Chamber and committees

I understand that. Basically, I think that there is a balance to be struck. Given that the bill was essentially inherited from the previous UK Administration—and I think that we are still in a new world in terms of understanding market regulation in a post-EU context—has the Scottish Government made an approach to the Cabinet Office seeking a broader set of principles and understandings, so that devolution is front-loaded into its thinking? It appears that we have found ourselves in the position of having to think about devolution after legislation has been drafted. If the Scottish Government has such concerns, is it trying to be proactive about finding new approaches to these issues?

Have you formalised that in any way, by trying to seek a more systematic approach?

This question is for Adrian Sargent. In much of what community wealth building stands for, you can see the threads of development economics. Central to that has been a focus on building actual capital—financial capital—through looking at micro-loan systems and how they can evolve and how communities can organise. Is there sufficient focus on how capital can be built? Regulation of financial providers is obviously reserved, but the level of assistance is also a factor. Could more be done to look at how to set up credit unions or organisations that use peer financing, especially commercial peer-to-peer financing? Could the question of how to provide greater assistance to the creation of those sorts of organisations be explored further?

It has been a really interesting discussion. I will more or less do a series of supplementaries and pull on some of the threads that have already been discussed. I will start with Matt Pearce. Is a fair summary of what you are saying that there is a risk of there being a bit of a top-down exercise and that we need to think about how we facilitate engagement from community organisations and whether we need to compel councils to do that? Do you agree with Stacey Dingwall that if it is passed as it is, the bill will create a set of reports, but with a danger that not much will change? Is that a fair summary?

That makes sense.

Stacey Dingwall, could I ask you a couple of questions? I do not know whether I need to declare an interest, but I obviously have some prejudices towards small businesses, and when I was running a small business I was a member of the Federation of Small Businesses.

I was struck by a couple of things that you said, the most important of which being the point about councils not always disclosing expenditure below £50,000. Do you know why they do not? I am guessing that most of your members, if they use Xero, Sage or QuickBooks, could detail their expenditure to very small amounts of money. Is it something that councils cannot do and, if so, do they have the right systems in place? Alternatively, is it something that they will not do?

The previous witnesses alluded to things that perhaps should be included in the bill, such as initial facilitation that makes it easier for small businesses and community organisations to engage, processes to engage community organisations at the start of a process and standardised reporting. Those things might make a difference. Does COSLA think that the inclusion of those issues might strengthen the bill? Right now, local authorities are required to do some additional consultation and produce a report—there is no additional activity, duties or obligations. My concern is that, without exploring some of those additional possibilities, nothing much will change in some areas.

It is very helpful. I think we should try to overcome those issues, but that is a very helpful contribution.

That sounds like general engagement, but I think that there is a need to really engage with the detail. I am interested in what prevents small businesses from applying for contracts, and what gets in the way of people and communities setting up businesses, which might begin as sole traders before growing into limited companies. We need to start thinking about those pipelines. Have those discussions taken place in the context of the bill? Could we go further and think about how we can bake that support into the way that government at all levels goes about its business, so that public procurement helps people to start up businesses and helps small businesses to grow?

I am thinking about the things that the bill could do and what you touched on there. The bill will require local authorities and other public bodies to do an additional set of consultation and produce a report. You seem to be suggesting that there is a convening power element. Should there be an obligation on local authorities, the Scottish Government and health boards to use that convening power to broker engagement, provide a forum and facilitate dialogue between community organisations, public institutions and, indeed, private sector organisations? Is that what you are suggesting?

My final question is for you, Morven Taylor, particularly because you are from the housing sector. One of my concerns about the bill is that it talks in quite broad and general terms about community wealth building, but in communities that have high levels of deprivation there is a lack of fundamental capital, particularly housing infrastructure. Unless we address that, we will struggle to build community wealth in any meaningful way. Do we need to benchmark communities’ access to fundamental infrastructure of housing and transport and fundamental public services before engaging with concepts such as community wealth building?