Seòmar agus comataidhean

Good morning. The Accounts Commission recently reported on Glasgow City Council’s early retirement and redundancy payouts. I was staggered to find out from the report that there was no independent scrutiny of the early retirement and redundancy payouts from restructuring and that the financial terms for the departures of five officials cost more than £1 million. Given that those payouts have come as the council is grappling, as are many others, with on-going budget cuts, that is embarrassing for the council—in particular for councillors, who are having to face up to the scenarios that can occur. However, there is also anger from communities, who see that the cuts always trickle down into communities while, on the other hand, there are big payouts for council officials.

Collectively, how can we look at that better? How can councillors be involved in the processes so that they are always sighted on them, whether in their audit or scrutiny committees or through any other mechanism that could be available to them to prevent such scenarios as I have described from happening in future?

That is helpful.

You referenced whistleblowing. Are the whistleblowing procedures in councils robust enough, or should councils be mindful of them to ensure that people feel confident to raise such matters through the correct processes?

Thank you.

Thank you, convener, and good morning, committee. Before I make my opening remarks, I declare an interest as I sit on the advisory board for Pregnant Then Screwed. It will therefore come as no surprise that I am here to support the petition in the name of Carole Erskine and the fantastic work that Pregnant Then Screwed does to highlight the challenges that many families right across Scotland face with childcare.

The challenges are very evident from the petition that has been submitted and the 2,600 submissions from parents who are struggling to grapple with the current 1,140 hours offering. If I may, I will use my personal experience of applying for childcare for my daughter, who is three. I have just embarked on the application process for the 1,140 hours of childcare, and even filling out the forms is not an easy process.

The process is usually quite lengthy. You have to number the nursery or childcare provision that you wish your child to undertake 1, 2, 3 and so on, and then you are beholden to local government as to whether you obtain one of those nursery slots or are directed to other nursery provision elsewhere. When the latter ends up being the case, parents have to travel considerable distances just to drop their child off at their childcare provision.

We have not even begun to look at the costs associated with the 1,140 hours provision. The hours will cover roughly two full days and another half-day; if you are a full-time working parent, you will have to cough up the costs for another two full days of provision. That shows the significant financial challenges of not only trying to access a nursery close to home, but the additional costs associated with the current funding model that we have in Scotland.

In the Pregnant Then Screwed survey of 2,600 parents whose submissions I have just mentioned, 83.7 per cent of parents said that their childcare costs were the same as or more than their income. Moreover, anyone listening to the radio this morning will have heard a parent explaining that their childcare costs could amount to £1,600 a month. That shows the stark costs of childcare in Scotland.

You have received useful responses from the SPNA and the NDNA about the petition’s request, setting out their concerns about local government, which has overall control of the budgets, and the requirement to provide funded hours. The fact is that nurseries in local authority areas cannot normally accommodate working parents who, for example, have 9-to-5 jobs. They might have to drop their child off at about 8 o’clock in the morning and might not be able to pick them up until 6 o’clock, and not all local authorities are able to provide that offering. As a result, those parents have to rely on the private sector, which is usually the poor man in the relationship with local authorities when it comes to the 1,140 hours provision.

I believe that it is time for an independent review, because we need to fully understand the costs facing parents and what they are having to front up in addition to the 1,140 hours. In other areas of the United Kingdom, the free funded childcare offering has been expanded from nine months to three years old, and I believe that that should be considered, too. We should be putting childcare back at the top of the Government’s agenda.

My request to the committee, therefore, is not to close the petition, but to look at referring it to another committee. I understand that we have roughly 20 weeks left before the end of the parliamentary session, but I would suggest that there are legacy reports. Even if the committee in question could not find time to consider the petition between now and the end of the parliamentary session, the matter could be covered in a legacy report, and it would show that the Parliament is taking seriously the issues that parents across the country are experiencing daily when it comes to providing their children with the best possible start in life.

South Lanarkshire Council is one of the councils that has raised concerns about timescales, even though it might be quite proactive.

Going back to the commencement times, there is an election cycle and a budget cycle in 2027, and councils will have other priorities alongside the policy area that you want to legislate in. Would commencement at that time be bad timing? Will all councils be able to achieve it? If they do not achieve it, what will be the consequences?

I thank the witnesses for their contributions so far. The issue of best-value audits comes up time and again in relation to transformation, reform and assessing the progress that councils have made. When I was the chair of the audit and scrutiny panel at the council that I was elected to, I was always informed that comparing the audits of different local authorities was like comparing apples and pears. How can the reports be best used by local authorities? Is it time for the Accounts Commission to try something new to assess transformation and change in local authority areas? Sorry, Malcolm Burr, but I am picking you to go first again.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. My question is on the same issue. Local authorities will need to be given the right amount of time to implement this plan. When local development plans were put in place, local authorities had up to 5 years to produce them. However, I am very concerned that they will be given substantially less time to produce these plans.

At the start of this meeting, you said that local authorities seemed to be at different stages. Will you advise the committee on where local authorities are—for example, what percentage of them have reached an advanced stage and what percentage have not done so? In effect, you are going to have 32 local authorities that are at 32 different stages. That is not very good when you are trying to bring forward legislation in the field; you would probably want local authorities to be at similar stages so that, when the act comes in and section 10 commences, they will all be at the same starting point.

The committee has heard evidence from some stakeholders that a reallocation of the agriculture budget to local authorities would help them to implement the good food nation plan. Is it the Scottish Government’s intention to go down that route? I am seeking reassurance from the cabinet secretary today that she will not take that approach.

Thank you.

That is helpful—thank you.