Setting the Scene

Argyll & Bute is a huge constituency and its people are diverse, and its economy complicated. Its geography is unique with a coast line longer than that of France. Argyll and Bute is an area of outstanding beauty and has the diversity of rugged remote mountains, islands and forests contrasting with in the towns of Oban, Dunoon, Campbeltown and Rothesay.  Argyll & Bute has 25% of Scotland’s forests, so finding its communities is often like finding a needle in a haystack!

Its people are hard working, resilient and resourceful and are Argyll & Bute’s best asset. The area has a population of around 90,500 which is spread across the second largest authority area in Scotland and it has the third sparsest population density with just 0.13 persons per hectare. Not even 1 whole person per hectare! Seventeen percent of Argyll & Bute’s population live on our many islands and 45% live in settlements of 3000 or more. The remaining 55% of the population live in small villages or on their own in isolated clusters, farmhouses and crofts.  None of its people live far from the sea with 80% of the population within a kilometre of the coast.

The major inhabited islands of Bute, Islay, Jura, Mull, Coll and Tiree are all unique. All, except for Islay, are suffering from a decreasing young population, which is a major problem affecting their future viability.

I know there is nothing we can do to stop young people leaving to explore the world, that’s just the way it is. What I and others can do is to try to take some steps to help young people to stay. We must encourage people who have moved away, perhaps now with a family, to come back. To come back these people are going to want to be able to set up in business in Argyll & Bute and know that they will enjoy a 21^st century lifestyle and that this will continue for their children too.

Given the exodus of younger people the demographic profile is changing and in the next 25 years 15% of our young people are expected to have left. The working population is predicted to fall, in the same period, by as much as 10%, with our elderly population rising by 30%.

This is not unique to Argyll & Bute but does present some difficulties about how we meet the needs of a growing elderly population with a working population which is dwindling. This means working on early intervention for the elderly to make sure that we have as healthy an elderly population as possible. This in turn relieves the public bodies of the necessity of looking after a high proportion of people in their twilight years because they will be more capable of looking after themselves. Old age does not need to be an unhealthy age.

The Coming Challenge

The economic pressure that Argyll & Bute faces is colossal for everyone. This is a challenge we all have to face together.  To say that anyone has a magic wand with all the answers to everything is to be living on another planet, but by working together and sharing resources, not protecting our own empires, we may be able to pull through what is and will be a very difficult financial time for us all.

I promise to work with all the public bodies and enterprise agencies and banks to make sure Argyll & Bute is ready for this challenge. My main strand will be to work with local people and organisations: listening to what they are saying and working with them to improve their living and working conditions. For example, housing is a basic need and the recent reduction in the Housing Assistance Grant for new builds will make building in rural areas virtually impossible. I will work with the construction industry in Argyll & Bute to try and mitigate the worst of the effects of this decision and try to get the grant reinstated to a more realistic amount for remote areas where volume, in numbers of houses, is not possible.

The Way Forward

Argyll & Bute’s biggest opportunity at the moment is renewable energy and the area is ideally placed to capitalise on this major asset. Just the other week there was the welcome announcement that Scottish and Southern Energy and Marsh Wind Technology have joined forces to take over Skycon, at Machrihanish, securing almost all the present jobs, a relief to everyone in Campbeltown and a continuing support to the local economy.

Campbeltown epitomises the structure of Argyll & Bute with an urban community separated by many tens of miles from the next town. With this remoteness it is very important to ensure that the businesses in these areas thrive. To do so they need good infrastructure and good communications with a well trained workforce and a strategy for attracting quality jobs to their areas. Places like this need to become Enterprise Zones like the ones being announced down south in England & Wales. Planning rules in these zones are relaxed and new businesses don’t have to pay rates. Meanwhile, it is my intention to work with Argyll & Bute Planners within the New Planning Act to ensure that the applications for new operations when submitted go as smoothly as possible.

Argyll & Bute’s landscape is a huge asset and it helps support another major industry – tourism. It is renowned for its first class mountaineering, walking and water sports, welcoming accommodation and a well trained chatty and friendly tourism sector workforce. This is crucial to making sure visitors have a good experience. We know that the likelihood is they will come back. The tourism industry must be able to promote itself and today this means ensuring that it has access to super-fast broadband. Tourists are then only a mouse click away.

To help tourism’s seasonal businesses let’s investigate a rates relief scheme to make it affordable in out-of-season time, and when there is a revaluation of business rates in 2015 let’s make sure that businesses get transitional relief instead of the huge increases they faced last year.

The University of the Highlands and Islands has a role to play here too. It and the satellite colleges must be kept funded to allow them to offer the courses that help our tourism industry to continue to flourish with courses such as hospitality, food hygiene, basic reception skills and much, much more.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s) are in the majority in Argyll & Bute, they range from small construction businesses to chalet hirers, boat builders, restaurants, shops and the many cultural outlets. SME’s are the grass roots of the economy and they must be protected. The setting up of the Regional Development Banks is vital to making sure SME’s get the financial and business operations help they need to move their businesses forward.  I intend to support the setting up of the Regional Development Banks and work towards cutting the bureaucracy these small businesses have to deal with in their day to day dealings with public agencies.

Many SME’s are in the construction sector and I recently heard that their industry was suffering because of the 20% VAT increase and that they were loosing out to people offering to do the same job for cash on the black market.  I am pressing the UK government to reduce the VAT rate for all refurbishing, renovation and repair work to around 5.5%. This is already done in some EU countries and has been a great success in sustaining businesses, improving employment and increasing revenues to the treasury. A win-win situation.

SME’s also need to be encouraged to engage and support the new apprenticeship schemes making sure that Argyll & Bute gets new tradesmen.  The construction college in Lochgilphead is turning out joiners, brickies and plumbers and the construction industry needs well trained young people.  Learning skills like these that will keep Argyll & Bute equipped to keep our economy going, and to stifle the trend for our young school leavers to move away.

Farming is a staple industry in Argyll & Bute and the retention of less favoured area status and single farm payments is vital to the prosperity of rural farmers.  My colleague George Lyon MEP is taking a leading role in the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. I’m working with him in keeping the interests of farmers in Argyll & Bute to the fore.

Fishing and Aquaculture are both very important business areas for Argyll & Bute.  Fish farming is expanding and is an area of growth.  I am also aware that inshore fishing is another growth area. The industry deserves to have a sustainable future.  I have ‘floated’ the idea of a decommissioning scheme for inshore boats just as they have for deep sea trawlers.  If adopted this enables inshore fishermen to leave the industry without financial penalty and debt. There would also need to be controls on the static gear fishermen use, in regulating the number of creels to avoid overfishing and pave the way for agreement with the inshore trawler men about where each can fish. This in turn maintains a living for all fishermen and sustains the communities in which they live.

These many strands of life in Argyll & Bute give the area its unique character and ensure that its communities are held together, and that they are kept vibrant with good skills and good people. The key to this is reliable communications and a modern infrastructure network.

Cementing this all together needs good roads and ferry links, Argyll & Bute has suffered for too long from poor roads and black spots in communication, and less than efficient ferries. I will campaign to get investment for our roads and for the introduction of a pricing reduction scheme for our ferries, just as they have for the Western Isles. Businesses and families in Argyll & Bute deserve the benefit of cheaper travel to and from the Argyll Islands.  I will also work to ensure that Argyll & Bute gets high speed communication so that people are not disadvantaged by living in a remote rural area.

Alison Hay

Alison Hay is the Liberal Democrat Party’s candidate for the Argyll and Bute seat in the Scottish Election 2011 which will be held on 5th May.

The photographs above have been copyright cleared and show:

• Alison Hay
• The wind farm at Beinn an Tuirc
• Wood transport
• Kennacraig