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.

Sure.

As Tom Arthur said in the previous evidence session, we expect to get the output of the local governance review by the beginning of next year—I think that “early next year” was the language that he used. A really important on-going piece of work is the “Democracy matters” conversation, but an equally important piece of work involves looking at single authority models, with Orkney Islands Council, Western Isles Council and, I think, Argyll and Bute Council looking at whether such a model will work for them.

As I have been going around local authorities, I have been saying to them, “If there’s something that, two years ago, you thought might not work”—which is where Argyll and Bute Council was a few years ago—“and you want to look at it again, do not hesitate.” Argyll and Bute Council is likely to come forward with a single authority model that it thinks might help it get sustainability. These things need to be worked through in partnership, and that will, I hope, allow us to make the changes. I do not expect these things to be carbon copies of one another. If we end up with three single authority models, I expect that each will be unique and will work for what is right for the area.

I know that other island authorities, particularly Shetland Islands Council, do not want to take the same route. Instead, they talk about the partnerships that they have developed under the current arrangements, and we would hold them up as exemplars.

There is a lot of learning to be done, and any changes that we make in this respect will be looked at by other authorities. I hope that, even if we do not end up with a single authority, the work that we have done in looking at the issue will help us to improve the sustainability of public services as a whole.

Part 7 gives ministers power to make regulations to facilitate supporter involvement and to give fans rights in a number of areas. The Scottish Government held a consultation on that in 2016, and no action has been taken since. The matter sits within the portfolio of the Minister for Social Care, Mental Wellbeing and Sport. If colleagues are okay with this suggestion, maybe you could ask her to give you a written update on the Government’s views in light of the responses to the 2016 consultation.

That is an important question. That is why our approach is not to say that the Verity house agreement means that it is all completed. There is a lot of work to do to get it right in a respectful way, with COSLA and the Scottish Government working together. The work that Sarah Watters mentioned is happening now in order to get the outcome framework right. Part of the work that is on-going relates to finding a better way to take the fiscal framework forward and identifying where we could have different arrangements in order to agree our shared outcomes.

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.