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Okay. Thank you for that.

You know what I am going to ask you, Mr Burr. Question 9 was:

“How, if at all, is your organisation working collaboratively with other public sector organisations to produce joint service reform plans for the public body landscape and use of resources (for submission to the Scottish Government later this year)?”

The reason why I was surprised by your “Not applicable” response was that you talk about a single islands partnership. I would have thought that you would be working with the other public bodies on the islands, such as the NHS. I am sure that you do work closely with those bodies. Can you give us a wee response to those questions?

Thank God you are not pushing that, John.

Sometimes it is hard not to get back in when you have multimember wards. [Laughter.]

That appears to have concluded questions from the committee. Are there any further points that you would like to make before we conclude the session?

An important part of reform is digitalisation. It is clear that there has to be co-operation between the Scottish Government and local government, so I am a wee bit concerned about some of the comments on that in your submission.

For example, in paragraph 43, you talk about the myjobscotland portal, which you say is managed by COSLA and

“has streamlined the recruitment process for councils and other public sector bodies (although the Scottish Government and its agencies have opted not to use it)”.

In paragraph 70, you say that, in the digital strategy,

“both COSLA and the Scottish Government committed to develop and expand DigitalBoost as ‘our primary programme of support for SMEs’.”

You go on to say that

“Despite this, the programme saw its budget reduced by 25% for 2022/23 and indications are that it is unlikely to be funded in 2023/24.”

Clearly, the collaboration is not working as well as it should. Why is the Scottish Government not using myjobscotland and why is the digital strategy support for SMEs not being continued?

I do not want to talk only about budgetary stuff, because our inquiry is more about reform, but that is at the core of a lot of what you have been saying, so I will ask one or two questions on that before I bring Sarah Watters in.

The figures that you mentioned are from paragraph 46 of your submission, in which you talk about

“an increase of 4.3% in Scottish Government funding of other areas over the same period”,

but would that be the case if you were to take out the funding for the national health service, for example? The difficulty has been that we have an ageing and more frail population. We could argue about the percentages here and there, but any Government of any colour would have put a disproportionate amount of additional funding, when it was available, into the NHS because of it being demand led. An example of that is the fact that, pre-pandemic, there was a 25 per cent increase in accident and emergency cases over five years. There has been a 50 per cent increase in radiographers and a doubling of the number of psychiatrists in the NHS, but that is still not enough.

Is that not the context in which we operate? You responded in such a way as to suggest that we are all heading in the same direction at the same pace, but there are some areas of the Scottish Government where the pressures are absolutely in your face. You can argue about priorities—it is crucial that we do that—but is that not the background picture, in a period in which, overall, we have had a fairly flat funding settlement over a number of years?

I will ask you about those kinds of issues as we move on. It is interesting that you keep saying “since 2008”, but as I recall, the previous Administration had a policy of top slicing 3 per cent of local government funding year in, year out. That would have been its policy, so we would have been in this situation regardless of which Administration we had had.

I have a question for Sarah Watters—fair funding sounds good, but how much is fair funding? That is the issue. Given that local government is as aware as the rest of us of the financial pressures that the Scottish Government and indeed the United Kingdom Government are under, how realistic is it to expect additional funding for local government over and above any average increase in the settlement that may come to the Scottish Government over the next year?

I have one final question regarding the fact that local authorities were not asked by the Scottish Government to submit reform plans to inform the 2024-25 Scottish budget. How do you feel about that?

That is a point well made.

I know that Sarah Watters wanted to come in, but I am trying to move on because I want colleagues to come in. I could spend the whole evidence session asking questions, because there is so much really good detail, but I will just ask one more question about best practice.

What is good about the document is that there are tremendous examples of good practice—for example, Renfrewshire Council’s tackling poverty commission, North Ayrshire Council’s skills for life programme and East Dunbartonshire Council’s snack and play programme. You also give the example of North Ayrshire Council’s community wealth building programme, which is expanding throughout Scotland.

I have asked over many years on a number of committees how such good practice can be spread throughout local government, because a concern that I have always had is that council X might have a great project and council Y might have another brilliant project, but there is not as much sharing and cross-cutting as there should be to ensure that those projects are implemented more widely.

I thank the committee for my appointment, and I thank in particular my colleagues Michael Marra and John Mason, who have convened the committee’s meetings in my absence.

As I rejoin the committee, I declare that I have no relevant interests.