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Thank you for clarifying the question. There is quite extensive engagement on the banking issue through, for example, the banking forum where we engage with the banks and the UK Government.

With regard to the nitty-gritty of how it happens, I have had quadrilateral meetings with my counterparts in Wales, Northern Ireland and the UK Government. The agenda in the latter meeting included items on access to loan funding and on what the banks were doing or not that we would like them to do. We have direct engagement with the UK Government on banking through active face-to-face conversation.

With regard to access to cash, we have made the point about extending some of the schemes that we think should be extended.

There is a general commitment to work together on supporting businesses. I think that it was the Scottish Financial Enterprise that said that businesses are facing a wall of liabilities right now, and we discussed that point at length with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and my counterparts in the other devolved Governments in the last quadrilateral meeting.

Everything that relates to the Green deal has now been published and we have not sacrificed our commitments. The A9 is still going to be dualled, and the A96 is referred to in the co-operation agreement in terms of the priorities for the next few years. As far as I am concerned, as someone who represents a rural area, there are no consequences for the projects that I, as a local MSP, am fighting for—I usually lobby myself, which does not work very well. I am fighting for investment in local communities, and that will continue to be the case. What I am trying to say, in a roundabout way, is that what makes the biggest impact is not deals but our having the cash—the actual, hard money—to invest.

I will pause there, because I want to talk about the report about our missing out on funding, about which I was quite confused. There is an irony at the heart of a report about the UK Government, in essence, using the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020 to try to spend directly in areas of devolved competence, which then says that we are not engaging sufficiently. It seems ironic that, after having joined the Welsh and Northern Irish in saying that the United Kingdom Internal Market Bill was an attack on devolved competence, we are being accused of not engaging sufficiently.

Our big problem with levelling up, the unionisation of spend and so on is that we are usually kept in the dark. Occasionally we are brought into the light to be told what is happening, but that is a rare experience, as far as I am concerned.

It is really difficult to prioritise our spend when another Government is spending in devolved areas. As far as I can see, all local authorities are considering whether to bid for things such as the levelling-up fund, so there is a big question for us. For example, fair distribution is at the heart of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities’ methodology, to ensure that every local authority gets a fair share of the capital that is available, so if some areas are getting substantially more, directly from the UK Government, does that mean that we should compensate the other local authorities and give them capital that would otherwise have been shared fairly across local authorities? Where we are already spending on, for example, the key roles that were mentioned in the news report to which you referred, but some areas are now to get money directly from the UK Government, should we use the funding for other priority projects, which have not yet been funded? It is extremely difficult to determine how to use our limited capital funding as far as we can for hospital projects, roads and schools when the UK Government is making decisions about capital spend that we are not sighted on.

I think that it was David Duguid who made the comment about our missing out on money. I have certainly not rejected any money and I am not aware of ever having rejected any money. Scotland needs as much investment as possible. It seems a bit rich that we are being accused of not engaging by people who are trampling over the normal devolved processes for distributing funding.

I will start with the MTFS and then move on to the wider subject of the timetable. The original intention would have been to publish in May, but that was not possible, due to the election. I am interested in the committee’s view on that. There is on-going uncertainty because of the UK Government’s plan for a spending review. That spending review would be very helpful to inform our medium-term financial strategy. If we have it, we will be forecasting not on the basis of the best available evidence but on the latest data from the UK Government.

I think that there are no perfect timing options, given that the MTFS could not be published in May. It does not make sense to publish it in advance of the OBR forecasts. If OBR forecasts are published on 26 October or we have the promised UK spending review, it would be quite misleading to rely on OBR forecasts from the previous March. There continues to be a lot of movement in our economic and fiscal outlook, so block grant adjustments that were based on March forecasts would significantly overstate our budget.

That is the territory that I am in just now. I am happy to take the committee’s view on how we can spread out scrutiny of the budget, the MTFS and the resource spending review in a way that allows you to give the budget the appropriate attention that it needs, and I would be open to your views on how I can best work with the committee on that. I would intend, certainly for the 2022 MTFS, to revert back to its previous publication timetable in May, in line with the written agreement.

I hope that I have given you enough information without concluding a position right now, and you can perhaps take a view on that.

On the budget timetable, we have obviously had two years of significantly delayed budgets. There is no perfect time. If the UK Government publishes its budget first, we have the best available evidence that we need but, if there are any delays to the UK Government’s budget, we are left in a position of choosing whether to take inadequate and inaccurate information and base a budget on that in order to give security and certainty to businesses and local government, or to wait, increasing the delay of giving that certainty to local government but having the best available evidence. I would very much like to revert this year to what we did formerly, which would be to consider a budget in late autumn.

That would be my hope, but we really need the UK Government and the chancellor to confirm that. Until he confirms that, I am working off hints, suggestions and indications, rather than anything more concrete.

No, but I will take those two issues in turn. I think that it is important that I talk about local government pay, and I will then go back to talking about flexibility and ring fencing. As you know—I have said this repeatedly to COSLA, I have said it in public and the First Minister has confirmed this to COSLA, too—our budget has been fully deployed and there is no additional funding available for additional spend.

I am hugely grateful for the heroic efforts of all key workers, including those in local government, but matters of pay are for local government itself. Those matters are negotiated by the trade unions and COSLA through the Scottish joint council. We are not a member of the SJC, we have never taken part in pay negotiations and I do not intend to do so now. The point about managing budgets is a question for COSLA and local government.

On flexibility and the local government funding settlement, as I said a few moments ago, in last year’s budget, I was explicit that we were maximising the amount of non-ring fenced funding for local government. At the moment, the vast majority of the £11.7 billion that local government gets is not ring fenced. That includes some capital—£617 million—but the vast majority is for day-to-day services, and is not ring fenced. There is a general uplift. The last thing that I did before Parliament went into recess was provide an extra £275 million of non-recurring funding for Covid-related matters, and that was not ring fenced. Essentially, the vast majority of the funding is not ring fenced, and it is for local government to make decisions about how to spend it.

The irony in your question is that, on one hand, there is a general request for us to intervene in local government pay and, on the other hand, there is a request for us to provide maximum flexibility and discretion for local government. I intend to provide that maximum amount of discretion for local government without getting involved in matters of pay and how local authorities spend their budget.

There is certainly a growing understanding—although it is not yet universal—of the role of community wealth building. We in Parliament and in the public sector sometimes start to use such terms without necessarily explaining to the wider public what they mean, but there is a growing sense of the concept’s importance. With regard to its importance in the Scottish Government, we have seconded Neil McInroy, who was previously chief executive of the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, to a part-time role as strategic adviser to the Scottish Government as we develop our community wealth building programme.

As members will know, there are currently five pilot areas in which we have worked with local authorities to produce individual community wealth building action plans that reflect both their economic challenges and where we think that there are opportunities. Three of those plans have been published, and two are still in draft. The five pilot areas are Clackmannanshire, the south of Scotland, the Western Isles, Tay cities and Fife and the Glasgow city region; Elena Whitham also mentioned the £3 million for the Ayrshire region.

There are a lot of good examples. The key with the pilots, and with what is happening across the Ayrshire region, is to take best practice and roll it out. We are working with COSLA, the Scottish Local Authorities Economic Development Group and the Improvement Service to use community wealth building as a vehicle to deliver more locally bespoke and unique inclusive economic solutions, rather than having me, as economy secretary, come in and say that one size fits all, which we know is blatantly not the case. It is good to see a bottom-up approach being taken.

I meant that, for many families across Scotland, the status quo was pretty tough and grim. When it comes to recovery, we cannot be content just to go back to the way things were. We need to resolve some of the structural challenges in Scottish society and the Scottish economy. One example is that work needs to pay. We cannot expect families to make ends meet through insecure employment. The fact that so many children in working households are in poverty should be a huge incentive not to return to the way things were, but to do things differently.

Another example in the economic sphere is town centres, which you mentioned. Prior to the pandemic, we were already grappling with the way in which our town centres have changed, because people shop online and local town centres perhaps struggle to compete with some of the bigger urban centres. The pandemic has exacerbated those trends: more people have started shopping online, more people are digitised and our town centres are struggling more than they were, even with the big emphasis on shopping local. Those are two examples of how going back to the status quo is not an improvement, which should be an incentive to act.

Your question about local government’s role is important. During the pandemic, we saw that—homelessness is a good example of this—when there was an urgent need to act, because it was an emergency, we did not get sucked into process and bureaucracy but we focused on outcomes. Rather than get bogged down in the process of ending homelessness, we just decided, together, to end homelessness and to ensure that everybody had a home.

I go back to Miles Briggs’s question about preventative spend. In thinking about our national performance framework, of which COSLA and we are joint signatories, we need to focus on outcomes rather than process to fix the issues. We need to take that approach to every problem—rather than get fixated on process, we need to have the outcomes in mind and deliver those. It is easier said than done, but there are no more excuses, because we focused on outcome rather than process during Covid.

Thank you very much.

As someone who was not formerly a serving councillor either, I have to say that it is good to have some company at this morning’s meeting.

I can think of quite a number of examples. However, before I go through them, I have to say that one of the points that I frequently make about preventative spend is about the importance of Government and the Parliament going hand in hand on this. We are going to get into this again over the next few months, but I would simply note that, every year, Parliament scrutinises—and quite rightly so—those budget lines that go down as well as those that go up. As you will know from your years as health spokesperson, Mr Briggs, the problem with preventative spend is that additional spend in one area—in other words, prevention—means an equal and opposite decline in other spending areas. When I have come before the committee, previous members have asked me why, for example, I am not spending more on environmental measures to reduce future health harms. Mr Briggs will know as well as I do that, if we were to reduce spend in acute health areas and move that money into, say, more parks—I do not mean to be facetious, but you will understand what I am saying—there would be a bit of an outcry. That is what we have to do with regard to preventative spend.

One example that I would highlight would be our spend on active travel and low-emissions zones, both of which have, as you will know, a direct impact on lung health. As a result, although that spend is part of the transport budget line and has to be accommodated there, the benefits are seen in the health budget. We need to start scrutinising overall budgets. Perhaps the committee could take up that matter, given its diverse range of subject areas, but we have to get into the spirit of looking at what is happening in one budget line versus what is happening in another.

Another area in which the committee might take an interest is community wealth building, which involves us investing in local economies and community economic development rather than in big national economic development, knowing that, when you invest in local communities and create jobs at a local level, that inevitably has a bigger impact on, for example, the amount of spend on welfare support. If we are spending on creating jobs, we are not spending on welfare support, because individuals will be earning sufficient sums of money to support themselves and their families.

Those are two examples, and there should be more. In order to get more, we need to take a more holistic approach to the way in which I set that budget and, more importantly, the way in which the budget is scrutinised.

Yes, there will be on-going support. If I can be a little tongue-in-cheek here, it takes us back to the core question for the committee, which is about ring fencing versus maximising local authority discretion, and I look forward to the committee’s steer on that. We will certainly provide on-going support—not only financial support but support in kind—as we develop the approach, and we will help to facilitate work and provide expertise and guidance. However, when we are developing new strands of work, the big question for us, and for the committees, is whether we ring fence funding for specific outcomes and purposes, and that includes community wealth building.

Community wealth building will play an important role in our wider economic strategy. I want that strategy to have a strong local dimension, which will require local authorities to think creatively about their role in helping to develop local economic strategies. We will continue to provide support and encourage local authorities to keep on doing what they are doing: working with local communities to develop bespoke local economic strategies.