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The first group would do that. The relevant bodies would work with the local authority to produce the plan—that would be colleges, health boards, Scottish Enterprise, enterprise agencies, Skills Development Scotland and the regional transport partnerships. That is the core group that would work with the local authority to produce the plan, and then the bodies in the wider group are the ones that must take it into account when they produce their corporate plans.

I suppose that that comes back to where we started, which was the conversation about the purpose of the legislation. If the legislation flushes out such conversations in local authorities as they sit around the table with the relevant partners and put the plan together, it is clear that, depending on which part of the country they are in, there will be different solutions, given that credit unions and other organisations have different profiles. If the legislation flushes out those issues and the guidance says that credit unions should be considered, that points to the value of the legislation in enabling people to have such conversations.

The purpose of the way in which the bill has been designed, in enabling or requiring local authorities and local partners to sit down and pull together the local action plan, is to give a framework but also to allow scope for locality-specific issues to be pulled together. You will know much more about island groups than I do, but I am sure that, if you sat down with people from Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles, they would have a lot of similar challenges but also a lot of different challenges. Having things at that local level is really important to flushing that out. From our perspective, it is about making sure that the legislation enables that and the guidance lists the things that should be considered, and how they should be considered, in order to enable that to happen.

Are you asking whether the Government is doing anything to enable credit unions to lend to organisations in the community?

If you look at the annual procurement report, you will see that 47 per cent of the total public sector spend—£16.5 billion—goes to SMEs. I made the point earlier that that is a significant number, although that does not mean that work is not happening to increase it further. Interestingly, the proportion of public spend that goes to SMEs is higher than the proportion of the economy that is represented by SMEs, so SMEs get a bigger proportion of spend from the public sector than they do from the private sector. That is an interesting thought to reflect on.

In local areas, the issue becomes one of definition. In Clackmannanshire, the scope for spending with local bodies within the council area is different from that in Glasgow, where there are a lot more businesses and, therefore, a lot more scope to spend with local bodies. The setting of targets at that level becomes an issue. Last week, the committee talked to the Federation of Small Businesses, which tends to focus on microbusinesses. Those are very different from what we would call medium-sized businesses, but both are in that SME range—a huge range of different businesses is caught by the SME categorisation. In setting targets, we would need to be very careful about what exactly we would measure and how we would compare like for like. As you said, the spend of a health board is very different from that of a council in terms of the scope that each has for spending locally. The best way to set such targets would probably involve considering that as part of a plan, in order to allow for local variations.

Absolutely. I think that some of that could be in the bill and some of it could be in guidance, depending on how we want to articulate it.

That is absolutely true. It is important to recognise that we are not starting from ground zero. There are a whole series of workstreams in the national strategy for economic transformation that seek to address the point about entrepreneurs starting businesses. There are a lot of great examples of community development trusts, including in my constituency, and a lot of work is being done at a Scotland-wide level through organisations to pull that knowledge together, share best practice and give the momentum and impetus to take that forward. There is a lot happening, but I recognise the points about capacity and our role in helping to support that where we can.

Capacity can be a challenge. Going back to the point that Willie Coffey made, I note that there will be good capacity by definition in areas where good progress is being made, but not in areas where it is not. How that is balanced is important. We are keen to work with partners in the broad sense to take that forward. However, I note again that the bill is not the only opportunity that we will have to address these issues.

I am very happy to consider that. Again, however, it is important to put the matter in context. The public service reform strategy that we brought out last week has workstreams on how we make community planning partnerships more effective. Will legislation come out of that work? I think that it is likely that there will be a lot of public service reform during the next parliamentary session, which will cover a range of things in that space and consider how to get more empowerment in local service design and everything else that goes with that. We are very much considering that.

I suppose that it comes down to what the most effective vehicle is. If there are specific things that we can do in the bill during the next few months, given its timescale, we are very happy to consider that, but I would say that the bill is not the end of the story. There is a lot more to be done. There is also the democracy matters work, on which we have indicated that we will create legislation on the single authority model, the strengthening of CPPs and so on during the next session of Parliament.

I know that some issues relating to that are reserved and some are devolved. We are happy to unpick that. Stephen White might be able to comment on that.

That is a good question. [Laughter.] I had not spotted that. Do officials want to comment on that?