Chamber and committees

That is a very important question, which I think we will return to over the next few months, particularly in relation to the budget.

Every year, when it comes to budget negotiations and budget engagement with COSLA, the care service forms a key part of my interactions with it, as you will appreciate. I do not imagine that that will change. I imagine that, this year, COSLA will talk about the financial support that it needs to deliver that service as part of the budget process.

There is a much bigger process of consultation and engagement. We have had the Feeley report. That is not the end of the matter. There is still a process for considering the optimum way of delivering care for the users—for our elderly residents and those who need additional support.

I go back to an earlier answer that I gave—I cannot remember who asked the question. We can focus on either process or outcomes. We have to focus on outcomes for the person who requires care support, but we have to bring everybody with us to do that. My engagement with COSLA on the financial settlement will therefore continue. I am committed to continuing to engage with it on the financial settlement. A big process of work is going on in the national health service, too, led by Kevin Stewart, and the committee will need to have an input to that as well. It will need to be sighted on that work, and it will need to give a view on it.

I take on board the concerns that Miles Briggs has flagged up. I heard them from Alison Evison at the time. I think that all of us recognise that, after Covid, we need to improve the service that we provide holistically to the people who rely on it. My sincere hope is that we will focus on the outcome of improvement in care rather than on process, but there are a lot of moving parts, and we all have a role and a duty to consider how we can take everybody with us.

The service has to be local. We have got to have a local service. Localism needs to be one of the central building blocks of a national care service.

We would not have been able to get through the pandemic without local government and its employees. As the person who has overseen the financial support packages over the past 18 months, I cannot pay great enough tribute to local government staff and employees, many of whom sacrificed weekends, evenings and holidays, week after week, to get money out to families and businesses that were in need. Their names might never be mentioned in the committee or in Parliament, but they have been absolutely instrumental, and many of them have been doing their jobs from home in quite trying circumstances. Local government has been the means of distributing support directly to people in need; we could not have done it without it.

With regard to the financial requirements of local government, in every budget I deal with the funding that is given to me and cut it in a way that tries to protect every part of our funding needs. Local government has been largely protected, despite the fact that we have been dealing with very difficult financial circumstances over the past 10 years. I do not shy away from saying that the financial circumstances have been difficult, or that they are probably going to get harder in the light of the fact that the outlook for the Government’s own financial settlement is quite challenging.

Over the past year, we have, obviously, had substantial additional Covid consequentials. They are now largely spent. My impression is, as we look ahead towards the United Kingdom Government’s budget and spending review, that it will be tightening up quite considerably in order to deal with the implications of the increase in borrowing.

The Scottish Government’s financial funding package in the upcoming budget is therefore going to be very challenging. Our responsibility will be to try not only to protect the health budget and local government, but to remobilise our health service and justice service. The needs, therefore, considerably outstrip the funding supply, if that makes sense.

Yes, there will be on-going support. If I can be a little tongue-in-cheek here, it takes us back to the core question for the committee, which is about ring fencing versus maximising local authority discretion, and I look forward to the committee’s steer on that. We will certainly provide on-going support—not only financial support but support in kind—as we develop the approach, and we will help to facilitate work and provide expertise and guidance. However, when we are developing new strands of work, the big question for us, and for the committees, is whether we ring fence funding for specific outcomes and purposes, and that includes community wealth building.

Community wealth building will play an important role in our wider economic strategy. I want that strategy to have a strong local dimension, which will require local authorities to think creatively about their role in helping to develop local economic strategies. We will continue to provide support and encourage local authorities to keep on doing what they are doing: working with local communities to develop bespoke local economic strategies.

I will answer, but if Andy Kinnaird wants to add anything, he is welcome to do so. The climate emergency is the overarching priority for NPF4, so NPF4 will make a fairly urgent and radical shift in our spatial plan and policies to meet our targets and it will prioritise the reduction in emissions in a way that also responds to the nature crisis. NPF4 will play a key role in integrating land use and transport; it will focus on place-based outcomes when it comes to the climate emergency; it will support green economic recovery; it will promote nature-based solutions; and it will apply the concept of 20-minute neighbourhoods.

All those things are geared towards responding to the climate emergency. There are key themes but, if you want one overarching priority that brings everything in, it is responding to the climate emergency. Planning has such an important role to play, because we have a choice with every planning application—do we improve how our communities live and work together or hinder that in a way that increases or reduces emissions?

Paul McLennan is another former councillor with a wealth of experience. It is wonderful to have you in the Parliament and on the committee and I look forward to working with you.

The UK Government had announced that it would be starting a spending review last year but, for understandable reasons, that was delayed. We hope that it will be delivered this autumn, but we will wait and see what the UK Government does. The Chancellor of the Exchequer signalled his intent to publish a comprehensive multiyear spending review later this year.

The challenge for us is that, because local government is such a substantial part of the Scottish Government’s budget—more than £11 billion every year—it is very difficult for us to provide that long-term security without having long-term security ourselves. How the Scottish Government’s budget works is that, although we are given funding, which is gratefully received, it can be revised up or down. You can appreciate that if, for example, we commit next year a particular amount of money for local government, the risk is that our budget might be revised down, which would leave a shortfall. If local government planned on the basis of that funding, we would have to deal with a gap.

We desperately want to provide that long-term security and we desperately want that long-term security ourselves so that we can make long-term plans, which we have been unable to do because of year-to-year budgets. My sincere hope is that we will get the spending review this autumn, which will allow us to embark on our spending review and provide multiyear certainty to local government.

Until we have that security, it would not be prudent for us to provide it, because there are too many risks attached to our ability to deliver on the funding amount that we might confirm. We want to give that security because I know that local government wants to give security, for example, to some of the third sector organisations that it supports, which often appeal to local government for a multiyear settlement. It is a domino effect, but my hope is that that might change this autumn.

I will ask Andy Kinnaird to come in on that question, because it is about process and development. As I said, the national planning framework is long term and is a national plan—[Inaudible.]—in communities. In other words, it is about how we create liveable places, the wellbeing economy and better green places. It is about sustainability, places that can be invested in and places that can be inhabited.

If it is okay, I will ask Andy Kinnaird to talk about the process, the role of local consultation and local government’s ability to feed in.

You will know that, over the past two years, I have chaired a cross-party group on the reform of council tax—again, unfortunately, that had to be suspended because of Covid. The commitment is to look at council tax more generally and, hopefully, to invite a citizens assembly to consider the reform of council tax. I think that the issue should be seen in the wider context of local government flexibilities and taxation, but the commitment is to conduct a review of council tax as part of a wider consideration of local government fiscal powers. To go back to Elena Whitham’s question about what reform of the fiscal framework would look like, we need to see council tax as part of that wider conversation.

We need to ensure that planning departments in national parks and local authorities, as you mentioned, have the resources that they need to implement and deliver NPF4. There will be a programme of engagement with local authorities to understand the need for delivery and implementation and respond to that. We cannot divorce the policy from its delivery. Planning is one of the most obvious policy areas that will work only if it is delivered and implemented. Planning departments and policies are front facing as they engage with the public.

Andy Kinnaird might have something to add about the process, but I confirm absolutely that we will engage and are engaging with planning authorities to ensure implementation and delivery.

Are you asking specifically about planning?

I absolutely take on board the point about valuing local government staff, and I am sure that all of us have been engaging with some of those employees day in, day out in case work. I could not have done what I have done over the past 18 months in relation to financial support without local government staff. They have been truly heroic.

However, there is a fundamental difference when it comes to pay. We are the direct employer in relation to the NHS, so it makes sense for us to have direct involvement there. Historically and currently, local government pay is negotiated between the trade unions and COSLA through the Scottish joint council. We are not a member of the Scottish joint council and we have never taken part in those negotiations, and I have been crystal clear that I do not intend to change that. We are not the direct employer; the local authorities—COSLA—are the employers.

I meet COSLA regularly to discuss all manner of financial issues. The First Minister has also met it. On each occasion, I have been explicitly clear that the budget is fully deployed and there is no additional funding. I am not sitting on central pots of funding. Right now, our biggest risk to the budget is the fact that, without the guarantee that we had last year, our budget can go up or down. It can be increased, but it can also decrease. Our budget is fully deployed and no additional financial support is available. It is for COSLA to negotiate the pay deal for local government staff, who I agree have been heroic during the pandemic.