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I come to Alastair Wilcox.

I put the question to Ross Dornan. What does he think about decoupling gas from electricity in the market? How soon can that be done? Does that process need to be accelerated?

I ask Frazer Scott the same question. Given that children have already been referred to, he might want to focus on single older people.

Good morning, minister. As you will be aware, the committee is conducting an inquiry into local government and its partners in delivering net zero. In your opening remarks, you said that the strategies and delivery plans would need to be comprehensive and place based, but the fact is that local authorities do not have control of all the levers in that respect, nor do they own all the properties, space or land that is required for a place-based approach to be taken. As a result, they are dependent on working in partnership with others.

In the evidence that we have taken, we have heard that, although councils understand their leadership role here, there are certain skills that they just do not have, and I have to say that paying £50,000 for a consultant will not necessarily help with the finance side of things. You have indicated that the finance aspect will be separate, but it is quite clear that it will be integral to helping local authorities to mobilise private capital and so on, which is one of the skills bases that authorities have said that they need support with or something that they need a better collective approach to.

I realise that that is not covered in the strategy and delivery plan duty in the order before us today—in fact, it is only common sense that it has not been—but the guidance should perhaps set out better, quicker and more comprehensive support for councils to ensure that they can deliver a comprehensive place-based approach. Do you acknowledge that it is not just a case of putting a duty and a responsibility on councils and leaving them to get on with things, and that providing integrated support through guidance and other aspects will be absolutely critical?

Roddy MacDonald, what is the capacity of the voluntary sector and volunteers to be involved in the big projects that we have heard about?

Briefly, for the record, we acknowledge that there is no proposal for any tourism tax in West Lothian and that Linlithgow palace is closed because of unsafe masonry.

On the point about that culture change and the fact that business improvement districts could do more, what would enable them to do more? You talked about their doing bigger projects. However, is there not a risk that, if they do small things, business improvement districts have the challenge of justifying what they are doing? How do we get that trust among all the public sector bodies to empower business improvement districts to do more?

I will come first to Anthea Coulter and then to Mark Darragh. We have heard that considerable funding is now available for town centres. We also know that there is a great deal of entrepreneurship, not just in the third sector but in the business improvement districts. Would that enable better collaborative working with councils? There has been a period of austerity in which councils may have been risk averse, because things have been tight financially. What enablers would help a culture of bigger projects, potentially? People want to see value from a BID, which they might not see in a small project. Are capabilities opening up that perhaps were not there five years ago?

We have heard from Phil Prentice about the various funds that are available, and we know from the examples that have just been given that their success is due to a common alignment between different funding streams, whether they be from Historic Environment Scotland, Creative Scotland or the town centre fund. The common theme is that there is a common vision about the story of the place and what needs to be done.

My question for David Grove, though, is about risk aversion. Many council officers involved in towns have to get a return for the council, which might own the properties and might well be under financial pressure and stretched in many different directions. Is there a danger of risk aversion preventing us from making the step change that we need? It all comes down to people; the capital investment might well be available but, in relation to people, what sort of culture and resource do we need? If we are to take communities and, indeed, the business community, artists and so on with us, we need to remember that, although these people are often the most entrepreneurial, they also run businesses and can get exhausted by the time and effort that they have to put in, constant consultations and so on. How do we make that step change to ensure that people embrace entrepreneurialism and become less risk averse?

Very briefly, Danny, given your previous experience in working for the council and with community groups, what do you think are the key elements culturally to enable people to have that trust and, particularly for local authorities, to pass over power and decision making to local communities?

Thank you. Phil, can you comment on the danger of risk aversion and on the benefit of entrepreneurialism in the public sector as well as working with partners in the private sector? Again, we had better focus on successes rather than on where that has not happened. What are your reflections on good practice that we can follow up on, and on practice that we need to try to move away from?