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Okay. It sounds to me as though no real change in respect of those matters is being proposed or tabled this morning. Minister, thank you very much for your replies.

Good morning, cabinet secretary. I will pick up on the NSET issue that Colin Smyth led on. When I was a member of the Public Audit Committee, one of the issues that we focused on was how the national strategy for economic transformation supports and interacts with our regional economic development partnerships. As a member from Ayrshire, I am particularly interested in how that develops. I would not say that particular problems were raised, but we were interested in how the Government will evidence how NSET has benefited communities such as Ayrshire.

If we look at population trends that have been released in the past few days, we see that Scotland’s population is increasing, but the increase is far greater in particular areas in Scotland than it is in others. To generalise, it would be fair to say that the populations in the south, the west and the islands are diminishing, while the populations in the north and the east are increasing. Is the Government aware of that? Does it see that as an issue with regard to delivery of NSET in those particular parts of Scotland? How do we plan to rebalance the situation, if at all?

I will take you back to the issue of Prestwick airport, cabinet secretary. The Scottish Government has been, and still is, a great supporter of the airport, which we own. Does the Government think that there is room for improvement in the number of passengers going in and out of Prestwick? The airport is so close to Glasgow and is named Glasgow Prestwick, which I think is a strange term to use these days. However, given that closeness, do you think that there could be an increase in the volume of passengers coming through Prestwick? We see about half a million passengers going through Prestwick but about 7 million going through Glasgow. They are geographically close and we own Prestwick, so does the Government see any potential to improve passenger volumes?

Would you say that a positive change in population should be an indicator of positive economic transformation? Despite the very small increase that was reported yesterday, the trend for Ayrshire is still down. Constituents will say to me that we have a lovely national strategy for economic transformation but that the overall population of Ayrshire is still going down. If, overall, people are leaving the county, how can the Government say to constituents such as mine that our transformation strategy has been successful?

Could I just—

Good morning, cabinet secretary, and good morning to your colleagues. You must have heard the discussions last week and, possibly, those earlier today about the debt issue that was faced by some councils in England. The question for us around this table is whether there is a risk that Scottish local authorities could face a similar situation. What are your views on that?

The big difference between down south and here was the complete collapse of the external Audit Commission there. The audit function as a whole did not appear to function in some of the councils that have been mentioned. Members discussed that last week, but I believe that we have a strong internal and external audit function in Scotland, which is principally led by Audit Scotland, but which can be found in council departments, too.

The worry for the public when they hear such stories is whether something similar could happen in Scotland, but the drift of the conversation has been that it is unlikely to happen here, because of the protections that we have to guard against that and the measures that you have described, Jamie. Is that a fair comment?

Okay.

The Accounts Commission reported that

“the lack of transparency ... makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions on councils’ planned use of reserves.”

Would you share that view, and would you encourage councils to be a bit clearer about what they plan to do? Reserves are listed in various categories, which we found difficult to follow.

Thanks very much, convener. Good morning, everybody.

I will come to the reserves issue in a wee minute, Katie, but first of all, on council debt, you must have heard some of our conversations last week with Professor Heald, who talked about local authority debt being upwards of £1 billion. You must also have heard the conversation about what happened, tragically, to some councils down south, which incurred huge amounts of debt that they have been unable to service. In fact, some have, in effect, declared themselves bankrupt.

There was a discussion about the power of general competence, which English councils have, but Scottish councils do not. I asked a direct question whether local councils in Scotland would like such a power, but not, one would hope, to do the same thing that Woking Borough Council did and end up £2 billion in debt.

Is the debt in Scottish councils generally serviceable? Are you collectively able to service and pay that debt as it arises, presumably from borrowing and so forth?