Chamber and committees

The landscape of public bodies changes almost annually and with every Government, so we have put regulation-making powers in the bill to allow ministers to designate additional bodies as they are created.

No, but SCOSS makes recommendations on social security provisions and it is for the Government to decide whether to accept them on the basis of costs. You will be aware that SCOSS has made recommendations that the Government has refused to action on the basis of costs.

Further, there is already headroom in the budget. The Scottish Fiscal Commission has said that the budget is likely to fall from £78 million to £74 million, if I remember rightly. That is because of the current system and the way in which it is set up. As I said, in essence, the industrial injuries disablement scheme supports men who worked in heavy industry in the 1960s and 1970s. As those men are, sadly, passing away, entitlement is dropping off, and the budget is falling, year on year, because of that. As we have not updated the list of prescription or entitlement, that will not change and the budget will continue to fall.

To my mind, there is already headroom in the budget to make changes. However, as I said, it would not be for the council to decide on Government budgeting. It has no role in setting the Government’s annual budget. The Government of the day will make decisions based on the argument that the council makes and based on political pressure. When it comes to budget day, every single year, trade unions and other campaigning organisations will apply pressure that their priorities should be reflected over any others. It will be for the Government of the day to decide. The council cannot tie the hands of whichever Government is in office when it comes to setting its budget.

It is key that the council is set up through primary legislation that this Parliament passes, because that will protect its status. Even if the council makes a recommendation that a Government of whatever colour strongly disagrees with, it will not be at risk of being disbanded. A working group that is set up by Government can be disbanded just as easily as it was created. We have seen working groups set up and disbanded without their recommendations being implemented. It is crucial that we set out clearly in statute that the body will be independent of Government, and also the membership requirements of the body, so that it is not subject to change at the whim of Government and it cannot just be ignored.

We also need to consider who will be on the body. It is likely to include some public sector workers, some of whom will be employed directly or indirectly by Government. If the body is a Government working group, they might feel that they are curtailed by their employment status. It is important to give them the protection that will be afforded by the body’s independence if it is a statutory body this is created by Parliament through legislation.

I am going only on the agency agreements that are in place between the Government and the DWP and on the DWP’s assertion that it would not countenance a further delay, which the Government was looking for. In essence, the 2026 deadline is a hard deadline, which the DWP does not have the capacity to go beyond.

I was talking about prescription. If the council made a recommendation on prescribing certain illnesses or injuries in certain occupations and the Government decided to accept that recommendation and implement it, which then led to a bigger call on the budget, the Government might look at that and consider that there was a bit of preventative work to do in, say, the fire service, the health service or whichever area the spend had been driven by.

I might not have explained myself properly. I do not disagree with the need for employment law to be devolved, but I do not think that that is necessarily applicable to the bill.

On the wider aspect, with the bill, we are seeking to set up a council that would scrutinise regulations on employment injury assistance. Although, under the bill, the council would have a specific power to work with others—in its evidence, the HSE said that it regularly works with the Scottish Government and public bodies in Scotland, so it would have that ability—

As the bill stands, and as it is set up, the council would not have the power to interfere on preventative work because of the reservations.

Yesterday, the Institute for Fiscal Studies challenged the assertion by the Government that local authority funding is increasing in real terms. It—not I—said that the figure being asserted by the Government is

“highly misleading”,

because it compares apples with pizza:

“It compares updated 2023-24 funding (AFTER additions for pay) to original 2022-23”

figures that were announced in December 2021.

A month ago, Shona Robison said that the amount that is needed to fully fund a council tax freeze would be figured out by negotiation. However, neither the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Finance nor the Minister for Community Wealth and Public Finance, has been able to tell me what “fully funded” means. Yesterday, COSLA said that it needs £14.4 billion to stand still—with £300 million for the council tax freeze. Will the councils get that funding to prevent the bankruptcy that is being warned of?

The minister says that the funding settlement is “challenging”, but “challenging” does not cover councils saying that they could go bankrupt. They have already considered sweeping cuts to libraries and leisure services. The Scottish Housing Regulator has warned of “systemic failure” in homelessness services. When councils threaten bankruptcy and people are being failed by repeated cuts, the Government must surely see that local government services are breaking down. That will fall to the Government. What has it set out on what bankruptcy will mean for a local authority? What preparations has it made for that taking place? Would it step in to provide services in that area?

To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to protect local authorities from the risk of bankruptcy. (S6T-01678)