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A power of general competence was agreed in the first session of Parliament when Wendy Alexander was the minister. Although it might not have been implemented, it was certainly agreed by the Parliament, as anyone who checks the Official Report will be able to confirm.

Thank you. That concludes questions from members. We are over our time and we have not been able to touch on reserves or climate change or much about economic productivity and economic growth.

I will raise one issue that was alluded to by Michael Marra and John Mason, which is the trade-off between expenditure on welfare as opposed to local authorities. In paragraph 49 of your submission, Katie, you talked about how the benefit budget has increased by £984 million in this financial year and said:

“The opportunity cost of these decisions needs to be considered.”

The funding could have gone to

“economic development and employability services which help to create jobs and support people facing barriers to the labour market to progress toward, into and sustain work in fairly paid jobs, thus reducing dependence on the welfare system and also improving health outcomes. This funding could have been used to create more affordable housing supporting people out of poverty, reducing homelessness and improving health and education outcomes.”

Has COSLA done a cost benefit analysis of how that £984 million could have been spent in local services? That is a key point of your submission.

Thank you very much. That has been very helpful to the committee. We will hold our final evidence session in our inquiry on managing Scotland’s public finances, a strategic approach, at our next meeting, when we will hear from the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government.

We will now take a five-minute break to allow for a changeover of witnesses.

Allan Faulds, you say in your submission that you feel that inequality has not been consistently considered across the national outcomes.

Why would any Government want economic growth for its own sake? Is the purpose of economic growth not to generate wealth to invest and spend on services?

Jamie Robertson, what is CIPFA’s view on that? It seems that there is broad support for the visitor levy, but there are issues. It is great for Edinburgh and, I imagine, for Katie Hagmann’s Dumfries and Galloway region, but I do not know that North Lanarkshire, Clackmannanshire and certain other local authorities would necessarily be able to generate additional funding in that way. Would it cause a funding imbalance across Scottish local authorities if, for example, Edinburgh were to get £30 million, £40 million or £50 million a year and North Lanarkshire were to get only a few hundred thousand pounds a year, or even less?

Clearly, you are not prepared to say what you feel the settlement from the Scottish Government should be. The committee is trying to pin that down, because it is very difficult for us to make recommendations to Scottish ministers about the Scottish local government financial settlement if local government does not tell us what budget it requires for next year.

There is a lot of pressure on ���˿��� about teacher numbers: the Educational Institute of Scotland has called for 3,500 more. I recall that we were all lobbied about that earlier this year. There are also frequent calls in the chamber for more teachers, despite the falling number of children in our schools.

Malcolm, what impact is the straitjacket of ring fencing having on your local authority? Those of us who were here in the days of the historic concordat in November 2007 might recall that the Scottish Government was seeking to eliminate that sort of thing, but it has gradually crept back in over the past 15 years or so.

Good morning, and welcome to the 27th meeting in 2024 of the Finance and Public Administration Committee.

Before we start, I put on record our thanks to the Estonian MPs, organisations and officials who met us during our short fact-finding visit to Tallinn last week. There is a lot for us to learn from Estonia’s success story in digitalisation and public service reform, and we will draw on that learning as we continue our pre-budget scrutiny. I thank our clerking team for its first-class organisation and preparation for the visit, which ensured that we met the right people at the right time, that visits went smoothly and that we were all adequately fed and watered. We will publish a summary note about the visit in due course.

The first item on our agenda is to continue taking evidence on managing Scotland’s public finances, a strategic approach. I welcome Councillor Katie Hagmann, resources spokesperson for the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities; Jamie Robertson, chair of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy directors of finance; Malcolm Burr, chief executive of Comhairle nan Eilean Siar; and David Robertson, chief executive of Scottish Borders Council. Thank you all for your written submissions. I have to say that COSLA’s submission was exceptional—it was 41 pages and included 171 paragraphs, and it made for a very interesting Sunday.

We have about 90 minutes for the session. If witnesses would like to be brought into the discussion at any point, please indicate that to the clerks and I can then bring them in.

I will start with COSLA’s submission. Katie Hagmann, in addition to providing a very detailed submission, you have added a wee summary. One of the things that you mention in the summary and, indeed, frequently throughout the submission is the need to provide “adequate, sustainable and flexible funding” for local government. Can you expand on that? It is a rather vague statement. Can you give us a wee bit of a steer on where you feel that local government funding should sit in the forthcoming Scottish budget?

Still on local taxation, we know about cruise ship levies, visitor levies and even workforce parking levies. I would not think that any of those would have a massive impact on local authority finances. Which other areas would you like local government to look at, Malcolm? You mentioned reform. If we were to reform local government finance, which other areas should local authorities have control over? Would they include a local sales tax, for example?