Chamber and committees

The previous witnesses alluded to things that perhaps should be included in the bill, such as initial facilitation that makes it easier for small businesses and community organisations to engage, processes to engage community organisations at the start of a process and standardised reporting. Those things might make a difference. Does COSLA think that the inclusion of those issues might strengthen the bill? Right now, local authorities are required to do some additional consultation and produce a report—there is no additional activity, duties or obligations. My concern is that, without exploring some of those additional possibilities, nothing much will change in some areas.

Forgive me, you are slightly putting words in my mouth. Equally, if we had fundamentally different standards for weights, measures and product information from the rest of the UK that made it difficult to sell to the rest of the UK, there would be an outcry among those self-same people. There is a balance to be struck, partly because withdrawing from the EU has meant that there is a broad range of market regulation that now exists at UK level that was previously at European level. More importantly, as much as I believe in devolution, I also believe that we want common market standards and as big a market as possible, including at UK level. All that I am asking is whether there is not a balance to be struck and whether divergence is not a concern regardless of what market you are talking about. Is it not about how those competing interests are balanced?

I understand that. Basically, I think that there is a balance to be struck. Given that the bill was essentially inherited from the previous UK Administration—and I think that we are still in a new world in terms of understanding market regulation in a post-EU context—has the Scottish Government made an approach to the Cabinet Office seeking a broader set of principles and understandings, so that devolution is front-loaded into its thinking? It appears that we have found ourselves in the position of having to think about devolution after legislation has been drafted. If the Scottish Government has such concerns, is it trying to be proactive about finding new approaches to these issues?

Have you formalised that in any way, by trying to seek a more systematic approach?

It has been a really interesting discussion. I will more or less do a series of supplementaries and pull on some of the threads that have already been discussed. I will start with Matt Pearce. Is a fair summary of what you are saying that there is a risk of there being a bit of a top-down exercise and that we need to think about how we facilitate engagement from community organisations and whether we need to compel councils to do that? Do you agree with Stacey Dingwall that if it is passed as it is, the bill will create a set of reports, but with a danger that not much will change? Is that a fair summary?

That makes sense.

Stacey Dingwall, could I ask you a couple of questions? I do not know whether I need to declare an interest, but I obviously have some prejudices towards small businesses, and when I was running a small business I was a member of the Federation of Small Businesses.

I was struck by a couple of things that you said, the most important of which being the point about councils not always disclosing expenditure below £50,000. Do you know why they do not? I am guessing that most of your members, if they use Xero, Sage or QuickBooks, could detail their expenditure to very small amounts of money. Is it something that councils cannot do and, if so, do they have the right systems in place? Alternatively, is it something that they will not do?

It is very helpful. I think we should try to overcome those issues, but that is a very helpful contribution.

This question is for Adrian Sargent. In much of what community wealth building stands for, you can see the threads of development economics. Central to that has been a focus on building actual capital—financial capital—through looking at micro-loan systems and how they can evolve and how communities can organise. Is there sufficient focus on how capital can be built? Regulation of financial providers is obviously reserved, but the level of assistance is also a factor. Could more be done to look at how to set up credit unions or organisations that use peer financing, especially commercial peer-to-peer financing? Could the question of how to provide greater assistance to the creation of those sorts of organisations be explored further?

The previous witnesses touched on the fact that there are already existing levers and vehicles in this area, such as the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015 and community asset transfer, and we discussed the fact that the bill does not re-examine or tweak any of those things. Do COSLA members have any interest in how we can make the process easier, more straightforward and beneficial in the interests of community wealth building and local authorities themselves?

Again, however, that is more an expression of hope regarding what might be in the guidance rather than a suggestion for something that might be specified in the bill.