Chamber and committees

That empowering point is really well heard, so thank you for that.

I recognise that, with the visitor levy, there will be no one-size-fits-all model. Different approaches will be taken by different local authorities. To set the scene, Edinburgh is very different from Highland. The Fringe festival in August will have a huge number of people coming, regardless of the levy. The Highlands are absolutely the best place in the world and one of the great gems of the Scottish tourism industry, but it is a lot more expensive to get there in the first instance. Just looking at the north coast 500, doing that this year will cost people about £60 or £70 more than it did last year by way of fuel in their tank as a result of the spike in fuel prices. There are already additional costs for visitors in getting to the Highlands.

As well as that point about the competitiveness of the tourist industry, there are other concerns. For example, people who travel across the region for healthcare will be slammed with the visitor levy, too, which is an absolute nonsense. Also, if the money is raised, it has been suggested in other local authorities that it should go to a culture pot. For Highland Council, we have real constraints on our roads and infrastructure, so spending it on that might be a solution instead.

Talk to me about the different approaches.

With regard to upskilling, there will be communities that are ready to go and others that will require additional support. Will that support come from the local co-ordinator? How will that be bridged?

Thank you—I appreciate that. I have another question, which will, I hope, be more helpful than what I have been throwing at you at so far.

With regard to the report that you produced, we will come to the end of the local government consultation period, and we will debate the new model that has been presented to us. Would you consider, at that stage, relooking at the report and perhaps bringing forward a version 2.0 to reflect what has changed?

It is good to hear that you met the culture secretary.

I recognise that I have had my time, convener, but others might perhaps pick up on that point.

That is helpful.

I want to circle back to the visitor levy—saying that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. The proposal was put to you that, if the visitor levy is raised, it should perhaps not go to local authorities, but go into a central pot. Can you clarify your stance on that? Surely, it should be up to local authorities to decide how they spend revenue that is raised with the visitor levy.

Excellent. Thank you very much, both.

I thank the witnesses. As Keith Brown said, the report is a really good piece of work, and I welcome anything that can genuinely shift power outwards into our communities. All credit to you, and thank you for joining us.

I want to follow on from what Keith said about the £500,000 figure that you have arrived at. Keith made a good point about Clackmannanshire. It has a low starting point, so its baseline differs from that of, say, Edinburgh. There will be local authorities that have a higher proportion of deprived communities. I represent a rural constituency—in fact, it is Scotland’s most rural constituency. In the Highlands, every pound that you spend has to be spread ever thinner, so the outputs that you get are much smaller. In this committee and elsewhere, I have often advocated the concept of rural proofing, which is the idea that funding settlements should recognise the additional level of costs in rural areas to provide services, including cultural services.

Will you unpack the £500,000 and say whether that is equitable across all the local authorities? From my line of questioning, you will probably understand that I do not think that it is quite right.

I want to return to public service reform. Indeed, I do not think that we can get through an evidence session without talking about it—and I see from the witnesses’ reaction that they feel the same.

Your fairly meaty report has been put together on the basis of there being 32 local authorities. If I were in your shoes, I might well have had an interesting reaction to discovering, all of a sudden, that we might have six to 10 regional authorities. I do not expect you to be an expert on what the Government is bringing forward with regard to local government reform—indeed, I do not think that anyone will be, given that we have only about four pages of it to go on.

I think that Mr Baker suggested that, given the proposal for six to 10 regional authorities, a potential model could be lots of different local consortiums. However, it is also proposed that there will be 120 to 160 community authorities, and the very short paper that we have had from Government says that

“the provision and maintenance of local leisure, sport and culture facilities”

will come under them. Is that right?

That was an honest and transparent answer, and I genuinely appreciate it. We probably should recognise that it could be tried and tested.

There are so many illustrative examples. With self-directed support and the delivery of care in the Highland area, carers are being paid to travel to get to the person who needs care instead of just to deliver care, so, automatically, the person receiving care has their SDS hours reduced. That is one of the challenges that we face. I really appreciate that answer.

How can we ensure that local culture Scotland is genuinely community led? There are questions about how participation is measured. There will be communities that are already active and ready to create local consortiums, but there will be others that do not have the same skill set. Part of the infrastructure should address those skills gaps so that we can have a genuinely community-led initiative. I am keen to understand a little bit more about that.

I want to unpack my concerns about the transparency and liability of the funds. I think that it was Senga Beresford who touched on those aspects. Let us look at the community benefit or community wealth building that comes from energy—for example, onshore wind, of which there is a significant amount in Highland. There are a lot of questions about transparency, scrutiny and liability, with some active communities taking money off in one particular direction. That can create a lot of tension. I would really like to know what we can learn from that, and how you would deal with the challenges of transparency and the upskilling that has been suggested.

That is somewhat unfortunate, because I was going to pick on you, Lucy. I will make this a relatively tight follow-up, if that is okay. You talked at great length about MEND from a UK Government perspective and you were talking about the trade-off with regard to capital expenditure. When it comes to capital expenditure and what that means in relation to revenue investment, do you have a list of assets that are, effectively, on red alert, so that if you do not shift funding right now, they will fall apart or be closed to the public? Are you at that sort of dangerous stage? What does the future look like?