Chamber and committees

I am sorry; you are right. Marie McNair will ask those questions.

I will bring in Paul McLennan to ask questions on longer-term financial sustainability and the impact of budget changes on individual services.

Does Carol Calder want to come in on that? I see that Willie Coffey wants to come in on the general theme.

It is a work in progress. Thanks, Willie, for that question.

We have come to the end of our questions, but I want to hand back to Bill Moyes. Do you have any closing comments? Maybe we have not covered something that you want to highlight. I would love to give you time to do that.

Thank you very much for underscoring that. That point certainly did come out in the session.

It has been a really rich discussion. I am glad that we have this relationship with the Accounts Commission and that we are going to be seeing you at least annually. I find that the overview reports are very helpful for us to understand what is happening in local authorities. I have also been finding local authority reports for my region very useful.

I thank all of you who have taken part today and helped us to understand more of what is going on at a deeper level.

As that is the last of the public items on our agenda, I close the public part of the meeting.

Thanks for that response.

Sorry for jumping in. I see that Willie Coffey and Carol Calder want to come in.

It has been a very rich discussion. I have a couple of questions on the local government and Scottish Government partnership. My questions are related to the Islands (Scotland) Act 2018, because I am a Highlands and Islands MSP. In the 2018 act there is a mechanism for the three all-island local authorities to request additional powers. However, such a request has never been made, despite the act being in force for several years. Have you looked at that and do you think that the mechanism in the 2018 act is fit for purpose? I am not sure who might want to pick that up.

Thanks for that, Carol. Having been through the new member experience a year ago, I am grateful to hear that there is that level of support for colleagues working at council level.

We are now going to move on to questions from Annie Wells about skills shortages and workforce planning.

We move to questions from Willie Coffey on the theme of inequalities and community engagement.

Bill, what you said was slightly clipped. Who do you want to lead off?