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It has been a really interesting discussion. I will more or less do a series of supplementaries and pull on some of the threads that have already been discussed. I will start with Matt Pearce. Is a fair summary of what you are saying that there is a risk of there being a bit of a top-down exercise and that we need to think about how we facilitate engagement from community organisations and whether we need to compel councils to do that? Do you agree with Stacey Dingwall that if it is passed as it is, the bill will create a set of reports, but with a danger that not much will change? Is that a fair summary?

That makes sense.

Stacey Dingwall, could I ask you a couple of questions? I do not know whether I need to declare an interest, but I obviously have some prejudices towards small businesses, and when I was running a small business I was a member of the Federation of Small Businesses.

I was struck by a couple of things that you said, the most important of which being the point about councils not always disclosing expenditure below £50,000. Do you know why they do not? I am guessing that most of your members, if they use Xero, Sage or QuickBooks, could detail their expenditure to very small amounts of money. Is it something that councils cannot do and, if so, do they have the right systems in place? Alternatively, is it something that they will not do?

The previous witnesses alluded to things that perhaps should be included in the bill, such as initial facilitation that makes it easier for small businesses and community organisations to engage, processes to engage community organisations at the start of a process and standardised reporting. Those things might make a difference. Does COSLA think that the inclusion of those issues might strengthen the bill? Right now, local authorities are required to do some additional consultation and produce a report—there is no additional activity, duties or obligations. My concern is that, without exploring some of those additional possibilities, nothing much will change in some areas.

It is very helpful. I think we should try to overcome those issues, but that is a very helpful contribution.

That sounds like general engagement, but I think that there is a need to really engage with the detail. I am interested in what prevents small businesses from applying for contracts, and what gets in the way of people and communities setting up businesses, which might begin as sole traders before growing into limited companies. We need to start thinking about those pipelines. Have those discussions taken place in the context of the bill? Could we go further and think about how we can bake that support into the way that government at all levels goes about its business, so that public procurement helps people to start up businesses and helps small businesses to grow?

I am thinking about the things that the bill could do and what you touched on there. The bill will require local authorities and other public bodies to do an additional set of consultation and produce a report. You seem to be suggesting that there is a convening power element. Should there be an obligation on local authorities, the Scottish Government and health boards to use that convening power to broker engagement, provide a forum and facilitate dialogue between community organisations, public institutions and, indeed, private sector organisations? Is that what you are suggesting?

My final question is for you, Morven Taylor, particularly because you are from the housing sector. One of my concerns about the bill is that it talks in quite broad and general terms about community wealth building, but in communities that have high levels of deprivation there is a lack of fundamental capital, particularly housing infrastructure. Unless we address that, we will struggle to build community wealth in any meaningful way. Do we need to benchmark communities’ access to fundamental infrastructure of housing and transport and fundamental public services before engaging with concepts such as community wealth building?

The point has been made that targets are really important and I think that that point is germane to that.

I take the view that, ultimately, community wealth building is about growing capital—financial capital and social capital—within communities that have a deficit of that. I would have thought that that would result in more people starting organisations of the sort that would like to be your members. Ultimately, I think that one of the things that you should see as a result of the bill is an increase in the number of small businesses. How did the Scottish Government engage with you to look at the mechanics of what might make that possible? Was that detailed? How much conversation has the Scottish Government had with you?

Is it something you could look at?

Good enterprise resource planning software should enable you to see the granular detail of what you are spending on businesses in which postcode areas, and that would allow you to aggregate and report spending on SMEs. That would probably do more than anything else to address the issue.

I have a blunt question. I am concerned about something that we have heard from the previous witnesses today and in previous meetings. What I have heard from you this morning is that the bill might require you to do an awful lot more consultation and produce more reports, but that it might not have any net effect. Is that something that you are concerned about?