Chamber and committees

I know that the sharing of resources, co-location and so on are happening in many council areas, and Police Scotland has been looking at some of that, too. It is all about bringing your infrastructure together and looking at the associated costs. I just wonder whether the councils that Keith Yates and Bill Howat were associated with ever did that. If so, was it more about improving services, or was it just a way of making savings?

I was about to ask about your views on the integration of health and social care, but perhaps that is going too far. [Laughter.]

Finally—this is my million-dollar question—how would you like to see the Verity house agreement taken forward? We have touched on the council tax freeze, which was thrown into the conversation when the ink was not even dry on the agreement. Do witnesses have any views on why it is taking so long to implement or on what could be useful to take forward the fiscal framework between the Government and local authorities on the principles that are set out in the agreement?

We have heard a lot about consensus on allowing councils to do their own thing. On the flipside, most people do not accept a postcode lottery—most politicians in this room will have used that phrase in discussions about all portfolios that we have worked on. Do you all think that, because local decision making is more important, it is absolutely fine that we should have a postcode lottery?

What if I used the phrase “variation in services” instead?[Laughter.]

Does anyone else want to add anything?

I will start with Alison Payne. Bill Howat has been thrown in at the deep end a few times this morning already.

Does anyone else want to add anything?

Yes, we come to the easy topic of public service reform. The Accounts Commission has stated that

“councils ... urgently need to transform how they deliver services to become financially sustainable.”

How, in your opinion, should councils be looking to change how they deliver services? What opportunities does local government have to reduce costs and improve efficiency that it has not already looked at over the past number of years? Moreover, how can the Scottish Government actively support that transformation? As I have said, it is an easy topic.

I have a question in relation to the Christie commission report. As a committee, we have discussed its recommendations—and the changes in how local authorities operate that have come out of them—in many areas of our work, especially in relation to how local authorities are able to move towards a preventative model. Do you have any examples of that? Were the principles of Christie taken on board or not? That perhaps comes down to the difficulty of making the shift to prevention, because you do not have a separate budget to do that work.

The minister will know that, since his appointment, I have been trying to work constructively with him. However, I have to say that, after eight years as an MSP serving in this Parliament, I have never heard a more out-of-touch statement being delivered by a Government minister.

The minister stated that

“we have seen progress in reducing homelessness in some areas”

Progress? After 17 years of this Scottish National Party Government, 15,000 children are homeless in Scotland today, and homelessness has reached its worst levels since records began. The statement was, simply, complacent.

The minister singularly failed to mention the one negative policy intervention that housing associations, home builders and investors have told him and, I know, all the cabinet about—the Scottish National Party-Green rent controls policy. That policy has resulted in the total collapse in construction of mid-market rent homes, and in housing associations not building new homes and having to rewrite their whole investment plans—not to mention investors seeing Scotland as being closed for business.

The Scottish Property Federation estimates that £700 million in residential investment has been paused or lost due to the rent controls policy. Property developer Chris Stewart has said that Scottish Government ministers are responsible for a loss of more than £3 billion of investment, mainly in the build-to-rent sector, through the imposition of rent controls.

We need change and action. I therefore ask the minister whether he will take forward two changes. Will he agree to review national planning framework 4, which is now slowing down investment? Every house builder is saying that they cannot get access to land and are moving out of Scotland. Many Scottish home builders are now building more homes in England.

We also need the minister and the Government to accept that rent controls have failed Scotland and are failing renters. Will the minister make sure that the Housing (Scotland) Bill addresses that and, if need be, that rent controls are removed?

I thank the cabinet secretary for the advance sight of his statement and for the time that he gave to staff, patients and elected members on a visit to the eye pavilion this morning.

As the cabinet secretary heard directly from clinicians then, the closure of the hospital and the significant disruption to the service have the potential to cause harm to patients in Lothian. We are at this point because of a failure to deliver a new eye hospital for Lothian over the past decade. There has been a failure of leadership by Scottish National Party ministers to plan for and deliver the growing health services that we need in Lothian.

The cabinet secretary will be aware that there is real concern among patients and staff that this might be just the start of a much longer period of closure of the hospital. We will not know that until work starts to be undertaken. It is now critical, therefore, that we see a commitment from SNP ministers to fast-track the funding and construction of a new replacement eye hospital.

I have two questions for the cabinet secretary. First, will he give a commitment that the Scottish Government will help to cover the significant costs that NHS Lothian will face when the services are redistributed across the NHS estate? Secondly, after today’s visit, does he fully accept that we need a new eye hospital to be built in Lothian?