Chamber and committees

It is important to emphasise how hard COSLA and Scottish Government officials worked to identify the £80 million—which, to be fair, everyone thought was the ask of the unions to settle the dispute—in a way that did not impact on front-line services. That was not easy to do and it took a huge amount of work. It feels as if we have pushed that envelope to the end, which is why COSLA will be keen to talk about the road map to £15 an hour, because there could be a cost this year. This year is particularly difficult; we cannot change the income this year.

If there is a suggestion that that is where Unison is going, I hope that it articulates that clearly so that COSLA can discuss that with Unison. COSLA is working hard to discuss with Unison what the asks are, because no one wants the dispute to go on for any longer than it has to.

On a point of order, Presiding Officer. I did not manage to connect to the voting app. I would have voted no.

The member was a local councillor, so he knows that councillors are democratically elected to make decisions on the priorities in their local communities. It is really important that, as elected members, we respect the democratic mandate of councillors across Scotland.

The money has all been allocated, and the difference is clearly that Mr Lumsden is coming to the chamber and asking the Scottish—

As I said, the money has been allocated. It was allocated to budgets as part of £100 million of additional funding that went to local government at stage 3 of the budget bill.

Mr Lumsden has come here to say that that money should have been ring fenced. I encourage him to speak to his local government colleagues, because I know that they are looking for more flexibility. They are not asking us to ring fence more pots of money. In fact, they are asking for exactly the opposite—more flexibility, so that they can use their democratic mandates to determine what is best for their local communities.

Local sport and leisure facilities, including swimming pools, are vital in supporting the physical and mental health of the nation.

Compared to the less than £6 million of consequentials that the Scottish Government received for swimming pools following the UK budget, the Scottish Government allocated £100 million of additional funding to local government at stage 3 of the budget bill, which was funded in part by those consequentials.

The Verity house agreement is an important opportunity for us—not just the Government but the whole Parliament—to reset our relationship with local government. For too long, we have treated local government as if it was the deployment arm of the Parliament, whether for Government or members’ bills. We need to respect the democratic mandate of our local government colleagues.

The Government has intervened and taken action in relation to the local government settlement in order to support our local government colleagues. To allow for the initial meaningful pay rise, £155 million was added to the settlement. Last month, we gave reassurance to councils on an additional £94 million to increase recurring costs on the offer that they had made in order to allow them to make a further offer. We continue to have discussions with COSLA on how resources can be found to settle the dispute without the need for strike action, but we all need to be conscious of the very challenging financial position that not only the Scottish Government but local authorities face.

Conservative members—including Liam Kerr, in particular—fail to understand basic economics. It is not possible to continue coming here and asking for additional resources for X or Y without suggesting where the additional resources should come from. The Scottish budget is fully committed. If we are to make changes and further support our services, we will have to make adjustments across the budget.

It is lucky that we did not listen to the Conservatives about a year ago, when Liz Truss announced her disastrous budget, which has had implications for local authorities and public authorities, not only in Scotland but across the United Kingdom, as they have had to face unprecedented levels of inflation in year.

The Government is committed to continuing to work in partnership with our local government colleagues and to respecting their role as employers. As I said in my first answer, the Government is engaging with local government and will continue to do so.

Striking would not be the first choice of our employees and staff across schools in Scotland. They know how important the work that they do is to children, parents and carers, so they have not come easily to the decision to get a strike mandate. We all need to respect the fact that they have it and ensure that we all get round the table and have meaningful discussions. However, we need to respect local government’s role as the employer and to respect local government colleagues’ mandates.

Local government pay negotiations are a matter for local authorities as employers and for unions. The Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities have committed to respecting that negotiating arrangement as part of the Verity house agreement.

However, strikes in our schools are in the interest of no one, including pupils, parents and carers, who have already had to deal with significant disruption over the past three years. We continue our engagement with COSLA on how staff and services are supported this year and next year, and we urge all parties to engage meaningfully in negotiations to avert strikes.

Stephen Kerr actually makes a very good point. The Government, our COSLA partners and our trade union colleagues are keen to settle the dispute without strike action because we want to avoid the damage that the action would cause to children. As members would imagine, the Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills is in discussions with our local government colleagues about the mitigations that would need to be put in place and how we can have a consistent approach to achieving those.

I go back to one of the other points that Stephen Kerr made. In spite of the swingeing cuts from the UK Government to this Government and Parliament, local government had a real-terms increase in funding of £793 million this year. That is a real-terms increase of 3 per cent, and the Accounts Commission confirmed that local government funding is 2.6 per cent higher in real terms than it was in 2013-14.