Chamber and committees

Thank you; I appreciate your opening remarks, cabinet secretary, which point us in a good direction for asking our questions. I will just comment that I think that we have a great opportunity. You said that you are overseeing a wide-ranging area, but it is all joined up. The committee has been talking about our remit being local government and housing and planning, and how important it is to hold all those together and see how those aspects of how we design Scotland work. We have the opportunity now to do that.

The committee has some questions and I will start. What are the biggest challenges facing local authorities? Do you agree with the Accounts Commission for Scotland that tackling inequalities and addressing the effects of poverty are some of the biggest challenges facing local authorities? I heard you say that one of the most important challenges is tackling child poverty. Can you share a bit more about that?

That concludes our questions. It has been a rich and thought-provoking session, which will form a really good basis for our future work. Thank you for spending your time with us and sharing your views.

Agenda item 2 is an opportunity for the committee to take evidence to inform its understanding of what its key priorities should be for this session. It is also an opportunity for the committee to inform its pre-budget scrutiny. The committee will take evidence, virtually, from the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government and then from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

I warmly welcome to the committee, for the first time in this session, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, Housing and Local Government. I also welcome her officials from the Scottish Government: Catriona MacKean, deputy director of the better homes division; Caroline Dicks, head of the affordable housing supply programme; and Stephen Garvin, deputy director of the building standards division.

I invite the cabinet secretary to make some opening remarks.

Thank you. My colleague Elena Whitham will ask the next question.

Thank you very much for that.

We are sticking with housing, but my colleague Miles Briggs will bring in the theme of homelessness.

We will change the topic. I invite Willie Coffey to come in.

I have very quickly been learning a lot about local government in this role. The fiscal framework has piqued my interest. The Scottish Government has invited local government to bring forward its own proposals for such a framework. How could a fiscal framework between the Scottish Government and local government work? What must be done to ensure that a rules-based system could work? What are the barriers to progress, given that issues such as ring fencing, single-year budgets and unsatisfactory changes to settlements have been under discussion for decades?

I call Elena Whitham to continue the theme of community wealth building.

It has been challenging to hear about what you and the businesses that you represent have faced. However, I am heartened to hear from Pete Cheema and John Lee about convenience stores becoming neighbourhood stores. They seem to be taking the initiative on local procurement. The Parliament will be doing some work on 20-minute neighbourhoods. You are leading the way on that, which is great.

My questions relate to climate change and net zero. Colin Smith mentioned the difficulties of Brexit and Covid, which meant that food was not reaching islands and rural areas. Climate change is having an impact on food-producing countries in the south and in Europe. What impact will climate change have? What proportion of our emissions comes from haulage and transportation?

It is great to hear about that innovation. I am from Moray, which is a whisky area. We have a good train line and I am excited about the idea of getting whisky on to rail. Have you been looking into that?