Chamber and committees

I have a supplementary question on the topic, which Jonathan Sharma started to go in the direction of answering.

The Scottish Government’s shared policy programme with the Greens includes a commitment to devolve responsibility to local government to set non-domestic rates. What are your views on that idea? Would that increase revenue for local authorities? Would local authorities have the capacity to take on that additional responsibility in due course?

We have exhausted our questions. We really appreciate Jonathan Sharma and Kevin Fraser joining us to give us evidence. It has been very helpful for the committee to hear your perspectives.

As previously agreed, we will now take agenda items 4 and 5 in private.

Thanks, Alastair. If we have time at the end, we might come back to that. I see that Pete Wildman would like to comment.

We have quite a few questions to get through and about half an hour left for the session. It has been great to get an overview, which has been helpful, but our questions might draw out some of those issues. If you do not mind, in the interest of time, I will move on, but you can perhaps squeeze in more of what you wanted to say if those issues are not drawn out elsewhere. Is that okay?

Good morning, and welcome to the 10th meeting in 2021 of the Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee in 2021.

I ask all members and witnesses to ensure that their mobile phones are switched to silent and that all other notifications are turned off during the meeting.

Our first item is consideration of whether to take items 4 and 5 in private. Item 4 is an opportunity for members to reflect on the evidence taken in the meeting, and item 5 is consideration of our approach to an inquiry on retrofitting housing for net zero. Do members agree to take items 4 and 5 in private?

I see agreement, so I confirm that the committee will take those items in private.

Okay. I will bring in Elena Whitham.

We will move on to theme 4, on workload issues, which will be introduced by Miles Briggs.

Do you want to come back in, Miles?

I am not sure what is going on there. You should just go ahead, Jonathan. I think that there was a bit of unpinning and pinning of your video. If you go ahead, that will be great.

Does Kevin Fraser have anything to add to that?