Budget Process 2009-10
Good morning and welcome to the first part of the Finance Committee's 26th meeting in 2008, in the third session of the Scottish Parliament. I remind everyone to switch off mobile phones, which interfere with the broadcasting equipment.
The Finance Committee is delighted to be here in Ayr. I thank Jackie Wilson and the rest of the staff at the County buildings in the town for all their hard work in helping us to organise the event. The purpose of our visit is to continue our examination of the Scottish Government's expenditure proposals for next year. We are at stage 2 of the budget process, in which we scrutinise the Government's draft budget. In doing so, it is beneficial for us to gauge the local impacts of spending plans and to find out how engaged different parts of the country are with the national process.
I thank all those who participated in the workshop sessions. Committee members will now report back on the issues that were raised in the workshops on infrastructure and investment, and on economic development. The deputy convener, Jackie Baillie, will report the views of pupils from Belmont academy, Queen Margaret academy and Kyle academy. Well done to all the youngsters who participated. This morning, I have heard some very strong contenders to become members of the Scottish Parliament—the future is in good hands.
I invite James Kelly to report on the infrastructure and investment workshop.
I thank the various parties from throughout Ayrshire who participated in the workshop. We had a good spread of people and they made many excellent representations and informative contributions. I will attempt to reflect them. I also thank my colleagues Joe FitzPatrick, who ably chaired the session and ensured that everybody was involved, and Jeremy Purvis who, as ever, made pertinent contributions that aided the discussion.
The group raised a number of points. Concerns were expressed at the outset about the credit crunch that has affected us during recent times, and the impact that it might have on pension costs, and the consequences of that—in particular, the potential impact on the Scottish budget of taking resources from other areas to fund pensions.
The big issue in much of the discussion was connectivity and transport, which is a major issue for the Ayrshire economy. It includes rail, road, the bus network and the airports. Rail is a major consideration, and the upgrade of the Glasgow airport rail link is felt to be important. The rail link between Glasgow central station and Paisley is in urgent need of the upgrade that is due to be completed by 2012-13. Any opportunity to bring that work forward would bring benefit to the Ayrshire economy, especially improvement to signalling at Glasgow central and increasing the number of lines. The consequence of that would be longer and more frequent trains using longer platforms, which would, it is hoped, increase the number of passengers making the journey down to Ayrshire.
It was noted that bus services to and from Ayrshire have improved as a result of the M77 upgrade. We should continue to promote bus services, which are good not only for the economy, but for the environment. Continued work on the road network is important; for example, the M77 upgrade is said to have been of benefit. Direct benefits include freight traffic being increased by about 25 per cent and a cut in the number of road deaths, although more work is needed. The group noted that we need to continue to promote work on smaller roads projects, for example the A737 and the Maybole bypass, which it is felt would be advantageous to the Ayrshire economy.
I will speak more about the airport when I come on to tourism, but it was suggested that we should make the airport a priority in order to boost the number of tourists and to bring more people into Scotland.
We were reminded not to forget the importance of the ports and the freight sector, particularly in relation to links to Ireland. That sector has grown considerably in recent years.
In respect of the budget process, the discussion focused on how the priorities and transparency of the budget connect to the public and to opinion formers in Ayrshire. It is felt that there is a need to take a much longer-term view to get things right for Scotland and Ayrshire and that it is important to tie up the planning process with what is going on with the budget and budget outcomes.
The group also discussed the road equivalent tariff, on which there are differing points of view. Some people feel that the changes are not beneficial and it was pointed out that the transition to the road equivalent tariff is currently a pilot scheme and that it will be reviewed. The scheme needs to be considered further so that the benefits can be compared with the disadvantages to see whether it is good for the Ayrshire economy overall.
It was pointed out that it is important to have infrastructure investment in flood prevention, which is of particular importance in East Ayrshire and North Ayrshire, and that a longer-term view on flood prevention is required beyond the current spending review period, because the nature of flood prevention work means that it is not easy to suddenly turn it on when funding becomes available.
Finally, the group looked at tourism. It is felt that Ayrshire has many benefits to offer. The group meets in the home of Robert Burns—Robert Burns is a big selling point for Ayrshire. We also have two championship golf courses at Troon and Turnberry—I am doing a good job of making some selling points for the Ayrshire economy—and there are some great sailing venues, such as Largs in particular. More needs to be done to market those benefits, but the group feels that the priorities in Scotland are bigger projects such as the Commonwealth games and the Edinburgh trams project. Ayrshire wants to point out the benefits to the economy of its selling points and to get them across more strongly.
The air route development fund is no longer in place, so it is felt that more marketing funding should be used to market the airport and Ayrshire in general.
As you can see, we covered a wide range of topics in an excellent session. I close by thanking everyone who took part.
Thank you. I ask Derek Brownlee to report on economic development.
Our group had quite a wide-ranging discussion among the broad range of representatives. I will cover some of the high-level issues, the first of which links well with the report from James Kelly's group: the impact of infrastructure on economic development and potential economic development. One of the key things to have came out of the discussion is the importance of getting the infrastructure right in order to allow regeneration. There seems to be a feeling that the ability to regenerate, particularly where unemployment is higher, is seriously inhibited by transport links. Many of the things that James Kelly mentioned, from the Maybole bypass to the A737, were also mentioned; there is a lot of common ground. We discussed prioritisation of transport, how that is done and where spending on transport might get greater emphasis than other areas of the budget.
We also talked quite a lot about tourism and employment. The contrast came out quite strongly between Scotland's relatively high unemployment and, in the parts of the labour market where employment opportunities exist, the lack of employability and marketable skills. We heard about the potential of tourism in this area and the reality, and the advantages there would be for local people to form the greater proportion of the tourism workforce, which could be addressed by upskilling people earlier. There was also discussion about whether greater emphasis should be put on tourism vocational education earlier in the curriculum.
We also talked about the links between what the Scottish Government, local authorities and Ayrshire authorities are trying to do, and how they are trying to work collectively. Questions were asked about whether everyone is pulling in the same direction and about how we get a strategic perspective in which the plan is agreed up front and everyone contributes to it.
There is a feeling that a lot of good work is taking place. In some areas, discussions are working well, but in other areas, discussions are not happening to the extent that they are needed to ensure that the potential is realised. Key messages came out of the workshop about the need for investment in infrastructure, the need to push in the same direction and the need for reskilling to take advantage of tourism opportunities.
I have only scratched the surface of what we discussed. We will hear more from one of the participants on some of the issues that I have neglected, and perhaps on some of the solutions.
Normally, only committee members participate in this part of the meeting. However, one participant from the economic development workshop has asked to be allowed to say something. Exceptionally, I invite Billy Kirkwood to come forward and put his points to the committee.
Billy Kirkwood (RDK Construction):
Thank you, convener. We wanted the economic development workshop to finish on a high—not in the doldrums—so we asked everyone in the group to come up with ideas on how we could help the Ayrshire economy.
We need a clear renewables strategy. What are we going to focus on? Will we focus on exporting power or on domestic power use? There is concern that there seems to be a lack of direction on that.
It was also suggested that small towns and villages are pretty much falling apart in many ways, so we feel that something has to be done to encourage them to expand and develop. Efforts should be made to get businesses into the small towns and villages, which would help with their regeneration.
On access to improved training and upskilling for people from all walks of life, we feel that there is a requirement to encourage more people not just to train, but to upskill to improve their chances of getting work.
On tourism and hospitality, we definitely need improved road and other infrastructure links to help to grow tourism in Ayrshire. We also need to improve the attitude towards tourism in schools, by getting kids into training and looking for job opportunities in the sector.
Personally, I think that budget transparency is important, so I would quite like to see what portion of the budget is being invested in Ayrshire.
Improved transport to job markets and improved communication skills in industry are also required. Industry, employers and the people in education must work more jointly, which will allow them to understand what is required. We also need improvements to our universities in Ayrshire to push and drive more collaborative working.
Affordable housing was mentioned. Ayrshire is quite a rural area, but we seem to have a surprising amount of farming land on which nothing much is being done. There are opportunities to set aside set-aside and return to farming, including forestry opportunities. Hydro power was also noted as an option in respect of renewable energy.
Ultimately, we need some form of strategic master plan that properly identifies medium to long-term objectives for Ayrshire—for the economy, for the infrastructure and for tourism. If we get that right, we can start to deliver effectively in the short term as well.
Thank you for those important thoughts on the local situation.
Last, but certainly not least, Jackie Baillie will report on the schools workshop.
I drew not the short straw, but the best workshop—it was superb. The debate heated up towards the end, but investment in education is doing very well in Ayrshire—as we saw from the articulacy of the young people who participated. I thank Angela McGarrigle, from the Parliament's education services team, and Mark Brough, from the committee's clerking team, who gave us an outline of what Parliament is all about and the budget process. We then received five-minute presentations on what each of the schools that were represented is doing and asked questions thereafter.
We started with pupils from Belmont academy, who used a Burns quotation to convince us of the need for a Scottish human rights commissioner, with the small price tag of £1 million. However, they could not say what they would cut to get the £1 million. That resembled the behaviour of certain politicians I know, so they were off to a flying start. We then had the Kyle academy pupils, who probably had the most expensive proposal, which was to provide free school meals for all schoolchildren. Their argument was based on reasons of health rather than poverty. Interestingly, they took a long-term approach, which is risky because there is not necessarily a huge evidence base to suggest that that would be the right thing to do. When the students were asked how they would pay for the measure, they lost a bit of sympathy because they proposed a reduction in the pay of teachers, some of whom were sitting in the room. The students from Kyle academy may be walking home.
The Queen Margaret academy students gave a presentation on antisocial behaviour. They suggested that there should be additional legislation and more powers for the police. They think that tagging and curfews might be useful tools in the toolbox, if I might quote a phrase. They had robust views on the consequences of antisocial behaviour for people and communities. As a constituency MSP, I find that that is probably the single biggest issue in my postbag. The Queen Margaret presentation was probably the most creative financially. The students said that we should not worry about the cost of £17 million, because we could take it from the contingency fund. However, they were cute enough to understand that we would need to build that into the baseline for future years. They certainly have a future in finance.
We did not have a vote at the end. However, although the Queen Margaret academy pupils took more of a punishment approach than I would be comfortable with, if we voted for them and then had a human rights commissioner just in case they went too far, that would be a reasonable compromise. The fascinating thing about the process was that we rehearsed arguments that have been made in Parliament—the arguments that the young people presented and the questions that they put to one another were no different from what has been said in Parliament, which suggests to me the value of the exercise.
I do not presume to speak for the students, who are articulate enough to speak for themselves. They clearly demonstrated an ability to make choices and to consider alternatives and what is of most value to them and their communities. They considered short-term budget issues, as we do, and long-term approaches that would cost more over the years. Like true politicians, they started off being incredibly polite to one another but, by the end, the discussion got kind of heated—I witnessed behaviours that I have witnessed in Parliament. The most fascinating thing happened towards the end of the presentations, when we witnessed temporary coalitions between schools in an attempt to ensure that they got their points across. That is exactly what happens in the Finance Committee and Parliament.
The session was great and I hope that we do it more often.
That is what today is all about—Parliament and people meeting and discussing issues of great concern to all of us. The morning has been refreshing—the participants have clearly cheered up the committee members. I thank everyone who participated for being part of the democratic process, which is part of the return of democratic decision making to Scotland. I hope that the process continues to grow as part of Scottish democracy reviving and revitalising itself. We have something in common—our Parliament is the servant of the people, which is the way it should be. I hope that the dialogue between us is developed and strengthened further in the years to come.
I am sure that committee members will want to raise some of the issues that were highlighted this morning during this afternoon's evidence session with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth. The outcomes of the workshops will feature in the committee's report on the draft budget, which will be published in December and which will be publicly available on the website or direct from Parliament.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—