Local Government and Regeneration Committee

Meeting date: Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Official Report 506KB pdf

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Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy in Scotland

We have with us a panel of six folks from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to give us evidence on the commission on strengthening local democracy in Scotland. I welcome Councillor David O’Neill, chair of the commission and president of COSLA; Councillor Rhondda Geekie; Councillor Drew Hendry; Louise MacDonald; Geoff Mawdsley; and Adam Stewart, secretary to the commission.

Would you like to make an opening statement, Councillor O’Neill?

Thanks, convener. We are not a delegation from COSLA; we are a delegation from the commission on strengthening local democracy. I make the point about the commission’s title that the commission is about local democracy, not necessarily local government. I will say a bit more about that.

I am grateful to you for allowing us to start a bit earlier. Drew Hendry and I have to get away at about half past 10 or very soon after. We have a meeting with a swathe of cabinet secretaries who could meet us only today. If we could not have met today, it would have been well into the new year before we could have.

It is a really exciting time for me as the president of COSLA and the chair of the commission, because I believe that doing things locally is the most effective way of improving people’s lives. As a country, we need to do much better than we currently are doing. Since the end of the second world war, much has been done to improve the wealth and health of our country, but it has all been done through a top-down approach, with national strategies. Although we have seen increases in wealth and undoubted increases in our nation’s health, inequalities have grown during that time. In particular, we have seen the gap in wealth increase between the haves and the have nots.

An example of how that gap in wealth manifests itself is the gap in health. Life expectancy has increased across the board, but the gap between life expectancy for those at the top and those at the bottom has widened. Take the example of two kids born today, perhaps just a few streets apart in one of our cities. The first child is born into a community that suffers high levels of intergenerational unemployment and deprivation. The other kid is born a few streets away in a different postcode and data zone, in a community that does not have high levels of unemployment or deprivation. The kid from the latter community can realistically expect to live well into its 80s. It will have its three score year and 10, and then some extra, and its quality of life during that lifespan will be good. The kid that is born into the community with high levels of deprivation and intergenerational unemployment will be extremely lucky to see its 60th birthday—fact. It is not likely to see its 60th birthday and, with an additional bit of bad luck, it will die before it is 50. That is a gap in life expectancy of 25-plus years, which is unacceptable in a modern, developed western democracy. The commission is partly about how we address the outcomes for our communities and how we address such issues. I believe that, if we continue to try to fix such problems with a top-down approach, we will not improve the situation.

It is clear that local democracy in Scotland is weak in comparison with the rest of Europe. Why do we think that that is important? Because the places that we look to for examples—north European countries such as Germany and the Scandinavian countries—take a bottom-up approach to working with communities and have far better outcomes for their communities. Life expectancy in those places is in a much healthier position than life expectancy in Scotland. The commission is exploring whether a more local approach can transform inequalities and improve outcomes for our communities.

It is no secret that this is a crucial time for democracy. A huge debate is taking place about Scotland’s future, but that debate must be about improving the lives of people in our community. That is the crux of the matter. The issue is not so much the constitutional outcome as what it does for our communities and whether it enables people to improve their quality of life.

We brought the commission together because we believe that there is space in the debate for all of us. A lot has been said about decentralisation to Scotland, but much less has been said about decentralisation within Scotland. I am a great fan of devolution—that will come as no surprise to anybody around the table—but the devolution should not stop in Edinburgh and most certainly should not stop at the council chambers; it should go right down to the heart of our communities.

The story from local people is not really about the workings of Holyrood or Westminster but about the local services that communities need. I want the commission to be about that and to give people a real say in what matters locally. It is about libraries, not legal advice. It is about schools, not submarines. It is about care, not currency. Those are the things that matter to people in their communities and in their families.

We need to recognise that Scotland will have new powers. Irrespective of the outcome of the referendum in September next year, Scotland will be a different place. We need to think about where the powers should rest. I believe that decisions should be made as close to communities as possible. Power is not designed to stop at Holyrood or in the council chambers. The commission is thinking about what empowering local services and local accountability could mean.

We want to build on the commitment to local democracy that all councils have already begun to make. Earlier this year, all 32 councils unanimously agreed to a vision, which we called local matters. It sounds grand, but it is essentially about the sort of local government that we want to have in five years’ time and what we need to do to deliver it. Councils have put that approach at the heart of their work, but I wanted to test that thinking to find out what delivering on it would mean.

I will describe how the commission is working. The commission is independent; it is not COSLA or Scottish local government. There are no preordained conclusions for the commission. The media have suggested that I have a fixed view and I have been asked what will happen if the evidence proves otherwise. We will follow the evidence; we will not ignore it—to ignore it would be bizarre.

I emphasise that this is not a COSLA commission. It involves equal numbers of local government members and non-local government members, some of whom are here today. We are open to new ideas and our terms of reference are broad. We are supported by an independent secretariat.

We are absolutely not driven by party politics. Members of all political parties and none in local government are represented. However, we are all united in a belief in social justice, improving outcomes and reducing inequality. We all believe that local democracy in Scotland must be stronger, whatever the referendum’s outcome.

We understand that there is a difference between local democracy and local government. Our focus is on stronger local democracy, not about grabbing powers for local government. We are open to change. I doubt that the way in which things are done now will always be right for post-referendum Scotland, and doing things more locally involves looking at community representation and participative democracy as well as a representative democracy. The commission is concerned with working through those issues.

For us, it is not good enough to say that democracy means someone coming out to vote every four or five years—that is not participative democracy. Democracy has to be about much more than that. It must involve engaging with people in our communities so that they have a real say in what happens. That would go a long way towards improving the ownership of local democracy and local services, and would hopefully help to drive up participation.

This is Scotland’s first commission on stronger local democracy. We want to put stronger democracy on the map. We are innovative, and ambitious and I believe that we are, indeed, breaking the mould. It is too early to speculate about conclusions, but we believe that the challenges and opportunities in Scotland need local solutions. One size does not fit all. In many cases, what applies in Glasgow will not apply in Orkney and what applies in Edinburgh will not apply in the Borders. We need local solutions.

We are very much aware that there will be a new situation in Scotland, and we want to push power down to the lowest possible level. We realise that better democracy is about Scotland’s whole system of government; it is not just about local government.

We will work in an independent, non-partisan and evidence-based way. All our energies are going into setting up that process, and only once we have done that will we consider recommendations.

We hope that the committee will get behind our approach and will help to get the process started. We would be delighted to receive a submission of evidence from the committee by 20 December, all being well.

I am struck by a number of things that you have said. Obviously, many members of the committee have served in local government, and are therefore aware of some of the things that go on in councils across the country.

Your phrase “schools not submarines” resonated with me—I was particularly thinking about Trident nuclear submarines. You have said previously that you want local government to have a place in the constitution. Could you say how the commission is going to approach that issue? Of course, you would first need to have a constitution. Could you give us some more information on the issue?

Local government, as it exists in the United Kingdom today, exists not as a matter of right but because another sphere of government has decided that it should exist. In England, it exists because the Westminster Parliament has set up a system of local government in that country—it is probably the devolved Administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland that have done it in those two areas. In Scotland, local government exists because the Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament have decided that we should have it. No one has said that they want to do away with local government or has talked about a wholesale reorganisation of local government, but we are not protected constitutionally. In other developed western democracies, particularly in northern Europe, local government is contained in their constitutions, and the fact that there shall be local government is in legislation.

09:45

Why do I feel concerned about that? Well, despite my youthful good looks, I have lived through a period when a Government decided to abolish Scottish local government. Many of you will recall when Strathclyde Regional Council had the temerity to campaign against the privatisation of Scotland’s water industry and had the power and strength to prevent that from happening. However, what it did not have was the power and strength to prevent a vengeful Government from doing away with the council by abolishing the regional system in Scotland. I am not arguing that the two-tier district and regional system was right and I am not arguing that it was wrong, but central Government should not have the power to decide whether there should be local government; the people should have the power to decide that. If anyone is going to abolish or change the system of local government in Scotland, it should be done only with the consent of the people and not be done at a whim.

Your contention, convener, that the protection can come only from a written constitution in an independent Scotland is one—

I did not say that.

Your contention that the protection can come only from a written constitution is one that I reject. The United Kingdom does have a constitution; it is not written but is contained in case law and custom and practice and exists by dint of the role that institutions within the United Kingdom play. I therefore do not think that we need a written constitution.

One of the requests that COSLA made to the Scottish Government was that the European Charter of Local Self-Government should be included in the proposed community empowerment and renewal bill, but the Scottish Government has rejected that at this stage. That is something that the committee could help us with. It would be useful if the bill was amended to include the charter, which would be a very large step in the right direction to ensure constitutional protection for Scottish local government and local democracy.

I am sure that we will come back to the constitutional aspect.

Good morning. Like Councillor O’Neill, I have lived through two changes to council structures. I remember the old burgh and county councils, which were changed in 1975, and the scrapping of the regional councils, which Councillor O’Neill mentioned, and the formation of the current local government structure. Councillor O’Neill is right that the changes were made by Westminster Governments and not by Scottish Parliaments or Governments. I would argue that they were made for particular political reasons. I think that Councillor O’Neill alluded to one of them, which was Strathclyde Regional Council’s referendum on the water industry. However, there was also the wonderful campaign on benefits take-up that Strathclyde Regional Council and Lothian Regional Council were involved in in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which led to the demise of the regional councils as a structure.

To go to the heart of what Councillor O’Neill is saying about the commission on strengthening local democracy in Scotland, I note from the panel that you have pulled together that there is no one representing community councils or residents and tenants associations. Many community councils feel that they are a form of local democracy that goes beyond local government and they sometimes feel that local government is too large a structure and too far removed from the decision making at local community level. Why did you feel that it was unnecessary to invite representatives of community councils or residents and tenants associations to form part of your commission to examine the role of local democracy?

I will try to get everybody in here, so I would be grateful for brief answers.

The commission has 20 members and half of them are not from local government. We have a very substantial representation from the third sector. Perhaps I could leave it to them to say a wee bit more, but—

Sorry, but the third sector does not represent community councils. I think that they would quite rightly reject that. Community councils are bodies that were created after 1975 when the burgh and county councils were scrapped. They were seen as a form of democracy that could interact with local authorities. They were given certain obligations and commitments at the time of their creation, but they feel that they are not being listened to or able to fully engage. Some—but not all—local authorities bypass or ignore community councils. My question is why community councils or residents and tenants associations were not included in the commission. Irrespective of the commission’s size, those democratic bodies, which try to engage actively with local authorities, seem to have been ignored in your commission.

What I was going on to say was not only that we have third sector representatives on the commission but that we have put out a call for evidence to organisations, including community councils and associations. I am a great fan of community associations—they do a power of work in their communities. It is open to anyone who wishes to make a submission to us. We would be happy to sit down with them and discuss their views.

Every community council has a different view. It would be difficult for us to ensure that they are all represented properly on the commission, so a much better way is to ask them for evidence.

I sit in on community council meetings—I am sure that others do, too—and talk them through what we are doing. In asking for evidence, you would probably get one community council talking against the other. Some wards have more than one community council, so even in one ward it would be difficult to get a representation from those community councils. A much better way is to bring together all their evidence and make a statement on their views rather than to have them, as you suggest, sit on the commission.

I return to what David O’Neill said about areas of deprivation. East Dunbartonshire, which I represent, is always thought of as a leafy suburb, but areas of deprivation exist there too—a fact that is often ignored when deprivation is looked at at the national level, because it is never thought of in that way. We work together with the voluntary and private sectors and community councils in partnership to tackle deprivation through early intervention. Even within a couple of miles in one council area, there can be a 10-year difference in life expectancy. All that must be taken into account, but I take John Wilson’s point about community councils. I used to be a community councillor, so I know how they feel. We will not ignore them—they will be brought into the debate—but it would be difficult for them to sit on the commission.

It is a well-made point that we must engage better with community councils and tenants groups because they are an important part of the work that the commission should be looking at. I take the point that you always start from an imperfect place. To get absolutely everybody who could represent local democracy in one room would be a challenge that is probably beyond us at this point.

However, for my part—I am sure that other members would insist on this too—I will take genuine care to ensure that the concerns and, more important, the participation of both community councils and tenants groups are made a critical part of the work given that the general sense and feeling in Scotland about empowering people to take more of their own decisions is about creating more community planning partnerships and doing more with the community across a wider base. Therefore, it is imperative that we be inclusive. If we, at the end of the commission, have failed to be inclusive with community councils and tenants groups, the work will not be worth the paper that our report is written on. We must take that into account and we must do that work.

I agree. My day job outwith the commission is chief executive of Young Scot, the national youth information charity for young people aged 11 to 26. Young Scot is a membership organisation for young people and we have more than 520,000 members.

On receiving the invitation to join the commission, I was very keen to ensure that we would not be shutting out anybody from the debate, so John Wilson’s point about ensuring that we listen to community councils and tenants associations, as well as a range of other groups, is well made. That is one of the priorities, and I am reassured by the fact that everyone on the commission has a commitment to ensure that it happens. We are at the start of the process, but I have been left in no doubt that there is a willingness to go beyond and to try as hard as we can to reach out, to hear from communities across Scotland and to listen to different voices in the conversation. We are at an early stage and we have mechanisms in place that will allow that engagement to happen, but we are open to other mechanisms, so if we can listen to and engage with people in other ways, we want to hear about them.

I am director of the think tank Reform Scotland, which has advocated a stronger role for community councils. We did a survey of community councils for a paper that we published last year called “Renewing Local Government”. There is a greater role for local government, and one area that I hope that the commission will look at is how we push power down closer to communities. That does not just mean community councils—there are other ways of doing it and of involving local people—but I would certainly be disappointed if we do not engage seriously with community councils and other representatives of communities, and I will certainly push for that on the commission. You can be assured that we will take a lot of evidence from those groups, because they are absolutely a key part of the process.

Given the timing issues, I am happy to leave further questions to a later date, convener.

In that case, Richard Baker is next.

The terms of reference for the commission state that one objective is to

“Investigate a local approach to service and accountability”.

Councillor O’Neill mentioned concerns about a top-down approach. In the Parliament, we have debated for some time the tension between trying to achieve efficiencies through the national delivery of services and ensuring local accountability. The most recent example of that relates to police and fire services.

Do you have any initial thoughts on what needs to be done to achieve greater accountability in delivering local services and what needs to change in the current approach? Councillor O’Neill mentioned concerns about a top-down approach, but what particular areas for improvement inform the concern that the commission seems to have?

I have two points on that. The words “efficiency” and “effectiveness” are not necessarily the same and nor are they necessarily mutually exclusive. For example, down south, the criticism has been made that a 15-minute visit is not enough for a care worker to see that an elderly person is okay and has taken their medication and food. Those visits are certainly efficient, in as much as the job of work can be done in 15 minutes and three or four people can be seen in an hour in that way. However, we have to ask ourselves whether the approach is effective in doing what we want to do, which is to give the elderly person human contact and to give them the confidence to live in their own home and to know that they will be okay, thereby reducing the number of unplanned admissions to hospital, which is a big problem among elderly people. So far, we have not necessarily been very good at getting the balance right between efficiency and effectiveness, and we need to get better at it. That applies across the public sector, rather than just being peculiar to one area of it.

Quite often, we hear the term “postcode lottery” in relation to services. However, local government and local agencies do not necessarily deliver services in exactly the same way across Scotland—it would be ridiculous to think that they should do so—and nor do individual local authorities necessarily deliver services across their areas in exactly the same way. Councils tailor the services to suit the needs of the community.

I will give two examples from my council. Seven or eight years ago, North Ayrshire Council built a brand-new secondary school on the island of Arran. Arran has a population of 5,000, while the mainland of North Ayrshire has a population of 130,000, but Arran is half the landmass of North Ayrshire. We would not dream of building a secondary school for 300 pupils on the mainland, but it was appropriate to do so on the island of Arran, so we did it.

North Ayrshire does not configure its care services for the elderly at home on the island of Arran in the same way as we configure them on the mainland—it would be bizarre to do that. We tailor them to suit the needs of the communities and the people whom we serve. That is not a postcode lottery; it is local decision making, local priority setting and tailoring the services to what is needed.

10:00

You are telling us what happens at the moment in terms of local councils making the appropriate local decisions for certain areas, but Mr Baker was trying to get to the concerns about having a top-down approach rather than hear about the flexibilities that you have within the current system.

At the beginning, you talked about life expectancy in certain areas. One of the main reasons for a shortened life is poverty, yet the tax and benefits system is controlled by Westminster. We have no say in it here and local government has no say in it either. How should we deal with that situation? I think that that is the thrust of Mr Baker’s question.

That is a relevant point. We have made similar points to the UK Government in our discussions on welfare reform. There needs to be more local flexibility.

I will give you another example from North Ayrshire. The Department for Work and Pensions spends almost as much on North Ayrshire as North Ayrshire Council spends. If North Ayrshire Council were able to influence even a few percentage points of that spend and allocate it to local priorities—for example, youth unemployment is a terrible problem in North Ayrshire—we could make a tremendous difference and there would be less need for the DWP to pay out in benefits.

In England, under the city deal, cities have been allowed to have a treasury function so that the entirety of public expenditure in a city is controlled from one centre within that city. If the city is able to reduce the spend that the DWP needs to make—for example, by getting people back into work—a percentage of the money remains in the city instead of it all going straight back to the UK Treasury. There is then almost a self-fulfilling prophecy as the city is able to do more and more within its area.

The city deal, which has been rolled out for the large cities in England and is currently being rolled out for some of the smaller cities, would be of great interest in Scotland. It would require a tripartite discussion between local government, the Scottish Government and the UK Government, but I think that it would be worth having.

Does anyone else want to comment on that point? We are pretty short of time.

As was pointed out earlier, there are different views on the commission about the constitutional issue and the effect of tackling the top-down approach. I would like all the money, rather than a few percentage points, to be controlled in Scotland, but that is a point of difference between me and other members of the commission. I think that we should have control over welfare here.

The key point is how we challenge the top-down system that we have at the moment. There is an opportunity for us to consider not only how we might gain additional powers, but how we might re-examine the powers that we have. There is a real deficit within local government, in communities and across the piece in that we probably do not understand what powers we can use just now. If we look at how we could enhance that position with future opportunities to have greater responsibility within Scotland, we see that there is a massive opportunity for change to ensure that communities can build up.

Some good work is going on on the ground, through communities, to tackle the inequalities that exist. I can give you examples of where we are working with communities to do that. In my local authority, Highland Council, we have collaborated on community planning partnerships. Good work is going on, but there is an awful lot for us to look at. I hope that we get a thorough examination of how we can challenge the existing models.

There is an important link between taxation, representation and expenditure, as has been said. Obviously, we have done a lot of work on how fiscal powers could be devolved from Westminster to Holyrood, but it cannot stop there. The same arguments that apply to that must apply to the relationship between Holyrood and local government. We should be looking at pushing the powers further down.

I accept the point that it does not require independence, but it certainly requires a major transfer of fiscal power to enable us to give local government the ability to raise at least the majority of its own revenue. That would be a huge boost to the autonomy of local government, and I am certainly keen to explore as part of the commission how we might do that and test that proposition.

My question, which is about funding, follows on neatly from that. Currently, local government controls just less than 20 per cent of its income. My question is about the variety of funding opportunities.

There are new schemes, such as tax increment financing schemes and the business rates incentivisation scheme, but fundamentally both the council tax and business rates are not under your control. To what extent is that on your agenda? If you are taking a more localised view of expenditure, what about income generation?

The Scottish Parliament is already going through quite significant changes as a result of the Calman commission, and it will have more control over its resources in the future. How are you constructing a parallel discussion at the local level?

You started off correctly by talking about social justice, outcomes and services. That is a parallel discussion that relates to solidarity and how to spread income across the country. That is a huge issue, but it would be really useful to get a sense of the principles that you are looking at in local government funding.

Once you have established the principles for local government funding, or in parallel with doing that, will you consider the community level? We have talked a little bit about community councils but, if you are looking at a more locally driven agenda that is not, as David O’Neill said, just about local councils, what are the funding issues?

I want to go back to what was said about welfare reform and what has happened there. You are absolutely right—

Will you be brief, please, as a number of other folk want to come in and we have only a few minutes left?

I was going to make a comparison. Sarah Boyack is absolutely right: we currently have no control over our council tax and the amount that we set that at. We have to manage all the issues related to welfare reform and we have less funding to do that with, but the expectation is higher because of all the issues. We have to manage that situation.

If we have to look after all our citizens and be responsible for them, we should have some sort of tax-raising power. We should not have that taken away from us. I am sure that, in every council area, people have a huge expectation of what we should be able to deliver, and that is getting higher and more difficult for us to deal with because of the reforms that are happening. We therefore have that expectation but very little control locally, and what control we have is being eroded year on year by the different things that are coming in. That is a big concern for us, and we would like it to be resolved.

Ms MacDonald, do you have a view on that?

I am thinking about the question. Some of the questioning is on how technical a lot of the debate is and how quickly the debate can become quite technical. I am thinking about how we can have such a conversation at a local level. When the commission goes out and has evidence hearings, how can we have such a conversation and discuss the issues, and get an understanding of what that process means, looks like and feels like?

I am not a councillor and I do not work in local government—that is not part of my background. My position on the commission involves thinking about how we can have that conversation in a youth centre—for example, along the road in the 6VT youth cafe on Victoria Terrace. How can we have that conversation there? What would it look like? Sarah Boyack’s question and the questioning this morning are making me think about how the commission might explore those issues.

I will let Ms Boyack back in briefly.

That is why I asked about the principles that will underpin local government finance. Rather than getting into the technicalities of different types of funding, I am interested in what those principles are, in the same way that you set out that issue clearly for the commission. It would be useful for us to find out what principles you think should drive the funding of local government finance and community finance, and how you might get that discussion going.

I was keen to tease that out. Issues such as stability, certainty—

I said “briefly”, because three other folk have questions and we have only a short time.

Would you like to comment on stability and all the rest of it, Mr Stewart?

Only to confirm that the issue of resources and raising local revenue is one of the elements of the terms of reference for the commission. We will be looking at that quite closely. As Louise MacDonald mentioned, we have already begun that process by gathering public opinion on the visibility of how money is spent locally and whether that needs to be improved.

The issue is definitely on the agenda. At this stage, it is too early to draw conclusions, but we will be looking at it.

Grand. Stuart McMillan is next.

Who decided on the membership of the commission? How was it set up?

As I said, the commission comprises 20 members. We had to get a balance by having a wide range of members. I think that we have been reasonably successful in doing that. We have 20 members, who are there to challenge; no one is there to sit meekly by.

We could have made the commission bigger, but we wanted to get the right balance and size and we settled on 20 members. I think that we have a fairly good range of members.

It struck me that the commission’s 20 members are made up of 16 men and four women, and that none is from an ethnic background. In what way is that a balanced membership?

Sadly, I think that that reflects the reality of Scottish public life, particularly when it comes to local government elected representatives. We saw the introduction of the single transferable vote, which—

Can I stop you there? I accept your point about local government, but 10 of the members are not from councils.

I am coming to that.

It was claimed that the single transferable vote would increase diversity, but it did not—more than ever, Scottish local government is dominated by white middle-aged men such as me.

If we had tried harder, could we have got more women on the commission from sectors outwith local government? I am sure that we could have done, but we were limited to what we thought was a workable number. I do not think that we have a perfect mix of members, but I am confident that every one of the 20 members is on the commission because of their skill set. They are not there to sit and keep quiet; they are there to challenge.

Your submission is very bullish, but I am concerned about the timescale. How will you do all the work that you have set out, which includes the setting out of local approaches and the identification of long-term characteristics, in three months? That seems extremely tight. If you are to consult everyone, how will you be able to do that in such a short time?

Mr Mawdsley, would you like to have a crack at that?

Adam Stewart will be able to comment on the process, but although we have a heavy work programme, everyone on the commission is committed to it. We have lined up stakeholder sessions to discuss matters with the key players and to ensure that we take evidence from all the relevant bodies.

It is a two-stage process. The initial report will come out in that three-month period, but there will be a later report, too. We are all confident that we can meet the timescale, but we accept that it will take quite a lot of time to take the necessary evidence.

What will happen if you overrun?

I confirm that we are doing our work in two stages. We have already begun a great deal of work on the initial part. The first stage involves asking people what they think about local democracy at the moment and what it could look like in the future. We have a range of mechanisms to collect that information, which include opinion surveys, focus groups, stakeholder sessions and listening events with a range of different demographics.

By March, we hope to be able to say what people told us in response to the questions that we asked, which should give us some principles that we can work on. In the light of what people tell us, we will be able to think about what the future looks like from the point of view of recommendations for change. It will be the summer before we have the report on what the landscape will look like in the future.

The timescale is very tight, but there is a power of work going on at present. In January and February commission members will meet almost twice a week to take evidence to allow all that to happen by March in the first instance.

10:15

I have two questions; the first follows on from what Stuart McMillan said. I spoke to some of my community groups about the commission’s appearance before the committee today, and I showed them details of the membership. One of the points that they raised was, “Why are there so few women?”, and another was, “Why are there so many politicians?”

Did you consider the possibility of having a commission without political input that could report back to COSLA? That might avoid the potential for the recommendations to be challenged as having a political motivation.

I started by saying that the commission is on local democracy and not on local government, but local government obviously plays a substantial and significant role. One cannot ignore the fact that local government is there; it would be a bit bizarre not to have local government involved.

Councillor Geekie, you are one of only four women on the commission. What is your view?

I made the point about female representation early days—

Often.

Often and loudly. As one of only two women leaders in Scotland, I make that point often.

I am sorry—I have missed the point of your question, Mr McDonald. I beg your pardon.

With there being 10 councillors on the commission, is there a risk that the recommendations could be seen by some as having a political motivation rather than being about the delivery of local democracy?

As David O’Neill has said, it would have been very strange if local councillors had not been represented. We wanted to ensure that all parties were represented, but—as some of the other commissioners have said—the people who know best what happens in local government are obviously the leaders of councils and political groups. If we had not been part of the commission, we would have been criticised for that. People might have said, “You don’t want to spend the time and do the work to be part of it.”

It is difficult—we take your point, but it would have been a very strange situation if we had not been part of it.

I am on record at COSLA as saying right at the beginning that we had the balance wrong in terms of gender and ethnic mix. That was a clear concern for me when we started out.

As I mentioned earlier, the commission is imperfect because of the representation that we do not have. However, the key point, which has already been made, is that the commission is a starting point. Local government is pulling the work together and driving it forward. It is the first stage on our journey together, and it is appropriate that we take that step. That probably explains the natural imbalance that exists whereby the commission has a large degree of council representation while other areas are not so well represented at this point.

There is an opportunity in the next few months to take into account those issues and problems as part of our workload. Our work should not exclusively be about how we come to our opinions; it should also be about how we take on board other views as part of the journey.

As I have said previously, if we do not get it right, we cannot get it right at the end of whatever timescale we have; it will not be worth it. We need to make sure that the issue is thoroughly examined.

Ms MacDonald, do you want to comment as one of the independent members?

Yes, I have a couple of points. I understand the issue, but I hope that I am not on the commission just because I am a woman. That is my first comment.

On all such matters, there are always interesting discussions to be had. On the groups that we are all on, do I represent every 40-something woman in Scotland? No, I do not. I think that we are there because we have diverse experience—

Are you there representing young people in your capacity?

I would have a route for engaging young people. Part of our work is to create that opportunity and the space for that conversation to happen with different groups, as is the diversity of the grouping. We have Pam Duncan and others on the commission who can reach out to different groups.

The other point is: rather than us going off into separate rooms and having separate conversations—councillors in one room and local government officials in another—are we not always asked and encouraged to have those conversations and to do that work together? It is a sign of healthy democracy that we are able to challenge, and that has already been clear from the meetings that we have had. We also need to bring in that diverse grouping. I agree that the situation could be better, but we can build on the diversity that is required.

You are never going to get a perfect grouping of 20 people, but, as we have discussed, the evidence sessions can bring in other groups that need to be consulted.

From our point of view, the attraction of getting involved is that there is an opportunity to discuss issues that we have done a lot of work on and which we think are important, but which do not get the same level of publicity as other issues do. It also gives us a chance to test some ideas and put them out for greater scrutiny from the sort of people you are talking about, in the wider community.

On the question about politics, the commission’s work is not necessarily that political. If you are talking about local democracy, you can agree on where the powers should lie without necessarily agreeing on how those powers should be used. That is the whole essence of local democracy, and that is why the commission is important. It is about local democracy and enabling people to shape their own lives and their communities’ lives. That is what is important to us as an organisation—we have done a lot of work on it—and that is what we want to discuss and debate in the course of the commission.

I will come back to the idea of healthy local democracy. Right now, if they want to, people can log on to the internet and watch this committee proceeding. Later, they will be able to read everything that has been said at this committee meeting. When I was a local councillor, if one of my constituents wanted to look up a decision at a council meeting, they could see the motion that was tabled, the amendment to that motion and the vote that was taken, but they could not see a single word that was said or watch the proceedings unless they attended the meeting at the town house. Is the commission looking at how we strengthen accountability and transparency of decision making in local government?

I used the phrase “participative democracy”, and part of that participation is being able to scrutinise representative democracy. I spent 13 years as the leader of North Ayrshire Council and seldom did we take any items in private—we would do that only if we were talking about an individual—but I am also conscious of the fact that seldom did members of the public come along. That happened only when some sort of controversial decision was being taken, so I take your point.

Will the commission itself be looking at that aspect of televising, webcasting and recording much better what goes on—not just the decisions, but also what happens in council chambers across the country?

I can confirm that that point has been raised by commission members, and we are keen to ensure that the commission leads by example with those processes. We have mentioned a few elements of data collection or evidence panel sessions. We are working with a number of people at the moment to try to do some webcasting, podcasting and interaction through social media and a whole host of other areas, trying to make that work as successful as possible. Our papers are public and are available on the website as a starting point.

If we are going to have the serious discussion that we are likely to have about additional power devolving down to local government, people need to have some assurance that they will be able to effectively scrutinise the way in which local government is operating. I know that some councils do webcasting, but verbatim reports of council meetings, which are not currently produced, might be one thing that should be considered.

It is vital that we are transparent in all aspects of the process, because we are talking about local communities being able to participate in what we are doing. The only way to get that kind of reach is to let people see and hear what we are doing.

On the issue of power and who makes decisions, some of the answers that we have heard today almost predetermine the outcome of the commission, which will be that local government makes decisions about how it raises and spends its money.

If the commission is truly about local democracy, how do we ensure that we get the power to the communities to make the decisions? We already have that in some community planning partnerships, and the area management committees throughout Scotland have been established by local authorities to allow local area and community organisations to make decisions along with elected members at local budget-setting levels.

How do we get to a stage where power has genuinely been devolved not just to local government but to local communities so that they can decide how local authority funding is spent in their areas?

I think that we have got the gist, Mr Wilson.

We do a huge consultation on that point at budget time. Given the pressures that we are all under, we ask people how they want us to determine our funding for the following year. We are involved in that all the time, working with local people. The other thing is that a lot of our funding goes out to the very organisations that you talked about, as we provide part of the funding of organisations in the community that deliver for local people. Meaningful involvement is important.

It is certainly about much more than devolution to local government; it has to be about devolution to communities.

I will give an example. The man or woman who runs the local boys or girls football team is doing much more than just running a football team. They are engaging the kids in diversionary activities, lifestyle choices and health activities. I do not know anything about running football teams, so why am I sitting in the council chambers taking decisions about that? It is the people who are involved—the people at the grassface, if you like—who should be doing that. We need to be careful not to place on people a burden that they do not have the skill set to manage, but we should absolutely have them involved.

I am sure that we will deal with a lot of those issues during our discussions on the community empowerment and renewal bill. Power devolved is power retained, some folk have said, and there was lots of talk of devolution there.

On how we can ensure that the process works and how we can get that engagement, one of the challenges for us throughout the process, both in the commission and day to day, is to act as a proper enabler—not just as an organisation that says, “We’ll help you to do this”, but as an organisation that gives people the ability and opens up opportunities for them to participate properly.

I agree with what has been said about consultation and so forth, but we have to start to look at what communities want to do, in terms of building a local plan from their community council ward level up to other levels, and what their priorities are. We need to start to work in that way. It is a matter of being open minded and ensuring that we have used all our existing thinking and our existing powers. It is about looking at what we need to enhance that work and making sure that we have properly opened all the doors and provided support and training—becoming a proper enabler, as I said.

Point 5 of your remit mentions the current landscape of democracy in Scotland. Are you going to look at the CPPs, arm’s-length external organisations, community health and care partnerships and other such bodies as well?

Mr Stewart is the secretary of the commission.

We are looking across the whole system of government. I think that it was made clear in Councillor O’Neill’s opening statement that we realise that local government is only one element. The whole system of government is really about pushing power down to local levels.

We have not had specific discussions on partnership arrangements, whether they are ALEOs or CPPs, but as part of the evidence-gathering process we will look at a number of themes early in the new year, one of which is partnership and integration. We are inviting in a host of people to scrutinise that issue in more detail. It is clearly a little early to say anything about the conclusions, but it is certainly part of the work programme.

Mr Mawdsley, do you have a view?

We have done a lot of work on democratic accountability and how we can look at quangos more generally. That is certainly something that we should explore as part of the commission. There is a question mark over how democratic they are, and if we are looking at local democracy we have to look at the accountability of organisations. I would certainly push for us to look at that.

In your opening statement, Councillor O’Neill, you mentioned local government in Germany and Scandinavia. Will the commission take evidence from local government and local bodies in places such as those?

We hope to be able to do that. One of our commission members is a past secretary-general of the Council of European Municipalities and the Regions, so there is experience on the commission. We certainly want to be able to look at what other places are doing.

10:30

Does anybody else have a view on whether you should talk to folk elsewhere to find out their experiences in their constitutional positions?

Absolutely. It is vital for us to take a look out of Scotland into other countries where these things are working and have been proven to work. It is common sense for us to do that, and for my part I would certainly be looking for us to do it.

Definitely. There is a huge amount to learn from other countries about community participation. Many countries have much lower tiers of local government that are much closer to their communities and have significant powers. We can learn a lot about how we can make the system more flexible and more responsive to local communities from countries such as Norway, where local authorities at a very local level have quite significant financial powers as well as powers over other issues.

I confirm that point. We are pleased that the commission is making its presence felt in Europe and particularly in Brussels. We understand that a number of submissions are coming in from some of our sister organisations across Europe as part of our first evidence-gathering process. We have also commissioned some desk-based research on the charter of local self-government and how the UK and Scotland compare against it. Some steps are in motion that may lead to further discussions, probably early in the new year.

Thank you very much for your evidence this morning. I realise that we had quite a short time to fit everything in, and we may get back to you on certain points. I wish you success with your meetings later today.

Convener, it would be really useful if the committee made a submission to the commission.

We are not in the business of making a submission, but without a doubt we will keep a close eye on what you are doing and consider a number of the points that you made today.

On that point, convener, it may be useful for the committee to take further evidence from the commission at a later date once it has gathered some information. At that time, we will be able to have a further discussion on the commission’s progress.

Yes. We will certainly discuss that later.

10:32 Meeting suspended.

10:54 On resuming—