Seòmar agus comataidhean

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.”

I should really call you all by your first names, because we have two Robertsons on the panel, which makes things a little confusing.

David Robertson, you heard at the beginning that we had a trip to Estonia last week to look at what it is doing in relation to digitisation of public services. Incidentally, Estonia is doing that because, after independence from the Soviet Union, it had a budget of only €130 million for the whole country. It couldnae afford to set up offices in rural towns and had to do everything somehow differently, and it ended up doing it digitally. Is Scottish Borders Council looking at that sort of service delivery?

Another area that you have highlighted frequently throughout the submission is preventative spend and early intervention. You say that there needs to be

“a refocus on prevention and early intervention spend”

and that

“Now more than ever, there needs to be investment in ‘upstream’ services that help to prevent problems rather than focusing spend on responding to them.”

I think that we would agree with that. I have mentioned to other witnesses and panels that in the 2011 to 2016 parliamentary session John Swinney allocated £500 million to try to embed preventative spend, but the difficulty was that there was no corresponding disinvestment in programmes that were—shall we say?—providing less value for money. What is COSLA doing to try to ensure that we move down the road of disinvesting in areas that provide less value for money in order to focus on the areas that provide the most?

I thank all our guests for their contributions. We will conclude our national outcomes scrutiny with evidence from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Gaelic next week.

Flexibility is a really important issue. David Robertson, how is ring fencing impacting on the Borders?

The political perspective is that the Scottish Government gets blamed if teacher numbers fall. If it gives local authorities flexibility to change teacher numbers and there are, therefore, fewer teachers, the Government gets the blame, rather than the local authority that takes the decision, despite local government having its own level of democratic accountability.

You are smiling, Mr Robertson, because you know that that is exactly the case.

Jamie Robertson, because of prudential borrowing, local authorities have greater flexibility in borrowing than the Scottish Government does. There has been a significant reduction in borrowing from £1.23 billion in 2019-20 to £690 million in 2021-22, with a slight up-kick to £820 million in 2022-23. The figures for last year are not in your submission, but it says:

“Councils have found themselves in a position of having to place greater reliance on borrowing as a source of capital funding to sustain and invest in their infrastructure to meet the needs and priorities of communities and boost local economies.”

Clearly, there is greater reliance on borrowing. Do you feel that that will continue to be the case and that borrowing will have to play a bigger role, or will there be a reduction in borrowing across local authorities, as there has been in the past three or four years?

Right, okay.

Good morning, and welcome to the 26th meeting in 2024 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee. We have apologies from John Mason this morning.

Our first agenda item is a round-table discussion on managing Scotland’s public finances, a strategic approach, as part of our pre-budget scrutiny. I welcome to the meeting Allan Faulds, senior policy officer, Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland, which is known as the ALLIANCE; Alice Telfer, head of business policy and public sector, Institute of Chartered Accountants Scotland; Euan Lochhead, architect and retrofit co-ordinator, North East Scotland Retrofit Hub; Lewis Ryder-Jones, advocacy advisor, Oxfam Scotland; Michael Kellet, director of strategy, governance and performance, Public Health Scotland; David Melhuish, director, Scottish Property Federation; and Heather Williams, training lead and member of the women’s economic empowerment project, Scottish Women’s Budget Group. Unfortunately, Dave Moxham, deputy general secretary, Scottish Trades Union Congress, who was due to participate, is no longer able to attend.

Thank you all for your written submissions, which gave me a very enjoyable Saturday and Sunday of reading. We have around 90 minutes for this session. If witnesses would like to be brought into the discussion at any point, please indicate to the clerks and then I will call you. It is not a case of my just asking various questions of individuals. I am hoping for—as it says on the tin—a round-table discussion. As Allan Faulds already knows, I will put my first question to him, and then anyone who wants to come in should let me know. I will take people in the order that I see them indicate. I hope that we will get quite an informed discussion.

I will, if things start getting stuck, move on the discussion. Topics wise, we will go from taxation and growing the tax base to public service reform, potential behavioural response and capital expenditure, just as it says on the tin. I will try to involve every person who has given a submission on a topic as often as possible—that is, as often as you wish to come in.

Allan Faulds, in your written response to the first question in our consultation about the Scottish Government and its priorities, you said that you are quite happy with its priorities of eradicating child poverty, tackling the climate emergency and improving public services. However, you said:

“we believe that the priority of ‘growing the economy’ represents a step backwards in the Scottish Government’s approach to the economy.”

Given your submission and your reference to increasing public expenditure in a number of areas, how you can square that circle?