Chamber and committees

I will ask Councillor Heddle the same question.

Under the new Verity house agreement, councils will have more flexibility to spend as they see fit. We have already talked about that; we have heard that it is very welcome, and it sounds great.

However, my question is about where accountability will lie. As we all know, it was recently revealed that councils are expected to make cuts of around £300 million. If, for example, a council were to decide to access funding from the education budget and attainment were to begin to fall, who would be accountable? Would it be the Scottish Government, which left councils no choice but to make those cuts, or would it be the council for taking money out of the education budget?

Thank you, convener.

I will stick to the matter of the surge in community participation and empowerment. It has been described, as you have probably heard, as a “tick-box exercise”. Diving a bit deeper, the committee inquiry heard about a

“a lack of visibility of the CPP in the wider community”,

and it is clear that certain groups feel that their voices are not being heard. Will the Scottish Government take the opportunity, during its review of part 2 of the 2015 act, to help to renew the focus of CPPs on empowerment and participation by identifying opportunities to drive improvement and share best practice? That question is for the minister.

In the past, considerable amounts of local government budgets have been ring fenced to deliver Scottish Government priorities. If councils have that independence, what assurances are there that there will be a positive impact on the delivery of shared priorities and outcomes? What mechanisms are in place to ensure that the Scottish Government does not roll back such independence?

Thank you, Professor Boyle. Dr Webster, would you like to add anything?

Good morning. I thank the witnesses for your statements so far, and for all the information that you have provided.

You may know that decisions that are taken in local authorities are heavily influenced by Scottish Government budgets. In that respect, if the local authority was considered to be in breach of any minimum core obligations but it simply had to make the cuts as a result of the Scottish Government’s ring fencing of funding, who would be responsible for the breach? Given that local authorities will inevitably have different spending priorities, how will that be allocated between national and local government? I ask Professor Miller that question first.

In the past couple of committee meetings, the housing emergency has been raised quite a lot. I would like to better understand what the minimum core obligation would look like in practice in relation to housing. Currently, Scotland has a housing emergency—we all know that. We have record numbers of people living in temporary accommodation and many people are homeless, yet the Scottish National Party Government has slashed a lot of the budgets around that.

What impact would enshrining the right to housing into Scots law have? What would it mean in practice for the public authorities and for the Scottish Government? What implications would there be if that right was not being met?

Thank you, Professor Boyle. Dr Webster or Professor Miller, do you have anything to add?

Professor Boyle, you talked about a Colombian example. Will you say a little bit more about that?

Yes, please. If you could follow up with an email, that would be great.