Official Report 775KB pdf
The next item of business is a Scottish Government debate without motion on empowering communities and strengthening local democracy. Members who wish to speak in the debate should press their request-to-speak button now.
I call Ivan McKee to speak for up to 12 minutes.
15:34
I am delighted to open the debate. Our public service reform agenda is focused on delivering the Christie principles of integration, prevention, efficiency and empowerment. Of those, to my mind, empowerment is of critical importance. Reform of Scotland’s public services must empower communities and strengthen local democracy by supporting people to take decisions for their areas.
These are not questions for Government alone, which is why the Scottish Government has committed to a period of genuine and extensive engagement on public service reform to help to ensure that proposals deliver meaningful improvements. This debate is part of that process. It is about engaging positively and constructively on how, together, we can rewire the public sector in a way that supports people to take decisions for their communities.
Will the cabinet secretary explain why the consultation on local government will last for only three months?
We feel that it is important that we move at pace on this important issue and, frankly, we want to make sure that we get minds focused on the change that is possible. The three-month period will allow us to engage extensively, and an awful lot has happened already. As we reach the end of the period, we will outline where agreement has been reached and where we will go next. I do not know whether the member is saying that we should take longer to do that and, if so, how long it would be before he started to complain that we were taking too long to do it, as we have heard in previous contributions from his party.
I want to hear what opportunities this work could bring for communities in members’ constituencies and how we can help to reshape Scotland’s public services together. Our communities are best placed to understand what is needed in their local areas. Development trusts, third sector organisations and a wide range of community groups sit at the heart of our communities, and many volunteers give their time to serve their local areas and support our vibrant grass-roots democracy in Scotland.
The community development sector and workforce underpin so much of this activity, and they form a critical part of the infrastructure that builds communities, enabling people to know their rights, have a voice and make a change. We recognise that those who are closest to the challenges that communities face are also closest to the solutions. I look forward to hearing views from across Parliament.
This debate complements wider engagement that has already started. Recently, the Minister for Public Finance and I met Norway’s Minister of Local Government and Regional Development to discuss Norway’s model of local government and what learning might be shared in taking forward our reform programme. When the Deputy First Minister was in Shetland last week, she discussed the reform proposals with the council leader and chief executive. Scottish Government officials recently met representatives from all three Ayrshire councils and, separately, East Renfrewshire Council to discuss reform. A programme of bilateral meetings between ministers and local authority representatives will be in train over the autumn, and in the next few months we will engage with public bodies, national health service boards, trade unions and the third sector, as well as communities themselves, to ensure that proactive leadership and collaboration are central to our approach to public service reform.
The programme for government is clear that community empowerment, community wealth building and our democracy matters programme will be at the heart of our approach to public service reform and, in particular, to changes to local governance. It recognises that our model of governance and decision making for public services increasingly creates disparities and risks inconsistencies in delivery and in outcomes for the people we serve. The current model of local government has not been reviewed since devolution and the restoration of the Scottish Parliament in 1999.
The Government’s starting point is to ensure that we have a stronger democracy and the organisational capacity and capability that we need at the right levels to unleash economic opportunities and achieve the ambitions of communities in all areas of Scotland.
The minister mentioned organisational capacity, and he spoke about the importance of empowering communities. Does he understand why trade unions and workers are so concerned that up to 20,000 public sector workers could lose their jobs as part of the reform? Does he agree that it is hard to empower and have the right capacity if we could potentially lose that many workers?
The wider public service reform programme is all about getting the right workforce in the right place to ensure that we are delivering effectively for the people of Scotland. We firmly believe, as indeed Christie did, that by introducing prevention, joining up services, removing duplication and empowering communities and the workforce, we can end up in a place where public services are more effective and more efficient at the same time.
The programmes that we are taking forward will create new governance arrangements that are strategic and capable of enabling more local decision making, that identify where resources can be pooled to greatest effect and most efficiently, and that ensure that key services and outcomes are delivered consistently well in line with what communities want and need.
To support that dialogue, on 21 September, ministers published an initial set of proposals that describe our ambition for significant and transformative change and act as a starting point for discussion to help to shape engagement over the coming months. Our starting point for the discussion is simple: we need to reform local governance, not to preserve existing structures for their own sake, but to deliver better services, stronger economies and better outcomes for communities. We want more local decision making, not more bureaucracy.
The minister mentioned the importance of local democracy and local accountability. Many of my constituents in East Dunbartonshire are concerned that they will be subsumed into a much greater Glasgow authority and that they will lose local accountability in the process. Can the minister assure them that that is not going to happen?
The work is about strengthening local communities and giving them more power to deal with issues locally. In the member’s constituency and in constituencies across the country, local communities should look at the reform agenda as an opportunity to have more say in the issues that directly affect their everyday lives.
Scotland has councils that are, for the most part, too large to be truly local and too small to operate strategically at the scale that is now required. We are therefore proposing a model that is built around a smaller number of strategic regional authorities alongside a much larger number of community authorities, which will be able to operate closer to specific communities. We propose to have bespoke arrangements for island communities. The principle is that strategic decisions such as those on economic development, housing, transport and long-term planning should be taken regionally, where appropriate, while decisions that affect everyday community life should be taken much closer to local people. As we have set out in our paper, the potential number and range of community and regional authorities that could be established is intended to be illustrative of the scale of change that the Government envisages.
On the point about giving communities more say, is the Government prepared to look again at its position on equal rights of appeal for the planning system?
The planning system is outside the scope of this work, but I am sure that my colleague the Minister for Public Finance would be happy to take that up and comment on it in her closing remarks.
The key point is that some decisions should be made closer to the community to reflect each community’s needs. That includes decisions such as those on how our local environment can be protected and preserved, how our local history, arts, culture and heritage can be promoted and enjoyed, how high streets could be renewed and further developed, and how local services can best be designed and delivered to meet the needs and circumstances of the people who use and rely on them.
As I said, the proposals are a starting point for debate, not an end point. They are intended to start a discussion that I hope members will continue to contribute to openly and constructively. The proposals and dialogue build on work that was taken forward during the previous parliamentary session through the local governance review and the democracy matters engagement. We heard from more than 4,000 people across the two phases of engagement. The number of people who took part in that conversation and the strength of feeling that was expressed through that engagement are a reminder that accessibility, not apathy, is the issue with local democracy.
The upcoming period of dialogue is an opportunity to discuss how we can design future governance structures; how we can reinforce and scale up community support and democratic infrastructure to achieve an approach to public sector decision making that is more inclusive and responsive to what people want and need; and how we can achieve a democracy that is better able to anchor our towns, villages and neighbourhoods. It also means supporting the growth of a vibrant and robust civil society across Scotland.
Tools to enable participation, such as citizens assemblies and participatory budgeting, have shown their value in bringing down barriers to playing a meaningful role in Scotland’s democracy.
If, under the new two-tier structure, councillors would be expected to serve on both bodies, what would that mean for the role of a local councillor? Would they, in effect, become full-time politicians? What would that mean for the resourcing of those positions?
As the First Minister has already indicated, that issue will need to be considered as part of the consultation and our current discussions. However, I absolutely recognise the point that Murdo Fraser makes.
In the previous parliamentary session, we supported the Electoral Reform Society and Fife Council to deliver a citizens assembly in Dunfermline to enable deliberation on the future of Scotland’s newest city. That work brought together people from all walks of life to consider the issues and the bonds that bind them. The outcome was a robust and ambitious plan for Dunfermline, and I commend Fife Council for committing £5 million towards the delivery of the citizens assembly’s recommendations.
For more than a decade, we have championed participatory budgeting as a mechanism for empowering communities to decide how public money should be spent. We have worked with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities to support more than half a million people to engage in participatory budgeting processes relating to more than £750 million of local authority budgets.
Although there is more to do, Scotland can already point to significant progress in empowering communities. Backed by the provision of more than £3 million, our strengthening communities programme is supporting 83 community anchor organisations. The programme, which is now in its 14th year, has empowered hundreds of organisations across the country to become more sustainable and resilient.
We recognise that our local areas and democracies differ widely across Scotland, and we recognise the importance of supporting the development of thriving rural and island communities. Scotland’s communities have achieved great things, and if we want to have public services that are preventative, person centred and sustainable, we must move power closer to communities and create systems and joined-up services that are more responsive to local circumstances, more accountable to local people, and more effective and efficient.
I agree with the points that the cabinet secretary is making. A point that is continually made to me by my constituents about local government—I put on the record that I am a serving councillor—is that it is not just the structure of local government that is not working; in too many instances, the culture within local government is not working, either. Does the cabinet secretary accept that point? How does he see progress being made on that issue as we move through the programme?
I would need another 12 minutes to explain the importance of culture change as part of the public service reform agenda. However, the member can rest assured that there is clear recognition that a change in culture and in how people perceive these processes and the engagement and empowerment agenda is central and critical to the work that we are taking forward. We believe that the structural work can encourage and engender a culture change that is, in many cases, necessary.
This debate arrives at an important moment. The challenges that communities are facing are significant, but so, too, are the opportunities. That is why we published a proposal for reform of our democracy and the governance of our public services last week. As I have already outlined, these questions are not for Government alone but for local government, the wider public and third sectors, community organisations, businesses, civil society and communities themselves. This debate will help to spark the first discussions about those ideas and how they can renew our democracy and further empower communities.
I look forward to contributions from colleagues from across the chamber, representing their constituencies, and I look forward to a constructive discussion that can bring fresh thinking, energy and support for this important ambition.
I remind members that, should they wish to speak, they must press their request-to-speak button.
15:48
I wish to declare, from my entry in the register of members’ interests, that I am a sitting councillor on Fife Council.
I want to first express to the chamber that Reform UK is serious about fixing our broken council system in Scotland. I assure the public that, where good ideas are presented, we will genuinely support them and that, where consultation is needed from a fresh perspective, we are more than happy to provide it. On that point, I am happy to take an intervention from the cabinet secretary if he will confirm whether the Government is willing to collaborate with Reform UK and whether it is willing to meet our representatives in the spirit of co-operation.
The First Minister has made clear the Government’s position with regard to engaging with Reform UK.
I thank the cabinet secretary for being willing to co-operate with us—is that what I am to understand?
This is not a debate—it is an opportunity for the member to make her speech.
Oh.
I have already done the cabinet secretary a favour and have begun my own consultation with all of Scotland’s council chief executives. I am sure that he will welcome honest and genuine feedback from an unfiltered perspective. In response to a question that I put to him last week on this subject, he said that he would
“engage with everyone who has an input to make”—[Official Report, 22 September; c 12-13.]
on local government reform. I am sure that this would make his boss unhappy, but if he makes a serious commitment today to accept our olive branch and work with us to get this right, it is our constituents, third sector volunteers and the vulnerable people who rely on essential council services who will be very happy instead. I do not know about the cabinet secretary, but that sounds like a perfect trade-off to me. Unfortunately, his Government will have to build back a lot of trust with both the public and the councils that it has badly let down for many years.
Three years ago, the SNP promised Scottish councils a more collaborative approach when it came to policy making and funding, via the Verity house agreement. It took barely a year for the SNP to go back on its word. One of its biggest betrayals came when Humza Yousaf announced his infamous council tax freeze—not even in Parliament, but at his party’s conference in 2024. That gimmick—which is what it was—was cynically designed for only one reason: to bribe the public into supporting his failing Government. However, all that ended up happening was that councils were bullied into becoming even more financially unstable and the SNP suffered one of its greatest defeats at the 2024 general election. That should tell us all one thing: that local government is too important to be the plaything of any political party. It must be taken seriously, and all of us in this chamber should play our part in positively contributing to seriously reforming our broken council system.
Unfortunately, I do not think that we have got off to a good start, given the way that the Government has decided to approach today’s debate. The fact that it has not lodged a motion for debate not only represents an immense disrespect to this Parliament, by depriving it of a key vote, but also clearly proves something that I said when we returned from the summer recess. [Interruption.] The SNP has no plan, no clue and no intention to be held accountable for its complete mismanagement of our public services. Given that the few proposals that it has come up with look like they were written by a student trying to crunch a last-minute deadline, it is no wonder that it wants to avoid accountability.
In the absence of a ministerial statement, a motion or an actual proposition by the Government on its vision for local government, all that I can do is ask some questions, which I hope the Government will answer in its closing speeches today.
My first question is, why now? The timing of these discussions is utterly bizarre. There was no indication in the SNP’s 2026 manifesto that it would embark on local government reform of this scale. Anyone who has been elected as a councillor, who has worked in a council or who has simply been paying attention would know that these reforms have been badly needed for many years. [Interruption.]
The member must be allowed to speak.
I suppose that the reason why this has taken everyone by surprise is that we have all become accustomed to decades of SNP neglect—not to mention the fact that we have council elections next year, which could leave councillors making long-term decisions for a local authority that may not even exist in a few years’ time.
My next question is, why do we have just three months in which to consult with stakeholders? The Local Government Information Unit described those arrangements as unworkable and unreasonable if the Scottish Government itself does not have a clear aim of where the reforms are heading.
On top of that, where are the numbers? We have no estimated costs, no savings estimates and no timescale for when the reforms will be implemented. The Deputy First Minister’s fob-offs and improvised responses at the weekend are simply not good enough.
Will the member take an intervention?
COSLA vice-president Steven Heddle thinks that a decision of this scale cannot be made without knowing what it will cost and whether it will work. Will the Government confirm whether scaling back the number of local councils will result in any redundancies from existing council jobs?
Will the member take an intervention?
Mr Barratt, please sit down. It is clear that the member is not willing to take an intervention.
On that point, is the actual number of councils really being reduced? Replacing 32 councils with more than 100 new bodies does not seem like streamlining.
I could go on, but it is clear to see that the SNP Government’s position on local government reform is nonsensical. If its track record is anything to go by, we cannot take anything that it says at face value. Although I want to remain optimistic, I do not believe that the SNP has the best intentions for genuine reform of local government.
Will the member take an intervention on that point?
I offered one earlier.
It will be yet another gimmick to give the illusion that the Government has any ideas at all. I assure the public and members that, where the SNP is failing, Reform UK is here to step up and provide a real alternative. I look forward to working with anyone who cares about our public services as much as we do.
15:55
I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests. I am a serving councillor.
Progressive public service reform has the potential to modernise our services and drive social change: earlier intervention to prevent failure demand, driving improvement through transformation and building prosperity to liberate services from the costs of poverty and inequality—changing services and changing lives. Across Scotland’s councils of all parties, there are examples of innovation and change that the Government can learn from, such as South Lanarkshire’s family support hubs, Edinburgh’s construction skills pathway, East Ayrshire’s net zero accelerator, and many more. Despite the fact that local government’s share of the Scottish Government’s budget is falling, councils keep stepping up, as do the public servants who sustain them.
They could do so much more with fairer funding, a focused Government and a coherent approach to reform: invest-to-save funds that match the scale of the challenge, the long-awaited power of general competence, the rolling back of ring fencing and an alternative to years of underfunding, which the Scottish Fiscal Commission forecasts will continue with a reduction of almost £500 million in the local government portfolio—more than in any other. The risks to Scotland’s public service reform ambitions are an absence of investment, an absence of understanding and an absence of coherence.
When the council map of Scotland was redrawn in the 1970s, that followed an independent royal commission and years of evidence gathering and development to build democracies at both district and regional levels. When the map was redrawn again in the 1990s—not in such a dignified process—it still followed independent reports and years of development. It is simply not credible—COSLA says that it is disingenuous—to imagine that a three-month consultation is a basis on which the Government can remake Scotland’s councils, given that it has still not even replaced the council tax after 19 years, and it is not credible to imagine that reorganisation will balance the books. In its evidence to the Public Service Reform Committee, SURF—Scotland’s Regeneration Forum—said:
“we can find no published evidence of a … large-scale public sector reform initiative … which … lowered expenditure”
while simultaneously
“improving outcomes”
and performance in Scotland. I say candidly to the Government that that is the credibility gap at the heart of the reform agenda, and it is not the only one.
When this country had regional and district councils, those were distinct entities with their own mandates, yet the Scottish Government’s proposal is that
“The same overall regional administrative or corporate structures would support both regional and community authorities.”
Are the community authorities distinct legal entities? District councils certainly were. If those bodies share the same corporate structure, how can they be autonomous?
Shared services.
I do not think that that is a resolution to a point about different democratic mandates.
The Government’s paper says—and this is welcome—that
“there are functions within existing public bodies which could be brought within the regional or local democratic sphere as part of this reform.”
However, that is not what the Deputy First Minister said to the Press Association last week. She said:
“No, what we are promising is we will reform local government.”
So, which is it?
The First Minister said that councillors who are elected in May will serve a five-year term, but could not tell us whether the councils to which they are elected will still exist at the end of that. The First Minister also said—and the minister repeated it today—that
“some of our councils are too small to be strategic and some are too big to be local.”—[Official Report, 1 September 2026; c 32.]
That is not an unreasonable position. Is the Government prepared to name the councils that it has in mind? The SNP leader of Glasgow City Council—Scotland’s largest council—has said that it is too small. The SNP leader of Clackmannanshire Council—Scotland’s smallest council—says that it is big enough. Who is right?
That is not all that has been said about the reforms. Unison, the biggest local government trade union, told the Scottish Government that it cannot reform democracy “on the cheap”, and it warns of confusing reform with cuts. COSLA is clear that structural change should be secondary to outcomes. It says that the Government’s paper gives rise to more questions than answers. Alex Neil, a former health secretary in this Government, says that it is
“ill thought out nonsense ... No preparatory research has been done to provide the evidence as to what works and what doesn’t. We are being ‘governed’ by a bunch of amateurs”.
I thank my good friend Joe Fagan for taking the intervention. During his distinguished time as a council leader in South Lanarkshire, were there ever times when he thought, “Oh, I wish we could do things differently. I wish we could be bigger. I wish we could have more powers in this area or that”?
There were, indeed, and I will speak about them in a moment.
The most perceptive reaction to the proposals came from the Local Government Information Unit. It said:
“Reorganisation is complex, difficult and expensive. It consumes attention and energy for years, to the detriment of everything else councils should be doing.”
It went on to say:
“Local government in Scotland deserves a serious conversation about transformation. This is not it.”
That is a serious point.
It was Michael Chisholm of the University of Cambridge who put a final cost on the structural reorganisation of local government in the 1990s. He found that the gross transition cost of the 1996 reorganisation in Scotland was £400 million at 1996 prices. The same exercise would cost more than £800 million today. Whatever the merits of redrawing the municipal map of Scotland, the Government has to be realistic. Restructuring is expensive when a Government is pushing for efficiency, and it is an impediment to real reform happening now. With the local governance review, work is already under way to empower communities and strengthen community councils—a tier of governance entirely overlooked by the Government’s proposals. Local government has pushed through years of delay for the power to democratise bus services and rebalance power, not just away from the centre but away from the market. We should back councils that want to build municipal power and wealth.
Councils in Forth Valley, Falkirk, Stirling and Clackmannanshire are embarking on a programme of transformation through collaboration. Island authorities are already the driving force behind work to develop a single-authority model of unified governance. The Glasgow city region has the strongest and most developed proposal to embed joint working and devolve economic levers to the regional level. In Scottish Labour, we say that a new generation of devolution deals can redistribute power, wealth and opportunity across the country, with skills policy aligned to regional growth.
The administrative map of Scotland will change eventually, but, if the Government’s intention now is to improve outcomes and transform services, this is no way to do it. The proposals risk more centralisation, not less.
There is a whole lot about what Labour is against, as per usual, but does Labour have any idea what it would change? I am hearing that we are going too fast or too slow, but I am not hearing anything about what those guys would do.
That sums up exactly what the problem is on the part of the Scottish Government and its supporters. They conflate the urgent need to drive improvements through service reform and outcomes with profound changes to the way that Scotland is governed. That will impede public service reform.
The proposals risk more centralisation, not less. They will pull power further away from communities, not closer to them. Without investment in change, the proposals simply mean more cuts. We will work with the Scottish Government if it is prepared to follow the evidence and take the time to get this right, but we will not allow our municipalism, our localism and our regionalism to be co-opted by a Government that does not share those instincts. Defending local services and local democracy, and using the power of devolution to change people’s lives, is our priority and it must be the priority for the Scottish Parliament.
16:04
As a Parliament, we have a challenge before us. In the programme for government, the Scottish Government set out its aim of putting more power in the hands of people and communities, as part of comprehensive public service reform. The Scottish Greens share that aim, and we want this reform to succeed. Local government reform is the first part of that work, and the Scottish Greens will support a return to two-tier local government as a key outcome for this session of Parliament. The principle that the Government and COSLA have already signed up to in the Verity house agreement is “local by default”, and it should run through every part of the programme for government.
Does Lorna Slater agree that local government should be partners in any proposals that are developed and that no top-down reorganisation should be imposed on Scotland’s democratically elected local authorities?
As I understand it, the process will be one of co-design, and it is moving at pace, so councillors and COSLA will need to hop on board, as the Scottish Greens have done by preparing a paper on what we think should be on the table.
We want a genuinely empowered local tier that holds as many powers as possible alongside a smaller number of regional authorities that take on strategic functions such as transport, economic strategy and health and care integration. Catchment-level planning on deer and invasive species management, nature restoration and flooding should also be considered when designing the regional layer.
We expect that the balance will look different in different places. A city region and an island community need different models. Genuine empowerment starts with a general power of competence. The Macintosh commission recommended one for Scottish councils in 1999, and councils in England have operated safely with one since 2012. It would replace today’s narrower power to advance wellbeing, which has left councils facing legal uncertainty.
We also need to extend decriminalised civil enforcement such as on parking and bus lanes to those councils that do not yet have it. We need to review how Crown Estate seabed leasing revenue is shared so that coastal and island communities see more of the benefit from the waters around them. We also need to give councils stronger powers to use procurement to support local businesses so that more public money stays in local economies.
Any local government reform bill must include an enabling power so that the council tax can finally be replaced. Council funding must be sustainable and sufficient to support the new responsibilities. Putting more power in the hands of people and communities cannot begin and end with local government, though; it also needs to run through the wider reform of our public bodies.
The fact that Historic Environment Scotland is able to barricade off Radical Road in Holyrood park indefinitely without community engagement or consultation under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 is an excellent example of our public bodies making decisions without the consent and support of the people and communities who are affected by those decisions. That kind of heavy-handed, top-down, backroom decision making may have been acceptable in 1979, but it is not acceptable in 2026.
If we have the opportunity to revisit how our public services and public bodies function, let us ensure that the principle of community empowerment is built into all of it. Communities should not only be consulted on decisions but be able to make them. That means a defined share of local budgets being allocated directly by residents through participatory budgeting, building on what many councils already do. It means a stronger, faster right for communities and local authorities to take on land and buildings, such as halls, parks and green spaces, when they want to run them themselves, or to bring empty homes back into use.
Overhauling the process for compulsory purchase orders and implementing powers for compulsory sales orders and compulsory lease orders must be part of the programme to give communities and local authorities the powers that they need to build and to tackle the unique problems that they face.
Continued work on community wealth building and supporting co-operative and democratic business models are also parts of the jigsaw of getting more power into the hands of people, and the Scottish Government would do well to consider how that can be incorporated into local government reform and general public sector and public service reform.
There is one more piece of infrastructure that this reform depends on, but we rarely talk about it: information about land. In 2014, ministers set a target of completing Scotland’s land register by 2024. Registers of Scotland has made real progress since, but well over a third of Scotland’s land is still not on it. It is surprisingly hard for a community group, business or council to find out who owns a piece of land and what is being done with it. Whatever shape local government takes, councils will not be able to levy the kind of carbon land tax that the Scottish Greens have proposed, deliver regional transport strategies effectively or do a dozen other things without that information. Accurate, accessible information on who owns and uses land is public service infrastructure and we should treat it that way. It should be a priority to make information about Scotland’s land ownership and use public and easily available.
Reform on this scale does not come around often. The Scottish Greens want it done well, and done with communities rather than to them. We will judge every proposal against a simple test: does it put more power in the hands of people and communities, and does it improve public services? We will work constructively with the Government, and across the chamber, to ensure that the answer is yes.
16:10
This debate is an important opportunity to discuss the SNP’s proposals for local government reform. If there are opportunities to improve services, reduce duplication and deliver better value for taxpayers, such proposals deserve consideration. The Scottish Conservatives have long called for public service reform and have proposed changes in our own manifesto, but good reform starts with a democratic mandate, a clear process and a credible plan. Unfortunately, what we have before us today lacks all three.
Replacing 32 councils with up to 10 regional and 160 community bodies was not presented to voters at May’s election, and neither were detailed proposals for replacing NHS boards, which will impact local authorities through both integration joint boards and health and social care partnerships. John Swinney appears to be making up local government reform as he goes along, failing to give clear answers about his plans. Reorganising local government and the services that it provides is too important to be taken forward with half-baked measures, and certainly not as some manoeuvre to outflank Labour’s talk of devolution in England or to bring in a national care service through the back door.
What concerns me even more is the process. For context, the 1975 reforms followed the three-year Wheatley inquiry and a further 20 months of consultation, while the 1994 reforms had eight months of consultation, yet the SNP now believes that the future of local government can be determined in a three-month conversation. Will that genuinely shape policy, or is it just another tick-box exercise?
Before ministers start redrawing boundaries, however, they must address the real challenge that councils face, which is chronic underfunding. The Deputy First Minister was right to say on Sunday that everyone wants their local services to improve. However, I can tell her, having knocked on doors in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Stirling and Wick in recent weeks, that not one person mentioned restructuring councils. All of them, without exception, spoke of a lack of funding, because councils’ share of the Scottish budget has fallen in the past 15 years from 39 per cent to 32 per cent, while ring fencing on the Scottish Government’s objectives has risen to 70 per cent. Audit Scotland and COSLA show that local authorities have been forced to make £5 billion of savings since 2010 and still face a funding gap of £500 million this year.
Would the member take any ownership over the decade of austerity that has hollowed out the budget of the Scottish Government and, consequently, local authorities for the past decade? Would he accept any responsibility for the current structures of local government, which are widely viewed as a Conservative attempt to gerrymander the local government boundaries?
If some of those measures had not been taken, we would be facing considerably worse now.
Council tax has increased this year by an average of nearly 8 per cent, which is more than three times the rate of inflation, yet street cleaning has been reduced by 34 per cent and spending on culture and leisure has been reduced by 26 per cent. It is no wonder that Scotland is looking in such a sorry state and much-needed social activities are disappearing. We should be focusing on how councils have the funding to deliver services that their communities need.
That all leads to the question of how much this will all cost. I ask that because the previous local government changes would cost £556 million in today’s money—an amount that is larger than the cuts that councils are facing this year, and a sum that would be better directed to front-line services.
There are equally serious questions about workforce planning. Public sector staff have worked under immense pressure for many years. Many might see prolonged restructuring as the right moment to leave public service altogether, so the Government must explain its retention policy for this skilled workforce.
There are also significant democratic concerns. Councillors could be asked to sit on both regional and community bodies, yet it is not clear how political representation and democratic mandates would operate in practice with regard to those bodies. Councillors are already carrying substantial workloads, and asking them to serve across multiple tiers risks creating more professional politicians, making it harder for people to stand for election. If this debate is truly about empowering communities, why is there so little discussion of community councils?
Will the member take an intervention?
I will not—thank you.
Across Scotland, volunteers give up countless hours supporting local representation, resilience planning and civic engagement, and resourcing those grass-roots institutions deserves attention, yet a motion at the upcoming SNP conference proposes ending community councils.
The SNP has a terrible track record of reforming public services, but the Scottish Conservatives believe that there is a better approach, which we set out in our manifesto. Communities want efficient services, local representation and proper accountability. They do not want years of uncertainty, endless restructuring and additional layers of bureaucracy.
Will the member take an intervention on that point?
The member should be bringing his remarks to a close rather than taking interventions.
We should focus on stabilising council finances and improving the funding formula. Instead of increasing central control, we should give councils greater budget freedom and trust local communities to make decisions about local priorities. Scotland needs better government, not bigger government.
16:16
As I said to members last week, for as long as this Parliament has existed, it has failed—across the parties—to push power out of this building and into the rural communities that I serve, so I genuinely welcome the debate. It matters because a one-size-fits-all approach to policy simply does not work, and my constituents have lived that. It is important to put on the record the closure of the Inverness control room, ever more patients having to travel outwith the Highlands for care, and rural fire stations being off the run.
Let me be clear that these reforms must not become code for ever greater centralisation. The litmus test must be whether power and resources are genuinely moving closer to people. If ministers are serious about that, powers must move down from the Scottish Government as well as moving between councils. It worries me, as it did Joe Fagan, that when the Deputy First Minister was asked whether ministers would devolve any of their own powers, the answer was simply no.
For rural and island communities, I hope that the Parliament will agree that one model will not fit all. Distance, population sparsity and access to services create particular challenges. Island communities should be able to lead the design of their own arrangements, but the same principle should apply to rural communities on the mainland, too.
In particular, the Government will know that Highland Council and NHS Highland are currently conducting a joint statutory consultation regarding the Highland partnership integration scheme, which governs how local adult and children’s health and social care services are managed. I am deeply concerned that these reforms cut right across that work, so I encourage the Government not only to address those concerns in the summation today but to do so in writing to both Highland Council and NHS Highland. I echo the points that Joe Fagan made earlier about other processes happening simultaneously in Scotland.
I also urge the Government to be careful about creating structures so large that decisions become further removed from the people who are affected by them. If we take the example of planning and housing, it cannot be right that decisions about major development in a community such as Wick could ultimately involve councils representing communities hundreds of miles away. Although there are shared issues in the Highlands, there are also unique challenges in Caithness and Sutherland, for example. Both counties continue to grapple with depopulation, while Inverness, which remains within the same local authority, is an area that has experienced incredible growth. What is defined as local must therefore be spelled out and tested before lines on a map are drawn.
As a member for an urban area, I would like to show common cause in relation to planning. In my constituency, there is a massive amount of purpose-built student accommodation, which could be seen as strategic on a regional basis but which completely undermines the sustainability of existing communities. I want there to be more clarity about which planning decisions are taken locally and which ones are taken regionally. It is not just a rural issue; it is an urban issue, too.
I am glad that the member has put that on the record. Similarly, I look forward to hearing that point addressed in the summation.
As one constituent put it to me, there is little point in devolving power without the ability to generate or retain revenue. The Liberal Democrats are eager to see the management of, and revenues from, Crown Estate Scotland assets devolved to local authorities, as Lorna Slater mentioned.
We are eager to see control over transport and other levers of economic growth devolved. On the one hand, that means a new model of regional transport partnerships that is responsive to local people and determines when buses should and should not run. On the other hand, it means being strategic about economic development, business support and skills. In a Highland context, that would mean asking questions of the University of the Highlands and Islands and of Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
In addition, we have raised important concerns in this place on many occasions about restoring local accountability for police and fire services.
Before I close, I must also say that the plans have been met with a great deal of concern and uncertainty by community councils in my constituency. The proposed community authorities would currently have no separate mandate, no budget of their own and no staff of their own. Indeed, if the plans mean councils sitting on two authorities, as Murdo Fraser mentioned, would that then spell the end of voluntary-run community councils? As one constituent, who is the chair of a community council, put it to me, that would strip away the last tier of local government that is untouched by party politics.
The principles are straightforward: the best decisions are made when local people are empowered to make them, and communities should have the powers and resources to shape their own futures. If the reforms do not deliver that, we will simply be changing the names on the door rather than genuinely transferring power. If the reforms do not deliver that, both my party and my constituents will remain sceptical about the Government’s intent.
We move to the open debate, in which each speaker will have five minutes.
16:22
When I heard that this debate was to take place, I almost felt sorry for the cabinet secretary and the minister. They either get accused of speaking from the top and telling people exactly what to do or, when they have an open discussion about it, they get accused of not having any plans. However, I am going to take them at their word, and I have hunners of ideas to suggest.
I remember back in 1993, when the then Secretary of State for Scotland, Ian Lang, said that Renfrewshire was back. Of course Renfrewshire was not back; it was a construct of what Renfrewshire was prior to that.
I will say something that some members in the chamber might be surprised at. Those of us from the west of Scotland are not all Weegies. We might sound similar, but I do not hear it myself. I say this with great affection for those from Glasgow, but, when we talk about the west of Scotland, there is a tendency to look at Glasgow as the centre of everything, when we all know that Paisley is the actual centre of the universe. The serious point here is that Paisley is the fifth most populous area in Scotland.
I refer to my entry in the register of members’ interests, in that I am a serving councillor in Renfrewshire. In 2025, Renfrewshire Council was announced as council of the year at the United Kingdom-wide Association for Public Service Excellence awards. It is large enough to be strategic but small enough to be local.
Does the member agree that, when these issues are being examined, it should be considered that a city is not required for a region that serves Renfrewshire?
It is as though the member has read my speech already, Presiding Officer. I agree with that, given that Paisley is the fifth most populous area in Scotland, behind our four main cities. I used to say that Renfrewshire included the largest town, but my son told me, “That means nothing, Dad.” Referring to it as the fifth most populous place in Scotland means a lot more.
That is important, because when we start reorganising local government, we need to remember that people do not necessarily see the world through the boundaries that we draw on a map. They identify with their town and their community. They know where they live, where their kids go to school, where they work, where they shop and where they get their services. That matters. If we are going to reform local government, we should start with a very simple question: what actually makes services work better for the people who use them? What actually works?
People do not wake up in the morning thinking about council structures. They care about whether their bins get emptied; they do not care about what logo is on the bin. They think about whether their child is getting the educational support that they need. They care about whether they can get to work and whether their town centre is somewhere where they actually want to spend time.
That brings me back to geography, because people in Paisley do not see themselves as living in an extension of Glasgow, nor do people in Renfrew. People in Johnstone, Barrhead, Greenock, Gourock, Port Glasgow and Eastwood certainly do not see themselves that way. Those are communities with their own histories, identities and economies.
We can see that from something as simple as football. St Mirren and Greenock Morton have a rivalry that can get fairly lively because they see each other as being from Renfrewshire. They play in the Renfrewshire cup—which, incidentally, St Mirren wins all the time.
Renfrewshire is real, not a construct. However, that rivalry tells us something: people identify with their communities. We do not need to pretend that identities do not exist in order to create effective regional government. We should build a new system around such identities.
The Scottish Government’s current proposal is for a smaller number of regional authorities for strategic decision making. The proposal currently envisages six to 10 regional authorities and 120 to 160 community authorities for towns and districts, with decisions being taken closer to home. I agree with that direction and put forward Renfrewshire, with the similar towns that I already mentioned. I am not simply referring to the current Renfrewshire council area; I am referring to the historical geography of Renfrewshire, which broadly included what are now Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire and Inverclyde. I am saying, “Make Renfrewshire great again”, but I am not proposing that we turn back the clock. I propose that we look at whether the geography makes economic and service delivery sense in 2026.
We have so much in Renfrewshire and the wider county as it is. We have the advanced manufacturing innovation district Scotland in Glasgow airport. We have Greenock ocean terminal. We have Scotland’s largest town. We have urban communities, coastal communities and the River Clyde. We have communities that need strength in order to work together to make things better for everyone.
Bigger government should not mean distant government. I have already said how we can break the larger Renfrewshire area down into its constituent parts—the towns and boroughs. I say to everyone in the chamber that, if we are really looking at these reforms, look at Renfrewshire. We do not need to be part of a greater Glasgow. I am not being negative about Glasgow itself, and we can work with it on other things, but we do not need to become a city region. We already have Renfrewshire, which is an area that people identify with. Let us make Renfrewshire great again.
16:27
I have often said that a two-tier local government system is the way to go, but I admit to having been of the opinion that it was a post-independence job. I figured that we had enough layers of government as it is, and I took a view that SNP politicians are often criticised for: I thought, “We will get to that after independence.”
Am I right in thinking that in the previous parliamentary session, Emma Roddick called for local authority reform? Perhaps she was before her time.
My whips are on it today. I have been in favour of it for a long time, and in the previous parliamentary session, I was pulled up for my very strong opinions, which I am about to get into.
I am very excited that John Swinney now thinks that it will be possible to deliver local government reform pre-independence. I sincerely believe that, wherever that is the case, we should do what we can with the powers that we have. When announcing his intentions, our First Minister said:
“some of our councils are too small to be strategic and some are too big to be local.”—[Official Report, 1 September 2026; c 32.]
Nowhere fits the latter description like Highland Council, which is not only by far the largest local authority by land mass but the seventh largest by population, for which I cannot see a justification.
I have been a Highland councillor, and I appreciate that there are as many opinions on this issue as there are Highland councillors—74, incidentally—and many of my party colleagues in the area do not agree with my position. However, just as my being in this place and serving in the Government solidified my views on the necessity of independence, serving the Inverness Central ward made it very clear to me how much Inverness needs a city council.
I am not from Inverness but from the other side of the Kessock bridge. I grew up in Alness, where I was raised by a mother who was a Caley Thistle supporter, to the ire of some of our neighbours.
I became an Invernessian by choice, rather than by birth, although my football team seems to be a result of both nature and nurture, so I am not coming at this from a perspective of not caring about the rest of the Highlands, not understanding other council wards or having no stake in the success of our other Highland communities—I absolutely do. However, I do not think that the perennial parochial palaver that we go through in the Highlands best serves any of those communities.
Again in parallel to the national argument, that does not mean hating non-Inverness towns and villages or not working with the rest of the Highlands on shared priorities, and I think that a two-tier system would allow for that. Every community I know feels that too much power or support goes to “that place down the road”—in Papa Stour, Lerwick gets everything; in Barra, Uist gets everything; in Uist, Stornoway gets everything; and, in the Highlands, Inverness gets everything. As a result, we often see that the majority non-Inverness elected members deprive Inverness of investment and the attention that it deserves and that is normal for any city.
One of the worst examples of that is the allocation of Crown estate funds. Various allocation models were on the table at the Highland Council, and councillors voted through the model that ensured that Inverness received as little of the funds as possible, even when that meant less money going to their own wards.
Historic Environment Scotland invested a large sum of money into Inverness town house only for the council to then agree, this term, to move its offices out of the building, removing a key income stream for the Inverness common good fund. More recently, money was allocated through the city region deal to the Longman interchange before being reallocated to the Corran ferry, which is another project that irrefutably required investment, but it is frustratingly easy, from my point of view, for the council to agree that Inverness is where that funding should be moved from.
We could debate the ins and outs of those decisions and the factors that led to them, but there is a pattern and it is not, as constituents often used to complain to me, a pattern of Inverness getting everything. All investment has to be justified by promised ripple effects or is subject to last-minute reprioritisation; all events have to prove that they are benefiting the wider Highland communities; and all progress seems to come with an apology and a healthy dose of Inverness cringe.
Last year, a constituent was complaining to me about local recycling services. I pointed to recent investment in the Inverness waste transfer station and he of course said that Inverness gets everything. I pointed out that, in this case, we were talking about everyone else’s rubbish. Eventually, he conceded that that was a fair point and that maybe his village did not really want to be the destination of the Highlands waste.
I recently submitted a question for First Minister’s question time that was not selected. I am not accusing the Presiding Officer of anti-Inverness sentiment, but I submitted the question because, that Monday, I read on the front page of The Press and Journal that Labour MP Torcuil Crichton was calling for Inverness to be cut out of future Highlands and Islands development plans. He said that Inverness should be carved out of plans to boost the Highlands. I am sure that that will go down well with his voters; it does not go down well with me, but it does helpfully make my case today.
What I would have put to the First Minister in the light of those comments is that serious consideration must be given to creating a new city council that would allow Inverness, like most other cities, to govern itself and take advantage of local opportunities—an argument that I am sure sounds very familiar to my SNP colleagues and an opportunity that I hope the cabinet secretary will take.
16:33
I draw members’ attention to my entry in the register of members’ interests, in that I am a serving councillor. Front-line essential services are what I think of when I think of local government, and I am incredibly proud that, for nine years, I have worked in and for local government. Yes, there have been challenges, but it has also been the most incredible privilege to advocate for and help those who need it the most, while simultaneously navigating strategic decisions, ensuring best value and delivering for my community.
I have seen the incredible results and life-changing opportunities that youth work has delivered. I have had influence in the delivery of improved waste and kerbside recycling and I have seen and supported community ambition through place planning and investment.
My experience does not just remain within my local authority. I have had the unique opportunity to sit in a national role. Appointed as spokesperson for resources, I have seen at first hand the wonderful diversity across our local councils and I have celebrated incredible achievements at the COSLA excellence awards, including seeing my own local team win a top award for our work on community asset transfers, levering in £27 million of external investment to the region.
I have also seen that local government and the Scottish Government can work really well together. In developing the local government fiscal framework, I heard directly from officials on both sides that the open and collaborative working was hugely beneficial and, importantly, helped to develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that were faced on both sides. Collaboration was key to success there, as it always is. I welcome the openness of the cabinet secretary’s approach and the fact that the Government is entering the dialogue with an open mind. Importantly, I welcome the fact that COSLA supports ambitious reform.
Change can be unsettling and can lead to fear, and the unknown can be daunting. However, if we can agree to focus on the outcomes that we are seeking to deliver, that fear can be diminished. If we can agree to work in a genuinely collaborative way, trust can be built. If we can agree that people must come before structures, the foundations of empowering our communities and strengthening local democracy will be laid. I have seen from the Scottish Government a desire for intensive engagement with local government. How that has progressed is important. The structures in local government are for dialogue at a national level, but how we involve the more than 1,200 councillors across the country is another question.
Katie Hagmann has made important points about putting people before structures. Given the timescales that the Government has suggested, and knowing the barriers that many of our communities face, does she agree that more might have to be done to make sure that people can participate and have their say? The timescale sounds quite short.
I agree that three months is a short timescale, but I think that that is the opening—I believe that it is the starter for this exciting opportunity.
I was just about to come on to the point that there will be an important role in the national dialogue for the workforce and for the third sector, our community partners and, of course, the public. Today, however, we are talking about that starting conversation, which is important to acknowledge.
It is also important, especially as we enter this period, to acknowledge and thank our local councillors. They are democratically elected, serving each and every day in and for our communities, and they are valued by us all. Furthermore, it is important to reiterate what has already been said: that anyone who is elected in May next year will serve their full five-year term. I hope that people are excited to stand for election to the role, and I especially encourage women to stand, as currently only 35 per cent of councillors are women.
I think that the member is a councillor in Dumfries and Galloway. Does she have any thoughts on how things might change there? I am genuinely interested, because we have heard different views from members already.
I am a serving councillor—there are many of us in the chamber today. There was a debate just last week at full council in Dumfries and Galloway, and all councillors were able to take that forward. A view has been established, and that will be captured and taken forward by the leader to further discussions via COSLA. Of course, there are other conversations, and the chief executive also has a responsibility to ensure, within those structures, that the views of all elected members are captured. I absolutely welcome that everybody should be able to feed into the process.
Although there are many benefits to working more strategically at a regional level, I am excited by what could be done at a local level. Ensuring that decisions are taken as close to the community as possible is an exciting opportunity. With some communities in remote rural areas already feeling disempowered, I am keen to ensure that that is addressed, especially across my constituency in Ayrshire and other areas of South Scotland.
Could the member come to a conclusion?
I will.
We are entering a brave and bold space, but let us ensure that people, not structures, remain at the heart of the work. Let us commit to working collaboratively and with respect, and let us focus on the outcomes that we all want to achieve: a fair, healthy and modern local democracy, with community at the heart of all that we do, delivering for Scotland and her people.
16:40
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Before taking part, I spoke to the SNP group leader in East Lothian Council, Lyn Jardine, as well as to other councillors in East Lothian. I have also offered to speak to all councillors in East Lothian, no matter which party they represent.
The most important thing—this theme has come through in the debate—is that the conversation does not become primarily about structures or maps. It is not only about how many authorities there should be, where their boundaries might lie or which existing councils might sit together. Those questions will come, but they are not the starting point. Instead, the starting point must be to ask where power should sit, what strategic decisions will require strategic scale, what decisions are better taken closer to communities and whether reform will actually improve people’s experiences of public services, which is what we are here to do. We must ask ourselves honestly whether we are genuinely moving power closer to people or simply moving administration from one structure to another.
I say that based on my experience of being a councillor for 15 years and a council leader, and I was also a community councillor for 10 years. From that experience, I know that being administratively closer to something is not the same thing as communities having greater influence over it. If community empowerment is genuinely at the core of reform, the test must be whether people will have more agency over the decisions that affect their lives and communities.
There is an important distinction between participation and representation that can sometimes get lost—they are not the same thing. We know who tends to participate; we hear from community councils, campaign groups, organised interest groups and those who have the time, confidence and knowledge to engage with council processes. Those voices matter, but they are not necessarily representative of the whole community.
To build on the point that was just made about people feeling empowered, is there a risk that creating several large regions could cause that feeling of empowerment to be lost?
The devil will be in the detail there. Strategically, we need to look into regions, but, locally, communities will be the crux of the matter. The consultation will consider that issue.
To return to the point about having a genuinely stronger local democracy, we should be better at hearing people who do not normally participate. That includes people who experience poverty or inequality, people who have caring responsibilities, people who work several jobs, younger people or people who have simply stopped believing that engaging makes any difference—we all saw that to a certain degree during the election.
So often, people who have the least opportunity to participate are among those who are the most affected by decisions about public services. That is where the roles of elected councillors and MSPs remain vital. A councillor represents a whole ward and carries a responsibility beyond it, including to those who never attend a meeting, complete a consultation or contact us as councillors or MSPs. Representative democracy and participative democracy should not be considered as alternatives; done properly, they strengthen each other.
We also need to think carefully about place. Emma Roddick spoke about Inverness, and I will talk a bit about East Lothian, which is a good example of why place matters. Musselburgh, Tranent, Haddington, North Berwick, Dunbar and all our rural communities have distinct identities, circumstances and priorities. There may well be functions, such as economic development, infrastructure or other services, for which operating across a larger regional footprint will give greater strategic capacity. However, there must be genuine localism on the other side of that bargain. If decisions move upwards for strategic reasons without other meaningful decisions moving downwards towards communities, people could experience reform as government becoming more remote rather than less.
There is a strong connection with the wider agenda of public service reform and prevention. People do not live their lives according to the organisational structures that we have created. Someone does not wake up with a housing problem on Monday, an employability problem on Tuesday, a health problem on Wednesday and a family-support problem on Thursday; those problems all interact. If reform will enable us to organise more services around people and places rather than institutions and organisational boundaries, that will create much better opportunities for prevention and earlier intervention.
That is where the issue becomes more than a local government restructuring exercise, because accountability must also come with capacity. There is little democratic benefit in making somebody locally accountable for a decision if they do not have access to the people, expertise or resources that are required to do anything—we heard from the minister on that point.
The proposal that regional corporate structures could support both regional and community authorities are therefore important. That will potentially allow us to gain strategic capacity without recreating a complete bureaucracy at community level.
We should be confident that the proposals are not finished. That is not a weakness. The engagement will be ongoing. If we are talking about strengthening democracy and community empowerment, it would be contradictory for Government to announce a final structure before communities, councillors, public bodies and the third sector had properly shaped it. We heard from Ivan McKee how important that is.
The engagement phase must be substantive and it must not involve consultation on a predetermined answer. It is important that councillors’ voices are heard in that process, because they sit at the point where representative democracy, communities and public service delivery already meet. That principle applies whether we are talking about a country, a community or an individual. Self-determination ultimately means having agency.
If I was to boil the matter down to one thought, it would be that the success of the reform will ultimately be measured not by how many authorities Scotland has but by whether people feel that they have more agency over their communities, whether services respond better to their lives and whether they know who is accountable when services do not respond in that way. That is the test that we should set ourselves.
We have a very quiet chamber today, so I ask members who are having conversations across the chamber to take them to the back or out of the room.
16:46
I think that most people will judge changes to local government in a very simple way. They are going to ask, “Will this make things better where I live?” When somebody contacts my office about a pothole, a library that they are worried will close, a day service that their disabled family member relies on, or sheltered housing closures affecting someone that they love, they are not thinking about types or structures of government—they just want it sorted, and they want their service delivered.
We have to be honest about how disillusioned people are and how far that has impacted our local communities. I have heard that on the doorsteps when I have been out campaigning. I was previously a councillor but, as an MSP, a lot of my casework is still council focused. As MSP for Banffshire and Buchan Coast, I see that local knowledge matters but that we also need a wider strategic view.
Nine data zones in Aberdeenshire are included in the most deprived 20 per cent in Scotland, and every one of them is in Fraserburgh or Peterhead. The Banff and Buchan area accounts for about 48 per cent of children and young people living in poverty across Aberdeenshire. Aberdeenshire also has 149 data zones in Scotland’s most deprived 20 per cent for access to services. When we cross into Moray, we see that Buckie central east is one of only two local outcome improvement priority areas.
We should consider those figures alongside what communities have had to fight for. There have been changes to sheltered housing. Day opportunities for people with learning disabilities have been affected. Communities have been fighting for their libraries. Street lighting columns have been removed or chopped in half just to make savings, with local councillors warning that some areas could be left in complete darkness. For a woman walking home at night, or for an older person or somebody who is vulnerable, that is not just a saving on a spreadsheet; it changes how safe their community feels to them.
I have been critical of both Aberdeenshire and Moray Councils when I think that my constituents are being let down. However, we now have a chance to ask a bigger question: where is the structure poor, and where could we do something radically better? The Government has made it clear that the local government reform proposals are a starting point and that today’s debate is part of a wider national conversation. I welcome that, because some decisions need a wider strategic view while others should sit closer to the people who are affected by them.
Our school communities are worth looking at. Our academies and their cluster primaries already connect families across towns, villages and rural areas. People know those communities and they grow around children, parents and relationships that already exist. I am not saying that every boundary should follow a school cluster, but if we are asking what a real community looks like, why would we not start with places that people already know and belong to?
Whatever shape we end up with, I do not want my communities to be empowered in name only. I want them to have a meaningful voice and a fair share of the resources that are needed to deliver change. When resourcing more localised Government structures, I ask that we look at needs, not just at the population on a map. We need to look at deprivation, public transport and access to services. Areas with greater needs should not have to fight harder for less.
For me, it is clear that power should sit with those who live in the area. I do not just mean local government; I support Scottish independence for the same reason. I want Scotland to have the full powers of an independent country because prevention is better than cure. I am glad that the Government wants public services to focus more on outcomes and vital prevention work. That is exactly the lens that I would hope to be using. We have to stop waiting until people reach crisis point and then we end up spending more to try to put things back together. Our councils should be part of preventing that crisis by working with schools, health services, the third sector and communities. This cannot just be another mapping exercise or another corporate structure that people feel distant from.
Does the member think that reorganisation at this point will help or hinder the vital work to shift towards prevention, which we are happy to work with the Government on?
Reorganisation would be beneficial; we need to change the structure. Having spoken to my constituents on the doorstep, I know that they are really fed up and they do not see that the current structures serve them. We have a duty to listen to calls from our constituents and to see where we can work together to provide for them and serve them.
This is a chance to help to make local government feel local by putting valuable resources closer to targeted needs. It is a chance to let the communities of Scotland, such as mine in Banffshire and Buchan Coast, see as well as feel the difference. I, for one, am excited about the possibilities and I have hope that we will put humanity at the heart of it all.
We move to closing speeches.
16:52
I start with reflections from members across the chamber about the timing and pace of the reforms. The three-month time period gives me a lot of cause for nervousness and concern. I do not have faith that we will be able to deliver at the scale that is required, or that we can properly involve communities across Scotland, which all operate at a different pace and scale.
I agree with Joe Fagan about the history of previous restructuring programmes, which have involved independent commissions. I recognise how difficult it will be to ensure that everyone is adequately heard. I know that Alexander Burnett made similar comments to that effect. I seek the Government’s assurances on that. If it is not able to reach some consensus by the end of the year, we need to think about pushing the process further down the track.
I echo some of Monica Lennon’s comments about our 20,000 public sector workers and the concerns that have been raised by trade unions. I am glad that she put those on the record. Many of those workers will be looking for assurances from the Government.
Lorna Slater and the Greens made a number of points and suggestions for local government reform. They spoke about devolving aspects of wellbeing and procurement, and I commend the points that were made about council tax. I welcome their contribution and there was a lot of shared territory, but I struggle to see how we will be able to co-design effectively in three months. I am sure that we will have more conversations to that effect.
I enjoyed the contributions from Government back benchers. Mr Paisley—George Adam—said, “Let’s make Renfrewshire great again”, but I did not realise that it was not great any more. As I come from a rural constituency, I appreciated the perspective that he put on the record.
Emma Roddick and I are both Highland MSPs. We disagree on serious issues, not least that I am a Ross County fan and she is a Inverness Caledonian Thistle fan. Although we have different perspectives on Inverness and her calls for its independence, the independent-minded nature of her contribution was helpful. I welcome the opportunity to engage with her further so that we can find some common ground for our part of the world.
Can I just clarify that the member is supporting said call for independence for Inverness?
I think that there are a lot of opportunities to pool and share resources. The communities that I represent in Caithness and Sutherland are looking for more control of their own areas. I welcome people in Inverness having more of a say in theirs, too.
A number of points have been made in the debate by Government back-bench members about ensuring that people are put before structures, and I would certainly welcome that happening. I have some serious concerns about points that have been raised by others about the funding settlement and the lack of clarity around it. We are having this debate in a vacuum, and until we get a bit of clarity on those issues, I do not think that we will be able to find consensus.
I advise members that we have no time in hand. Interventions will have to be absorbed within the speaker’s allocated time.
16:55
Like David Green, I think that this has been a really interesting debate and I have enjoyed a lot of the contributions. Emma Roddick made a very interesting contribution about the situation in the Highlands. It is clear that there is a lot of interest in how we restructure local government to make it work better and ensure that communities are better represented.
The difficulty with all this, which we have heard about throughout the debate, is the timescale in which we are being asked to reach conclusions. We are now nearly a month on from a bombshell being dropped in the programme for government, where the Scottish Government came up with the idea of there being, potentially, as few as six super-regional councils and as many as 160 community authorities.
The member points to the timescale. What timescale does he think would be acceptable?
The point that I am going to make is that we are already a month into the three-month period. In effect, we have nine weeks left to draw up a detailed blueprint to reform local government in Scotland. I just do not think that that is possible in nine weeks, even if we just had to deal with all the issues that we have heard discussed in the chamber over the past couple of hours.
I appreciate the member taking my intervention; I know that he is strapped for time.
Fife Council, where I am a councillor, is the third-largest local authority, and too many decisions are being made in Glenrothes. Fife already has seven area committees making decisions on transport budgets, grounds maintenance and, previously, on planning. Are those committees not a template for community authorities, and is that therefore not an opportunity to be grasped? I am certain that the member’s colleague Councillor Dempsey, as convener of one of those committees, would agree.
I do not disagree with anything that Mr Barratt said, and what is happening in Fife makes a lot of sense. Of course, what people in Fife are worried about in these proposals is being absorbed into a bigger region, such as one that includes Edinburgh, in which decisions that affect Fife are taken in Edinburgh. That is why the proposals need more consideration.
That takes us back to the basic point that I am trying to make: we have nine weeks to redraw the entire map of local government in Scotland. My colleague Alex Burnett described the SNP’s plans as “half-baked”, and I think he was being generous. Never mind the proposals being half-baked—the SNP has not even turned the oven on yet.
There has been opposition, as one would expect. There is opposition from COSLA, as we have heard. Just last week, at an emergency meeting at Perth and Kinross Council, a joint Conservative-Labour motion was agreed that condemned the SNP’s proposals. It is striking in its wording, arguing that local decisions should be made as close to the residents as possible, and saying that the Scottish Government’s proposals could mean that decisions on core issues such as education, housing and social care would be likely to be made further away from the people who are affected by them.
The big concern in Perth and Kinross is that it ends up getting lumped in with the city of Dundee, when the two communities historically have had very little in common, and that Perth and Kinross will be overwhelmed by decisions being taken in Dundee rather than in a more rural area.
The motion also criticises the Scottish Government for underfunding local authorities since 2007, and health and social care partnerships. It notes the huge disruption that local government reorganisation would cause, plus the costs involved. It goes on to condemn the Scottish Government for not engaging in meaningful consultation with councils, saying that the Government’s approach is “impractical and disrespectful”.
What is interesting is that the motion was agreed by the council unanimously. Each and every one of the SNP councillors, who are part of the minority administration in Perth and Kinross, agreed to it. That is in the First Minister’s own backyard, and it is his own local councillors who are using such strident language. It must be deeply humiliating for him that that is happening in Perth and Kinross.
Further, what is happening in Perth and Kinross—where people are concerned about being absorbed into a greater Dundee—is reflected elsewhere. We have heard some of that in the debate this afternoon. Large rural areas such as the Borders do not want to be absorbed into Edinburgh. We heard from Adam Harley that his constituents in East Dunbartonshire do not necessarily want to be absorbed into Glasgow. There are similar concerns elsewhere.
I know that I am short on time, but I want to make one more point about money. We know that public service reform has to deliver cost savings. However, we have had nothing from the Government about what cost savings might be delivered from this; indeed, creating whole new structures and going through a whole process of reform is likely to cost more money, at least in the short term. We need to get some figures attached to all this.
We are not against change. We think that there is appetite for reform, if it brings decisions closer to the people. However, we need proper time to discuss these issues.
17:01
I declare an interest as a member of Orkney Islands Council. It is that experience that shapes how I approach this debate.
In conversations with councils, community groups and public bodies across the Highlands and Islands and beyond, I have heard a common message: we need to give communities real power over the services and decisions that affect them.
I come to the debate from a perhaps unusual position, as a member of an islands council. In many ways, island authorities already operate in a way that looks closer to what our Scandinavian neighbours do. They are rooted in place, close to communities and responsible for a wide range of local services, be they ferries and airfields or quarries and community infrastructure. With the work ahead of us, we have an opportunity to build on that even further.
The Scottish Greens believe that Scotland should move towards a model that gives every community more local power and responsibility. David Green and Emma Roddick made good points in making the case for that. Of the places that I have been, nowhere was there more of an appetite for localism and greater autonomy and decision making than in Caithness.
I am pleased that the Minister for Public Finance, Hannah Mary Goodlad, will close the debate, as I believe that we share a vision for empowering communities to act, as we see in our communities of Orkney and Shetland. I look forward to continuing to work on that agenda with her, the cabinet secretary and the DFM.
Too often, as a councillor, I have seen the public sector working at odds with itself. National legislation, statutory duties and separate public bodies can interfere in ways that make it harder, not easier, to respond to local need. Councils are then left trying to join the pieces together through clunky multi-partner projects or community planning partnerships that, if we are honest with ourselves, have not delivered on the ambition in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Act 2015. Their role too often goes beyond simply convening. Increasingly, councils are asked to fill gaps when other public bodies are scaling back. That is neither sustainable nor fair to communities or to local government.
Likewise, having sat on the Highlands and Islands Regional Economic Partnership for two years, I know at first hand that that model is not how we drive forward regional economic strategy. Alongside lots of great people doing good work, we tried to make progress in relation to the substance of that model. However, that experience has led me to firmly believe that we need regional governments that are empowered to drive forward regional economic strategy. We also need local government that is laser focused on local needs, local high streets and local opportunities.
We must also look honestly at community councils. As the cabinet secretary mentioned, which I welcome, community development trusts can bring people together around benefit funds, buildings, assets, projects and local priorities. They deliver change, draw in funding and take direct action. By contrast, too many community councils are burdened by statutory consultation, inconsistent support and a quasi-official role that I have seen disempower rather than empower.
If we want people to feel agency, participation must be meaningful and lead to outcomes. This Parliament must deliver real, lasting empowerment for local places and local government. That must also mean sustainably funded councils, drawing from a more diverse range of sources, including a long-overdue replacement for the council tax.
Budgets, too, must become less dependent on annual decisions made in Edinburgh and London. The need is urgent and clear. Councils across Scotland face financial pressures so severe that the savings required on paper simply cannot be found without a transformational scaling back of public services, which we cannot allow to happen.
We must also respond to the loss of public confidence. The Scottish Government statistics on that, which were published on 17 September, were alarming. Fewer than 40 per cent of respondents thought that their council provided high-quality services, and fewer than 30 per cent thought that their council was addressing the key issues that affect the quality of life in their local neighbourhood.
That is a case not for lambasting councils but for honesty. Councils are delivering more complex services and meeting rising demand under tighter financial conditions. They cannot keep absorbing pressures without serious consequences for services and communities. What we see locally is not a sudden collapse in quality but the cumulative effect of 15 years or more of financial pressure on councils and on the Scottish Government. The situation was never sustainable. The question was only when the limit would be reached. That limit is no longer on the horizon but squarely in front of us.
Even more worrying is the lack of confidence that engagement in local democracy makes a difference. The same Government statistics found that only slightly more than a third of respondents said that they would like to be more involved in council decisions that affect their local area. What is deeply worrying is that only 17 per cent felt that they could influence decisions that affect their local area. Paul McLennan made a good point on participation versus representation.
That should sound alarm bells for us. If only 17 per cent of people feel that they can influence local decisions, local democracy is not working as it should.
I reinforce that point. To those who say that there is no need for change, does that not in and of itself absolutely demonstrate, apart from anything else, the need for urgent change?
I agree. That is why I am glad that we are engaged in the process together, so that we can chart how we reinvigorate that faith in local democracy and local agency.
True local democracy must mean shifting power, resources and responsibility closer to people, and trusting communities to shape the places in which they live. Our task is clear: to move decisions about those services as close as possible to the communities that are affected by them, so that local people can shape the services that they rely on. For that to be successful, we must reform local government funding, support community-led organisations and consider how to take a disparate public sector into a more locally democratically accountable space.
If we are serious about empowering communities, we must also be serious about empowering local government. We cannot ask communities to take responsibility while stripping away the tools, funding and confidence that are needed to act. Scotland needs a more local, more democratic and more trusted system of local government. That is the work that we must take forward together.
17:07
The cabinet secretary opened the debate by underlining the critical importance of empowering communities across Scotland. I think that we can all agree on that aspiration. He then rhymed off almost a wish list of what he wants for communities—that they are strengthened and empowered, have more say, and are sustainable and more resilient—I may have missed out a few things. Again, I think that we can all agree that those things are important.
However, today’s conversation is about how we map the route—how we get there. I do not say that we all have the same vision, because I am not sure that we have. However, I think that there is a lot of agreement across parties that we all want the best for our communities. That is a good place to start in any discussion.
It is also really important that we make sure that the good intentions that we have heard about today are not lost in the process. I have heard colleagues including Katie Hagmann say that it has to be about people before structures, and my colleague Joe Fagan opened the debate for Scottish Labour by talking about changing services to change lives. If we want the process to be truly person centred—which was also on Ivan McKee’s wish list—we have to make sure that as many people as possible can be part of the conversation.
That is why I tried to intervene on George Adam, although he was very excited and in full flow—because he touched on something really important about his constituents who are going about their business, living busy lives, being worried about their children and having a lot of stress.
It is a genuine question: how do we make sure that people can genuinely participate in the process? As Murdo Fraser said, we have only nine weeks left, and I imagine that people will start to prepare for Christmas. How do we make sure that we are not just an elite bunch of serving and former councillors who are all very passionate about this? I include myself in that exclusive club.
How do we ensure that our constituents hear about those conversations and can be part of them? It will not be any surprise to colleagues that, for Scottish Labour, it is about ensuring that there is the correct funding and investment in our communities. We want to improve lives, we want fair work for all our workers across local government and public services and we want vibrant communities.
However, genuine concerns have been raised. Alexander Burnett warned against a tick-box exercise, while we heard from David Green that our communities are all very different, so we have to ensure that we do not end up with a one-size-fits-all approach. I was going to intervene on Mr Green and ask if we are going to get a referendum for Inverness, but maybe I will just not bother asking about that.
What does modern local democracy look like? We are hearing that, in many of our communities, people feel disillusioned and frustrated. Karen Adam touched on that. I wrote it down somewhere—perhaps Karen Adam will remind me, but I think that her question was, “Does it make it better where I live?” That is the fundamental question. I see that the minister agrees, so perhaps we will hear more about that in the closing speech. We can debate structures, process and who gets to decide, but, at the end of the day, there is a lot that we need to improve for people where they live.
I will set out one of my frustrations since leaving local government. Initially, I worked for the council, then I became a local councillor. I was in Parliament for 10 years—although I have had a break—and, when I sat in committees, I often heard about excellent practice and good achievements, but when other MSPs and I asked councillors and council officials, “Why is that not happening elsewhere?”, the response was often that they did not have time to share it. There was no capacity to cascade that learning. How, then, do we build capacity and more resilient communities?
Over the coming weeks and, hopefully, months, I want to hear more from the Government about how reform will reduce child poverty. How will it reduce inequality and tackle the housing emergency? How will it combat drug and alcohol deaths and make our communities safer? Those are the things that people really care about.
What we have heard today from MSPs is a real connection with our communities—we all have that passion. I was surprised to learn that SNP colleagues are very excited about this agenda. I would gently say to them, “Where is the excitement about council tax reform?”, because that comes up on the doorsteps and was a flagship policy of the SNP almost 20 years ago. It would be good to channel the excitement that we have heard today into discussions about council tax reform, because, for too many years, that issue has been in the “too difficult” box. A few colleagues at the back are looking at me in disbelief. If they want to intervene, I am happy to take an intervention.
What should the cabinet secretary—or the minister—take note of to avoid, given that the Labour Government’s local government review in England had to be shelved because it was so shambolic?
The most important thing is to listen to our communities. That is why I want the debate to leave the chamber, get into communities and look honestly at where our services are threadbare. Alex Kerr knows, because he is my MSP, that we are relying on volunteers in the third sector to fill in the gaps. We have to be honest about funding.
I close by referring to Roz Foyer, the general secretary of the STUC, who warned that reform
“must not be a mere smokescreen for brutal cuts cosplaying as progress. Real progress means ending the £3 billion outsourcing within the public sector, delivering sectoral bargaining within social care and properly funding our public services through progressive taxation that builds, not bulldozes, our local government and public services.”
That is a good note to end on. I hope that we can all find a way forward, but, if we want real progress, let us get the debate out of this chamber and into our communities.
17:14
I have really enjoyed the debate. Perhaps because there is nothing to vote on at the end, members have felt freer to give their own opinions, which has been refreshing.
I thank Monica Lennon for reminding us that the consultation will end at the end of December. I was reflecting—in fact, I was sniggering to myself—that perhaps it would be Ivan McKee’s Christmas present to the nation, when he finally wields his axe on councils, but it might be the sort of present that people want to hand back.
I hope that Mr McKee will reflect on the tone of the debate. Several members have said that the three-month consultation period is too short, including members of his own party. After the programme for government—
Will the member take an intervention?
Yes, of course.
This is a genuine question, which Murdo Fraser did not answer earlier. How long should the consultation be for if three months is not long enough? That is not a party-political question; it is a genuine question.
I thank Jackie Dunbar for her intervention. The issue should not be party political, as we have seen in today’s debate. The cabinet secretary ought to reach out to all parties. I know that he does not want to speak to Reform, but my hand of friendship is constantly extended to Mr McKee, and he knows that.
In answer to the question, I feel that three months is too short. The most recent reorganisation took five years, so three months is too short.
Give us a number.
I am not going to put a number on it.
The First Minister told us that
“some of our councils are too small to be strategic and some are too big to be local.”—[Official Report, 1 September 2026; c 32.]
He did not say which councils fit into which category, but Mr McKee, the man tasked with wielding the axe to the behemoths of the public sector, said that
“practically all local authorities—there are some exceptions—fit into both categories.”—[Official Report, Social Justice, Housing and Local Government Committee, 16 September 2026; c 45.]
Presiding Officer, if that leaves you more confused than ever, you are not alone.
So, we had a vague proposal for reform of local government but no idea what the Government’s thinking was, until last week when it told us as an opening gambit that we could have a smaller number, between six and 10, of regional councils, and a substantial number—120 to 160—of community authorities focused on local decision making, whatever that means. It also said:
“While there may be a general model in most cases, recognising their unique status and needs, our proposition is that this would sit alongside bespoke solutions for island communities.”
Needless to say, Scotland’s existing 32 councils are extremely sceptical. Joe Fagan made the excellent point that councils are already co-operating across boundaries. They work together—that is happening.
The previous reorganisation in 1996, under the Major Government, when Scotland’s powerful regional authorities were broken up, was a political decision. This also feels like a political decision. The previous reorganisation took five years from first consulting on it to delivery, which begs the question, what is the rush here? The three-month consultation feels rather hasty.
I wonder about two things. First, did Graham Simpson also receive the very nice letter that I did from the cabinet secretary and the Minister for Public Finance asking us to share our ideas with them about community empowerment?
Secondly, on the exact point that he has just made, does he think that it is worth taking our time on reorganising the map, because there is a much greater urgency around the need to reform the actual services that are provided?
I have not received any such letter. I never receive any letters from the Government these days.
Members: Aw.
Joe Fagan knows that I am full of helpful ideas. If only my good friend Mr McKee would talk to me more than he does at the moment. He could repent, and perhaps we will get somewhere with this agenda.
Funding is the big issue facing councils, not how big or small they are. My view of my own council, South Lanarkshire Council, is shaped by a few basics. Do the bins get emptied? They do. Are the streets cleaned? Mostly, although littering is a problem. Are the roads and pavements in good nick? No, but some parts of Scotland are a lot worse. Are the schools good? Generally. Do our town centres need help? Yes, they do.
Will the member take an intervention?
I will, if the Presiding Officer will give me the time back.
A very quick intervention and a very quick answer, please.
Will the member correct the record? The process never took five years—it started in 1992, and the councillors were all elected by 1996. We had councillors who served on three different bodies at the same time, despite what Alexander Burnett said. Last time, the process was about gerrymandering—the creation of East Renfrewshire and Stirling councils was about trying to create Tory enclaves.
Here is the main point: the member has just mentioned funding. Is he going to break the record of what he did as a Tory MSP and actually vote to give more money to local government in the budget? Is he going to bring that forward?
Do you know what? I would love to see more money for local government, but local government has, ever since my time as a councillor, year after year, had to make cuts as a result of budgets that Keith Brown—disgracefully—voted for.
Let us not kid ourselves that any new structures will bring decision making closer to the people. That is not how local government works. Power rests with unelected officials, and woe betide you if you criticise them—that will not change. I can also pretty much guarantee that the change will not save money—it will cost money, as Alexander Burnett pointed out, and I think that Ivan McKee knows that.
Ministers should take heed of the fact that the European Charter of Local Self-Government (Incorporation) (Scotland) Act 2026 comes into force next month. Article 5 of the European charter of local self-government, on “Protection of local authority boundaries”, states:
“Changes in local authority boundaries shall not be made without prior consultation of the local communities concerned, possibly by means of a referendum where this is permitted by statute.”
Maybe Inverness will get its wish—the Government is keen on calling for referendums when it suits, and here could be its big chance to offer referendums across the country. Let us see what Mr McKee has to say about that.
I will end where I started. What is this process all about? What is it for? I do not think that we have really answered that today. Until Mr McKee does so, he needs to take a bit longer and consider it more.
I call the minister, Hannah Mary Goodlad, to wind up the debate.
17:22
The phrase, “Too small to be strategic and too large to be local”, is one that we hear again and again. It is short, simple, effective and spot on.
The Highland Council area is the size of Belgium. The island of Barra is run by councillors six isles to the north. From the mountain village of Crianlarich, you can climb the Munros and look over to the wild Atlantic foam, and yet it is governed by a council that is almost lapped by the North Sea. Leith, which could be one of the largest towns in Scotland, is just another part of the City of Edinburgh Council area.
I think that we can do better—I know that we can. From today’s debate, it is clear that there is agreement around the chamber that we can do better. I thank every member who has contributed this afternoon. The discussions that we have had have moved the conversation forward, and we are keen to see more of that.
As Monica Lennon rightly said, it must become a national conversation—a conversation that gets folks excited and engaged about what local democracy could look like; who represents them at a local and regional level; what local democracy means for the place that they call home; and where decisions are made.
Lorna Slater of the Greens made a really good point in her contribution: reform like this does not come around often, so we should grab hold of it with both hands.
There will be different needs for different communities across the country. The Borders are different from the west coast, the islands are different from the north-east, and the central belt is a different beast in and of itself. There will be different needs and different requirements right across the country, because this is about a consultation process and the starting of negotiations to take this work forward.
Will the minister take an intervention?
Certainly.
I hope that this will be a case of third time lucky. Earlier, I put this question to members who said that three months was not long enough for the consultation. Has anyone been in touch with the minister to suggest how long the consultation should be?
I really commend Jackie Dunbar’s tenacity in pursuing the issue, because it is the third time that she has asked the question. It is indeed the case that we have not heard how long the consultation should be. Certainly, from my experience in the world of business, a quarter of a year is fairly enough time to get things going. This is the start of a consultation period that will lay the blueprint and the foundation, and then we will continue to hold conversations and dialogue post-Christmas.
The minister will have heard today that people want reassurance that communities will be able to participate. Some experience more barriers than others, so the issue is not so much about how many weeks the consultation lasts for, but about how we open the doors to everyone. If this is a starting point, will those further conversations be part of the formal consultation? COSLA is saying that it wants us to follow the evidence.
When we come to talk about evidence, I have a number of stats, which my colleague Kristopher Leask outlined well. Seventeen per cent of our communities across Scotland feel that they can influence decisions—that is simply not good enough. When we were having the conversation with Bjørnar Selnes Skjæran, the minister for local government in Norway, it was very clear that our Norwegian and Scandinavian neighbours have a level of democratic engagement that we just do not have here. Having worked across the Nordics and the Baltics, I have seen that. Again, the evidence holds up: the Nordics have 80 to 85 per cent turnout in their local elections; the Baltics have 50 to 65 per cent; and we have 30 to 40 per cent. That is not good enough—I will come on to talk about that further in my speech, as well as about Ms Lennon’s point about how we can engage with people by looking at citizens assemblies. Our door is open. In my closing remarks, I will look at participatory—that is a very hard word to say—budgets.
I must give a moment to the comments from Julie MacDougall about gimmicks. Reform members are very well versed in those—for example, only two weeks ago, we saw their conga. They talk about disrespect, but the language that they use to describe our fellow humans—“strangers”, “men of fighting age”, “imports” and “home-grown Scots”—is some of the most disrespectful language that I have ever heard.
I thank the minister for her comments, which I fully disagree with. Does she agree that she is talking about including people in this democratic process, yet Reform UK is not being included in the discussion about much-needed and very important local democracy decisions?
My heart bleeds. When Reform members talk about inclusion, they would be well advised to take a mirror and look at how the 17 members in their ranks include people across our country.
This Government is committed to fundamentally changing how power is shared and ensuring that communities are genuine partners in decision making. Local democracy and empowerment will be central to our work moving forward. We recognise that barriers can prevent people from engaging fully in democratic life.
Will the member take an intervention?
I will make progress.
If we are serious about strengthening local democracy, we must ensure that everyone has the opportunity to have their voice heard. That means learning from successful approaches such as citizens assemblies. My door is open and our colleagues’ doors are open. We are engaging across different Government structures across our country and are learning from our neighbours as well.
Scotland has, of course, already taken significant steps towards community empowerment, and many examples have been highlighted, including the importance of asset ownership, regeneration, support for our island and rural communities, and community wealth building.
We will now go further and push power out and across.
Will the minister take an intervention?
I will happily take an intervention from David Green, who I have enjoyed working alongside on this.
We are revealing to members in the chamber that we are friends now.
The minister represents an island constituency, and I represent a very rural constituency. She will forgive me for raising the same point again, because this is a debate about empowerment. Almost 10 years ago, the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 introduced island communities impact assessments. Does the minister not recognise that rural communities deserve a similar approach?
I absolutely identify with that. It is a two-way conversation, and a new social contract needs to be developed from local to regional and national levels.
As I said in my previous answer, the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018 is a transformative piece of legislation that is there to be used, yet not a single island authority has deployed that tool and asked for more powers. I put that point back out there.
At the start of today’s sitting, I was very interested to hear the point that Frank Strang made at time for reflection about trust and the four words on the parliamentary mace to which many of us consistently return. Trust is at the heart of this debate: trusting communities to know what is best for their own places, trusting local people to shape local priorities, and ensuring that government at every level works alongside communities rather than simply acting on their behalf.
The Nordics get that right. The Baltics get that right. In those countries, there is a social contract between Governments and society. That two-way contract is one that respects, listens to and owns its own mistakes as well as its successes. It is a contract that has the politics of humility and humanity at its core, which Karen Adam so gracefully highlighted and thoughtfully included in her remarks.
It is time for us and the Scottish Government to write a new contract on this side of the North Sea, with local, regional and national layers, and with trust and respect woven throughout it. If we get this right, we have a huge opportunity to change our country for the better. When I look at Scotland today, I see a country that is not entirely at peace with itself. Racial tension, the rise of the far right and violence against women are all factors that pull us apart. We should all be concerned about that tension. It certainly keeps me awake at night.
I strongly believe that a significant way of challenging and addressing that is by democratising our country. We need to make sure that people care. We need to push power out across the country into communities, making folk feel that they matter, that their voices matter and that decisions are being made with them, not to them. We need to put folk at the heart of decision making.
This will be the largest change to local government that we have seen since the creation of this Parliament. We are setting our sights high. This is about being bold and having the ambition to match.
Empowerment, self-determination and confidence must become principles for everyday life in this country, not just for independence referendums. If we in this chamber believe in the people of Scotland, we must trust them with more than our votes. We must trust people with decisions, trust them to shape the priorities that, in turn, mould their lives, and trust communities to know what their places need.
Again, I thank members for their valuable contributions. My door is open and my colleagues’ doors are open.
That concludes the debate on empowering communities and strengthening local democracy.
Previous
Law Officers (Roles and Functions)Next
Decision Time