Chamber and committees

Ross Greer has a brief supplementary.

Uncommitted reserves make up only about a tenth of the actual reserves. However, uncommitted reserves are equivalent to 3.4 per cent of local government spend, which is still more than twice what the Scottish Government’s available reserve is.

In the case of the Scottish Government, we are talking about only a couple of days’ worth of running costs.

Do other witnesses have anything to say about that? Adam Boey, in your submission you say that

“A framework should have structure”

and that

“there is no framework—the circular presentation of national outcomes only suggests that all outcomes are equally important, and that some arbitrary performance measures are being associated to them.”

Let us look at the changes that have been proposed. Adam, you said in your submission that you disagree with care being added as a new outcome, because it is

“already covered in ‘Health’ where social care is specifically mentioned—the articulation of the health outcome is better, in terms of a specific impact or result we want to achieve.”

You disagree, Sarah. You said:

“We welcome that this new outcome reflects the need to prioritise social care in Scotland”.

Growth and distribution are not necessarily the same thing.

Allan Faulds, how do you think that the NPF should drive spending decisions?

Jamie Robertson, another issue that comes out quite forcefully in the submission is flexibility. For example, on page 19, there is a really interesting graph after paragraph 78 that shows that, since 2010-11, there has actually been a significant increase in education spend—21.2 per cent in real terms—while adult social care spending has gone up by 29.4 per cent, and spending on looked-after children by 17.5 per cent. However, that has been matched by huge reductions in other areas—35 per cent in street cleaning, 27 per cent in tourism, 20 per cent in culture and leisure and 26.6 per cent in planning. There are a couple of other figures in there, too.

The submission also says that

“Scotland has a significantly lower pupil/teacher ratio than the rest of UK”,

with 13.2 children per teacher

“compared to 18 in England ... but does not have better educational outcomes.”

I think that I know what you are going to say in answer to this question, but just for the record, how important is it for local authorities to have the flexibility to decide for themselves how many teachers they employ, for example, and whether money should be able to be deployed elsewhere, if required?

Right, but you have not told me what those resources should be. What should the Scottish Government do about the local government settlement? Obviously, you are looking for funding to be increased and, from reading your submission, I know that you think that it needs to be increased quite significantly in a number of areas. We will discuss prevention and taxes later, but I want a wee bit more detail on what you mean.

I will come to David Robertson shortly, because Scottish Borders Council talked about the same issue in its submission. It said:

“addressing shared priorities, and unlocking both the potential and the best outcomes for communities requires adequate funding from central government.”