MSPs pass Bill on Community Wealth Building across Scotland

MSPs have unanimously voted to pass a Bill that will ensure local authorities implement community wealth building across Scotland.

The Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill was supported by 103 votes with no votes against.

The Bill, which was brought to the chamber by Public Finance Minister Ivan McKee aims to ensure that local authorities and other parts of the public sector implement community wealth building across Scotland.

Mr McKee said: “It is critical that the voice of local communities is at the heart core of community wealth building and as an economic policy, I wanted to see the power of our communities harnessed to help build our local economies.

“Ideas from communities about growing businesses and creating jobs must be listened to. The next Scottish Government and subsequent administrations will be tasked with considering how all relevant government activities contribute to community wealth building.

“Whether very directly in areas such as procurement, fair worker skills, or a wider range of policy areas where public investment or regulation might flex and change to assist our economy to grow in a way that is successful, sustainable and fair, I think community wealth building is an attractive policy to many, as people want to see and feel change where they live.”

Community Wealth Building (CWB) uses the economic power of “anchor” institutions to try and stimulate and retain economic activity within a local economy.

This Bill aims to ensure national coverage of CWB as an economic development tool. It does this by placing duties on the Scottish ministers and various public bodies, particularly local authorities.

The Bill will place a duty on the Scottish Ministers to produce a CWB statement.

The statement must set out what measures the Scottish ministers will take to reduce economic and wealth inequality between individuals and communities in and across Scotland, and support economic growth in and across Scotland, by facilitating and supporting the generation, circulation and retention of wealth in local and regional economies.

Supporting the Bill, Scottish Conservative MSP Murdo Fraser said: “We have a lot of publicly owned assets in Scotland. They are not being utilised to their fullest opportunity and I think anything we can do to bring those back into more productive use where the community have an interest, that’s something we should seek to promote.”

Scottish Labour MSP Daniel Johnson also confirmed Labour supported the Bill but said: “there is a huge amount more to work to once this Bill is passed”.