Chamber and committees

Yes. A pertinent phrase is “You can’t be what you can’t see.” We need to see local government represent and look like Scotland, and in some parts of the country it does not. We fully understand all the reasons for that, and it is not unique to local government. We still have work to do in the Parliament and there is work to be done at Westminster. For example, the level of women’s representation is much lower than in other spheres of government. That is an issue, without a doubt, and I think that there is an opportunity to do something about it.

It is important to emphasise that this is not just about remuneration. It is about so many other things that go through someone’s head when they are deciding whether this is for them. Partly it will be about work-life balance, other commitments, caring responsibilities and so on. However, some of it is about the toxicity, to be frank, of our political discourse, social media and the media’s portrayal of politicians. We all know what that can be like—for women, in particular—and it puts folk off. I have spent a lot of time trying to persuade women I know to stand in local government and in other spheres, and it is hard. It does not take long to find abuse directed at female politicians—female councillors included—and that abuse has a particular flavour. There is something about our body politic more generally that we need to try to sort out. It is not easy and I do not have a list of answers here. It is hard and it puts women off—it puts other people off too, but particularly women.

Yes, and I look forward to seeing what it recommends.

My pleasure.

Thanks very much, convener. I do not want to take up too much time before we move to questions, but I do want to say a few words to begin with.

First, I thank Angela Leitch, the convener of SLARC, and all the members of that committee for the time that they have given to and their work on the issue of councillor remuneration and the report that they have produced. I am also grateful to COSLA officers who supported the committee in its work.

I also put on record my thanks to all serving and former councillors for their work. Councillors are key to our democratic system and play a valuable part in local decision making. We all know that it is not an easy role, and I am grateful to those who have chosen to stand in the past or are considering standing in the future.

SLARC was reconvened by the Scottish Government at COSLA’s request to undertake an independent review of remuneration and local authority bandings, with a key focus on whether levels of remuneration reflected the responsibilities of modern-day councillors and were not barriers to elected office. The Scottish Government’s response to SLARC’s recommendation report was published on 5 July. In that, I indicated that I was happy to accept the majority of the pay and structural change recommendations and would make regulations early in 2025 to implement them.

A key factor with regard to the timing for implementing the recommendations was that the initial report was not published until February 2024, which, of course, was after the Scottish Government and individual local authorities had agreed and set their budgets. Therefore, it was not possible to consider the cost implications and take them into account when making spending decisions this financial year.

Convener, I need to be up front about costs. The Scottish Government does not and has never provided funding specifically to meet the costs of councillor salaries; that has always been a matter for local authorities. Councillor salaries and associated expenses are paid from each authority’s annual allocation, as agreed under the local government settlement. However, I have indicated to the COSLA presidential team that I am happy to consider the cost of implementing the recommendations as part of the discussions on next year’s budget and settlement. I am sure we will talk more about that during the session.

As for the shared recommendations for the Scottish Government and COSLA—for example, on promoting the role of councillors in the severance resettlement payment—I have accepted most of them, either in part or in principle. I am happy for my officials to work with COSLA to give them further consideration.

As I have said, councillors play a key role in Scotland’s democratic system. Pay is only one barrier to individuals standing for election, and we need to look beyond it to review and remove other barriers to office. The COSLA barriers to elected office special interest group will, I think, be critical in this area, and I know that it is moving at pace on the matter. After all, councils, too, have a role to play by, for example, looking at the timing of meetings and reviewing any administrative barriers that might, albeit unintentionally, impact on participation. I look forward to seeing the outputs from that group and have asked my officials to support that work, where it is appropriate for them to do so.

I will end there, convener, but I will briefly repeat my thanks to SLARC for its work and to past and serving councillors for their contributions.

It would be difficult for any local authority. Essentially, Parliament could agree to regulations only if we have the money in place, so I guess that what comes first is agreement around funding. There would have to be agreement around that before the regulations. Would the regulations come in the new year?

I think that councils are instinctively against ring fencing.

It would then be a question of what mechanism to use as part of the local government settlement. Would the money be top sliced? Such things are all details that would need to be discussed, but there are ways of doing it, if political agreement can be reached.

That refers to what Fiona Campbell said earlier about the uplift mechanism and making sure that there is no detriment from the uplift being a year later. There would, going forward, be a mechanism to make sure that remuneration would keep pace with inflation and so on, and it would take into account that the change was being implemented a year later.

There might be, but I do not think that that was particularly looked at as part of developing the SLARC recommendations. It might be an issue that is more for the special interest group. I think that the mechanism of uprating will help to avoid councillor pay falling behind again and our being back here in 10 years.

Are wider reforms needed in local government? Well—how long have you got? We could sit here all day and discuss what they might be. SLARC was set up for a very specific reason and its remit was, understandably, quite tight, so it probably did not venture into some of the wider reform issues about the number of councillors and their roles and responsibilities. That is a whole other discussion. Is it one that might have merit in the future? Maybe, but we have in front of us, here and now, the situation that we need to focus on resolving.

As ever with detailed reports with a number of recommendations, some with far-reaching implications—and not just on a cost basis—the recommendations had to be properly looked at, analysed and responded to, and that was done. If we had rushed out a response without looking at the detail and the implications, we might well have been equally criticised.

To be frank, I suspect that, if we had had the report and if we had ensured that our response landed around the time of the pay review and the publication of the pay policy, that might have led to some unwelcome scene setting for what has become a series of quite difficult local government pay negotiations. Given that context, I am not sure that there would have been a great or perfect time for this to have been published, as comparisons were always going to be made between the uplift proposed in the report and what might be proposed for local government staff. To be honest, I just do not think that you can avoid that, and I therefore do not think that it would have mattered when things were published. That comparison was always going to be made.

The important thing is what we do now, and there is room and scope for agreement to move this forward. The history of looking at councillor remuneration is a troubled one; the first attempt back in 2011, I think, did not really get very far. What will be important—and I want to be really clear about this—is cross-party support, not just at local government level but in here, too. After all, regulations will require support if changes are to be made. If this is to be a priority, it must be taken forward on a cross-party basis. Indeed, that is the only way in which it will be taken forward.