Chamber and committees

That makes perfect sense. We will return to some of those themes as the morning goes on.

I want to bring in Euan Leitch from SURF, to give us his perspective on some of the challenges and how they have been risen to.

I think that that will be a recurring theme in our discussions this morning. Pippa Coutts talked about whether, and the extent to which, there has been a shift in control and power, and a decentralisation. Has there been a shift to greater community empowerment? If so, is that—or has it been—temporary, or is it permanent? That is of interest to us.

We are the Public Audit Committee, and I want to ask the Auditor General to give us his view, not least because it is important that we cover the extent to which there has been an evaluation of the experience; the extent to which things have been measured; the extent to which any good practice has been disseminated; and the extent to which the lessons that have been learned as we have gone along have been embedded into the way that we will look at things in the future.

Perhaps you can give us a general view, Auditor General, and do your best to help us to understand the extent to which there has been an evaluation of the times that we have been living through in the context of the community empowerment agenda.

The principal item on our agenda this morning is to consider community empowerment during Covid-19. Back in 2019, Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission produced a report entitled “Principles for community empowerment”, which provides a foundation stone for our discussion this morning. In late October, Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission jointly prepared and published a briefing that considered how community empowerment had been affected or changed by Covid-19.

I am delighted that we will be having a round-table discussion this morning among participants with knowledge and experience of how community empowerment has looked over the past 18 months to two years. I thank those witnesses who are joining us online for taking the time to give us your insights this morning. As you would expect, there will be some questions from members of the committee, but this is quite a discursive session, and you can ask questions of each other, if you like. It will be a bit more conversational, and hopefully not at all like an interrogation. I am keen to encourage a free flow of discussion. By that token, if questions are asked or if there are parts of the discussion on which you do not have any strong views, or if there is nothing that you particularly wish to put on the record, do not feel obliged to answer every question or to take part in every area of the discussion.

For those who are joining us virtually, the best way to attract our attention and to indicate that you wish to come in and take part is by putting an R in the chat box. Your microphone will be activated for you, so you do not need to press unmute on your screens. Again, I welcome you all here. I also welcome Stephen Boyle, the Auditor General for Scotland, who joins us in person in the committee room.

As this is a round table, I would like us to go round and introduce ourselves. Perhaps you can each say a little bit about the organisation that you are here to represent this morning. I begin, however, by inviting committee members to introduce themselves, before I ask the witnesses to do so.

Anna, I ask you to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your organisation.

I ask Stephen Boyle to introduce himself.

I certainly echo loudly Ewan Leitch’s final comments.

I thank each of the panellists for their contributions. The session has been instructive and insightful, and it has given us lots to think over in respect of what we can do as the Public Audit Committee of the Scottish Parliament in ensuring that the harsh lessons that we have been forced to learn because of circumstances beyond our control are embedded in our public institutions, including the Parliament, and that they find a ready echo in the communities that you all serve and that we also seek to serve.

I will have to draw the session to a close. I emphasise to the people who have been kind enough to join us this morning that, if there are further things that they want to get across that they have not had time to get across because of the time pressures this morning, please do not hesitate to put them in a written submission. It does not have to be an omnibus piece of work; it can be short, sharp and pithy. If there are points that you have not felt that you have had the opportunity to raise or that, on reflection from this morning’s session, you think are important for us to consider, please put something in writing to us, and we will consider that in our deliberations.

Once again, I thank all of you who are online, and I thank the Auditor General for joining us in the committee room.

I close the public part of the meeting.

That is great—thank you. The emphasis on outcomes is right, because we were living in unprecedented times, with people at risk of hunger and isolation and all the things that go along with that. We have already heard some of the experiences of communities rallying round, coming together and making sure that people did not fall between the cracks.

We have a large number of questions and areas for discussion this morning, so we will move on. Sharon Dowey will get the next part of the conversation going.

There is a broader discussion there about the extent to which we have any participatory democracy beyond participatory budgets in local authorities. What is the engagement on that broader spectrum? As Anna Fowlie has said, it is not just about local government. What is the rest of the public sector doing about community empowerment? Those are strong themes that have come out of the session so far.

We are now into the final part of the session. I invite Craig Hoy to ask a few questions and steer us through the final section.

Ryan, you are here not least because the Collydean community centre was one of the featured case studies in the briefing paper that was produced. We thought it would be good to have somebody with that on-the-ground experience joining us.

The themes that we want to cover this morning are largely grouped into three areas. First, we want to examine key factors that lie behind what has worked well during the pandemic. Secondly, we want to get your views and reflections on what you perceive as the risks, how we might go back to the old ways and what we need to do to embed some of the good practices that have been adopted over the past 18 months to two years. In the third section, we want to concentrate on what can be done to strengthen community empowerment and participation across the public sector, building on any lessons that you have learned over this past period of time.

I want to begin by hearing what your experience has been and what your reflections are. It seems to me that, because of the urgency of the situation that some of our communities face, there has been a degree of agility and flexibility, and the public sector has supported community bodies and placed trust in them to deliver services and support to communities in a way that has perhaps not been seen previously. It has been put to me that some of the old red tape and bureaucracy has been set aside in order to ensure that things are delivered with speed.

Is that a fair summary of the picture? Has that been the case everywhere, or has the approach been uneven? How have things differed over the past 18 months or so from how they were before the pandemic?

I ask David Allan to kick off on that. Others can indicate if they want to comment, and we will take you one by one.

That is helpful. I will go to Pippa Coutts before I ask Ryan Smart to give his thoughts. Euan Leitch wants to come in as well.