Chamber and committees

Do not ask for anything yet—and you are getting one thing, and one thing only.

That is fair enough—and it was a succinct answer. Does anyone else want to comment on transparency?

There is an issue with digital exclusion, but we will not go into that.

That concludes our deliberations with our first panel. I thank each of our witnesses for coming along and answering our questions. We will now have a break until 20 past 4, when we will reconvene with our second panel.

We will continue to take pre-budget evidence on Scotland’s public finances in 2023-24. I welcome to the meeting Councillor Katie Hagmann, the resources spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, Kirsty Flanagan, chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy local government directors of finance Scotland section, who is attending remotely, and Paul Manning, executive director of finance and corporate resources and depute chief executive, South Lanarkshire Council.

As we did with the previous panel, we will move straight to questions. I will ask the first few questions.

COSLA’s submission is excellent and very detailed. I found the appendices particularly useful. However, the thrust appears to be that additional funding is required for local government, although all the indications are that the settlement that the Scottish Government will receive will be static in cash terms and a decrease in real terms.

In your submission, you highlight an anticipated £743 million reduction in core funding by 2026-27. If that is not to come from local government, where should it come from? Should it come from other areas of the Scottish budget—you touched on health and social care, for example—or do you envisage that additional powers over planning and building control fees and tourist tax, which you suggest could be provided to local government, could fill that gap? It is a nice easy question to start.

You talk about the critical mass being reduced significantly in some smaller councils. I, for example, am an MSP for North Ayrshire and there are three Ayrshire councils, which were created for political purposes rather than for any other reason. Does that mean that those three councils would be in a better position if they merged into one local authority, because they would not be viable any longer? Would the situation in Forth Valley with Falkirk, Stirling and Clackmannanshire councils be the same? If the situation progresses as you suggest, where would we be in relation to delivering support services?

Okay. Before I let colleagues in, I will ask two more questions. The first is for Kirsty Flanagan. Your joint submission says:

“greater emphasis should be placed on tracking outcomes rather than ... spend.”

Should not both things be done?

The next item is our first pre-budget evidence session on Scotland’s public finances in 2023-24, focusing primarily on the impact of the cost of living and public service reform.

I welcome Stephen Boyle, who is the Auditor General for Scotland; Charlotte Barbour, who is the vice-president of the Chartered Institute of Taxation; and Susan Murray, who is a director at the David Hume Institute. We will move straight to questions.

Stephen, I will start with you. In your submission, you say that the Scottish Government

“needs to plan how it manages the long-term sustainability of”

social security spending and

“be clearer how it will improve outcomes for Scottish people.”

Is that happening, in particular with reference to how the national strategy for economic transformation is helping to grow the economy?

Charlotte Barbour, I have a straightforward question for you. Given current levels of wage increases, and assuming that there will be no change in the higher-rate tax threshold in Scotland, how many more Scottish taxpayers will be caught in fiscal drag from next April?

That is what we are trying to grasp, which is why we are relying on the evidence of our witnesses.