Rural Depopulation

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 11th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered depopulation in rural areas.

Tapadh leibh, Ms Vaz; thank you. It is an honour to have you in the Chair. I thank all colleagues for their attendance and support in what I am sure will be an illuminating 90-minute debate. Staging your first Westminster Hall debate is a bit like throwing a birthday party and wondering whether anyone will turn up—at least we know there is not a depopulation crisis in Westminster. I also thank the Minister for taking this debate. It may not seem obvious at first what the demographics of the Western Isles have to do with the Home Office, but if she bears with me, I will explain and expand on why this issue, which now affects the periphery of the UK, influences the entire economy and should inform the decisions that we make at national level on immigration.

First, let me give some context. In Na h-Eileanan an Iar, the Western Isles, we are in the middle of a depopulation crisis, and I am here to sound that alarm. We are painfully aware of what is a rapidly changing population. An older, strongly Gaelic-speaking demographic is passing on, and we see the rapid out-migration of younger, economically active families. They sometimes face insurmountable challenges: being priced out of housing and facing failing transport connections, stuttering health provision and childcare and a host of other issues, which weigh heavily in the scales of deciding whether to stay or go. And while we sound the warnings at home, the lights should be flashing on the dashboard in this place, too, and in offices across Whitehall. That is why I am staging this debate—to highlight the fact that we are simply running out of people to take up key public sector and private sector posts to keep our islands going. That affects the viability of vital services and it ill serves the local economy and the national one, too.

Just to give some further context, the estimated population of the Western Isles is 26,200. That represents a 5.5% decrease since the 2011 census and the highest percentage decrease in Scotland. According to estimates from the Western Isles health board, which has an obvious interest in this issue from a staffing and care point of view, the working-age population of the islands is set to decrease by 6% by 2028, while the over-75 population with the highest levels of comorbidity—people who have more than one illness—is set to rise by 25%. The situation is frightening. According to the board, these population changes will result in a year-on-year reduction in the available workforce—nurses and care staff—to attend the most important, most vulnerable people, and ultimately undermine the ability to sustain services.

I say we have to address this with local responses, Scottish responses and action at UK level to prevent the situation from entering that downward spiral. We know that an ageing-population pattern is part of a Europe-wide trend, and somehow we kid ourselves that this is an over-the-horizon event that we will deal with later, but for us in the islands, it is an urgent reality, and our breakfast will become everyone else’s lunch; if we do not address these issues on the edge of Europe, they will become structural problems for the rest of the country and the rest of the continent.

More than worrying about an ageing population, I worry about the exodus of a working population, particularly the female population. Since 2007, the number of women aged between 25 and 44 on the islands has dropped by 15%, from 3,289 down to 2,787. There are many reasons for that rapid decline but, for most parents, they can be encapsulated in one word—childcare. Of course that is a challenge for parents everywhere, but the lack of a working-age population, as well as the burdensome regulation, has strangled childcare in the islands. I am sure that is the experience of colleagues across the board. Working parents and primarily working mothers, of course, find it hard to return to work—to balance childcare and careers—and despite the many strong family connections and networks they have on the islands, ultimately they give up in frustration, and ultimately they speak to me, as they spoke to me during the election campaign, about giving up and moving to the mainland. And when we lose families, we lose the working-age population.

During the successful election campaign, I was joined by the then shadow Business Secretary, now the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, on a visit around some of the key ports in Stornoway. We went to a shellfish export company that was successful, with a £4 million turnover and rising, which was a great investment by the port and the parent company in the local fishing fleet. But the actual processing of the product in the chill of the packing room could not operate were it not for the Ukraine war. Most of the staff that packed the products were refugees from that conflict. They are a welcome and valuable addition to the workforce and the islands, but we cannot have our economic growth dependent on a conflict on the other side of Europe.

At a seafood processor on another island, a £3 million business at the end of a single-track road, there were sustainable stocks and work for perhaps 30 employees, but only 15 workers were available because there are simply no workers to be found locally. This was an operation that, pre-Brexit, had a large and well-integrated European workforce. Now it cannot find a local workforce, and the regulatory and bureaucratic challenge of sourcing staff is almost overwhelming.

In the fishing industry offshore, the present immigration requirements as I understand them require staff employed under the sponsored visa scheme to pass stage 4 English language tests. That is quite a high academic bar for an industry that seeks crewmen who are primarily experienced in working in noisy and challenging conditions where hand signals are often as useful as linguistic ones.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Member will be aware that this is a matter on which a number of us have campaigned over the years. Essentially, the problem is that the definition of what constitutes a skilled migrant worker is narrow and brings in skills, as with the English language test, that are not central to the jobs that those people are going to do. We have safely had migrant workers in the catching sector for years without that level of English language. Will the hon. Member and others join me in encouraging the new Home Office team to have yet another look, and this time take the issues seriously?

[Torcuil Crichton]

I agree entirely with the right hon. Member. The language requirement is just one aspect of the present visa system that is unsuitable for our fishing industry, the islands, and rural economies, and which we have until now been unable to navigate around. Hopefully it will undergo a fresh review under a new Home Office team.

The new Home Office team and immigration policy are rightly the reserve of the UK Government. I do not seek to break up control of the system. I stood on a platform of a properly managed, points-based immigration system that links up the needs of the workforce, the economy and the country. But I counter the narrative, which this summer was in danger of becoming the prevailing one, that the country is somehow “full up”. There are parts of the UK and Scotland where we are crying out for skilled workers to come and be part of our workforce, and to then stay and become part of our communities.

Scotland has specific needs for our skills base, and the islands and rural areas of Scotland and the UK have some very specific asks of their own. The lesson of policy in almost every area—not just immigration—be it administered from here or Holyrood, is that one size does not fit all. What works at a UK level may need more flexibility at a Scottish level, and again at a rural and island level.

In the past, the UK Government in other guises have worked with the Scottish Government to show flexibility. The former First Minister Jack McConnell, now Baron McConnell of Glenscorrodale, promoted the fresh talent initiative for post-study work visas for overseas students at Scottish universities, enabling them to stay on for a period. There is, and should be, interest in reviving that plan, and the idea of rural visa projects, which was advanced by the Scottish Government with the Migration Advisory Committee before the previous UK Government stamped on the idea.

There are many levers of Government that are not at the hand of the Minister, but that bear mentioning because they are part of local and Scottish solutions to rural depopulation. In the islands, we are lucky to have a system of crofting tenure, a uniquely Scottish system which has kept generations in their home community, but crofting has been hollowed out by political forces that neither understand nor value its work. Crofting tenure, properly regulated, should be a defence against the property market, but instead it has become an enabler. The sale of croft tenancies at inflated rates has become a critical factor in the housing shortage.

Crofting needs urgent reform. I commend the Shucksmith report, “The Future of Crofting”, now more than a decade old but an excellent piece of work, which sought to rebalance—or restore the balance—between crofters’ right to security of tenure and their responsibilities to keep the market at bay. It should be dusted down and re-enacted, but that is probably a subject for another debate and another place.

The lack of affordable housing, however, is an issue that many other Members here and elsewhere will recognise. I hope that it will be taken up by other speakers in the debate. In many of our areas, it is impossible for anyone with modest means to secure a house, which is a pretty basic precondition for retaining a working-age population and keeping the economy spinning.

We therefore need action on housing and on crofting regulation; we need access to land; and we need access and action on depopulation. As I said, the dashboard lights are flashing. More than anything we need focus. We need economic focus on the peripheries of the north and west of Scotland, those areas of continued depopulation. We need economic incentives, state aid, perhaps a reduction in VAT on construction, and enhanced capital allowances. I do not want the Minister to worry too much about those issues, because they are for the Treasury and other Departments, and I will take them up with them.

My time is running out, and I do not want to end on a note of despondency. There is hope. There is hope in community ownership of the many crofting estates in the Western Isles, a quiet revolution that has injected not just a new wave of development, but a growing sense of confidence and assurance that, given the tools, we can tackle the issues for ourselves. There is the vast opportunity of community ownership of, and a community share in, the wealth of wind in onshore and offshore developments, which are due offers. That change is so tantalisingly close and could be so transformative in terms of finance and confidence that it cannot be ignored as part of the UK Government’s GB Energy strategy.

There is also hope in individuals, families and communities and their resilience, which make the islands not just a great place to visit, but a precious place to stay. There are examples of local initiatives like the Uist repopulation zone, which has provided training opportunities and much-hallowed childcare provision to parents. It is led by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar and has received £60,000 from the Scottish Government. I commend the work of that project and of many other individuals and communities who focus themselves on the issue of depopulation at a local level.

As I said, we have a sense of urgency about this in the islands: we are experiencing a depopulation crisis. I hope now that that can find an echo not just in the contributions to this debate, but in the UK Government’s awareness and response to the issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Vaz. I congratulate the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) on securing this debate. The issue is as important to me and my communities as it is to him and his.

The yardstick by which I have for many years now measured any proposal for anything to happen in the Northern Isles is to ask a simple question: will this make it more or less likely for people to want to live here? Without a healthy and growing population, we risk losing the critical mass and, within that critical mass, we do not have the mix. Every population—every community—needs to have a mix of the professional, the technical, the skilled and semi-skilled, and the unskilled. In a city, where there is mobility within the different districts, we can take that sort of thing for granted; when we live in an island community it is a different story.

In some ways, I am the living, breathing example of how depopulation happens. I was born and brought up on Islay; I left as a 17-year-old to go to university and I eventually qualified as a solicitor. Islay has a population of between 3,000 and 3,500 people. It would not have been possible for me to return to Islay to go into legal practice with a population of that sort. I have lived most of my adult life in Orkney, where we have a population of about 22,000, which is big enough to sustain that professional community. The legal and accountancy firms, the wide range of doctors and the bigger hospital are things that allow us to maintain that mix so that we can keep our community functioning properly.

The history of Orkney and Shetland is slightly different from that of the Western Isles. Our population in Shetland was down to about 16,000 in the mid-1970s, at which point the oil industry came. Since then, the population grew quite rapidly, and it rests at around 22,000 or 23,000. That tells us that the critical thing to grow a population is the availability of a good mix of well-paid and varied jobs in the local economy.

Fifty years later, as we enter a period of decline in oil and gas as part of our economy, the just transition matters to us more than anywhere else. We see opportunities for our community in the development of, for example, marine renewables, tidal power and tidal stream generation, but if we push oil and gas off a cliff before the technologies are mature enough to come on stream, people will not hang around in places such as Orkney or Shetland, waiting for something else to happen. They have a history and a legitimate expectation of working in good, well-paid jobs, and they will take their skills elsewhere.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the importance of housing, which is probably the single biggest constraint on economic growth in the Northern Isles. I had an interesting conversation recently with the chief executive of Hjaltland housing association in Shetland. He was talking about a proposal he had put to a significant contractor, which was going to employ a significant number of people for a good number of years. He said, essentially, “If they pay the rent for us in advance”—this was a big corporate so it was rich enough to do it—“we will build the houses. Then, at the end of the time, the housing stock will revert to us and be available for other use in our community.” That was a brilliant idea—absolutely fantastic, not least in its simplicity. I think that the corporate would be up for that, but it was not seen with favour by the Government in Edinburgh and has subsequently been discouraged. That sort of creativity—coming up with solutions to problems that are appropriate to the community—is critical if we are to halt the reverse in numbers.

The infrastructure available for people in island communities is also essential, including digital infrastructure such as modern broadband and the availability of mobile phone coverage, given the problems that could be faced by communities such as mine when the copper wire switch-off happens for landline technologies. Other infrastructure is essential as well, such as the physical infrastructure of a ferry service. The hon. Gentleman does not need me to tell him about the problems that come from the lack of a reliable ferry service, because his constituents have endured that. But even within Shetland, and increasingly in Orkney as well, the internal ferry services have been problematic, as fleets get older and need to be replaced. Again, we need to listen to the communities. Those in Unst, Yell, Whalsay and Bressay are all keen to say, “Actually, for the next generation, we don’t want to rely on ferries. We want the construction of fixed links and tunnels, which would offer us opportunities to build and grow businesses.”

I spoke to one woman in Yell recently who told me that she would love to go back and have her home in Yell—she was born and brought up in Unst originally—but she has two children with medical conditions, which means that she does not want to take the risk of having to rely on a ferry journey, possibly in the middle of the night, should her children need medical attention at the hospital. Therefore, somebody who would like to live in Yell or Unst is forced to live on the Shetland mainland.

The problems of population decline for Shetland as a whole—if we look at the headline figures—may not be as acute, but the smaller island communities in Shetland continue to see that decline. This is about giving every community the empowerment to come up with solutions that are appropriate to them in their communities. I know that others want to speak, but I could say a lot more about this, and I hope that we will return to it at some point in the future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that serious point, one that I will draw on in my remarks. I will continue to work with him and others on how we tackle that serious issue.

Migration has been an important part of the history of our nation, as was raised by the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire. He will know, as I do, that for generations people have travelled here from all over the world, contributing to our economy, studying in our universities, working in our public services and being part of our communities and the way we have built our nation together. All of us here are alive to the demographic challenges that remote communities particularly are facing. We are also committed to ensuring that the immigration system works in the interests of the whole of the UK.

We have seen net migration treble in five years, driven largely by a big increase in overseas recruitment. We are clear that net migration must come down, and that the immigration system needs to be properly controlled and managed. I make that point because it is for that reason we are setting out a new approach, which is integral to tackling some of the challenges outlined today. We will link migration policy and visa controls to skills and labour market policy so that immigration is not used as an alternative to training or tackling workforce problems in the UK.

[Mr Carmichael]

Will the Minister give way?

[Seema Malhotra]

I have to make my remarks, and the right hon. Member has spoken. I will come back if I have time.

On the vision of developing more sustainable alternatives to labour market issues, I am sure that we are all keen to work together. There is no other way. That is why I have asked my officials to work closely with Seafish, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and across Government to address the issues facing the sector and our rural communities, and to make sure we are building together a more sustainable workforce and community.

[Seema Malhotra]

I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman, who is a long-standing campaigner on these issues. I make the point that it is important that we work closely across Westminster and with our devolved Administrations. This is part of an important reset, and it is important that we look at how we tackle these challenges together. Many of the issues that have been raised are matters for the Scottish Government and for local authorities in Scotland, but it is important that we look at how we work together across Westminster and with the Scottish Government to ensure that we have shared projects that are a success.

[Mr Carmichael]

I have said often enough that the medium to long-term structural problems in the catching sector for deckhands have to be solved by a better training programme, to make sure that we recruit from our own fishing and coastal communities. In the meantime, working together with the Scottish Government, where the responsibility lies, to bridge the gap with the availability of visas for incoming crew seems to me the perfect way in which the Governments here and in Edinburgh can work together to provide the industry with what it needs.

[Seema Malhotra]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention. I shall be coming on to some of these issues in my remarks, but let me first talk briefly about the regional visa schemes that have been alluded to. I am aware that the devolved Government in Scotland retain a key interest in this, and in 2022 the Migration Advisory Committee suggested that the Government could explore the issue further. It is important to say that the MAC must hear the voices of our devolved Administrations across the country.

Proposals have included measures to restrict migrants to certain areas, but there is currently no legal basis to do so, even if we wanted to. Fundamentally, overseas recruits are likely to be affected by the same factors as anyone else when making decisions about whether to move into or remain in remote parts of the country. That means that jobs must be available that offer sustainable salaries and attractive working conditions, but we must also ensure affordable housing, transport links, suitable local infrastructure such as broadband, and childcare. So many of those issues affect where people choose to settle and to make communities their home.

Addressing such concerns, and thereby making challenging careers more attractive, has to be the focus of the work to tackle depopulation. Otherwise, even migrants drawn to the UK to perform these roles can leave their jobs and the area as soon as a more favourable opportunity becomes available. In some of the analysis of the Fresh Talent experience, that has been part of the story. It is important to learn lessons—