Official Report 364KB pdf
Item 2 concerns the Local Government in Scotland Bill. We are pleased to have with us witnesses from the Scottish Executive: Leslie Evans, head of the local government constitution and governance division; Ian Mitchell, head of branch in the local government constitution and governance division; Mary Newman, head of branch in the local government finance and performance division; and Gillian Russell, senior principal legal officer in the office of the solicitor to the Scottish Executive. The witnesses may say a few words first and then we will ask questions.
I will provide a quick overview of the bill, then we will be happy to answer questions. I believe that the committee has been given a copy of the slides to which I will refer.
We will begin with a few general questions, the first of which is to ask what are the key objectives of the bill in outcome terms? In essence, what is the meaning of the bill for communities in Scotland?
As I mentioned in the presentation, the headline objectives are greater consultation, more innovation and better services that are tailored to local needs. The bill will impact on communities as they will be consulted, and that will give them a greater opportunity to influence the nature and delivery of the public services that they receive every day. In particular, communities will be able to influence the quality and experience of the services that they receive.
That would be useful.
It is for reasons of drafting. The way in which the bill is ordered is not intended to send out a subliminal message. The order has been mentioned to us on a couple of occasions but the draftsmen decide the best way to lay out a legislative tool for future interpretation. If that is felt to send out a difficult or different message, we will take that on board.
In your presentation, you said that one of the reasons for having the Local Government in Scotland Bill is to fit in with the modernising government agenda. A large part of that is about bringing different partners from the private and public sectors together. Given that we are trying to move towards more integrated and flexible provision by partners, why should not a common best-value framework be applied across all public agencies?
As you know, best value is rolling out to all of the public sector. We do not have to do that through this legislative vehicle, which is about best value for local government. Other tools are at hand to enable us to roll out best value to other members of the public sector. Although the vehicle might be different, the outcome will be the same. The public sector partners will also be under a duty of best value. In rolling out best value to the public sector, we hope to ensure that any guidance that is given out to those organisations will lean heavily on the local government guidance that we are developing and will certainly be complementary to it.
So, for any joint arrangements that local government enters into with other public agencies, the Local Government in Scotland Bill and the existing legislation will bind any partners to best value.
The bill will bind local government to the duty of best value. That will direct all of its actions, including whatever it does in partnership. The public sector partners, who will also be under a duty of best value, will also adhere to the principles of best value. The partnership working that local government and its partners are undertaking will be subject to the principles of best value. As I said before, the vehicle might be different but the outcomes should be the same.
If a key aim of the bill is empowered and accountable councils, why is so much of it taken up with arrangements for regulation and ministerial powers of direction and intervention? Do you agree that that sends mixed messages about trust and parity of esteem?
No, I do not agree. Part of the problem is that the intervention arrangements appear to take up a certain amount of the bill because the bill is quite short; the problem might be the perception.
Will the Scottish Executive be bound by the best-value provision in the bill?
The Scottish Executive has accepted the duty of best value, but it is not laid out in the Local Government in Scotland Bill. As the accountable officer, the permanent secretary is under a duty of best value. Other public sector organisations will be placed under a duty of best value through the provisions of the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000. So the answer is yes—the Executive will be under a duty of best value, but not through the provisions of the bill.
What balance is expected between quality of outcome and cost of service? Is not securing the outcome the fundamental issue?
Yes, the outcome is a fundamental issue. However, we want to get the balance right and we see that as being the responsibility of local authorities in taking into account their circumstances. They will have to get the balance right between the quality of outcome and the cost of service. We will advise them in guidance that they should take account of the experience of the people who use their services. The quality of service that service users experience will be the best way, or a good way, of indicating whether the quality balance is right.
But if that means only cost-effectiveness, why not say that? What does it add to the existing value-for-money duties that councils have? Are the four Es—efficiency, effectiveness, economy and equality—sufficient to achieve best value, or does best value entail effective community planning? If that is the case, should not the definition be more holistic?
Best value is about more than cost-effectiveness; it is about management and the pursuit of improvement. Value for money and cost-effectiveness are much more static duties, whereas best value is much more of a live management tool.
Previous drafts provided that authorities need not pursue further "continuous improvement" if they were satisfied that it was not practical or cost-effective to do so. The bill does not include that provision. Is the view now that the capacity for improvement is infinite? If not, at what point can councils reasonably conclude that they can go no further? You might be aware that committee members have visited local authorities and they have said that the continuous pressure to achieve better quality at less cost ultimately militates against best value.
We concluded that the reference to "continuous improvement" did not need to be made, which is why we took it out of the bill. We are aware that local authorities are under pressure to continue to find out how they can improve their performance. That will be articulated in the bill's best-value provision.
But how will local authorities know when the optimum point has been reached? They have continually been told that they must keep improving, and for years now they have been saying that it is becoming more difficult to do so. In fact, many of the councils that members visited in the Parliament's early days said that they were daft because they had made many efficiency improvements straight away and were then encouraged to make other substantial improvements, whereas other local authorities had made very minor improvements. Those councils felt that, by trying to deliver the best from the resources available, they were being penalised. Obviously, everyone continually strives to improve, but sooner or later a council must reach a point at which quality of service declines because it is trying to do more with the available resources.
We do not intend local authorities to consider only resource restriction when finding out how to do things cheaper, although many local authorities will continue to consider that option. However, one would not expect any service provider ever to think, "That's as good as we can get it." That is not good management practice in the private sector and I do not think that it is the case in the public sector either. Councils often consider more inventive and creative ways of improving services, perhaps simply by ensuring that there is sufficient investment in staff training to respond to services' needs.
But often councils are expected to do so with relatively fewer resources. Surely we cannot continue to improve services while relative resources are declining.
I agree, but councils are taking decisions every day about the service delivery priorities that they want to develop. For example, they take decisions about concentrating on one area of service delivery at one stage and on another area at another stage. That is part of good management practice.
I think that Leslie Evans has covered the ground. The duty will be on the authority, and every authority makes daily decisions about relative priorities. It could be that certain areas are given more attention than others at certain times.
You touched on guidance. Is it intended that there will be guidance over and above that which has already developed around best value? If so, how will ministers consult local authorities and involve them in that process?
The ministerial guidance is intended to be as short as possible and will act as a signpost to the guidance that is being developed as part of the task that the best-value task force has in hand. We have already talked to the best-value task force, which met for the first time last week. We intend to progress the guidance in partnership with the best-value task force in the first instance, but we would need to consult separately on any subsequent guidance that ministers decide to issue.
Should ministerial guidance override generally accepted good practice? Under what circumstances would that be likely?
We would expect ministerial guidance to be consistent with good practice; we would certainly not expect there to be circumstances in which ministerial guidance went against good practice. Such guidance is more likely to be to do with management priorities than to cut across guiding principles or examples of good practice.
The issuing of directions by ministers is the end point of enforcement and is based on an undefined concept of substantial harm to the public interest. What criteria would define substantial harm over and above a minister's own judgment? What objective tests must be met?
We have tried in the bill to describe the circumstances in which ministers could act. In the current intervention system, there is a financial test for direct labour organisations, for example, which are subject to intervention if they do not hit their targets. We have tried to integrate with ministerial activity the exposure and hearings process of the Accounts Commission, so that one can probably lead on from the other.
Are the intervention powers in the bill consistent with those in other recent legislation, including the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 and the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002? If not, will those acts be amended?
They are consistent, in that they are all last-resort interventions that have been tailored to the circumstances of each act as it went through Parliament. We do not see any contradiction or conflict between the existing intervention powers in the acts that you mentioned and those in the new bill.
Sandra White will deal with audits, inspection and regulatory bodies. I ask the witnesses, when answering the questions, to deal with some of the issues that Kenny Gibson raised relating to best practice. You suggest that best value will now include management of contract issues and so on. How will you monitor that best practice and pass it on to other councils? That will be very important.
In answering Kenny Gibson's first question, you talked about integration. I will ask a couple of questions on that. Some of the auditing, inspectorial and regulatory bodies deal with improvement, efficiency and effectiveness. You said that integration involving councils and outside bodies is very important. Many different regulatory bodies deal with aspects of best value, so how will their work be integrated?
Some integration has already taken place, but we are conscious that integration is a key issue. A joint scrutiny forum has been set up to improve co-ordination of scrutiny of best value among inspectorates and so on. Where legislation can help, we will make use of it. For example, we are considering an amendment to the bill for stage 2 that would make changes to the duties on the police and fire inspectorates in order better to assist their scrutiny of best value. We are conscious of the issue and we want to encourage and develop exchange of good practice and co-ordination of the way in which inspectorates scrutinise best value.
You say that an amendment will be lodged at stage 2.
Yes. An amendment will be lodged regarding the duties on the police and fire services. Such an amendment has been suggested.
Are current audit, inspectorial and regulatory arrangements compliant with the best-value partnership working requirements of the bill?
Yes, they are in that we are all under a remit to make continuous efforts to improve what we do.
Some initiatives have recently been undertaken to join up inspection in areas such as community care, to ensure that the inspection bodies work together and co-ordinate their work as much as possible. Each inspectorate usually has its own statutory basis and specific duties, which tend to be specialised according to the subject. There are also regulators such as Communities Scotland, which take a slightly more interventionist approach.
You mentioned Communities Scotland, but we know that it cannot be investigated. Do you intend to make such agencies compliant with best-value partnerships and subject to audit inspection?
They already are. A concordat between Communities Scotland and Audit Scotland was developed following the passage of the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001. That concordat indicates who will consider what problems and how any overlaps or differences should be sorted out. Recently, I asked how the concordat was working and was told that Communities Scotland and Audit Scotland have a good and thriving relationship.
Do auditors receive specific training to familiarise them with the requirements of other statutory and inspectorial regimes before they audit arrangements for best value? Those regimes impact directly on how councils provide and account for services. Has a specialised training unit been set up?
Auditors are professionally qualified and consider performance issues. They are not qualified in the duties of the inspectorates. However, there is a great deal of close working between the auditors and the inspectorates, which are increasingly aware of where they may tread on each other's toes. The Accounts Commission for Scotland and senior staff at Audit Scotland are left to sort out what their auditors need. They are aware of the issue that Sandra White raises. They sit on the joint scrutiny forum and hold direct discussions with the inspectorates, without much reference to us, about what they need.
So auditors receive no specific training in the best-value arrangements and how those arrangements impinge directly on councils. Is that issue highlighted?
As members know, the best-value regime has so far developed voluntarily. We do not direct authorities on what they should do, beyond that they should comply with the core framework of best value. We leave them to discuss with their inspectors and auditors what that means. We have little appetite for being directive about what auditors should look for. They are appointed because they are specialists and experts in the field; their work is certainly beyond my competence.
We are discussing the Local Government in Scotland Bill, which was written by the Executive. You say that it is for the auditors to determine whether each council has complied with the best-value regime. There is no specific indication that auditors should be trained in the ways in which councils present best value.
The audit duty is being amended so that it formally accommodates best value in the bill. It is for auditors to discuss their professional needs with the Accounts Commission—the independent body that exists to commission and direct audits. We know that the Accounts Commission, senior staff at Audit Scotland and those who deliver audit on the ground have discussed what it is appropriate to ask for, what that might mean in resource terms and audit fees, and what the auditors feel competent to do. The main responsibility of auditors when they audit best value is to consider performance arrangements.
I am trying to get my head round the provisions in the bill that deal with enforcement and the role of the Accounts Commission. Correct me if I am wrong, but you seem to be suggesting that auditors do not have to be trained in the specifics of a best-value regime, and that each council does its best to provide best value. However, ministers also have the power to tell councils that they are failing to conform to the best-value regime. How do you know that councils are failing to provide best value if auditors are not trained in the specifics of best value? I want to have a clear understanding of the position as regards enforcement.
We are saying that the Executive and ministers will not be directive about what auditors should do. It is the job of the Accounts Commission to direct auditors; it has the expertise to do that. The Accounts Commission's task is to arrange audit of local government, which formally must include best value. The Accounts Commission is thinking very hard about how best value can be audited and because it has audited best value for the past two years, it has been considering the issue for two or three years.
I will ask a question that I asked previously. I understand that we have been talking about enforcement. Will there be room in the Accounts Commission's inspectorial role for identifying best practice and passing it on to different councils? If not, is there, or should there be, other machinery that could be used for that?
There will be a couple of opportunities for doing that. COSLA will, in implementing the bill, play its usual role for councils as a clearing house for good practice and examples of best practice. Another possibility on the horizon is that the white paper "Renewing Local Democracy: The Next Steps" sets out a proposal for an improvement function. There is consultation on that proposed function, but the white paper does not identify the kind of process or its structure. Depending on how an improvement function materialises and whether the current consultation process favours it, such a function might become a vehicle for the exchange of good practice and the dissemination of examples of best practice in how local government and other public sectors manage the bill's policies.
The best-value task force met last week and discussed its remit and its approach to best value. The task force agreed that there should be three levels of guidance in future. There could be ministerial guidance, backed by joint guidance produced by the task force, on the characteristics that go with pursuing best value. There might be ministerial guidance on the requirement for effective people management. There could be task force guidance that training should be linked to business objectives and that there should be a relationship with staff and regular appraisals for staff.
How do you see all that being co-ordinated? You seem to be talking about various guidance from several sources. From what you have said, I appreciate the importance of the task force. I take it that the Accounts Commission will take on board the guidance and that it will modify its agenda when it goes out to audit. Will the Accounts Commission try to tie it all together?
We intend the guidance that we bring out to accompany the bill to be integrated. As Mary Newman said, the best-value task force is looking after the best-value guidance, but there was a deliberate decision to ensure that it oversees the power of well-being guidance as well, so a sub-group of the task force is developing that. We felt that that was important, because the power of well-being will operate very much within the framework of discipline and best value. Similarly, the community planning task force will be related to and will acknowledge the importance of the other policy strands of the bill.
I have a question about non-commercial considerations and local authority contracts. If a contractor thinks that a non-commercial consideration will limit its ability to comply with a contract, will the local authority be entitled to conclude that that is not the case? Further, if there is then a dispute between the contractor and the local authority, how will it be resolved?
The changes that section 10 will introduce will allow issues to be considered in certain circumstances, on the basis of what local authorities choose to do. They may wish to include those issues in their contract considerations, but they are not obliged to do so. The process is one of negotiation, as with any contract, and local authorities have freedom to decide what they want to take into account when issuing tenders and negotiating contracts with contractors. There are plenty of opportunities for exchanges to take place. It is up to the parties to resolve disputes on the basis of what the local authority is seeking to do with the contract and the conditions that it wishes to apply. The bill will loosen up the things that can be taken into account as part of the contract process, but will not impose obligations.
I have a question on the relaxation of restrictions on trading. Does the provision that councils can trade without restriction with contractual partners
I had not considered that until somebody talked about it. Most partnerships are a series of linked contracts. We are leaving it to parties to decide whether they want to build reciprocal clauses into contracts. Contract law and European Union procurement law lay down obligations with regard to how far that can go. We are saying, in a sense, that that will be down to negotiation.
Will the provision include public-private partnership schemes?
Yes. Most PPP schemes are a series of linked contracts.
I have a couple of questions in the same vein. Will you define commercial income and significant trading activity for us?
Significant trading operations are referred to in the best-value accounting code of practice, and count as proper—
I am sorry, but will you speak up a little bit?
A significant trading operation is an operation that the authority deems to be significant after consultation with its auditors. The significance or materiality is decided in discussions with auditors about the totality of the spend, turnover or activity in a given area and about whether the authority should consider an operation to be a material operation. We are not being prescriptive, because a lot of the decisions depend on where we are, what we are doing and how we compare to others, and that has to be determined locally. That is accounting practice. Auditors are already thinking about materiality and we understand that the accountancy profession is thinking about whether it has to say something more about significance or materiality. We leave that to it.
If I have understood you correctly, you are saying that there will be negotiation to identify criteria to allow the bill to work.
We have said that we think that limits should be relatively simple—perhaps a percentage of the turnover that one could make from trading surplus in the private sector. Some of that will depend on the size of the trading operations and on the area in which the authority seeks to operate. That is one of the reasons why we have also provided for a ministerial consent—we can see that a one-size-fits-all limit will not always work. We could end up with extremely difficult and complicated tables depending on the size of the authority and so on. We do not want to get into something that one needs algorithms to interpret—we want the situation to be pretty clear. That work will have to happen after the bill is published.
Do you think that the criteria will be open to challenge on the ground of unreasonableness?
Ministers would have to act reasonably in setting the limits. There would be potential for challenging the limits if they were unreasonable in the Wednesbury sense—so unreasonable that no reasonable minister would set such limits. The test would be quite tough to overcome. Regulations on that basis could possibly be challenged.
If we assume that a council is compliant with EU and UK competition law and so is not subsidising a trading operation and is a competitive player in a market, why should its ability to trade be limited at all? Does not that create market distortion?
Unsurprisingly, that issue came up as part of the consultation with the business sector. Local authorities have a predominantly public purpose. They are not established with public funds to put people out of business—if that happened, it would be unintended. We want to ensure that local enterprise and small businesses are not stifled, unintentionally, by local authority operations. However, we are also aware that we are in a period of transition from compulsory competitive tendering to a self-disciplined regime. The regulations are a useful tool because they will be open to consultation and will be kept under review to ensure that any restrictions are kept live and relevant to the operating circumstances. That is part of the transition process.
Does not restricting commercial income by ministerial diktat limit the power in part 3 of the bill to advance well-being?
It would not cut across that directly. As I have said, we do not want local authorities to become profiteering concerns. The power of well-being offers an element of cost recovery—one can take back the charges that it costs to provide the service and perhaps a little income.
I apologise for being late. First, I did not know that my colleague Keith Harding had a flu virus, which seems to be affecting a large percentage of the Stirling constituency. Secondly, I was told that the meeting began much later than it did.
Yes, among others.
What evidence has the Executive gathered on the costs and benefits of adopting the code and the practicality of auditing and enforcing it? Does the best-value accounting code of practice demonstrably deliver best value in practice?
Ultimately, that is an issue for the accounting profession, but the code has been wholly adopted in England and Wales and we understand it to be in partial use in Scottish local authorities. The feeling seems to be that it contains useful and appropriate advice for the circumstances that we are talking about.
If activity-based cost attribution is the core of the matter, how far and to what level of detail would that be taken?
That is up to the relevant accounting and auditing professional bodies. The bill refers simply to proper accounting practices.
The position is not wholly to do with activity-based costing. Following discussion, the BVACOP steering group decided not to move further in that direction for the moment. Some swithering is going on about activity-based costing in the accounting profession at the moment.
How difficult would it be to apply the code in the proposed form? I imagine that it would be easier to apply when dealing with small authorities such as Stirling Council and East Renfrewshire Council than when dealing with the authorities in Glasgow or Edinburgh, which must have immense ranges of finances and accounts. Do you anticipate any difficulties in applying the code?
Glasgow is a good case to talk about because the director of finance and the director of accountancy are on the BVACOP steering group and have been using the best-value accounting code of practice for two or three years. When we started talking about including it in the bill, it came as a surprise to chief executives, as their finance people have been doing the relevant work. We are asking senior management to place more reliance on the best-value accounting code of practice. The information is being collected and should be being analysed. The fact that CCT was in force obscured some of the trading elements of the best-value accounting code of practice because it was necessary to bow to a statutory requirement to do something else. We are removing the statutory requirement to have CCT-type accounting and are leaving the profession to decide what is sensible.
Perhaps I should have listened harder, but I have a supplementary question. First, will adopting the code of practice place a duty on local authorities to adopt the accounting practices, such as activity-based costing, that are increasingly used across most of the private sector? Secondly, will a duty be placed on local authorities to use standard and uniform accounting practices across all the different local authorities? Will that mean that it will be straightforward to compare costs, such as how much it costs to sweep a street in Aberdeen as opposed to in Stirling or elsewhere?
If you were to ask the professional bodies, they would say that the code, which is about allocating costs to service expenditure headings, is similar to activity-based costing but is not quite the same. ABC is more of a private sector approach to management accounting and goes into slightly more detail. In a sense, the best-value accounting code of practice is a management accounting tool. The code asks authorities to assign expenditure to service expenditure headings. In a way, it helps them to budget.
The second part of my question was about standardisation and uniformity of accounting practice across all the local authorities in Scotland. Also, are you saying that the code goes some of the way down the road towards management accounting and activity-based costing, but not right down to the bottom level of detail?
Several approaches can be taken. Management accounting techniques can go in and out of fashion. Activity-based costing became all the rage for a while in the private sector. Some private sector organisations will definitely still use activity-based costing, but that is an internal decision for them. Activity-based costing is about how costs are allocated and the basis on which costs are assigned to activities. For example, costs might be assigned on the basis of floor space or man-hours or time charts.
We will turn to community planning after John Young asks one more question.
I am interested in that most recent exchange. Does Mary Newman perceive any difficulties in the code's proposals? In her professional opinion, does anything stand out as being difficult?
For a while there might be confusion about when a trading operation is a significant trading operation. The code says that trading accounts should be disclosed for significant trading operations. If the trading operation is insignificant, the authority should still keep trading accounts for it, but it need disclose trading accounts only for significant trading operations. Sometimes there may be a slight pressure to conclude that a trading operation is insignificant if the trading results are bad. The profession might need to resolve that issue.
Can you think of any other issues?
As with any other accounting device, those who are extremely clever and extremely determined could probably find ways round things that do not suit them. However, generally, the profession does not try to do that—being a member of the profession, I would say that.
Lots of people want to ask questions now.
Surely what is significant in Orkney, which has a population of less than 20,000, will not be significant in Glasgow, which has a population of more than 600,000. How do you get the balance right?
That is why we think that the decision is best left to authorities, with the professional advice of their auditors. If they have a disagreement, the auditors will say so. It is a matter to be resolved locally. I do not see how we could produce comprehensive guidance that tells people whether an activity is significant. It will depend on the local circumstance. A small trading operation may be the only game in town. That in itself might make it significant.
Before we close this part of the discussion, will you give us more information about how you think the process will develop? Some definitions will be difficult to cope with in the first instance. You said before that you would be taking local circumstances into account and that there would be negotiation. Can you give us any background information on that?
The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy has offered to examine certain issues for us, to see whether it can resolve some of them. We know that the BVACOP steering group has issues in mind. Obviously, it wants codes of practice. The same issues about avoidance exist in England and Wales. We are moving from a system of prescription to a negotiated settlement. In some areas, the negotiations are just beginning. We are not the only people who have a view on the matter. That is the change. We have acknowledged that.
I want to pick up on the issue that the deputy convener mentioned following my questions about whether there would be specific training. The situation was that it would be up to each individual council and would depend on how it got on with the Accounts Commission. The situation now seems to be the opposite of that. Only councils will use the audit code of practice under the best-value regime. Lots of councils and other agencies want best value to be extended to other public bodies. When there is partnership between local councils and other so-called public bodies, will you clarify that best value will apply to both of them and that BVACOP will apply only to councils and not to other public bodies?
The professional associations will have to address that issue. So far in the UK best value has been a local government thing, although it has many similarities to other modernising initiatives. The push in Scotland to extend best value across the public sector—which has already happened to an extent, as it is already in accountable officers' memoranda—will affect the way in which accounts are done. It should not make a major difference, because a lot of the things that underpin best value are good practice in modern management and financial reporting.
I have one small further point, which follows on from the issues that Sandra White raised. Will the code of practice help to drive more openness in how financial information about local authorities is communicated to the public? Local authority finances are impenetrable for most people. Increasingly, efforts are being made to open up the Scottish budget and make it more understandable. Does the code of practice fit in with what we are trying to achieve at a higher level, in the Scottish budget? If the Scottish Executive allocates £20 million to education or whatever, people want to know how that money is being spent by their local authority. People might also want to compare what is happening in their local authority with what is happening in the local authority next door. Will the code of practice help to make that information more accessible?
The best-value accounting code of practice helps local authorities to account for their own management purposes. It also says that if there are trading accounts and an operation is a significant trading operation, those accounts ought to be publicly disclosed. Therefore, the code provides specifically for disclosure of trading. It is meant to improve the allocation of costs and the quality of financial information.
The best-value task force has a Scottish Consumer Council representative. I am sure that it will be interested in how user-friendly the information that is provided by councils will be and how that will be covered by the guidance. I am sure that that will be uppermost in its mind and I suspect that it will make its views clear.
I have a question to which there might not be a definitive answer. As far as I am aware, the accounting profession has a general code of conduct. How does that code of conduct differ from what is proposed in the bill? I appreciate that the accountancy profession may largely deal with companies, shops and businesses, for example, whereas, in the main, we are talking about local authorities. Are there differences in the codes of conduct, or do other angles that do not exist in the commercial sector have to be taken into account by accountancy firms?
Are you comparing the code of conduct with BVACOP?
Yes—if it is possible to make a fair comparison.
I do not think that the two can be compared, as BVACOP is technical in respect of where costs are put and assigned in an analysis of financial information.
It helps to a certain extent. Thank you very much. The question was not easy.
I realise that we are getting a little bit short of time and that we ought to give Mary Newman a rest, as she has been answering rather a lot of questions. We might have a few more questions. Would it be possible for us to send them to you in writing and for you to reply in that way?
That is not a problem.
I am pleased that we will now turn to community planning.
I am sure that we will all have plenty of questions about the accounts and BVACOP.
Yes is the short answer. As it was originally drafted, the bill used the word "planned". As well as using the word "planning", the bill that has been introduced deliberately refers to services being "provided". We certainly expect the process to include resourcing and managing the delivery of performance. We will expect the agencies that are involved in community planning to set out their joint vision as part of a community plan, if they feel that that is appropriate—it is not essential. We will expect them to set out their responsibilities, what they will do, what the time scale will be and what specific outcomes or milestones they anticipate on the way to realising their vision. We will want to know how they will monitor and evaluate that framework. We will regard that as part of the process.
You seem to be saying that you will be linking community planning and performance outcome agreements. Is that what you mean when you talk about linking the outcome?
There is no such link at the moment, but we are considering local outcome agreements, which are being piloted in areas such as the better neighbourhood services fund and the rough sleepers initiative. We think that local outcome agreements are a potential vehicle and we have talked to COSLA about that. I know that the community planning task force is interested in how local outcome agreements can be developed to enhance and support the process of community planning.
Are you saying that you will link community planning with performance outcome agreements or that you hope to link them?
We definitely think that local outcome agreements should be linked to the community planning process. We just have to agree on how to implement that linkage. It is quite a complicated and lengthy process to bend local outcome agreements to fit what the Executive asks of a community planning partnership and how it delivers. That relates to the issue of national priorities being linked to local priorities.
You mentioned partnerships and partners participating in the process. Are you saying that it will be a duty for partners to participate in the process? Will it be a duty not just to take part in planning but to deliver the plans? Will an opt-out agreement be allowed if partners say that they cannot deliver or that they wish to help in planning but are not prepared to fulfil a duty? Will there be an opt-out for any of the partners?
The partners that are identified to have a duty must comply with the duty. The inclusion in the bill of "planning" and "provided" reflects the importance of that.
So the guidance will say that if a certain agency has a duty, it must follow that duty through. The agency will have a duty not just to participate, but to follow through the plans.
As Leslie Evans mentioned, you do not have a copy of the guidance, but it will be supplied to you as soon as possible so that you can get a feel for the nature of the duties. One aspect of the duty of community planning will be to set challenging outcomes along with individual agency and partnership responsibility for delivering the outcomes. To that extent, all partners to community planning will be committed to the process and will be committed to the explanation of the duties in the bill.
I understand what you say about the duties and about bodies being committed to outcomes. What would happen if one partner disagrees with part of the plan, but the rest of the partners agree, perhaps 10 to one? Does that partner have a veto or does the bill build a vote into the process so that, if the majority says that the plan should go ahead, it will go ahead even if one or two partners say that they do not like part of it?
If we view community planning as a process and not just the production of a plan—that idea came out strongly in the consultation—every partner that participates in the community planning will have to go through the process of setting a joint vision for the area, setting targets and engaging in consulting and co-operating with community bodies. There is no opt-out from engaging in the process of community planning as we will set it out.
Do you mean that the Executive can intervene if a partner is not pulling its weight?
Yes. The bill contains provision for that. For local authorities, the Accounts Commission for Scotland and, for other bodies, the Auditor General have powers to make a report on partners that do not comply with the duties that are set out in the bill and the guidance.
You mentioned partners and communities. Will the bill prescribe which community organisations can be part of a partnership? Will community organisations be selected—that is probably the wrong word—and will the local council select them, or can all community organisations enter into the process?
In a spirit of trust, the bill gives the local authority discretion on which organisations it deems appropriate to consult and with which organisations it deems it appropriate to co-operate. We think that that is right because of the sheer extent and range of organisations that could be defined as community bodies.
I was going to mention the issue of the usual suspects, which you referred to. Are you saying that the councils will decide which community bodies will be involved and that the consultation will not be wider?
Ultimately, the councils will decide whom they should consult and with whom they should co-operate. That is reasonable in view of the sheer scale and number of bodies that may be defined as community organisations.
We have some examples of some innovative approaches being taken to avoid the trap of consulting only the usual suspects. We will not go into detail now, but we could forward some of those examples to you. We know that in Aberdeen and Renfrewshire there have been some interesting ways of trying to bring the community into the community planning process realistically and meaningfully. That means that those communities are much more likely to buy into the process, as they will get something out of it. We can send details of that.
That would be lovely.
Subsections (2) and (4) of section 17, which is entitled "Community planning: further provision", indicate that the duty on prescribed partners to participate in community planning can be modified. Why and under what circumstances would ministers modify that duty?
The provisions to which the member refers have been included in the bill because they would allow us to add bodies to the list in section 17 if, over time, we found that those bodies were not participating or engaging sufficiently in the community planning process through other means. We also envisage the provisions being used to add new bodies to those listed in section 17—we do not know what new bodies will come on stream in future. The bill will give us the ability to make the duty to participate in community planning specific to a region of Scotland, if a new body has a specific geographical remit. The two subsections to which the member refers are designed to provide us with options for the future.
Section 18 is entitled "Reports and information". Reporting requirements seem to be focused on arrangements and process, rather than on outcomes for communities. Is that intended? If yes, why? If not, where is outcome or impact assessment defined and required?
It is not intended that reporting requirements should relate exclusively to arrangements and processes. The bill sets a framework for reporting. We are giving local authorities, as facilitators of their community planning processes, the scope to decide the means by which they will report and how frequently they do so.
The next set of questions relates to the power to advance well-being.
I will try to get through my questions quickly, to advance the well-being of us all.
The commercial service income provisions in the bill would still apply, but the council could rely on the power of well-being to justify the venture. The authority would be able to apply to the minister to have limits set through regulation breached where it regarded such action as important. In the example that the member gives, the authority could apply to the minister to have the regulations that will be set under the commercial income provisions in the bill breached on economic or social justice grounds.
The potential danger is that significant trading activity is obviously related to a council's size. In some of the areas where councils are more likely to want to use the power, that activity will almost automatically become significant. The willingness of local authorities to consider such examples may be constrained, because they will be concerned that they will fall into that situation. Will the guidance cover that, so that councils will not be put off looking at possible well-being opportunities, simply because they may fall foul of legislation on commercial activities or significant trading activities?
We want the guidance to be as positive as possible and to create as few restrictions as possible. At its meeting last week, the power of well-being guidance sub-group was at pains to agree that it wanted the guidance to emphasise the openness with which we anticipate the power of well-being being used, rather than any restriction. We did not want the guidance to end up inadvertently restricting the power as you have outlined.
Another aspect that may similarly constrain the ability of councils to develop the well-being provision is contained in section 23(5), which refers to not allowing
We certainly want the power of well-being to provide an innovative power. Section 23(5) is included to distinguish between the power of well-being as used for purely commercial purposes—to be exploitative, if you like—and as used for innovative and creative purposes. The intention is that authorities can charge under the power of well-being at a reasonable rate and put the income back to defray costs. That is clearly set out and that is clearly the intention for the power of well-being. The commercial income provisions clearly still apply, but when it comes to initiatives such as BIDs we must differentiate between what is a tax and what is a charge. The power of well-being is very much about charges, and there is a clear connection between what one pays as a charge and the service that one receives in return. A tax, on the other hand, is much more general in terms of what one puts into the big pot and what one gets back out of it. BIDs are slightly different in terms of their potential connection to tax, as opposed to charges, but the intention behind the power of well-being is certainly that there should be a reasonable charge to defray costs. That is the signal that we have put out deliberately; we do not see the power of well-being as grounds for local authorities to expand their commercial activities unnecessarily.
I accept that. It should not be about expanding commercial activities, but I am concerned about whether section 23(5) is too restrictive in the way it is phrased. It could be so restrictive that section 23(6)(b), which says that councils can impose "reasonable charges" could contradict section 23(5). How do you sort out that distinction between charging—as opposed to taxes—and "reasonable" charging?
Section 23(6) qualifies section 23(5), which stipulates that a local authority cannot raise money by levying or imposing tax. However, under the provisions that are set out in section 23(6), an authority can set and determine "amounts of council tax" and, as Leslie Evans has pointed out, impose "reasonable charges". There is no complete veto on councils' ability to raise money, but they can do so only in limited circumstances.
I accept that that is the intention; however, the provision itself might not be entirely clear. That means that solicitors might receive the most charges from this provision, because they will go to court for clarification if someone challenges the assumption that a council is charging a reasonable charge.
Fair enough. We are also still listening to views on how the bill plays across the whole area of charging, and acknowledge that we will probably have to carry out further work on that issue. It is the one area that will need a little more detailed attention over the next few weeks. We will take your comments on board.
I have a further question about borrowing. How does the power of well-being fit in with the provision pertaining to prudential rules, which has not been included in the current draft of the bill but was mentioned in the original consultation on the bill? Would such rules not allow for borrowing to be considered as part of a well-being project?
Is that connected with capital consent?
Yes. By definition, borrowing relates to capital.
Although the provision has not been included in the draft bill, it forms part of the "Renewing Local Democracy: The Next Steps" consultation document. That will help to prepare the ground work for the introduction of an amendment at stage 2 to revise restrictions on capital consent. The provision relating to prudential rules will certainly come into the bill at that stage.
The bill says that
We are concerned that court rulings, for example, might result in the inadvertent narrowing of the interpretation of the power of well-being. We want to guard against such a situation, which is why we have changed the word "amend" in the initial draft to "extend". Although we are holding a strong line in this respect, we intend to ensure that the power remains as wide as possible in case something like a court ruling comes along and restricts it.
Section 23(4) restricts the use of the power to "unreasonably duplicate" another statutory agency's functions. What is the distinction between "reasonable" and "unreasonable" duplication?
The policy intention behind the provision is that, if agreement is reached between bodies, both should play a complementary part in providing a service. That is fine. Furthermore, if one party agrees that another party should carry out a function on its behalf, that would not be regarded as unreasonable duplication. We expect a benefit of the community planning partnership to be that partners will get better at understanding what each other does and at negotiating with each other about what they should do. As a result, there should be a clear understanding about how each plays its role in certain services. However, we are aware that certain services have an interconnection between two agencies, and we certainly expect organisations to play a complementary role and have a clear understanding of how services are delivered together.
Would it not be more advantageous for the bill to make it clearer that a local authority that wished to use the power of well-being to provide a service for which another statutory body was responsible, and had that body's consent, would be permitted to do so?
Certainly the guidance will make it clear what "unreasonable duplication" means. We have deliberately included the phrase because it is a legal term that has a particular meaning. The guidance will flesh it out by saying that, where a local authority and another partner come to an agreement about how a service should be delivered by the local authority as opposed to the partner and consent is thereby given, that will not constitute unreasonable duplication.
Section 23(6) refers to
Yes, although obviously we would expect local authorities to be taking that decision in the light of best-value discipline to make sure that it is best value to do that. It also means that, in considering the use of the power of well-being, a council would have to ensure that it would be beneficial to persons in the area, including to competitors. The decision would have to be made in the round and certainly within the discipline of a best-value framework.
I thank Leslie Evans and her team. This has been a mammoth session and you have done very well. Thank you for your offer to send material to the committee. You made that offer near the beginning of the meeting so I cannot remember exactly what the material is. Colin Mair, our adviser, has also been with the committee. I am sure that he will have additional questions and that he will be chewing over the Official Report for the bits that he might have missed when he was out of the room.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I am sorry that we are running so late. I hope that the witnesses have not been waiting too long. I see that Corrie McChord is not with you. We gather from what John Young told us earlier that Keith Harding, who is a member of our committee, has flu, like many people in the Stirling constituency. I do not know whether Corrie McChord has also come down with the flu, has another engagement or what.
Jon Harris will kick off, then we will take it on from there.
First, I give Corrie McChord's apologies. He does not have flu. He got back from Brussels on time but, unfortunately, something arose this afternoon that required him, as leader of Stirling Council, to attend. He phoned me at lunch time and asked me to give his apologies. I also agreed to say what he would have said as a short introduction.
Would anyone like to add anything?
I do not want to add to Jon Harris's points. I just want to say that local government as a whole is pleased to see the bill. Some of us go back three, four or five years with our involvement in community planning, so we are pleased that the issue of community planning is a major aspect of the bill. As questions develop, we can expand on our thoughts on all that.
Lovely. Thank you.
The issue is a bit more than a presentational one. We sometimes lose sight of the objective, which in our view is to deliver and enhance community well-being. We regard the best-value and community planning processes as tools to facilitate that well-being. We would have preferred to see up front in the first section of the bill a focus on well-being, then the bill moving on from there.
There is occasionally a tension in regard to the bill being about local government as opposed to local governance. For example, some of the biggest opportunities for best value lie across the boundaries of organisations, but that is not recognised in the bill. The duty is placed only on councils. That is an example of where the connection is not made. Another example is the duties placed on councils to produce the community planning report. That report is about community governance and should be an obligation that is placed on the community planning partnership. It seems to me that a permanent tension between two different agendas runs through the bill.
Would you like the definition of best value widened to include elements of community planning?
Yes.
On paragraph 1.6 of your response, under what circumstances could a minister be meaningfully subject to a duty of best value? How would that be enforced? Is it not the Parliament's job to hold ministers to account?
The notes accompanying the bill seem to rely on the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000 to give ministers a better opportunity to extend best value to other parts of the public sector than the bill does. However, I am not sure how the 2000 act will do that, given that it deals with matters such as resource budgeting and accounting and payments from the Scottish consolidation fund.
This may seem a silly question but lots of people have asked us this question in the Parliament. I know that we are dealing with the Local Government in Scotland Bill and that the criterion for its provisions is that they should deal exclusively with local government, but is the bill the right place to extend the duty of best value to all public bodies? Various officers have asked us that. Should such a provision be incorporated in the bill or in another piece of legislation?
Both COSLA and SOLACE would have preferred the title "Local Governance in Scotland Bill". That would have been more sensible if the intention was to extend best value to other parts of the public sector. Other parts of the bill that do not deal with best value, such as the part that deals with community planning, mention other public bodies such as Scottish Enterprise and the health boards. The bill imposes a duty on those bodies to participate in community planning. I do not see why such bodies cannot be mentioned in the part of the bill that deals with best value.
There is a wider dimension to the issue. Arguably, it concerns not only local governance but the governance of Scotland as a whole. As Peter Daniels has said, the duty of community planning is laid upon a number of bodies, but no mention is made of the duty on the Executive. Community planning has a national as well as a local dimension. To be effective, community planning must have the potential to link the national dimension to the neighbourhood dimension. Where will ministers be held to account for their obligations towards community planning? Local government has a part to play in helping the Government of the day, whatever its colour might be, to meet its national objectives.
That point came across at the conference that we attended in Stirling. We heard about the need for involvement of local communities in the health boards and in the police. I cannot say that I disagree with you. If we get a chance, we can ask the minister the pertinent questions that you have raised.
We would like the bill's approach to intervention to be a much more graduated approach that supports continuous improvement, although ministers must obviously have powers to intervene if, at the end of the process, a council fails to implement. For example, we feel that the power in the Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 to send in management teams looks like a first resort instead of a last resort. That is not compatible with the bill's approach. We suggest that the powers in the 2001 act might be examined. In the process of rationalising those powers and focusing on one system of intervention and enforcement, further repeals might be considered. Elements of the Community Care and Health (Scotland) Act 2002 might similarly be considered for repeal.
I am not saying that interventions always occur as a result of a misdemeanour, but the greatness or the smallness of the misdemeanour should be taken into account rather than that just happening across the board. Interventions should not depend simply on the Executive's decision.
The problem is that both the acts that we mention in our submission are very specific in the form of intervention. The Housing (Scotland) Act 2001 allows ministers to appoint housing inspectors to report on the performance of the council's housing functions. As a result of an inspection, the council might be required to produce a remedial plan. If ministers do not accept the remedial plan, they have the power to appoint a manager to come into the council to exercise its housing functions.
So you are seeking a more holistic approach?
Indeed.
Paragraph 2.9 of your submission mentions the relaxation of rules about contracts and so on, as well as the Local Government Act 1988. What substantial matters are contained under the sections of part II of the Local Government Act 1988 that are not proposed for repeal? You mention those bits that you are happy with, but are there any sections that you would like to be repealed that it is not proposed to repeal?
Part II of the 1988 act deals with public supply and works by contract. Section 17 requires councils to exclude non-commercial considerations in awarding contracts. There are eight non-commercial considerations in that section of the act. The Local Government in Scotland Bill removes the requirement not to have regard to non-commercial considerations from three out of the eight, but leaves another five in place. Section 18 of the 1988 act allows councils to have regard to race relations matters and that provision will be retained. That is good and we agree with that approach. Section 19 allows ministers to specify other matters as being non-commercial.
To add to that from a political perspective, the focus is an issue of trust in terms of what procurement practice is subject to best value. I do not think that a council would try to justify not procuring goods or services from a contractor who had traded in Iraq on that basis. If you are going to retain legislation—which we believe would contradict the ethos that we are trying to promote under the new duty of best value—you will have to justify why you are keeping it. We do not see that that is justified at this point.
Perhaps I should declare an interest—I am a council tax payer in East Renfrewshire. It is not often that we get a chief executive in the firing line.
I am aware of that.
I shall try not to ask Peter Daniels any awkward questions, although I cannot promise.
We would not say that there should be no restriction whatever on councils' ability to trade. As leaders in the community who have an interest in supporting local businesses, authorities would not want to set themselves up in competition with private companies in a way that might force them out of business. Our aim is to support local contractors. I am not sure that there is an easy answer to the question. Trading where competition is fair, where councils are signed up to best value and where competition is part of best value is one thing. However, allowing authorities unfettered discretion to trade or undertake work in the private sector that is not core to their functions is probably not something for which we would argue.
If the council leader had been here, I would have followed that up with a supplementary question. However, I will not do that with Peter Daniels; I will not ask him to say yes or no, for obvious reasons.
Half an hour of your earlier questioning was devoted to BVACOP. Originally, we were concerned about the overuse of BVACOP by the Scottish Executive. However, I do not think that BVACOP is particularly significant for local authority managers. Basically, it is a statement of good accounting practice. By focusing on total costs, it allows councils to compare the actual cost of a service with the costs of that service in other councils on a consistent basis. That is one of the great strengths of BVACOP.
Perhaps I should declare an interest too, as a council tax payer in Fife. More important, Douglas Sinclair is the returning officer, but that will not stop me asking awkward questions if necessary.
We are seeking clarification. Why is there a provision that would allow a minister to override professional practice and in what circumstances would the minister choose to do that?
Are you saying that you would like us to ask the minister that question?
Yes.
How could community planning link the national and the neighbourhood levels? What changes to resourcing, management and the delivery and audit of public services would be necessary to achieve that?
That goes back to my earlier point. There is a lack of a national planning framework in Scotland. Scotland is an institutional mess—we have 32 councils, eight police authorities and so on. Our arrangements do not make sense. There is no mechanism to join up Scotland-wide priorities, which means that each part of the Executive adopts a silo mentality and has its own set of priorities, as can be seen in the document, "A Smart, Successful Scotland". Some of those priorities are important and they should be joined up. As I said earlier, local authorities recognise that what they do impacts not only on their area but on the wider national agendas such as those in "A Smart, Successful Scotland", those that relate to improving the environment, those to do with social inclusion and so on. However, there is no mechanism whereby, periodically, the community planning partnerships and the First Minister can sit down and jointly agree the four or five key priorities for Scotland and the half dozen targets that we want to commit ourselves to delivering and want to be judged on. That takes us back to the fact that the Scottish Executive does not deliver services and improvements to those services; the health service, the voluntary sector and local government do that.
We have started the process of developing an outcome agreement between the community planning partnerships and the Executive around the set of priorities that Douglas Sinclair mentioned. It might be useful if we forwarded that to the committee as part of our written evidence.
That would be interesting. I was just about to ask you to do that.
How could the national interface that you suggest be prevented from becoming a top-down, rather than a bottom-up, process? How could you ensure that the planning was genuinely community based?
Part of the national agreement between the community planning partnerships and the Executive would be a recognition that the Executive had to provide the space to allow the community planing partnerships to deliver the things that are important locally. In the introduction to our submission, we said that the position of SOLACE—rather than the position of COSLA—is that there should be a provision in the bill to enable ministers to incorporate community planning partnerships to put them on to a statutory basis. Community planning partnerships should not be given responsibility for doing everything as, for example, the health service should continue to be responsible for areas that it is concerned with. However, we would like money that comes down and is used across the boundaries—drug action team money or social inclusion partnership money—to be allocated to a constituted community planning partnership.
Where, in such bodies, would democratic accountability lie?
The principal player—the chair of the partnership—would be the council, so there would be democratic accountability through elections and the community planning annual report. Over time, one can see the role of the councillor changing: the councillor would act as the advocate for the citizen not only vis-à-vis the council but vis-à-vis the community planning partnership.
We are keeping John Young busy today—he is here as a substitute for Keith Harding, who has the flu.
What is the witnesses' understanding of the distinction in the bill between reasonable and unreasonable duplication with regard to the power of well-being? Will what is meant be clear to managers and leaders? I am referring to section 23(4).
No, we are just working out who will give you an answer.
Toss a coin.
In paragraph 4.2 of our submission, we mention that the English equivalent of section 21(2)(e) says that there has to be agreement among the various partners. We suggest that adding the words "with their consent" to section 21(2)(e) would provide for that and would therefore remove the need for section 23(4), which talks about unreasonable duplication. We think that arrangements should be consensual. If consent were given, by definition, you would not be seen as duplicating, because who would give consent if you were duplicating each other's activity?
That is a fair comment.
It is not as though there will always be conflict between community planning partners; they may actually agree that the council should do something instead of the other partners.
That is a fair comment too.
The power of well-being is clearly linked to the process of community planning, a key element of which is engagement with the community. That does not refer to just one community—there are many communities of place and communities of interests. We have to consider how they would define their well-being. The council should use the new power to provide that well-being if the duty or responsibility to do so was not stipulated in other legislation.
Having been a councillor for 35 years, I have noticed a difference among the general public. They are far more aware of what they can do—particularly in planning matters—than they were in the 1960s. Have you found that too?
We would agree with that. Clearly, elected members are elected to take decisions, but most councils in Scotland now consult widely in their communities—through focus groups and the classic range of consultation mechanisms. A broad-brush approach is taken to ascertaining community views before elected members take their decisions. We can reassure you that members do not just slam into decisions—they take a structured approach. As you say, there is a very intelligent public out there nowadays.
I want to follow up on some questions that I put to the Scottish Executive witnesses. Does the part of the bill that deals with the power of well-being, as drafted, live up to the Executive's policy intent—that the power should encompass a wide range of actions that councils may undertake to promote well-being? Or are there constraints—in that part of the bill or elsewhere—that act against that intent?
In general, we believe that the bill provides the power to promote and improve well-being, but we have made two suggestions about where we would like to see improvement. Paragraph 4.1 of our submission makes the point that the lessons of the English legislation have been learned. That legislation got into difficulties by restricting the application of the power in respect of well-being, not just by explicit restrictions, but by implicit restrictions. We hope that the current definition will avoid us going to the courts in respect of the application of the power.
Intellectually, the Executive appears to have a desire to go in that direction. Words and phrases such as "caution", "take it step by step" and "creative responses" have been used, which is fair, given the circumstances of the past five or 10 years. Intellectually, the argument about promoting the power of well-being has, in a sense, been won. We are working on the mechanics and the practicalities.
Will the bill as it is drafted encourage local government officials and lawyers in particular to use those powers, or will there be caution that they may be subject to challenge in the courts as a result of the limitations in the bill and the guidance that may be produced?
We would see the power to advance well-being promoted as a power of first resort. There should be changes, in that one would no longer have to spend legal resource to find a way of achieving something. If that something was demonstrably well-being, we would say to our councils that they should go for it and that they should no longer have to find legal niceties in respect of existing statute. The issue is about changing the culture and promoting innovation and new ways of working. It is inevitable that that will challenge existing ways of working. The proposals are part of that process.
Perhaps this will go over ground that has been covered, but can you propose three key additions and three key deletions to the bill?
We should have anticipated that question.
I will mention one proposal while my colleagues think of two others. I return to a point that Iain Smith made. Why should the power of well-being lie only with a council? Why should it not lie with the community planning partnership in the course of time? One can see the process as evolving. SOLACE would want to see such a proposal as an important addition to the bill.
We have one proposal each.
My proposal would be an amendment to the miscellaneous provisions section of the bill. It relates to church representation on cabinets where local authorities have adopted a cabinet and scrutiny form of political management. In East Renfrewshire Council—which is my council—we have found it difficult to depart from the idea of an education committee. We abolished all our committees in 1999 and set up a cabinet and scrutiny model of political management, but as a result of the 1994 legislation, we are required to have three religious representatives on our cabinet. The City of Edinburgh Council took counsel's opinion and was advised that not only would church representatives need to sit on its cabinet, they would have to sit on the scrutiny body. Therefore, there would be three church representatives scrutinising a cabinet that consists of the same people. We need to sort that out.
From COSLA's perspective, the principal addition to the bill should be to extend the duty of best value and to better integrate it in the community planning process.
In general, councils should have as much discretion as possible and reserved powers should be kept to the absolute minimum, which would allow us to do our job properly.
I thank the witnesses for their evidence and for the material that they have agreed to send us. I hope that if we think of any other questions or they think of any more answers, we will communicate.
I ask permission to leave—although I am a representative of SOLACE, Tom Aitchison and Douglas Sinclair will deal with the white paper.
That is no problem.
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