Chamber and committees

Pay inflation is a real challenge for all parts of the public sector. Local government, the Scottish Government and other public sector bodies are facing pay inflation driven by general inflation and the cost of living crisis. We are facing in-year challenges that we have never had to face before. I am trying to be as non-political as possible, but the impact of the mini-budget is being felt in every area of public service across Scotland and in the rest of the UK. That is a real challenge.

The Verity house agreement means that we can take those things forward together by working in partnership. What is right for one area might be different for another, which is why we want to empower local government to make choices and decisions. I hope that, instead of directing from central Government, we can allow local government to make the choices that will have the greatest impact on local areas.

As I mentioned earlier, my local authority, Dundee City Council, made a budget choice last year to provide extra funding for anti-poverty measures, because of particular challenges in the city. A huge amount of money has already been spent on mitigating Westminster policies. If we did not have to do that, the money could be deployed in different ways. Dundee City Council took difficult decisions not to do some things, because other things were thought to be really important. It is absolutely appropriate for such decisions to be made by politicians who are elected by their constituents to make them at local level, instead of their being directed by the Scottish Government in order to make life easier when we have to answer questions in front of committees such as this one.

Place directors have been around for a while. They try to understand, promote and support how public services work together, and that role has been reinforced in the Verity house agreement. I would not expect place directors to be accountable directly—that would be quite strange, because they are doing a piece of work; they are not making decisions as such.

Ellen, do you want to come in? I guess that you are a place director for some place.

We remain absolutely committed to supporting Mark Ruskell in bringing his bill forward at reconsideration stage, and the Verity house agreement is absolutely explicit in saying that we are committed to incorporating the charter. In fact, the language used in the agreement draws largely on it. Just because the European charter has not been enshrined in domestic legislation does not mean that we are not allowed to meet the aspirations of the legislation. Clearly, that was an aspiration of the Parliament.

Mr Ruskell took the view that we should wait until the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) (Scotland) Bill was taken forward for reconsideration. We have had that announcement, and we will now continue to work at pace to bring the bill back for reconsideration, but this is a complex issue and we need to make sure that we get it right. It is an absolute commitment, and COSLA raises the matter at virtually every opportunity, because it is important to local government that the charter is enshrined in law in future. I hope that all members agree that it is important that we take that forward.

I definitely agree with what you are saying. The committee might find it valuable to hear about the experience of the Wester Hailes community—which has been a particularly deprived community, many parts of which have been marginalised—in producing one of the first new-style local place plans in the country. That plan has been agreed by the council, so it has a new status. It is one of many communities that are showing the way for others, so it might be worth the committee’s while to look at what it has done.

We are working with partners on that, and the tripartite group is one of the groups that is helping us to do that. Through that, the Scottish Government, local authorities and the Scottish Allotments and Gardens Society work together.

There has been a slowing down of that work, because of our work on the good food nation. It tends to be the same people who are doing the work, and the good food nation has been prioritised. I do not think that that is necessarily a bad thing, but you are right that there are probably some easy gains that we need to make. However, we need to do that in partnership rather than telling colleagues what to do.

The NPF is still there and still exists, but it is probably useful at this point to recognise that the new deal is not only the Verity house agreement. It is important to say that because those terms are sometimes used as if they mean the same thing.

The Verity house agreement is part of the new deal with local government and is the partnership agreement. There are three other aspects underneath that, one of which is important to what we are talking about here. The first aspect is the fiscal framework, the second is the completion of the local governance review, which we have talked about, and the final strand is the joint work programme, which has an outcomes and accountability framework. That is really important and is the big difference between the Verity house agreement and the concordat.

The concordat served a really important purpose and was transformational at the time. In our new deal with local government, we are learning from some of the challenges of that concordat. Let us be honest: the lack of an outcomes and accountability framework meant that, over time, we reverted to old ways and ring fencing was used as an easy way of ticking a box and sometimes of being accountable to this committee. It is really important that we get the outcomes and accountability framework right. It is not something that we can do overnight, but the Verity house agreement gives us a set of agreed ways of working to achieve an outcomes and accountability framework that we hope will stand us in good stead well into the future.

I have met the leaders of all Scotland’s local authorities and, as part of that, with the leaders of all the political groups. The appetite is clear. Folk see a real opportunity to reset not only for this year and next year but for the long term, and to reset the way in which the Scottish Government and local government work together to benefit our communities.

There is an appetite for change across the parties in a way that did not exist before. That may be due to the fact that there may be a little less flag waving than there was with the concordat. It is clear that we are on a journey and that there is a lot of work to do. The Verity house agreement is a really important part of that process and an important partnership agreement, but it in no way concludes the new deal with local government. It is a starting point to a deal that is about how we are going to work together while respecting both democratic mandates.

There is not much to add. Having that spirit of partnership at the centre of all of our interactions is crucial. Clearly, there will need to be a mechanism for how we deal with disagreement, but, if we have that spirit of partnership as a starting point, I hope that disagreements will be the exception rather than the rule.

I do not think that it is unreasonable for the bodies mentioned by Councillor Heddle that carry out independent scrutiny—scrutiny that goes wider than that by, say, Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission—to check their processes. The Accounts Commission, in particular, is likely to do that.

However, it is important that those of us with a democratic mandate to serve our constituents in this Parliament respect the democratic mandate that local councillors receive in their elections. If we all sign up to that, we can have appropriate scrutiny. If a policy area is shared, let us have those lines of accountability and ensure that Scottish ministers are challenged on the policy areas that we have set. Ultimately, though, local government will be challenged by its electorate on the decisions that it is making—and there might well be different decisions in different localities.

First, the strategic review group is not new—it involves the Deputy First Minister and the COSLA president meeting to look at, generally, all matters of shared interest. The outputs from that would probably normally be scrutinised through other parliamentary channels rather than directly through that channel.