Chamber and committees

Given the importance of robust data on rent levels and housing quality, what steps will the minister take to ensure that councils have a rigorous, transparent and properly funded process for collecting that data? Where, in the landlord register, does the Scottish Government envisage the data being stored?

Does the cabinet secretary expect that the 2025-26 settlement will reverse a decade of cuts and stop cuts such as those that are proposed in North Ayrshire, where the local authority proposes to remove 90 teaching jobs, to impose a charge of £50 for food waste collection and to reduce other bin collections from three-weekly to four-weekly?

As I understand it, the original request from a member of the public was to release all the evidence that was considered by James Hamilton, and the substance of the statement today relates to the legal arguments surrounding that. When will all the evidence that was requested in the original freedom of information request be released?

The debate is making clear that our long-term economic and financial sustainability is a matter of great importance across the chamber. I welcome the detail that is provided in the Scottish Fiscal Commission’s 2023 “Fiscal Sustainability Report”, which outlines some of the long-term challenges that we face, many of which are highly alarming.

It was interesting that Ross Greer said that we all accept that Scotland’s fiscal position is “unsustainable” and that Willie Rennie said that we have been debating the “demographic time bomb” for decades. I have to say that I have found neither of those issues to be central to the debates that I have heard in the Parliament in the three and a half years that I have been here. This debate is, in part, about making some of those issues central across the party-political divide in the chamber.

This debate links to a far wider debate about our economy and how we raise the money that we need to fund the high-quality public services that most people in Scotland want and ensure that all the population has a reasonable quality of life. As Liz Smith said, it is disappointing that the committee has had to wait 18 months for us to have a debate on the “Fiscal Sustainability Report”. Now that we are having the debate, it is disappointing that the Scottish Government motion does not even mention the report, and there is a tendency, which we all have, to fall into a party-political knockabout. The challenges that we face are clearly long term and very serious. The challenges of an ageing population and of the sustainability of public services will be with us after tomorrow’s budget, so we need to grapple with them.

The motion refers to a five-year fiscal sustainable delivery plan, without providing detail under the Scottish Government’s approach to the UK budget tomorrow. It may well be that some of what the cabinet secretary is seeking is announced in the budget tomorrow, or that it will be achieved through the on-going discussions in which she is involved. However, the long-term challenges that we face—an ageing population, climate change, de-industrialisation, economic inactivity, and a failure to deliver growth and effect redistribution in our society—need serious space for debate, including a long-term debate on how to create the solutions that are needed.

One of the strengths of this Parliament is that we have a huge amount of political consensus, compared with Westminster, for example. I think that, as a Parliament, we would be able to reach consensus on many of those issues.

We know that a continuing rise in the age of our population is predicted, along with fewer children being born, and that a population decline of up to 8 per cent over the next 50 years is predicted, too. That will have a significant impact on the amount of tax revenue that is collected for future Governments to spend on public services, and it will obviously add substantial costs to our social security budgets, our national health service, our social care services and other services, as an ageing population will require more services, not fewer.

The impact of the projected demographic changes that the Scottish Fiscal Commission report outlines must not be underestimated. It is estimated that total spending on devolved public services will be £54 billion in 2027-28, but that, by the end of the projection period in 2072-73, that spending will have increased by 123 per cent, which is £120 billion in today’s money. That is without taking into account the ambitions that many of us in Parliament have to improve on the failings in the public services that we currently have, which would no doubt require additional funding.

Of course, health is the largest component of Scottish Government spending, and, according to projections, it will grow more quickly than other areas. According to the report, it will increase from 35 per cent to 50 per cent of devolved spending by 2072-73. Future demographic changes among young people might lead to some falls in expenditure; for example, education spending is expected to fall as a share of Scottish Government spending, from 18 per cent to 11 per cent, if the population trends that we have at the moment continue. However, the impact of climate change is almost impossible to quantify in economic terms and it will no doubt dominate the future decisions of Parliament.

It is fair to say that none of us yet has the policies that might be required to address some of the challenges that will come as we continue to face a situation in which we miss our climate targets and fail to prepare properly for the economic impact of climate change.

This debate needs to be focused on the long-term challenges that we face. I genuinely hope that, in this Parliament, where there is a consensus on many issues, we will seriously grapple with the kinds of policies that need to be delivered in Scotland to make the differences that need to be made.

There are lessons to be learned from organisations such as yours.

Would Karin or any of the other witnesses like to comment?

I want to ask about inflation. It is important that third sector organisations are able to function properly and provide services, but also to be good employers and meet minimum standards, including the fair work agenda. How could inflation-linked funding be integrated to provide financial stability over multiyear funding periods? What role could funders have in that? Perhaps Neil Ritch would like to answer that first.

Thank you.

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, because although I am not a member of the committee and have not been involved in all the discussions that have been taking place in the Parliament about it, the debate about what targets should be and how we achieve them—which, of course, is the important thing—why we need carbon budgets and why we collectively need to step up to the challenge should be central to what we are all thinking about in this Parliament and beyond. Climate change and the effects of climate change should be at the forefront of our minds.

I accept that there is a political consensus in this Parliament that we need to step up to that challenge, but we also need to be honest with ourselves and admit that none of us has done everything that we should be doing, and we need to do far more than we have done.

We know that the Scottish Government has missed nine out of 13 targets so far and has missed eight in the past 12 years. We know that it failed to produce its climate change plan in late 2023, and I believe that we still have a legal deadline of late November to produce a plan, which is why we are having this debate.

Collectively, we need to agree that we must put in place every available resource to ensure that we do everything that we can to drive down our emissions.

I am not going to use my time here today to debate the pros and cons of the parking levy. There are many actions that need to be taken, and the member will be fully aware of the debate that is taking place on that issue.

Political parties in councils up and down Scotland also need to have the discussion that we are having, and we need to provide leadership. The Climate Change Committee deemed that the 2030 target of a 75 per cent reduction was beyond credibility. It also said that the introduction of multiyear budgets would

“provide a more reliable indicator of underlying progress”

and that a five-year period was most appropriate, given that the UK and Welsh Governments are already doing that. I agree that the Parliament and the Scottish Government should consider that, but we need to have a proper discussion of the pros and cons of that. I am not aware of all the arguments on both sides, so I hope that we are able to come back to that and discuss it as a Parliament.

The committee also said that each Scottish budget should be accompanied by a detailed plan, identifying what actions will be needed to achieve the reductions. I hear that Lorna Slater has one specific proposal, but a raft of measures will need to be taken. It is important to lay out what those policies will be, and an evaluation plan will be needed to track indicators to identify whether the deployment of scaling up at pace that is required is taking place.

As Liam McArthur said, there has been a series of failures on this agenda, and more detailed consideration of some of the specifics is something that the Parliament needs to do more regularly.

It has become abundantly clear that, although not enough is being done, there is a will in all political parties in the Parliament to do more. I am, therefore, supportive of the bill, but I agree that far more needs to be done to address the climate emergency, and, in the short time that is available to me, I want to focus on what that means to ordinary people, because this Parliament also has to carefully consider what a just transition means.

Much of the debate has been focused on a just transition for oil and gas workers, who will be at the centre of any move away from fossil fuel usage. I hope that the Scottish Government is working with the new UK Government to ensure that we have a concrete plan for energy transition jobs in Scotland.