberations on this topic. Tentative steps such as participatory budgeting and local place plans, while welcome or timid in comparison to the kind of powers that exist at a local level in any normal European country, which is why, for example, we need to return control of local taxation to local councils to reverse the centralisation undertaken by the UK Tory Government over non-domestic rates and the SNP Governments over council tax. Planning has already been mentioned, the Parliament has been scrutinising the bill and we will return to it next month. A gather and MSPs from all parties have been tabling amendments, all designed to better improve the places in which we live and work. What is evident is that, indeed, MSPs from all parties appear to agree that we need to strengthen the powers and responsibilities of local communities, but it remains the case that the planning system still appears to be massively dominated by powerful private interests and genuine public led development and planning is as remote a prospect as it has been for many decades. Presiding Officer, the Greens were elected to this Parliament on a manifesto to revitalise local democracy. By adopting the place principle, we are moving in the right direction, but we need to be critical and happy to do so. Yes, I have some time and I will give you back, Mr Finlay. Thank you very much. I wonder whether Mr Wightman could give us some indication of the number of people who come to him at his surgeries, email or whatever, who talk about the reductions in cuts to local government. Is that a significant part of his mailbag? Mr Wightman. Mr Finlay, for that intervention, yes, people do come to me talking about the pressures that local government face and the cuts that are taking place across the country, and I agree that it is in a bad place. Part of the reason for that is because we have had a decade of a government insisting on telling local government how much it can raise in tax. We want to turn that whole thing around, which is why in budget negotiations this year, hopefully we have started a process of revitalising local government and giving it greater fiscal freedom, but it will take a long, long time. To conclude, we agree that this is a useful starting point, but if we are to truly embolden local democracy, we must evolve decision making and budgets to a much more local level. Thank you very much. It is a pleasure to speak to today's debate, which I am sure from the contributions that we have heard so far will be a fairly positive one. As every member will agree, Scotland's communities are a rich source of energy, creativity and talent. Each of our communities is made up of people from diverse backgrounds with different skills and experiences, in all of whom have something to contribute to improving Scotland's physically, socially and economically. Working together can help to create the real-world experience that Mr Finlay spoke of earlier. As convener of the local government and community committee, and through my constituency case work, I know that people in communities can often feel their sidelined when it comes to making or contributing to local decisions. In my opinion, it is a people who live and work in a community who know what is best for that community and they are key to improving local places when they are involved in local decision making and delivery. Indeed, that is why the Scottish Government has implemented a number of community empowerment policies, whether it is through the Community Empowerment Act, the community choices programme or work in encouraging councils to use participatory budgets. There is a recognition from the Scottish Government that people should play their full part in their local area and shape their own futures. Central and local government have a huge role to play in encouraging communities to work together, through collaboration and partnership that we will realise Scotland's full potential and improve outcomes and addresses the inequalities in and across our communities. Fundamentally, the place principle provides a collective focus to support inclusive economic growth and create places that are both successful and sustainable. As the principle lays out, places are where people, location and resources can combine to create a sense of identity and purpose at the heart of addressing the needs and realising the full potential of communities. As part of that, place principle calls on all those responsible for providing services and looking after assets in a place to work and plan together and with local communities to improve the lives of people, support inclusive growth and create more successful places. Research has shown that when people in communities feel empowered, there is greater participation in local democracy, increased confidence and skills among local people, more people volunteering in their communities and greater satisfaction with quality of life in their neighbourhood. There can be no doubt that many challenges which affect disadvantaged communities are deep-rooted and can be better solved collaboratively, rather than by individual partners working in isolation or the being a top-down approach where the community are told that that is what is going to happen to their local area and they are not having the appropriate buy and the appropriate time. I would like to give an example of a community-led organisation in my constituency who is undertaking great work but sometimes feel powerless when it comes to local decision-making. Pollock Shaw's community hub recently held a community consultation on the future of the local Pollock Shaw's shopping arcade. The arcade, which is due for demolition, is at the heart of the community-led push for local regeneration. The hub held two open days looking at designs for the new shopping centre and also at a selection of public realm examples from across the UK and beyond. The process that was started by community activists who feel that local authority, other agencies and the private sector can take singular decisions about their community sometimes with little or no consultation with the community itself. There is great work being done by Glasgow City Council to include local groups such as the hub, who have actually been recipients of funding through the participatory budget. However, through the place principle and by providing a shared understanding of the place, even better collaboration and community involvement is encouraged, which can overcome organisational or sectoral boundaries. Place-paced approaches can provide a better way of enabling local communities to influence, shape and deliver long-term solutions that would benefit the communities in Pollock Shaw's and across Scotland. A holistic approach that is offered by the place principle is increasingly recognised as the best way to consider the issues of local economy, physical infrastructure and the social aspects of place. The place principle provides a coherent focus for many differing agendas, and I encourage all public bodies to follow the Scottish Government and Causal's lead and adopt a policy to bring the many ideas about services, investments and resources that NASS has together under one roof to help to shape a better place. Gordon Lindhurst Presiding Officer, I, too, welcome the opportunity to speak in today's debate. Our happiness and wellbeing depend, to a great extent, on the place in which we live. We should have places where we belong, feel safe and where the physical elements of a place should cater to our needs. The importance of a place, after all, is not just relevant in terms of its physical layout or amenities but in the very fact that it is where people live, socialise and meet others. In developing places that are fit for all, it is the local authorities providing the services and looking after local assets that should be leading the way, with the principles of localism and empowering communities at the forefront of their minds. That, from our biggest cities to our smallest towns and villages. Here in Edinburgh we heard more last week about a 10-year plan for the city, including further tram routes, replacing in part some bus services, as well as plans for pedestrian areas and even building lifts linking different parts of the city. Although, in their early stages, those plans will no doubt generate their fair share of debate, given previous debacles in the city concerning public services. However, it is an ideal opportunity to test that place principle, including a public consultation process that actually has a far and deep reach into the heart of our communities. Because, too often, consultation scratches the surface, paying lip service to the need to ask people what they think, without actually taking it on board or producing results that are reflective of the wider population—a lesson, I am sure, for this Parliament as much as for local authorities. I hope that Edinburgh City Council will make that effort before embarking on such ambitious plans. It is not just places that change over time but also people. Let me reflect on the fact that people's needs change, too, and the views and needs of those people should continue to be represented. It has struck me in preparing for this debate that there are various groups, many of whom we, as MSPs, will have met with, who represent specific needs or specific groups of people in our communities. I myself am pleased to have worked with dementia-friendly Pentlands in Edinburgh, a group of people who volunteer in communities in the south-west of Edinburgh. To me, they resemble the spirit of the place principle, as their goal is to give people living with dementia a stronger presence locally by building communities that are safe, supportive, strong and resilient enough to support dementia sufferers and their carers. Not only do they help people feel more included through initiatives such as the Pam cafe in Balerno, they also run a project called Community Conversations, where those with dementia and the people who look after them are asked what they think their communities can do to become more dementia-friendly. Having gathered those views, they disseminate them to the local community. For example, by educating people through the dementia-friendly business scheme, carrying out environmental and signage audits within the Pentlands area, and feeding into community transport consultation processes. That, to me, resembles exactly what the place principle is all about, a joined up collaborative approach to services that takes into account everyone's needs, including those of dementia sufferers. Let me finish, therefore, by paying tribute to all the volunteers who work as part of dementia-friendly Pentlands and thank them for the work that they do. I want to use this debate on adoption of the place principle to highlight some excellent work that is taking place, which is community-led and is in my constituency. It has been a privilege to seek to support some of those efforts in the communities that I represent. As I have done before in the chamber, let me praise the work of the Royston strategy group. I was pleased to hold a member's debate on the subject of Royston regeneration way back on 24 June 2014. Some time ago, that debate praised the community-led nature of the anticipated regeneration that has been championed by the strategy that has been driven through local housing associations and the local Rose Mountain development trust. A major community consultation and partnership with Kevin Murray Associates led to a vision document for the local community. While many community asks still need to be progressed and delivered, there have been successes. In the context of the debate, it is important to put some of those on the record. Royston hill will now have a new community hub, which is £1 million, coming from the big lottery fund and £575,000, coming from the Scottish Government's capital regeneration fund. The community will take back control of derelict land, known as the triangle site, as the Copperworks Housing Association gets £419,000 from the Scottish land fund. Those were key asks following a place-based community-led consultation, and they have been delivered. Significantly, the local authority had no regeneration plans for Royston, so the community got on and designed their own, and now they are delivering. Surely that is a place-based success that is actually community-led, and that shows what can be achieved. It is important, Presiding Officer, that if you offer a voice and you offer hope, you have to offer the prospect of delivery. We should not give false hope, so that is why I went to a concrete example of what success can be achieved. That is also why, in partnership with Springburn community council, we have established the Springburn Regeneration Forum. We did that in March 2017. I pay tribute to the community council and Helen Carroll, in particular, for their sheer energy to improve the local area. Again, the area did not have a regeneration plan from the local authority, although there are sizable regeneration plans surrounding it, such as at Red Road and at Cow Layers, but the town centre itself has no real attempts to regenerate it. Fast forward to today. The Regeneration Forum has secured around £40,000 to open a new community hub in the shopping centre, run a variety of projects and to work with Kevin Murray associates once more, to run a two-day charrette as part of a massive community consultation to develop Springburn's community-led vision. I want to thank the Scottish Government, who put over £20,000 into the pot of cash to make that happen, to end you home with about £10,000, to Glasgow City Council, who also put £10,000 in and to several others who gave money, but also to the shopping centre and the winter garden trust and others who actually gave support in kind. On 28 May this year, this month, we will feedback our findings of the charrettes to the wider community. We expect to create expectations when our vision is fleshed out, but that puts a challenge on all of us, on the local authority, on the Scottish Government and other funding partners to find a way of delivering that vision. I am sure that we can. That is why I note that the £50 million town centre regeneration fund might be crucial in attracting much of that investment to the local place in Springburn. The place principle is vital if we are going to deliver a strategic community-led view of what our town centres and our communities look like. I have seen it happen in Royston in my constituency, I see it emerging in Springburn in my constituency and we all have a key role as MSPs as local delivery agents, not to lead the regeneration but to build capacity within our communities to let them lead the regeneration, but we have to deliver for those communities. Neil Findlay, to be followed by Stuart McMillan. I am sure that many of us love the places that we live in and we are connected to them and the people who live around us. In communities across Scotland, there have often been fashions around workplaces. Many of them have long gone, whether it be mills or mines or steelworks or the fishing or farming industries. They shape the landscape, the infrastructure, the culture and, most notably and, importantly, the people. To the west and east of my region, the earth provided coal and things like shale and clay and stone, hard graft and many lost shortened lives shaped the people and still does. We have or have had infrastructure like miners' welfare clubs, working men's institutes, libraries, football pitches, dog tracks, pigeon, dockets, women's guilds, the co-operative, traditional housing, miners' rows and the like. Those were features in many of those communities, but while some of them have gone, what has not gone is the sense of community and the pride of being from that town or village. I love the place that I live, I love the communities that I work in and socialise in, the people, the individual culture of each of the villages and the idiosyncrasies of each of them. I and all of us here are in the very fortunate position that we can afford to choose where we live and set up our home or have our family or, indeed, retire to. Many people are not able to do that. A market system choice is often available only to those who have income that allows them to exercise that choice. Many have to make do with what they can find. If they are lucky, they may be allocated a home by a council or a housing association or they can afford a private rent. Others have to share a house or a flat. Too many live a transient life, moving from town to town area to area just to keep a roof over their head. Some live their lives on the streets and hostels or intents of cardboard or canvas. For people in these circumstances, parliamentary debates are in place on the design of services or the urban realm and theoretical discussions about concepts of empowerment are light years away from anything that they are experiencing on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes in this place, I think that I live in a parallel universe and I know that some people might agree and think that I do as well. However, that is definitely one of those days, because people out there are not stroking their chins or reading books about planning concepts and trends. Many are wondering where they will sleep tonight, whether they will have enough money for a hostel, how they will feed themselves, what medical support they can get for mental ill health or addiction. I accept that quality design of places that we live has a huge impact on the wellbeing of people in our communities. If we have clean, tidy streets, welcoming parks, high streets with bustling shops, houses built to last that are warm and affordable and local services that are adequately staffed and doctors' surgeries with appointments, that is what we all want to see. However, for so many people, that is not the reality. Of course, good design can create a welcoming, supportive environment, impacting on wellbeing and community cohesion. That is not new, that is not rocket science, but it cannot be done, I say to ministers and Government backbenchers on a wing and a prayer against a background of year on year on year on year cuts, brutal cuts, 100 million from my council alone in West Lothian. That is why I say that we live in a parallel universe. We have seen in recent months reports of health inequality rising and life expectancy falling. Look on the streets of this city, yards from this Parliament and you will see homelessness increasing and drug deaths at record levels. This is the harsh cold reality of life in our towns and cities today. We will need more than principles that service providers can opt out of to tackle it. I ask the Government when we are talking about all this nice stuff, can we address the hard facts of what people in our communities are experiencing, because if not, they will look on this place as a complete irrelevance to their lives. Thank you very much. I call Stuart McMillan to be followed by Jeremy Balfour. I welcome the debate and the dialogue on the place principle. I listen to some colleagues in the chamber who think that life was perfect before the SNP Government coming to power in 2007. Life certainly was not perfect for many, many people. Life certainly was not perfect for many, many people in my community as well as the community that you represent as well. The collective focus to support inclusive economic growth to create places that are both successful and sustainable is not just a well-intentioned target, but it is a common sense approach. As we have heard from some colleagues today, the collaborative approach to designing the principle is welcome, but it should have happened many, many years ago. Thankfully, the silo mentality of working in some aspects of the public sector started to change some years ago, and that has certainly moved forward since 2007. Today, in this chamber, I have had a statement from Roseanna Cunningham, our Cabinet Secretary for Environment, Climate Change and Land Reform, once again highlighting the issue of the climate emergency that we face. The Cabinet Secretary spoke earlier on regarding the Scottish Government, all the Cabinet Securities and the Ministers, to be looking at all the current activities to examine what we need to do to help our climate. With its climate change, with its health and social care partnerships, with its place principle, it is work that can only improve our country and the opportunities for our population. The various funds that are available, such as the town centre fund, the regeneration capital grant fund, the vacant and derailer land fund, investing in communities fund and spruce, are important in trying to bring about successful and sustainable places. I chaired the cross-party group on visual impairment. A number of years ago, I was offered the chance by Guide Dogs Scotland to undertake a walk blindfolded with a guide dog. It happened in Greenwick, along Clyde Square, to Clyde Street. It was an emotional and challenging activity to do, but it also ensured that I became more aware of the built-up environment in my community. After the event, when speaking to a local reporter, I was asked if I now wanted the local authority to demolish and build a better and more accessible environment. Clearly, that would not have been realistic. What is realistic is that future investments are done collaboratively and with accessibility in mind to consider every single member of our society. There is also another element, and that is the issue of any retrofitting, any improvements that could be made to the existing infrastructure that we have in our towns, cities and rural communities. Let us face it. The length and breadth of Scotland has been built over the years. Planning in the past clearly was not perfect. Some of those things were put up in our communities. In my community, in my constituency, there are many organisations that already operate with that sense of engagement and that sense of place principle. There is quite a number. Your voice and Inverclyde carers centre are hugely important in getting that message over to the elected politicians. I can also think of another three examples. The Belville community garden in the east end of Greenock, the Inverclyde community hub, the Invercip community hub and the Inverclyde Association of Mental Health. They have the Broomhill gardens and community hub. Those are three projects that were led by the communities themselves and have fashioned that change and the politicians to get involved and make sure positive change happened in those communities. There is still a journey to go, but I welcome the place principle and, certainly, I welcome the sense of empowerment that it will provide to our communities. Thank you very much. Jeremy Balfour, to be followed by Willie Coffey. I think that there is at least agreement that we all agree that the place principle is something that is good in principle but probably still needs more work in practice. As a former councillor here in Edinburgh, I was very aware of often the silos that did exist between different public bodies and actually within public bodies themselves. I have to say that I am slightly less optimistic than Stuart McMillan was that the barriers have broken down and are being broken down. I think that there is still a lot of work to be done, particularly within local authorities, to ensure that different departments are speaking to each other and speaking to other local authority organisations and bodies. I thank Mr Balfour for taking the intervention. If he looks back on the record, I said that there is still a journey to be undertaken, but I welcome the progress that has been made. I think that there is a difference between me being an optimist and you being an optimist, and I fully relate to what you said. However, I think that there is something that we all have to look at, both within the Scottish Government and within local authorities. That is the role of the third sector. I have been pleased this afternoon that a number of members from across the parties have mentioned local projects in their local areas. If we are going to have the place principle, it cannot simply be health boards, local authorities and other large organisations, but the third sector has a vital role to play. Often, it is the other ones that know what is going on within that local community and know what services need to be provided. I get concerns still, both within Edinburgh City Council and other local authorities, that it is often the easy budget to cut. Where cuts have to be made, often the third sector budgets are gone after. That is short-term, and it may be easy to justify, but the long-term effect on communities will be devastating. Perhaps the largest place principle that we have seen across Scotland is the joint integrated board, in which we try to bring health and social care together. I think that all of us support that and still support that principle because it is breaking down silos. However, I was interested in the Cabinet Secretary's opening remarks that she said that where that happens, it needs to be democratic, accountable and transparent. I think that those are principles that we all agree upon in regard to any service that is provided. I do have some concerns, Presiding Officer, about the democratic, transparent and accountability of some of the joint boards. We all want to see better services, but some of the decisions that were recently made here in Malovians, where groups that have been funded for a long time have been completely cut without much notice, are not the way forward. I welcome the way in which things are moving, but I think that we have to keep in mind whether the organisations that we are looking at are accountable and democratic and transparent to the people who are living locally and need those services. Presiding Officer, there is good news on this from East Ayrshire at least, which I hope might bring a smile perhaps to the faces of some of the gloomsters in the chamber this afternoon. When I read over the briefing notes for the debate, my first reaction was at long last, well done and good to put people in places at the centre of everything that we do. The place principle approach is easy to understand, easy to compile and can be quite rewarding for those who use it. At first sight, it might appear to be just one of those new initiatives that appear and then gently slip off the radar, but I think that it will become a really important tool to help our communities to set out their vision for the place in their community. As usual, Presiding Officer, I am indebted to my colleagues in East Ayrshire, who once again stepped up to the mark to provide me with a really helpful insight into the trailblazing work that is already carried out there in support of the place principle or place making, as it is referred to down there. Councillor Elena Whitham, my friend and colleague, is a coasalist spokesperson in the community wellbeing and also serves as the deputy council leader. From what has been told by Councillor Whitham and others, East Ayrshire is the first council in Scotland to include place making led by and for the community. As far back as 2016, East Ayrshire council changed how their planning and economic development teams worked to incorporate a place-based approach. Their place making model lets people in the community take control of their priorities for the improvement of the places where they live. It is essentially at the heart of the principle that the Government has outlined today. That involved the council and community steering groups working together to produce a map of the community, identifying areas that need improvement and how those improvements might be made. We believe that the first of those in Scotland was in East Ayrshire and the Irvine Valley town of New Milllands, to be specific. It has also been going on in Ocho Tree, in Catherine and neighbouring communities, and another 28 locations are in progress throughout East Ayrshire. The steering group was the New Mill's regeneration association. They undertook the essential community engagement workshops and public consultations to produce the place making maps and action plans for New Milllands and Green Home. The resultant New Mill's action map and place making programme identified their priorities for New Mill's, which was fed into the development of East Ayrshire Council's community-led action plans. The New Mill's place making plan was approved by our council in 2018 and it has since been adopted by the council as a statutory supplementary guidance. Why is that important? Once adopted, the plan has now become part of the local planning policy. That is the key. All the good work done by local people is now very much enshrined and enshrined part of the local planning process. It is a long way from the planning process. I remember when officials, God bless them, presented a community master plan to local people after it had been pretty much devised almost exclusively by officials. That place principle approach now gives the local community's vision the appropriate status and influence, and it must be taken into account and into consideration by private developers and public sector organisations. Why not? I have seen the work carried out in New Mill's and it is really great to see the town from this perspective setting out a vision for creating more civic space, cycling and walking areas, buildings to be protected and developed, new housing spaces, places with business potential and improving the streetscapes and environmental improvements. All of those provide us with a more holistic view of how our communities see their future and how it wants its towns and villages to develop. Well done, New Mill's. That is the reality, at least in Eustaershire. I commend that approach to members to persuade their councils to embrace it elsewhere. Indeed, Eustaershire has already allocated £1.7 million from its town centre fund using community-led regeneration as the driver. It is working, but it is not theoretical in pying the sky, as some members are suggesting that it is. Just to end, Presiding Officer, I am looking forward to the place making being progressed right across Kilmaric in the Irvine Valley, Ayrshire and indeed Scotland. It really does work because local people feel that they have the influence in shaping the future of their communities. Lastly, I would encourage members to come and see the work and to welcome members to perhaps visit New Mill's this year and take part in the local food and arts and craft festivals on September 21 and 22, when they will be made most welcome. In advance of today's debate, I took the time to read the Scottish Government's three-page fact-sheet explaining the place principle. Of course, the nub of it is that at the end of the day, folk want to shape their own lives. They want to change their own lives for the better. We all need to find ways to ditch the silos that exist within and across services. Of course, the real test will be how we are actually putting all this into practice, how we demonstrate the place principle, as others have said, in the real world, and to be able to point to more than anecdotal or isolated examples or projects. We need to move from the exceptional to the normal. Therefore, like others, it is important that the Scottish Government keeps Parliament informed of progress. It is good to see ministers reading a debate today. However, there is a role for others. There are opportunities for local government and other partners in the public sector to show leadership, too, because we need to recognise that, when it comes to empowering communities, there is not some two-dimensional approach. It is not a top-down process. We also have to accept that, if we are really listening to communities, it will not always be comfortable in the well-indeed challenge orthodoxy. I believe that the local governance review is particularly important in that regard. I wonder if the minister, when she is summing up, can perhaps update its progress. The local governance review is important to establish what the next steps are for meaningful community empowerment. Others have alluded to the need to harness and make best use of our resources due to austerity. As a result of austerity, there is part of this debate that feels like necessity. Good public sector reform and community power has to be far more than a cost-cutting exercise. In fact, it should not be about cutting corners. We have to recognise that it is the right thing to do, and it is the smart thing to do in terms of sustainable public services about mainstreaming that asset-based approach that has been championed by Harry Burns, because it is good for people's psychological and physical health. It is also the gateway to really establishing good preventative services on the basis of what actually works for communities. I know that this week we have spent much time celebrating the past 20 years of this Parliament, and there is indeed much to celebrate. However, if I had to point to one negative, it would be that that public sector reform journey should have been started far, far earlier. I want to mention that the child poverty delivery plan, every child every chance, as well as a central focus on earnings, cost of living and social security policy. It also recognises the importance of place-based approach to improving the quality of life actions to prevent young people who are today growing up in poverty from becoming parents who, in turn, have to bring up their own children in poverty. I know that, within the child poverty development plan, there was a commitment to invest £2 million in the innovative children's neighbourhood Scotland programme, the first being in Bridgeton and Delmarnock, and there were ambitions to extend that to other areas. I would be grateful if the minister had time if she could update us about that approach as well. In terms of my constituency, I see many local community organisations, Fault House and Breach Valley Community Development Trust, West Calder and Hardburn Community Development Trust, which have a fantastic vision for the old co-operative bakery building in West Calder. I see social enterprises such as Kidziko and the School Uniform Bank in West Lothian as well, which are all responding to harsh and real community needs, but they are organisations that, in my mind, are very much the successor to the co-operative movement that has a very proud history in West Lothian. My fire point is that, many years before I entered this place, I was a front-line social worker and I will never demure from the importance of investment in public services, but I also, over my career, recognise that how services are delivered and by whom is important in addition to how much we invest. We move now to closing speeches. Alex Rowley, to be followed by Graham Simpson. There is a sense in which I certainly have made clear that there is nothing in the motion from the Government today that you could disagree with, but there is a sense sometimes in this place that I feel is a bit like the Hans Christian Andersen Emperor's new clothing, where, if anybody speaks out, everybody is in complete denial. There is no question that the years of austerity have impacted on communities up and down Scotland. Anybody that says that that is not the case is in complete denial. If you take, for example, the importance of play and the importance of play parts, they are disappearing. I know my own granddaughter or mum tells me that she spent the weekend with her pals playing in a play park, yet they are disappearing. The simple things that are in communities such as play parks, councils say that they cannot maintain them any more. The impact at a very practical level is that I was out campaigning in Cowanbeath on Friday, and a lady from Quarry Court came up and spoke to me about the park and issues in Quarry Court and Blackburn Drive in Cowanbeath. She told me that she had to be home by lunch time because she has a space that is marked off because of her car and her mobility, but if she is not in by afternoon, she cannot get parked. That community has been crying out for year on year on year about the fact that they need car parking. Within a community planning model, where you had local people setting out what their local priorities were in a community plan, that would work. Those people clearly in that area would say that they are our priority and they then influence the decisions that they spend. The problem is that if the council turns around and says that if we have to slash those budgets and we have not got any money to put parking places in, that disrupts people's lives. Angela Constance acknowledged that austerity has been a key issue. Willie Coffey is very much to you, Alex, for taking the intervention. I invite Alex and his colleagues to come down to East Ayrshire and see the process working in practice. You would be very welcome to come and see it. As a council and former council leader, community planning is not only something that I have support in principle. I have driven the idea of community planning. If you come to Dunfermline, you will find one of the best local community planning partnerships in the country. One of their successes is because it is not driven by council officials, it is driven by local people with council officials being there to be able to support. Willie Coffey and Bob Doris talked about a charrette. They have done a charrette and I met them just a few weeks ago. Their issue now is how they get the money to implement that. Part of that, quite interestingly, would be the town centre monies that has been welcomed and the £4.0 million to be spent in five. However, I would say to the cabinet secretary that local people and local communities will have a say on how that money is distributed. Or is it just going to be a group of council officers, officials and councillors making those decisions? Bob Doris, I agree with the member that a charrette is an issue. We have got different political solutions in relation to that, but I agree with you in relation to that, but there is really good practice across the country that is community-led. That actually exists way before community planning partners were doing their stuff about local police. Will you not welcome the fact that it has been shared right across the country and it can improve communities to make sure that the money that we have is spent wisely and is community-led? I do not think that there is any disagreement. I do not understand why some of the SNP members seem to take offence as highlighting the impact of charrette. No day, Stuart McMillan was quite wrong to say that any of us had suggested that this was down to the SNP. I am very clear where charrette comes from. I am very clear that it is a political decision. All I am saying is that the impact to charrette on communities hinders the community planning process. The community planning process is something that I have certainly supported. Jeremy Balfour spoke about councils and what I used to call departmentalism within councils. In your right, Mr Balfour's right, it continues to exist. Indeed, if you look at the Scottish Government, you will find that whether it is silos or departmentalism, it will run through government departments. It is not something that has been wiped out, it has certainly been tackled. That is important. However, how you involve communities and Campbell Christie in his report, he highlighted that too many public authorities were coming to the table at the point where there was crisis, firefighting, if you like, and we needed to see more investment in preventative work. However, when you see youth clubs shutting down, community and development, youth workers being paid off at a rate that is not being replaced, where is the preventative work with the young people? Where is the preventative work in our communities? Someone mentioned a day centre for older people. Ross Day Centre has mentioned many times where they provide lunch clubs and exercise for older people. Lots of good things are happening out there, lots of project-based work is happening, but when the run-out in money that work stops, let's be truthful and acknowledge what is happening in our communities. Once we acknowledge the problem, we can hopefully start to address it. I think that this has been an interesting debate in parts. It certainly helped me no end. I'm known for my brevity. I like plain English and I don't like government speak. The place principle could easily fall into that category and I initially couldn't make head nor tail of it. I've got there, I think. The place principle is that bodies working in a particular area, let's say, Presiding Officer, the great place that is East Kilbride, should work together. That makes sense, doesn't it? I'll ask my take on it anyway, but let's see what the Government says. According to them, the place principle says that we recognise that place is where people, location and resources combine to create a sense of identity and purpose and is at the heart of addressing the needs and realising the full potential of communities. Places are shaped by the way resources, services and assets are directed and used by the people who live and invest in them. The place principle requests that all those responsible for providing services and looking after assets in a place need to work and plan together and with local communities to improve the lives of people, support inclusive and sustainable growth and create more successful places. I hope that you can just about follow that, Presiding Officer. It all sounds very sensible. It was signed by the Scottish Government and COSLA. It's all very well if everyone goes along with the idea that public authorities should work together, but people can and do work in silos, as we've heard, and sometimes it's difficult to get them to change. It's worth trying, though, and that's why I do like the fact that this principle was drawn up. Some tools have been developed to help people along the way. One is the place standard tool, and I want to talk a bit about that. It's particularly relevant because we'll soon be dealing with the planning bill in this chamber, where community engagement will feature heavily. The tool is there to help anyone assess and improve the quality of a place, and to use it, you're asked 14 questions and asked to give ratings, and these are, can you easily walk and cycle around using good quality routes? Does public transport meet your needs? Do traffic and parking arrangements allow people to move around safely? Do buildings, streets and public spaces create an attractive place that's easy to get around? Can you regularly experience good quality natural space? Can you access a range of space with opportunities for play and recreation? Do facilities and amenities meet your needs? Is there an active local economy and the opportunity to access good quality work? There are a number of other questions. I won't go through them all, but you should be able to see what the priorities are for change and improvement once you've been through this process. So it could be obvious that you need more and better green spaces, that your housing is run down, that there are not enough play facilities. Now you could be very cynical about this kind of stuff, but it's basically about working with people to improve their communities and done well, done with people. It works well. A really good example is what's next for strongness. That's a series of meetings later this week where Orkney Islanders will be asked how they would like their community to develop in the next five or 10 years. That's great. And Alien Campbell mentioned projects in Fort William and Grandtown. Willie Coffey made reference to some of the great work going on in Ayrshire, and if the invitation is still open from Willie Coffey, I would love to visit East Ayrshire if he will host the visit. Now, where it doesn't work is if it's used to just pay lip service to community involvement or where you exclude certain groups. And I thought the submission that we had from Inclusion Scotland ahead of this debate was particularly powerful in expressing the view that disabled people are often left out. There's been some excellent contributions today. I just want to mention a few of them. Gordon Lindhurst mentioned the dementia friendly project in Pentlands. Yes, I will. Neil Findlay. I'm certainly pleased that he's mentioned disabled people being missing out on some of the agenda, but I wonder if he would reflect on his own party's treatment of disabled people in recent years, which has seen them excluded from many things, including having dignity and a decent income. Graham Simpson. I think that Neil Findlay's contribution just says it all about labour today. It's been a doom laden Labour Party that's turned up to this debate. This should have been a consensual and positive debate, highlighting many local projects that many of the other members have tried to do. Michelle Ballantyne mentioned the importance of great architecture. Andy Wightman talked about centralised Scotland. James Dornan didn't rant, so that was good. He spoke about the excellent Pollock Shores hub. Bob Dorris also spoke about local projects. Jeremy Balfour expressed his frustrations with local government and third sector cuts. I thought that, across the piece, members were very positive in highlighting some of the great work going on in their areas. I tabled an amendment, Presiding Officer, which was not accepted by yourself, making me feel a bit like a Lib Dem. It simply urged the Government to keep us informed of how the place principle is progressing, so I'll just have to informally request that. It was positive and consensual, unlike Labour's. You can see the complete lack of interest on the Labour benches to the debate, unlike the rest of the chamber. I tabled it because we need to keep tabs on how effective the principle is in practice. After all, there is no point in developing those things if people don't use them. That would just give ammunition to people who might say, this is Government waffle, and we wouldn't want that. Despite the lack of disagreement over the place principle, it has nevertheless been a robust but good debate, as it should be, because the approach is not designed to simply be some esoteric, beard-stroke and philosophy that boils down to just motherhood and apple pie, because our communities deserve much more than that and deserve to be empowered and trusted. That approach is absolutely not designed to gloss over austerity or the daily struggles that those who are vulnerable or who are living in poverty face. Indeed, it is very much at the forefront of our thoughts, because if your day-to-day struggles involve working out how you are going to make ends meet, how can you possibly have the space to think about how you might feel some sense of empowerment or think about any notions of a place principle? That is about trying to ensure that we create a country and a society that enables everybody to feel the benefit of what we do and the investment that we make. Instead, the place principle seeks to make better use of the resources that we have to knock down silos to disregard organisational boundaries and to ensure that we focus in on people, places and outcomes. That comes on top of the mitigation measures that we as a Government have to apply to soften the blows of welfare reforms and acts that will take over £3 billion out of the social security system by 2020-21. Imagine if we did have all those tools and powers to look after our people and pursue our own policies without needing to use resource to mop up another Government's mess. It is on that premise of powers that I want to respond to some of the points that Andy Wightman raised. This year, as everyone knows, is the 20th anniversary of the Parliament being reconvened and a useful milestone to further reflect on where power and the balance of that power should lie. Although I do not share all of Mr Wightman's analysis that he spoke about of local government, I share some of his concerns around how we do more to empower our communities and the current need to transform local democracy. We seek to empower our communities, and participatory budgeting, as he mentioned, is one of those ways that we do that. However, it is just a good start. It is an approach that I see should be built upon. It gives communities the chance to decide on where money should be spent and on want, but it is just simply a start. We need to see that grow to be less risk averse and to ensure that the principle by which that applies is trusting our communities. That is why we also, along with COSLA, committed to the local governance review. In that, we are taking a whole-system approach. That means looking across Scotland's public services, not just local governance, but ensuring that measures to empower people in places in different spheres of governance are cohesively and mutually supportive. For the response to Angela Constance's request for an update, last year, over 4,000 people took part in the democracy matters conversation about the future of community-level decision-making. In addition, more than 40 public sector partners submitted proposals for alternative governance arrangements that can improve outcomes and drive inclusive growth in the places that they serve. Despite that variety of view, people, without exception, overwhelmingly wanted to see a transformation in how decision-making arrangements work in Scotland. They do not want to accept the status quo, so people in communities are up for that, and we will need to respond to that level of engagement. I will certainly ensure that we keep Angela Constance, but the whole chamber is more generally updated on the progress of that work. Many other members also made some good and positive contributions. As Stuart McMillan acknowledged, the place principle continues our empowering communities agenda. It builds on our regeneration strategy, the Community Empowerment Scotland Act 2015, land reform, the Scottish land fund, the planning bill, public sector reform, rural policy and inclusive growth policy. The place principle and place-based approaches are also supportive of a wide range of other policy agendas. For example, our public health reform agenda aims to improve the public health through a whole systems approach focused on prevention and early intervention and creating the conditions for wellbeing in our communities. Nonetheless, ununderstandably, many members spoke about their constituencies and the good work that is happening there enabled by that focus on that sense of place. Willie Coffey mentioned East Ayrshire. I am really glad that he did, because there is a huge amount of positive work happening in East Ayrshire and how their approach has enabled better decisions, joined up decisions and decisions that are taken not doing things to communities but decisions that are enhanced by working alongside our communities. For example, Willie Coffey cited that East Ayrshire has also benefited from the place approach through the good work of the centre stage project. I saw another example recently at the Scottish Civic Trust awards, while Bellsbank received recognition for the work there, which has transformed that former mining community, not because the council did stuff to it but because it worked with the community to recognise the potential and the assets of that area and enable that place, that community, that town to flourish and to be able to become a thriving place where people are proud to say that they come from. Gordon Lindhurst also spoke about dementia-friendly pentlands, and I think that that was a useful example in that it brought to this debate the importance of the communities of interest and how we should not, in the pursuit of empowerment, not risk that we empower the already powerful but also be mindful of not disempowering others. I would totally take on board on that respect in regard to Alex Rowley's example of the women with problems with disability. Again, I think that that underlines that we need to be inclusive in how we engage with people in all walks of life and from all areas of interest. Bob Doris also spoke about shirets in Springburn, and that mass engagement again to help to provide a vision for their community, given that community a sense of ownership about how they drive that community forward. In response to Alex Rowley's points, Bob Doris, I thank the cabinet secretary for raising the shirets in Springburn, which now gives me the opportunity, of course, to invite the cabinet secretary to Springburn to see that community-led regeneration underpinned by the place principle for herself. The cabinet secretary, can we just keep the conversations down, please? I happily take Mr Doris's invitation and to visit Springburn. However, in response to Alex Rowley's points, of course austerity has impacted on our communities, but I think that we need to be in this debate clear on where austerity has come from, and that is where people have been disappointed with some of the contributions from Labour, because it sometimes felt that it missed that the fundamental owners of austerity are the Westminster Government and the Conservative Party, and that is where some of the grumbling occurred through the debate and their contributions. Moreover, to respond to Angela Constance's points that she raised around the children's neighbourhood and the progression of new sites, the work is under way on that to identify new sites and, of course, we will keep her updated on the progress of that. There was a particular request from Michelle Ballantine about us looking to the Scottish Government to monitor councils and how they implement the place principle, which is quite contradictory to some of the other comments that were made about us wanting or seeking to centralise lots of things and discipling local government. So we are not planning to monitor councils per se, but what we are wanting to do is work with local authorities, work with councils to make the place principle a reality in something that is tangible. Very briefly, Michelle Ballantine, as the minister's last minute. My concern was that, obviously, the place-based approaches report in 2016 identified that the UK has had a place-based approach since the 1970s. My concern is that, if we are having to revitalise it and bring in a new one, what are we going to do to make sure that that actually does make a difference? Again, I articulate that by working in partnership with our colleagues in local authority, they will work together to make sure that we can take that forward and make it tangible and make it real. Ultimately, everyone, regardless of where they sit in the debate or where their views are on some of the fundamental problems with approaching a place principle, we all want to see Scotland, which everyone can see and can play a full part in society with empowered communities that are able to shape their individual and collective futures. However, the place principle will be the only way that we can make a success of our vision on our national performance framework. It will be one of the only ways that we can try and make good on knocking down the silos that still exist, that we can make good on the principles of Christy, that we can progress public sector reform, but it will need us to raise the debate on that, to tackle the vicious inequality that exists in our society. I think that it has been a good debate. I have been really appreciative of some of the contributions, and we will look forward to continuing those debates to make sure that people can feel that they have the ownership of the places that they call home, the areas that need that support that we will give to make sure that we can see everywhere and every part of the country flourish with the success that they deserve. Thank you very much, and that concludes our debate on adopting the place principle. I move to the next item of business, which is a committee announcement. I call Graham Simpson, as convener of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. Thank you, Presiding Officer, for this chance to make a short statement on behalf of the Delegated Powers and Law Reform Committee. It's a committee that hides in the shadows somewhat, but we look at every piece of legislation, and we thought we'd shout about our work on the current planning bill, specifically our report following stage two. There's been huge interest across the chamber in the bill, 24 members from all parties lodged amendments, and I can tell you that something remarkable happened at stage two, Presiding Officer, Alex Cole-Hamilton got one passed. Some of those amendments revised delegated powers already in the bill, some added entirely new ones. Over 40 new and revised powers were added to the bill at stage two. We had no recommendations to make on many of them, and we welcome the Scottish Government's commitment to lodge a number of amendments at stage three to seek to rectify some of the concerns that we did have. Our report nevertheless sets out various matters on which we think the Government should consider lodging amendments. A new section has been added, as added a requirement in the bill that the use of a property for short-term holiday lets will require planning permission. The definition of providing short-term holiday lets is currently only covered in guidance, and the committee has called for this definition to either be on the face of the bill or be specified by regulations subject to the affirmative procedure. I lodged a fair number of amendments to the bill myself. One of those was to allow what is known as land value capture in newly created master plan consent areas. I praised the committee lawyer who had to nervously tell me there may be one or two issues with that, and the committee agreed unanimously. There is a new section in the bill that says that before determining an application for planning permission, where the development involves any land on which there is a music venue, the planning authority must consult the music venues trust. The committee asked the Scottish Government to check with the music venues trust that they are okay with that. I thank all the committee members for their work, as well as the committee clerks and lawyers. Members who lodged amendments at stage two on the bill will have received a copy of the report. I urge all members to read it as we head towards stage three in mid-June, and I commend the report to the Parliament. Thank you very much, and we are going to turn at that point to decision time. The first question this evening is that amendment 17265.2 in the name of Alex Rowley, who seeks to amend motion 16265 in the name of Aileen Campbell on adopting the place principle will be agreed. Are we agreed? No. We are not agreed. We will move to division. Members may cast their votes now. The result of the vote on amendment 17265.2 in the name of Alex Rowley is, yes, 74, no 30. There were no abstentions. The amendment is therefore agreed. The final question is that motion 17265 in the name of Aileen Campbell as amended on adopting the place principle will be agreed. Are we agreed? No. We are not agreed. We will move to vote. Members may cast their votes now. The result of the vote on motion 17265 in the name of Aileen Campbell as amended is, yes, 74, no, 30. There were no abstentions. The motion as amended is therefore agreed. That concludes decision time. We are going to turn shortly to members' business in the name of Jen Eagle-Ruth on home start. Glenruth is turn is 21. We will just take a few moments, though, for members and the minister to change seats. Just a few moments suspension. We are not suspension. Just a few moments wheat.