GLASGOW Provan is home to the second-fastest growing business community is Scotland.

That’s right – a new report from the Federation of Small Businesses this week highlighted my constituency as one of the hotbeds of business growth in the country. Supporting enterprise locally has been one of my key priorities as an MSP, so this news is especially welcome.

Too often the east end of Glasgow has suffered from a bad reputation. But like many of our most deprived communities it’s a place crammed full of talent and passion. It’s great that others see the value in the area and are using and investing in local businesses. Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of Scotland’s economy, as employers and as drivers of innovation, and it bodes well for the future of Scotland if areas like Provan are performing so well on this indicator.

We need to stop looking at areas of high deprivation as problems to be solved, and instead see them as assets to be nurtured. Scotland’s greatest asset is not oil, or whisky, but its people.

This asset has been shamefully neglected by successive governments at Westminster. It is our job as politicians to empower and enable people to be able to fulfil their potential.

Self-determination is a founding principle of the SNP, and it must start at an individual and community level. I’m proud to be part of a party which uses this principle as a basis for economic policy in government. At SNP Conference last week, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon built upon her ambitious Programme for Government with a series of policy announcements.

Doubling spending on free childcare supports more women into work, bringing millions into the economy, and creating jobs. Empowering families to be able to make the decision to have a second earner increases consumption and benefits the whole economy.

Empowerment is recognising that equality doesn’t mean treating everybody the same, and that some groups of people need an extra hand sometimes. This is why the FM’s commitment to make care-experienced young people exempt from Council Tax is a step forward in supporting Scotland’s young people and in helping care-leavers to get on their feet and find work.

Empowerment is letting citizens reap the benefits of living in a resource-rich nation, and not allowing our assets to be stripped and sold to the highest bidder.

A new, government-owned energy company will do just that – providing homegrown energy as close to cost price as possible. This will help us to keep income earned in Scotland in circulation in the Scottish economy.

Like our communities, Scotland can’t wait for others to decide for us – we have to take matters into our own hands, with empowerment and inclusion at the heart of what we do.

It’s clear that we have made progress in the last 10 years, but the focus now is on what we will achieve in the future.

We can no longer trail in the wake of what others have decided – it’s time to take Scotland’s future into Scotland’s hands.