Chamber and committees

You have probably given me enough to go on. I want to bring in our other two witnesses, too, to get their reflections. Many initiatives have already been put on the record. We have talked about the flood prevention scheme, which I agree has very good comms. From the perspective of your respective agencies, what would you like to be done differently in order to square off the disconnect between the community’s perceptions, which have been so elegantly articulated, and the activity that is going on now, both in the short term and in the longer term?

There is a perception in Grangemouth, to which you have alluded, that the community bears the cost of the industry without getting the value of it. Some people hold the perception that the council does not give sufficient focus to that and that, inadvertently, its focus is on things that protect industry. They would argue that even the flood defences are about protecting industry rather than necessarily having the community at the heart of the project.

I have been aware of that perception since I was elected to represent the area. Has it changed? What active steps has the council taken to address it as part of the activities on a just transition? You are clearly aware of that perception.

Yes.

I have to fess up and say that I find the thread of John Mason’s questions very interesting—I do not know whether that is good news or not.

As I have been listening to all the questions, I have been thinking that, in general, the fulsome reports that have been provided are a very good thing. However, in our job of scrutiny as a committee, we are trying to manage and get oversight of different things. We have the initial, up-front estimates and then we have any revisions, where we are able to factor in actual spend plus the new estimates, then we have a final sum-up position, and then Daniel Johnson comes in and says, “Aye, but what about the year to date?”

When was the last time you thought about how you present these reports to the Finance and Public Administration Committee so that we are able to ask some of those questions? I appreciate that, with some of these questions, we are not really comparing eggs with eggs; we are throwing in bananas as well. It is about considering best practice in presenting public accounts. When was the last time that you reviewed what you do against what happens elsewhere? I fully accept that there are additional complexities around the fiscal framework, but do you routinely review what you are doing and ask whether you are acting from the point of view of giving maximum transparency, to enable the sort of questions that have come out today?

The committee can discuss that afterwards. It is reasonable for this committee to expect to get complex reports that include a summing up that the public might find accessible; there are enough of us here who would be comfortable reading something like that.

You were asked earlier about in-year budget pot switching—realignment, if you like. You commented on the fiscal framework. That ties in with the existing estimating processes. In your role as someone who sits above those processes, and given those variants, when did you last assess how effective your estimating processes are? What, if any, weaknesses have you highlighted and how will you address those? Because of the realignment, this must be about more than the fiscal framework. As the convener commented at the start, it is also connected to estimating.

There is a general question, which you do not have to answer now but which may be of interest to the committee, about how the on-going processes across directorates can be as efficient as possible. I was involved in that sort of thing in another life. There is a habitual scrabble towards deadlines and any review of how effective or efficient processes are can drop to the bottom of the pile. That is just how the world operates.

From the point of view of public expenditure and efficiency, I want to see built-in review processes that are overseen from a finance perspective. That continuous improvement should be properly built in, rather than being something that we would like to see. You do not need to answer that. It may be that the committee is not interested in that.

There is a rule in the committees that the longer the time before asking a question, the higher the probability that it has already been asked. I will just pick up on a couple of things.

First, Gordon McGuinness made a point about the local community. Both Cliff Bowen and Pat Rafferty will be across this point, too. There are still pockets of the local community, particularly in Grangemouth, who, despite the good work that has been done by Ineos—even going back to BP days, never mind Ineos—in the community, feel that they have been left behind. I should also mention the very good work that goes on in a number of parties to pull things together.

What gaps should be plugged to ensure that the local community in Grangemouth can share in the bright vision that Cliff Bowen in particular has set out for the future, as part of a just transition?

I invite the three of you to give us some thoughts about that.

You have described some good initiatives, but I am less clear about the extent to which ensuring that women and girls are, from now on, at the heart of a just transition is a fundamental SDS policy, which is slightly different to just having good stuff going on. Is that at the heart of the just transition?

Thank you for that. I want to pick up on what Ronnie Palin said about the skills perspective. I know that a lot of work is going on to make sure that girls in particular can participate. Surely part of the just transition has to be that more than half the population has skin in the game. How do you ensure that women and girls are at the just transition party? What is the latest position on your active development of that?

I strongly agree. Perhaps that is where allowing for flexibility in the planning system, as outlined by my colleague Fiona Hyslop, becomes increasingly important. Town centres must be community hubs that allow for a variety of activity.

Even now, economic activity in town centres is more broadly based than many people realise. I can go to town centres in my constituency and find retail shops—of course—but I can also find professional services such as accountants, pubs, entertainment venues, community playgroups, cultural centres, coffee shops, and many other types of SME. Sometimes, however, the challenge is that those different activities interact with different support funding opportunities, different regulatory controls and so on, which means that a town centre can find itself amidst a complex web of policy and funding support streams. That is part of the challenge in moving things on.

An added dimension to that complexity is that the situation is not the same everywhere. The committee has pointed out the different remits and sometimes very different delivery focus of the three enterprise agencies that together span Scotland. It worries me that there is a gap in the place-based support that is available for towns and communities that are not covered by either Highlands and Islands Enterprise or South of Scotland Enterprise. I know that the Scottish Government has been asked by the committee to respond to that concern; I, for one, hope that it will do so before long. It cannot be justifiable that, in effect, some towns and communities have less ease of access to support funds than other towns and communities have.

Another issue that has been known about for years is the need to address the cost imbalance between out-of-town development and town centre regeneration. That has come up in the debate. We have to find creative ways to lower the barriers to town centre development. In my judgment, we will simply not be able to realise our aspirations to regenerate Scotland’s towns if we do not tackle the issue head-on and give it due importance in policy development.

The committee has further commented, including during the debate, on how current VAT rules add to the imbalance. They add to distortions in local economies and create disincentives—we have heard examples of that. The Scottish Government is asked to set out what discussions it has had to date with the UK Government on VAT, but I would go further. If it is possible to devise tax incentives to support free ports, which are much more controversial business places, then perhaps we can think more creatively about relieving some of the tax burdens on town centres. I venture to point out that if, say, a reduction in overall tax burden had the result of encouraging many more small start-up businesses in our town centres, the cost to the Exchequer would be minimal—or even better.

Although I have focused on economic and business issues, I end by joining my colleagues in recognising the quality-of-life benefits to be had from thriving town centres. They are of us and from us, and we will continue to be within them. They can bring real social and environmental improvements to town-centre communities, and that should be nurtured and treasured. After all, is it not the purpose of politicians to provide such improvements for the people we serve? I am sure that we all aim to do that.