Chamber and committees

I thank members of USDAW and Unite for what they did during Covid.

Your members will be very close to customers and will have a view. Because of your role as industry leaders, they will inform you about what the sector will have to be like if we want to see vibrant town centres with vibrant retail and hospitality businesses. Other committee members will ask about your members’ experiences; I will give you an opportunity to talk about what the ingredients would be and how you see the future of town centres. I put the question to Joanne Cairns and then to Bryan Simpson.

Thank you, Joanne. Of course, it is a retail industry leadership group.

Bryan Simpson, we have heard evidence that the experience of town centres matters. I suspect that hospitality is the ultimate when it comes to experience. How do you see that helping our town centres, in the future?

Martin Newman, can you talk us through the implications for absentee landlords that we are able to contact and leaseholds? Is there any creative way of incentivising the use of those upper spaces that would benefit the retailers underneath?

To be fair to Maxine Smedley, she explained what Boots was doing with Macmillan and others in relation to service provision.

David Lonsdale, can you future think about this, too? I know that people are focused on running their businesses and are under a lot of pressure, especially given that the cost of living crisis might affect people coming into their businesses. If we want our town centres to be places where people will spend time, is there anything that can be done with landlords to enable that to happen? Your membership may have little influence on that, but they have an interest. Is there something that we can do collectively to bring back vibrancy to our town centres, above the first floor? What is preventing your members from doing that?

Unfortunately, many hospitality venues have said that they cannot open on certain days, because of a shortage of staff. That may be an opportunity to drive up wages, but there is a shortage of chefs or a shortage of labour and, obviously, we have had the impact of Brexit. Are you seeing any change, recently, post-Covid?

I am very conscious of the time. I am happy with what you have provided, Bryan, and will hand back to the convener.

Good morning, minister. As you will be aware, the committee is conducting an inquiry into local government and its partners in delivering net zero. In your opening remarks, you said that the strategies and delivery plans would need to be comprehensive and place based, but the fact is that local authorities do not have control of all the levers in that respect, nor do they own all the properties, space or land that is required for a place-based approach to be taken. As a result, they are dependent on working in partnership with others.

In the evidence that we have taken, we have heard that, although councils understand their leadership role here, there are certain skills that they just do not have, and I have to say that paying £50,000 for a consultant will not necessarily help with the finance side of things. You have indicated that the finance aspect will be separate, but it is quite clear that it will be integral to helping local authorities to mobilise private capital and so on, which is one of the skills bases that authorities have said that they need support with or something that they need a better collective approach to.

I realise that that is not covered in the strategy and delivery plan duty in the order before us today—in fact, it is only common sense that it has not been—but the guidance should perhaps set out better, quicker and more comprehensive support for councils to ensure that they can deliver a comprehensive place-based approach. Do you acknowledge that it is not just a case of putting a duty and a responsibility on councils and leaving them to get on with things, and that providing integrated support through guidance and other aspects will be absolutely critical?

I put the question to Ross Dornan. What does he think about decoupling gas from electricity in the market? How soon can that be done? Does that process need to be accelerated?

Can Keith Anderson answer that question, particularly in relation to Scotland’s energy supply?

The sheer scale and speed of the energy price crisis are overwhelming our constituents and the concern is that waiting until October, when there might be a second rise in the price cap, will be too late. The Scottish and UK Governments have already provided policy funding and support. What support do you think should be put in place immediately? What policy and funding changes are required?

Moreover, do you think that, whether it be the Scottish Government, the UK Government or, indeed, parliamentarians, we collectively are treating this as the crisis that it most obviously is? For policy advice, I will ask Chris Birt to respond first.