Chamber and committees

Discussions are taking place as we speak, and it is important that they are being developed. We have seen action already with the 5 per cent cut. I think that we all want to see more action, and I am pleased that the chancellor has been leading on that.

On the Conservative benches, we also want to see more action from the Scottish Government, which we are here to debate today. That is why I have proposed in my amendment—indeed, we stood on the proposal in our manifesto at the council elections—that we look towards increasing the single person discount on council tax from 25 to 35 per cent. That measure could be used directly by SNP ministers now to help every single person in Scotland save, on average, £134 a year for an average band D property. That would not require a bureaucratic process; it is a measure that this Parliament could pass to deliver support that is needed.

I am disappointed that the Labour Party and, I take it, SNP ministers will not be supporting that—

Will the minister take an intervention?

Thank you—

Thanks, convener.

I want to ask a few questions about council finances, with ring fencing particularly in mind. Given the commission’s familiarity with councils’ and finance departments’ annual accounts, what is your current view of the Scottish Government ring fencing funding, and what percentage of total government resources is currently being ring fenced?

Yes. I was just going to hand back to you.

That is very helpful. Thanks very much.

That leads on to the discussions that are taking place at the minute between local government and the Scottish Government around the new fiscal framework. What is the Accounts Commission’s view on how that could work and how local flexibility could be built in, of which the committee keeps hearing councils want more? I would like to hear your views on the fiscal framework.

That is helpful. One of the key messages in the Scottish Government’s spending review document is about strengthening that partnership. As we have heard from you, the success of local government lies in unlocking community action. The key question that I would like to ask you is: what needs to be strengthened within that partnership? Is it just to do with budget lines or is it to do with shared decision making in some of those areas?

To go back to my first question, local authorities now think that everything they do is ring fenced. As MSPs, we hear regularly from councils that the flexibility to decide local priorities has been taken away from them. Does the commission have any views about strengthening that partnership?

I start by giving the cabinet secretary my best wishes for her maternity leave. Nothing could lighten this debate more, to be quite honest.

I thank the organisations that contributed to the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee’s work on the Non-Domestic Rates (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Bill, and I thank our clerks for the work that they have done.

The passage of the bill has not been controversial. There has quite rightly been cross-party understanding of why it is needed. We are all acutely aware of the significant impact that the pandemic has had on businesses and on the workload of assessors across Scotland, and of the significant and unsustainable backlog that has built up. As has been stated, since the beginning of the pandemic, there have been more than 49,000 non-domestic rates appeals. That compares with pre-pandemic levels of about 5,700 appeals being lodged.

Scottish Conservatives accept the main principles behind the bill, which are that we should extend the rule to cover both net annual value and rateable value, and to cover the period back to 2 April 2020—the date on which the Scottish Government amended the definition of “material change of circumstances” to exclude changes in economic circumstances.

As I stated at stages 1 and 2, the bill is a sensible measure to update Scotland’s non-domestic rates and appeals system. We have also seen changes in England and Wales to mitigate the impact of the pandemic in this regard.

The Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee agreed that, because of the level of scrutiny of the order, an extensive programme of evidence taking was not necessary. During the bill’s passage through Parliament, we have heard concerns from a number of key stakeholders, and I welcome the fact that the minister has engaged with them. Those concerns come from businesses that operate in different sectors of our economy. It is clear that we need to look at how we can improve the appeals system to ensure those rights in the future, and I believe that the Government can take that work forward.

I welcome the minister’s assurances that the bill will not remove the right of appeal. That is important for many businesses, and it is a welcome step forward. Finally, I welcome the extension of the disposal deadline by a further year beyond 31 December. That extension was asked for and—importantly—the request was accepted.

The UK and Scottish Governments have both provided unprecedented levels of support to Scottish businesses during the pandemic—for example, the provision of 100 per cent rates relief for all eligible retail, hospitality and leisure properties. That is a huge amount of support, which has been very welcome. However, those sectors are already reporting that they are not recovering to the levels that they thought they would. Just today, there were reports in Edinburgh that accommodation bookings for the festival are not where businesses thought that they would be. We know, therefore, that many Scottish businesses are not out of the pandemic hangover quite yet.

The support that was provided, which amounted to around £10 billion in 2020-21, and the announcement that the support scheme would be extended by another three months, followed by a nine-month period of relief at 66 per cent, have been very much welcomed by businesses. Taken together, those support measures have, across Government, been worth £16 billion to the sectors. It is worth reflecting on how both the Scottish and UK Governments have stepped up during the pandemic period.

During the consideration of the bill, I have put on record a number of my concerns about how support schemes have been administered and how we must learn lessons in that regard for the future. There are businesses in much the same field that have been either winners or losers in being able to access support, sometimes simply because they are in different council areas.

It is clear that the processes that councils have used have not been universal. I hope that that issue is coming out of the assessor process, and that the Government will consider it as well. We all hope that we will never face a similar public health emergency again. Nevertheless, we must take forward the learning from the pandemic in that regard.

I turn to the important issue of support for businesses as we move forward. Scottish retailers have called on the Scottish ministers to lower business rates in Scotland permanently. Firms in the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors were fully exempt from non-domestic rates during the pandemic until 31 March. I welcome the SNP ministers’ extension of rates relief for the first quarter of the financial year, but we need to consider what additional support could be made available to those sectors that are clearly not recovering to the levels that they thought they would be.

It is clear that the pandemic has had a negative impact not only on our town centres but on many rural communities. Local businesses that were thriving before Covid have closed, are struggling to pay their bills or are finding that the way in which their business operates has completely changed. Significant consideration needs to be given to how businesses can adapt to what is now a very different environment.

As I have said, Scottish Conservatives want the Scottish Government to continue business rates relief. I want to put that on record.

Scottish Conservatives will support the bill to update Scotland’s non-domestic rates legislation and we support the committee’s recommendations, too. The legislation is similar to that which has been passed in both England and Wales and is, I believe, the most straightforward way to sustain an already overwhelmed appeals system. As I said, the Scottish Conservatives will support the bill at decision time.

It might be useful to include a question about the appeal process in any letter to the Government.

I welcome Christine Grahame’s guests to the public gallery and thank her for securing this debate and for the opportunity that it has given Parliament to discuss men’s health week as well as Clare Prenton’s play “Men Don’t Talk” and the work of men’s sheds in general across Scotland.

As Christine Grahame has outlined, Clare Prenton produced the one-act play “Men Don’t Talk” after conducting a number of workshops with groups from the men’s shed in Peebles. That work shows the huge benefit of men’s sheds, which I hope that we can all acknowledge today. “Men Don’t Talk” highlights the work that men’s sheds such as Peebles and District men’s shed do and helps to dispel the myth that men do not talk. Rather, men talk in a place and at a time when they feel comfortable to do so, which is why men’s sheds and other community projects are so essential to all our communities.

The debate is taking place during men’s health week, which is about raising awareness of health problems that disproportionately affect men. Men’s shed organisations across the country are indeed a vital source of support, friendship, relief and comfort to many and provide that strong support network that men often feel—particularly in today’s technologically driven world—that they are not necessarily connected to. It is important that that human contact is really looked at.

Men’s sheds provide an excellent opportunity to act early in the work that needs to take place to address people’s depression, relationship breakdowns and male suicide, particularly for men in Scotland from the poorest social backgrounds, who are often the most vulnerable due to issues around unemployment and poor social conditions.

The figures surrounding mental health and suicide among men in Scotland are shocking—we have had many debates on that—and I think that men’s sheds have a positive role to play in that jigsaw of how we find a solution.

In Scotland today, more young people under the age of 29 die by suicide than from all types of cancer combined. In 2020, 71 per cent of all suicides recorded were men, further illustrating the disproportionately high number of suicides among men in Scotland.

In my Lothian region, between 2016 and 2020, more than 500 people died from suicide, with 389—70 per cent—of those being men, which aligns with the national average. I recently met with the Scottish Men’s Sheds Association at its Banchory headquarters to discuss the challenges that face the charity, the work that it can do to help to turn around some of those problems, and the role that it needs to play in helping us to address them.

Anyone who has interacted with a men’s shed will know how their work is making a huge impact on local men in every community, and that the model is working well in rural and urban Scotland. Edinburgh and the Lothians, which I represent, are fortunate to have a number of men’s shed associations operating in the area, but we need to look at how we can further expand them, which I think is an important part of what this debate can help to achieve.

The debate shows how members’ business debates can drive change. The member has managed to do that because, yesterday, the minister responded to the Scottish Men’s Sheds Association to indicate that the Scottish Government will make available £75,000 of core funding. As Christine Grahame has outlined, that is fine for staffing, but we need a future commitment on support. I hope that the debate can help the three-year funding request that was put forward and rejected to be revisited, and that ministers will look towards the development of a future sustainable financial package, because it is hugely important for that to happen if men’s sheds are to be sustainable and expanded.

With just under 3,000 individual members and a pre-Covid engagement of about 10,000 members across Scotland, the Scottish Men’s Sheds Association is the largest and fastest growing member-led men’s health charity in Scotland—we should celebrate that. Therefore, it is vital that we look towards how its work will be expanded.

I thank Christine Grahame and Clare Prenton for bringing the work of men’s sheds to the attention of the Parliament. I will close with an important quote from another woman, the actress Glenn Close, that sums up the issue quite nicely. She said:

“What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candour, and more unashamed conversation.”

I sincerely hope that, by next year, when we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first men’s shed in Scotland, and when, I hope, the pandemic will be behind us, we can tackle issues of men’s health and wellbeing with more sunlight, more candour and more unashamed conversation.