Chamber and committees

What should the committee expect to see in that regard? Will there be a blueprint for how we all work together? We talk about digitisation, and we must be more efficient in future. There will probably have to be a headcount reduction to maintain the public sector pay bill as it is or to have it increase only slightly. The committee would like to see where we are going and what impact that will have on our public services.

My final question is about non-domestic rates. Last month, I asked for details about the re-evaluation. We still have not received those, and, obviously, the poundage has been frozen but the intake from non-domestic rates has increased by about £250 million. I am trying to get an idea of what is behind that increase. Do you have any more details?

I am not sure that Daniel Johnson did say that. I am not going to defend Daniel Johnson, but Liz Smith has already set out where additional funding for local government would come from, and I will come to that too.

For many years, councils have been asking for a fair funding settlement so that they can continue to meet the needs of our communities. The Government has continually squeezed those budgets to breaking point. The COSLA finance spokesperson, who is a member of the SNP, said that, in recent years, local authorities had faced

“extremely difficult financial choices due to real terms cuts”

and wider economic pressures. She added that

“There is a real danger that, as well as cuts, some essential services may stop altogether.”

To have essential services stopping altogether is quite a legacy for the SNP-Green coalition.

There is a different way. Given that the national care service appears to be dead in the water due to key unions withdrawing from the process and ministerial back-pedalling, perhaps the £1.3 billion that has been earmarked for that can be diverted to the bodies that are currently struggling to deliver social care—our local councils. Continuing to pour money into a dead-duck policy that no one thinks is a good idea, given the current financial pressures on our social care providers, is a disgrace and the SNP-Green devolved Government needs to wake up to that reality. There is a crisis in delivery and care that has happened on their watch.

My apologies—I am struggling for time.

I turn to the impact that the budget will have on business. The Fraser of Allander Institute has described the budget as taking a “hardline approach” to business, with

“No additional reliefs ... being applied to hospitality and retail, as is the case south of the border.”

The devolved Government has further cut £66.4 million in cash terms from the cities, investment, strategy and regeneration budgets. That is vital funding that drives growth in cities such as Aberdeen.

Last week, I spoke about the impact that the budget will have on growth: zero. It is a short-term budget with short-term goals. There is no financial planning or growth planning. It is a budget that lacks ambition from a Government that has run out of ideas.

It is the public that pays the price for that lack of ambition or solutions, not only in the demise of our services but in their pockets, because we have higher taxation than in the rest of the UK. Middle-income earners, such as teachers and healthcare workers, will be hit by increased taxation while the rising cost of living is also hitting them hard. The Government is making life more difficult for hard-working families in Scotland.

Although the tax gap between Scotland and the rest of the UK sees Scottish taxpayers paying £1 billion more in tax each year, that adds only £325 million to our public services. That is a result of slower growth in earnings and employment. Without growth, increased taxation becomes meaningless. Without ambition, growth is impossible.

As my colleague Liz Smith pointed out, services are not improving. In fact, they are getting worse. More and more people see their bins being collected only once a month; police numbers are falling; the attainment gap is not improving; NHS waiting times are increasing; the number of social care staff is falling; the drug deaths figure is not improving; growth is stalling and our high streets are closing. The list goes on and on.

The Government has more money to spend and more opportunities than ever before, but it has run out of ideas. The budget is short-sighted and short term. It is damaging to Scotland’s economy and to the pockets of hard-working Scots, it will see services cut and higher taxation for many of our constituents, and it does nothing to deal with the problems that this Government has created and has failed to address. It will harm growth, business and hard-working Scots, who will be left picking up the bill for this failed Government.

Will the member take an intervention?

I thank the member for taking the intervention. He talks about more powers. Why does the Scottish Government not use the powers that it has?

Will the member take an intervention?

Does the minister agree that great work is being done by the Scottish Men’s Sheds Association? Without getting political, I hope that he will have a word with the Deputy First Minister to see whether the money that was removed from the association’s funding can be reinstated, because it does a lot of good work that contributes to this area.

Does the member agree that the additional dwelling supplement being charged for local authorities is the wrong way to do it and that that should be addressed by the Government as soon as possible?

As a former council leader, I well remember the yearly merry-go-round of budget negotiations with the Government. Letters would fly back and forth, and meetings would be demanded and sometimes even granted. The Greens would demand more money for local government, and the pantomime would close with money being found down the back of the Derek Mackay sofa.

Unfortunately, we no longer have that pantomime. The Greens’ slavish devotion has been bought for the price of a couple of gas-guzzling ministerial cars. It is shameful. Despite the SNP-Green devolved Government having the largest core grant since devolution, it is local government, yet again, that will have to provide more essential services for less.

I have long argued that the only way to deal with some of the key issues in our communities is to deal with the problems at the grass roots and to fund community projects, which leads to much less funding being required further down the line.

A prime example of that is our men’s shed network, the funding for which accounts for a tiny amount in the scale of the budget, but which has proven to massively reduce health and social care costs further down the line. By investing in small community projects, we can address many issues such as loneliness, ill health and social isolation in a personal and local way, but the Government is slashing the budget for the men’s shed network. It talks about early intervention and prevention, but that is all talk and warm words without action. I challenge the Government to put its money where its mouth is and to correctly fund men’s health organisations.

The reduction in funding for our councils and the likely increase in the cost of our teachers, along with much-needed additional money to pay for social care staff, mean that services in our communities will be cut. The money has to come from somewhere. If it does not come from Government, it has to come from the roads, parks, refuse collection, leisure and education budgets.