Chamber and committees

I want to explore further the issues with diversity that you have talked about. As a former member of COSLA’s barriers to elected office working group, I am aware of all the work that is being done in the background by COSLA and by councils in general to increase the representation of under-represented groups in our councils. You have already touched on the outputs of that working group. Can you expand a little bit more on those today?

What progress is being made on the review of grant subsidy benchmarks and will there still be a differential between councils and RSLs? Are you confident that revised benchmarks will allow councils to meet the shared ambitions of the Scottish Government and local authorities to tackle poverty, inequality, homelessness and climate change?

President, you have mentioned community wealth building quite a few times in your evidence this morning. In a recent letter to the committee, the Scottish Government said:

“We intend to introduce Community Wealth Building legislation during the current session to encourage the model’s wider adoption across Scotland. Part of this will be removal of any impediments experienced by local authorities and other ... ‘anchor’ organisations seeking to advance a wellbeing economy.”

What is COSLA’s understanding of those impediments? What more can the Scottish Government do to help remove such barriers?

I refer members to my entry in the register of members’ interests, as I am still a serving councillor on East Ayrshire Council.

What are your views on the role of local government in Scotland’s economic recovery from the pandemic? What actions are required, and how can those be taken in such a way that there is no further increase in inequalities? We know that the impact of the pandemic has been heavily gendered. I welcome your views on those questions.

I will ask about the affordable housing supply programme. We know that Scottish councils share the ambitious target of delivering 50,000 affordable homes over the next five-year term and that they have warmly welcomed the five-year resource planning assumptions that give them some certainty over their plans. However, what evidence does the Scottish Government have on the increasing costs of building new homes and the extent to which that might affect the progress of the affordable housing supply programme? How will that be monitored and reviewed over the next five years?

Thank you for your response—I have a wee further question.

Thinking about local economies and the huge spending power that councils have, how can the Government support councils to enable them to encourage local community wealth building? Could that be done through reforms to procurement? There is a huge amount of spend in local authorities’ budgets. Could you talk a little bit about that, please?

I have a wee supplementary. Under your leadership, COSLA had its first job-sharing role for a spokesperson. That had never been done before, and it goes without saying that such a move allows local authorities to look at the levels of change in their own areas. It is incumbent on us all to increase representation from different groups. I just want to put that on the record.

I thank Jim Fairlie for that intervention. Recently, I was on a conference call with the Association for Public Service Excellence—APSE—and Robin Gourlay came on to the call. He has recently retired, so we paid tribute to all the massive work that he did.

East Ayrshire Council serves school lunches that contain very few processed foods. A large proportion—up to 70 per cent—of the food is locally sourced and 15 per cent is organic. All that is done with careful consideration of sustainability and environmental impact. Locally, that approach has resulted in suppliers growing their businesses to accommodate the increased demand for local food in school meals, thereby employing more local people, reducing food miles in the council’s carbon footprint and helping to create wealth that is retained locally. With the creation of 15 community food larders over the pandemic, East Ayrshire is also reducing local food waste and supporting dignified food provision in communities.

I refer members to my register of interests, which shows that I am still a serving councillor in East Ayrshire Council.

I rise to speak in support of the motion and in support of Scotland’s larder and our wonderful producers. They have been tremendous throughout the pandemic, but have also struggled with the real and present challenges that are posed by Covid-19 and Brexit.

I will focus my contribution to the debate on how we can support our food and drinks sector by seeking to adopt right across Scotland a community wealth building approach that will see organisations such as local authorities, health boards, colleges and universities and other public bodies utilise their vast procurement spend within their localities. I am glad that the Scottish Government is currently consulting on the draft local food strategy, because it is hugely important for many policy areas.

Councils are the area with which I am most familiar. The collective council spend across Scotland last year was £23.9 billion, or 14 per cent of gross domestic product. Although a lot of that is taken up by education and social work budgets, a significant amount of money is spent on procurement of goods and services—and, incidentally, on wages, which circulate in local economies.

In my local authority area of East Ayrshire, which is one of two councils in Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, the council has held the Soil Association’s food for life gold award for more than a decade, and is the only council in the UK to do so. Decisions that were taken at local level all those years ago, on the back of the Scottish Government’s hungry for success initiative, meant that community wealth building principles were at the heart of school food in East Ayrshire long before they came to the fore in the nation’s collective consciousness.

It was alarming to have constituents contact me during the summer to advise me that their private water supplies were lower or dry and that we were at a standing start for supplying emergency drinking water. I would like to have noted my thanks for the assistance from the Scottish Government to my many constituents who are not on the mains water supply due to the rurality of their properties. I ask that the minister commits to ensuring the robustness of water scarcity reporting so that both spheres of government can react to the real humanitarian crisis when indicators suggest that private water supplies are at risk.