Chamber and committees

We will now move to questions from Willie Coffey.

Agenda item 2 is an evidence session with Tom Arthur, Minister for Public Finance, Planning and Community Wealth, on the planning data parts of the legislative consent memorandum on the United Kingdom’s Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill. Mr Arthur is accompanied today by Scottish Government officials Cara Davidson, head of environment and energy, and Liz Pringle, head of digital planning services. I welcome Mr Arthur to the meeting. Before I open the session to questions from members, I invite him to make a short opening statement.

Good morning and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2022 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee. Annie Wells is joining us remotely today, and Mark Griffin will be with us shortly.

I remind members and witnesses to ensure that their mobile devices are in silent mode and that all notifications are turned off during the meeting.

The first item on our agenda today is to decide whether to take in private items 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8. Do members agree to take those items in private?

Members indicated agreement.

I have a question for Shona Morrison that is connected to culture and might be a simpler one to answer. You talk about the long hours that councillors must work and the lack of balance in relation to remuneration, but perhaps something could be done to change the need for long working hours. Who has the power to change the working hours for councillors? Where does that power sit?

Talat, your audio is intermittent, so we will pause for a moment. We will move to audio only for you, to ensure that we can hear everything that you say.

Would you like to start again, Talat?

No—it is the technology, not you.

The third item on our agenda is to take evidence on understanding barriers to local elected office. We have two panels of witnesses joining us. For our first session, we are joined remotely by Jessie Duncan, development officer from Engender; Hannah Stevens, chief executive of Elect Her; and Talat Yaqoob, consultant with and co-founder of Women 50:50. I warmly welcome you all to our meeting. We will direct questions to specific witnesses where possible, but if any of you wishes to contribute, please type an R in the chat function and the clerks will let me know.

I will open the session by asking a few questions. I would like to begin by taking a broader look over the past 10 years, and I will direct my question initially to Hannah Stevens. Given the effort and will that have been evident over the past 10 years, do you have a sense of why there is such a slow pace of improvement in the number of female councillors in Scotland?

Thank you very much. We have come to the end of our questions. Your evidence has been very helpful. We really appreciate you joining us this morning and we look forward to other times when you will join us.

As we agreed at the start of the meeting to take the remaining agenda items in private, I now close the public part of the meeting.

I was curious about local labour, and that issue has been covered.

Can I come in on that, convener? Regional marine spatial planning is an exciting opportunity. Lucy Kay said that it needs to be supported. Will you be more specific? What would need to be in place to support that?