Chamber and committees

Actually, Councillor Heddle has just made the point that I forgot to make about independent scrutiny and the range of bodies that play that role.

A fair bit of work is already taking place to develop the fiscal framework. Part of that work involves looking at all the areas of ring fencing and direction and at where there are opportunities to relax that.

The starting point is that, going forward, we should not have ring fencing. About 7 per cent of council funding is currently ring fenced. However, in the spirit of partnership, it is fair to recognise that, even when funds are not ring fenced, there is often a degree of direction. If you speak to senior council officials, they will tell you that, even when there is no ring fencing, the reporting is sometimes overly burdensome. If we can find mechanisms that give us assurance on outcomes, we can remove some of the unnecessary bureaucracy. That is a work in progress, but a significant amount of progress has been made, and we hope to have made some progress for this year’s budget.

Such matters have to be taken forward in collaboration with our partners. It would be absolutely wrong, and against the spirit of the Verity house agreement, for the Government to say that we will change the funding formula unilaterally. Any changes in that regard must be made in partnership.

By giving local authorities more flexibility in how they use their budgets, I hope that many of them will choose to use that flexibility to tackle poverty. That is one of the three outcomes that we have agreed, so it absolutely should be a consideration. I know that my local authority—Dundee City Council—took the decision to fund many anti-poverty measures beyond the statutory requirements because of the city’s particular circumstances. If we give local authorities more flexibility, they will be able to make the choices that work for their areas. That is the principle of subsidiarity. Such decisions can be made at the correct level, and we can respect the democratic mandate that our local government colleagues have in their own right.

Ellen Leaver might be able to say a little bit more about the work on the fiscal framework.

The new deal in the Verity house agreement is between local government and the Scottish Government, so those are all factors that we need to be alert to as we move forward.

Well, the agreement is between the Scottish Government and local government.

Work is taking place on the overall issue, but you are probably jumping three steps ahead of things. Clearly, though, that will be part of the work that will need to take place. Equally, we will need to look at how we might resolve the issue of accountability with regard to matters that are the responsibility of Scottish Government ministers. We will do that in the spirit of partnership enshrined in the Verity house agreement, and I hope that that will help us to take things forward in a way that works for everyone.

I thank the committee for the opportunity to make some brief opening remarks. We collectively recognise that the two spheres of government play a vital role in delivering sustainable public services that our communities across Scotland rely on. Building, maintaining and valuing a strong working relationship with local government is therefore a key priority for this Government.

As the committee will be aware, the need for a reset of the relationship between local and national Government was first set out in the resource spending review last year. The First Minister reiterated the commitment to a new deal with local government in his policy prospectus, “Equality, opportunity, community: New leadership—A fresh start”, in April and again on 30 June, when he, the Deputy First Minister and I signed a partnership agreement to be known as the Verity house agreement, alongside the COSLA presidential team and political group leaders.

I believe that the Verity house agreement will better enable both spheres of government to work effectively together to achieve improved outcomes for communities across Scotland. However, the agreement marks only the beginning of the new deal with local government. COSLA and the Scottish Government are working jointly at pace on a new fiscal framework and shared work programme, including an outcomes and accountability framework, to underpin the Verity house agreement. Taken together, those should balance greater flexibility over local financial arrangements with clearer accountability, while demonstrating strong delivery of better outcomes for people and communities. If we can get the new deal right, I believe that it will make a positive difference to our communities and the lives of the people whom we serve.

It would be good if Sarah Watters and Ellen Leaver could contribute on that issue, because they have been very much involved in the actual day-to-day work on that. The three shared priorities roughly align with the priorities in the resource spending review. Obviously, there was a degree of work, which Sarah and Ellen will have been involved in, to look at the priorities in the spending review and take something back to the politicians. However, I do not think that there was a particular argument around the three priorities, because they make sense. That is shown by the fact that the Verity house agreement, with those three priorities, was supported not only by the Scottish Government and the COSLA presidential leader, but by political leaders across the COSLA organisation—all parties were able to sign up to that.

I guess that that is the strength of looking at top-level outcomes and the difference that we are trying to make. On many of the issues, whatever our political perspective and our differences about how we get there, we share a common desire to improve the lives of people in Scotland, and the three priorities help us with that.

I will pass that to Ellen Leaver, if that is okay.

I agree with what Councillor Heddle has said about leadership, and I will add a couple of examples.

Part of the issue is that we need to ensure that it is not simply assumed that the local authority will always be the provider of leadership. That is not always the case. I have a couple of examples from recent visits in which other skills were brought to bear.

I mentioned previously the Wester Hailes community. In producing its local place plan, it used consultancy to supplement its skill set and that of the local authority. That worked for Wester Hailes and it gave the community more independence than there would be from a local authority person taking that leadership role.

One of the communities that I visited during my summer tour was the Struan community on Skye, which is looking at repurposing a building as a community asset for the future. The Struan community pulled in the support of Planning Aid Scotland to supplement the skills that it had around the table, although the community was pretty rich in that respect. It is not a case of one size fits all, but we need to avoid assuming that the leadership role should always be performed by Government, whether at national or local level, because that could remove a community’s independence.